Deniers/sceptics are all too quick to shout out that the whole of global warming science is a hoax. Yup, tens of thousands of people have faked the scientific theories since the early 1800s, the actual measurements of reality, the historical records, the pre-historical records, the even further back than that records. This colossal hoax is so all pervasive that even animals, birds and insects are joining in by pretending to be affected by non-existent changes in ecosystems. God help us, the conspirators have even persuaded dumb ice sheets and permafrost to fake it for the cause. Nature really is a lying traitor and we should never trust her again! Thankfully we have the brave, clearsighted denialist/"sceptic" movement to save us all from the biggest and longest lasting conspiracy the world has ever seen. The global warming hoax is bigger even than the conspiracy theories that one sees uncovered on JFK assassination websites, sites selflessly dedicated to exposing the "mankind-landed on the moon hoaxes" and spreaders of the previously biggest conspiracy idea - that Grey aliens are in charge of all world governments.
Of course ideas that the whole of global warming science is a hoax are preposterous, bordering on insanity. There's a lot of people who give them credence though... The minor conspiracies mentioned before are imagined by exactly the same type of pseudo-paranoid thinking as the denialists use to achieve their ends, which are the good of them and their cohorts - not the good of all. The current blitzkrieg of propaganda, that they have launched recently, is not just a few internet crazies mouthing off about Climategate, Amazongate etc. Too many ordinary people are getting fooled. This is a dangerous situation for the world to be in.
However, imagine if it all were a hoax, or a big mistake that thousands of very smart people hadn't spotted over the last 50 years or so. Let's look back from the future perspective of our children's world. Imagine that we had gone ahead and weened ourselves off fossil fuels and reduced our greenhouse gas emissions anyway. Peak oil - no problemo... loads of other problems solved...
A Joel Pett cartoon
15 comments:
after reading comments on your previous post, i started read the harry read me file
have you read this yet?
is it genuine?
The "harry read me" thing was last November. I didn't think it important enough to comment on. Although it ricocheted around the denialosphere echo-chamber at incredible speed, it was yet another non-story blown up from grain of rice proportions to the size of a mountain by the usual suspects. It was the log of a programmer who had to tortuously update an older database programme and was, apparently, par for the course when this type of work is undertaken. None of the screaming and shouting, and vast misrepresentation of it, by the denialosphere changed the underlying physics behind climate change or had any impact on the solid science.
What the deniers keep on doing, over and over again, is they twist inconsequential stuff so it looks like some sort of smoking gun hole in climate science (unless you actually are a scientist or are familiar with the science) and their gullible followers just lap it up and repeat it ad nauseam.
This happens so often that I believe it is possible to confidently identify some of the initiators of this propaganda as knowingly lying (like the tobacco company execs used to) therefore, to cut a long psychological analysis and report on their morals and integrity short, they are evil.
This is what Realclimate.org had to say about it.
HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be.
Just for you - here's an interesting analysis of one of the recent "gates" showing clearly how the liars and misinformers work click here.
so we'll take you have'nt read the 'harry read me' file then,
"long psychological analysis"
you really shouldn't hide your
qualifications under a bushel
who would have thought you had so many strings to your bow
I've read enough of it to assess who is telling the truth and who is spinning lies and paranoid analysis about the substance of it. It's about 250 pages - how much time do you think someone has to waste following up obvious red herrings? It would be like reading the whole of the Bible to get further clues about evolution.
Perhaps it would help if you knew that I have been involved with computers and databases since the mid 80's - once was involved for a short timed with minicomputers (before the IBM PC). I have been online on computer networks since well before the Internet. I am very familiar with the florid language that progammers and those who used to be called hackers (when it was a term of admiration and did not have criminal connotations) use when they communicate about what they regard as not perfectly the way that they would have done it.
It's pointless wasting your time with this stuff, anonymous, it's exactly like reading conspiracy theory websites - no matter how convincing they look, if you just read the biased and cherry picked information they present to you, you will end up with a bad idea of the truth. They are all just time wasting crap created by people of dubious rationality, balance, ethics and judgement. Ditto denialist websites and their propaganda.
as you value science, what is your take on pro agw scientists refusing foi requests and withholding data, codes and methodology upon which their papers rely?
you will know it is anathema to age old scientific principals regarding replication of studies.
do you find it incongruous that no such charges have been levelled
against any sceptical scientist or their work?
"ordinary" people as you call us
(does this imply you are extraordinary?) don't have to be scientists to see who are being open and honest in the whole mann-made global warming debacle.
Part 1
Are you all the same anonymous?
quote "scientists refusing foi requests" etc etc
If you only read denialist journalist sources or denier blogs like "What's up with that" you would think that was what was happening.
The overwhelming majority of the info "requested" (more on that later) does not belong to the Uni of E. Anglia's climate unit. It comes from many hundreds of sources over more than twenty years which still "own" it. If the Uni was to respond to the avalanche of hundreds of "FOIA" requests, orchestrated by McIntyre's minions at Climateaudit, they would have had to seek permission from those sources or there were restrictions on passing it on to non-academics. The administration would have been colossal and may have taken months of wasted time to fulfil.
Are you local? One of our senior politicians participated in this "denial of time" FOIA harassment attack (she alphabetically "did" the countries Namibia to Portugal) and crowed on Climateaudit about how it would "foul up (someone's) vacation" click to read comment.
As I mentioned, if McIntyre had just innocently wanted to "replicate a study" he would have applied directly to the sources himself but it really doesn't look like that was the plan. He has form for making mischief by finding hairsplitting points of contention of little or no significance. Any which looked suitable would have been launched into the denialosphere where the echo chamber of useful idiots would have spread it around the world in a few days giving further (false) ammunition to irresponsible or ideologically motivated journos and irrational-but-dangerous thinktanks. It would carry on echoing around for years before McIntyre's probably dubious analysis was outed. Jones and Mann etc knew perfectly well the reasons why McIntyre was doing it, and it wasn't for an innocent, ordinary replication, like the suckers have swallowed.
Here's a link to McIntyre setting up the "denial of time" harassment sting.
Here's a link to one of his main men posting the list of hundreds of countries
Quote "you will know it is anathema to age old scientific principals regarding replication of studies".
Yeah, I was reading about the philosophy of science when I was about ten. What McIntyre was doing was not for those noble purposes.
Part 2
Quote "do you find it incongruous that no such charges have been levelled
against any sceptical scientist or their work?"
There is an organised and vindictive campaign of smearing going on only against climate science - I wish the "warmist" scientists would pick apart the so-called sceptical scientists in public - they do in "private". BTW, name some - I challenge you to come up with credible names who actually publish peer reviewed science papers. If you manage it, I will show you that they actually barely differ from the IPCC position. What you have probably been led to believe is a big lie. Huge.
However, a little simple debunking never did anyone any harm this article is fun
Normally speaking, scientists come off worse (in the audience's "mind") when debating professional deceivers, who know exactly how to fool a crowd, but maybe it shouldn't be scientists who should do the debating? This video of darling-of-the deniers Professor Ian Plimer being absolutely eviscerated on live TV by the journalist Monbiot is a joy. He catches Plimer out big-time! Tot up Plimer's lies, misdirection, dissembling and evasion as his plausible garbage has light shone on it! It gets good about 8 minutes in.
Oddly enough "sceptics" are only sceptical (often pathologically so) about stuff that conflicts with their desired beliefs, yet they are incredibly non-sceptical about pseudo-scientific garbage and misdirection. They accept it without question.
Quote "ordinary" people as you call us (does this imply you are extraordinary?) [Yes.] don't have to be scientists to see who are being open and honest in the whole mann-made global warming debacle.
No, you don't. However, you absolutely need the judgement to assess the credibility and motivations of your sources. Most haven't got that. If you watch Derren Brown do something amazing by misdirection, you know it's a trick. Why can't you see that the denialist equivalents of Derren B are fooling you too? What you don't appear to realise is that you are being manipulated by liars, dissemblers and professional propagandists to believe something untrue and dangerous. Surely Goebbels would have been proud of the denialosphere and its willing followers?
BTW, the only "debacle" is the way the public mind is being duped by liars and twisted to lose faith in those who are trying to show the truth of reality.
Part 3
Here's a few extracts from "The Economist" blog of February 22nd that show why Jones, Mann etc were very reluctant to let McIntyre's minions have their pound of flesh.
It shows a much more accurate picture of the truth than any "ordinary person" will have got from the Mail, Express or Telegraph...
"That Daily Mail headline is a lie. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995; he said the opposite. He said the world had been warming at 0.12°C per decade since 1995. However, over that time frame, he could not quite rule out at the traditional 95% confidence level that the warming since 1995 had not been a random fluke…
What’s truly infuriating about this episode of journalistic malpractice is that, once again, it illustrates the reasons why the East Anglia scientists adopted an adversarial attitude towards information management with regard to outsiders and the media. They were afraid that any data they allowed to be characterised by non-climate scientists would be vulnerable to propagandistic distortion. And they were right."
If you look at the whole article. they actually appear to use an argument that I first used on Climate Progress a short time before about waves versus tide being a good analogy for short term weather versus long term climate...
here's a quote from dr. judith curry,
chair;school of earth and atmospheric sciences,
georgia institute if technology.
dr. curry is a climate scientist and agw believer to boot.
"no one really believes that the "science is settled" or that the "debate is over." Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements".
dr. currys full open letter can be found at many places on the web,
but not at "team hockey sticks"
real climate.com
so, would you concede that dr.curry has a greater scientific understanding of climate than you?
if yes, will you cease claiming that the science is settled?
Part 1
You commented:
so, would you concede that dr.curry has a greater scientific understanding of climate than you?
if yes, will you cease claiming that the science is settled?
I suppose you thought you were being smart? Your questions are simplistic and clearly betray your shallowness of knowledge. Curry didn't mean what you thought (wished?) she meant. Firstly, you really should know that there are very many aspects to the "science". It is not one indivisible thing. Within the bounds of the philosophy of science, which technically means that no scientific theory is ever (or can ever be settled) - see explanation after for the philosophical niceties - the basic climate science is (as far as any rational competent observer should be concerned) "settled" or "certain". As certain as the laws which tell us how much energy it takes to boil a kettle; how long it will take a space probe to slingshot around several planets and end up where we wanted it to; what happens to light waves and infrared when they enter and leave an optically active media, like a laser crystal or some gas with CO2 in it...
What is "sure" is that CO2 is increasing in our atmosphere, and that our activities are the predominant reason for that since the industrial revolution; that the atmosphere/ocean systems are warming and that the observed recent warming since the mid 20th century is predominantly down to us. Our climate forcings due to, amongst other things, fossil fuel use are stronger than the natural forcings such as the sun and orbital cycles. Climate changes in the past, caused by much weaker forcings over much longer time spans have caused massive extinctions of species due to catastrophic (to the species concerned) climate change. Natural "gentler" climate shifts take thousands, or tens of thousands of years, to sort themselves out and stabilise afterwards. I don't think too many sceptics have the faintest idea what their wishful thinking is risking.
It's true Curry has very much more knowledge than me (and most people on earth) in certain narrowly defined areas of climate science, particularly hurricane generation and certain areas of atmospheric convective transport. That does not necessarily mean that her opinions on, say, palaeoclimatology are of any greater credibility than those of an informed layperson - she may even be less knowledgeable because she is a highly specialised scientist and just may never have had the time to keep up to date with all of the myriad other disciplines that make up climate science (there's not really any such thing as a "one size fits all" climate scientist). I have been following in depth the development of climate science since the late 60's/early 70's. I don't know any one area of climate science in the detail that a researcher dedicated to that aspect of the science would know, but I have a pretty good knowledge of most of the various disciplines that make up the whole that is called climate science. So yes, it's possible, in some respects, I may know more wide information than she does.
Part 2
You cherry pick from Dr Curry's letters these phrases:
"no one really believes that the "science is settled" or that the "debate is over." Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements".
Unfortunately within these phrases there is a hell of a lot of ambiguity about what they mean, depending on who's saying them, how and to whom. They are a source of great confusion to the public because the true meaning is rooted in the philosophy of science, which is very different from the popular view of science. They can mean very different things when a scientist says them, speaking as a scientist to scientists, or alternatively when she says them speaking to a populist audience. I think Curry got confused - she thought if she spoke as a philosophically correct squeaky clean "ivory tower" scientist, that somehow the sceptics would "get it". Very silly of her to believe that.
It is a rather surprising thing for her to have said at the end of her two letters which would have only made some sense if you think her basic position was sensible - that the answer to the tidal waves of lies and misdirection that the denialosphere has launched over climategate is to throw open the books and the data for everyone to see. The position she took was incredibly naive politically because she doesn't appear to fully realise what the denialosphere is and the true motivations of many at the heart of it (just because she works in one area of climate science doesn't mean her political opinions outside her speciality are of any more credibility than the next bloke's...). She has been subject herself to the lies and black propaganda of the denialists in the past, so it is a little strange that now she appears to think they will just roll over and become nice reasonable, rational people if she throws them an "openness" olive branch.
Judith Curry's letters on Climate progress and Climate audit were political acts by her to try to build bridges between the so-called sceptics, climate scientists and the public. She thinks that the reported secretiveness of the few scientists involved in the so-called climategate emails is damaging to the science as a whole, not because she believes in the insane and unpleasant misrepresentations and accusations that the malevolent denialosphere have been promulgating about them, but because (in my opinion) she naively thinks that total openness and throwing open the books to any one who wants to have a look will somehow clear the air and then the "sceptics" won't feel there's stuff being hidden from them etc etc. What she neglects to realise is that, if one has followed the evolution of the sceptic denialosphere over decades, one gets a very different impression of them from that which the "man in the street" would get if they just discovered "Wattsupwiththat" or climateaudit a few months ago. Perhaps Dr Curry wants to see potential fluffy goodness where little actually exists.
Part 3
The gullible will chance upon these denier-nest blogs and believe that there they have found genuine sceptical science talked about by brave contrarians, for the noble reasons that the philosophy of science dictates - which basically says that true science should be offered out for all to criticise to "keep it real". The philosophy also says that no statement should be called scientific if there is no possibility that it can be disproved at a later date by new evidence. This is called the doctrine of falsification. All good scientific statements should be "falsifiable". This means that no theory is ever regarded as rock solid, no matter how proved it has been by time.
The only problem is that the vast majority of self-described sceptics are more accurately described as pathological sceptics. Their motivation to get their hands on this, that and the other is hardly ever aimed at being the friendly objective critics that the philosophy of science calls for, but rather to rip it apart, twist the meanings, insinuate doubt and error where none should be. The proof? It is a statistical one. One has to watch them over a long period - if you do, you will see that time after time, whatever information they look at, whatever area they look at, whatever angle they take, somehow they ALWAYS come to the same type of conclusions. Their "thinking" always leads to them ending up exactly where they wanted to before they started - this is called "confirmation bias". That's like the psychiatric patient who looks at the Rorschach ink blots and always sees the same images, no matter what the shape of the actual blots...
I myself am a climate science sceptic. I think that the climate modelling fraternity have too much confidence in their models to predict climate change scenarios accurately. The sceptic/deniers also realise that the models might be wrong but because their thinking is so pathologically biased they seem only capable of believing that the models will be wrong one way - they assume that the errors in modelling will automatically be on the high side and that warming will be less than the consensus position suggests. Stupid irresponsible and arrogant beyond belief! Do we feel lucky, punks?
Part 4
Another post just to be sure that anonymous and the other watchers get it. Because they need to get all the rocks out of their heads that have been placed there by unscrupulous people.
Two links follow that "sceptics" (open minded ones) may find worth watching and reading (with links to the scientific papers) skepticalscience.com
and the more accessible climate crock of the week
There is no such entity as a monolithic climate science that can be "settled". The philosophy of science means that a true scientist SPEAKING SCIENTIFICALLY would never claim that. However, a scientist (or someone else credibly speaking about the science) SPEAKING TO THE PUBLIC, who are not up on the fine gradations of the philosophy, can say this because it gives the most accurate impression of the state of play of the consensus view of the multiple lines of evidence, measurements, observations etc
Speaking accurately, but not perfectly according to the philosophy of science: The world is heating up, and we're the main cause; our actions are more than any other natural cause; If we, at a stroke, made our civilisation carbon neutral tomorrow, we would see warming "in the pipeline" continue for at least 30 years; Emissions we are putting in today will continue to add to the warming pressure.
All of the former is not disputable except by crazy or stupid people (and professional deceivers). Colloquially, it is settled or certain science - as certain as the science that says you will burn yourself if you put a match to your (flammable) trousers. The vast majority of the opinions and assertions of the denialosphere is just plain barmy and wrong, no matter how firmly they assert their garbage in the comments sections of the aforementioned blogs.
Incidentally, the moderators of those blogs rarely, if ever, seem to highlight the sheer lies and stupidity that their supporters regurgitate so frequently. I wonder why that is? Where is their integrity?.
There is actually very little in climate science that is in dispute scientifically at all. It comes down to one thing - the value for the "climate sensitivity", which is the amount that the average global temperature will rise by in response to a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels - 280 ->560ppm. The IPCC scientists have a range of figures from multiple lines of evidence - the median from this range is about 3 degrees C. This is regarded as the most likely figure - lower and higher figures are assigned probabilities depending on the calculated uncertainties.
What the actual climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 is CANNOT be known perfectly in advance, short of using a time machine to see what the actual result turned out to be. It can only be inferred from the historical and pre-historical record and from observations of current events as they unfold. It is at this sole point that there is the only significant uncertainty in the science. This uncertainty means that, if we do nothing to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, we are essentially buying a lottery ticket for our future. Most of the potential prizes are not good, hardly any of them are positive. The biggest bad prize is the future of a liveable climate on our planet for the next few thousand years.
Is it intelligent to listen to the gamblers who say, from their imperfect knowledge, that things will be just fine? Or listen to the majority scientific view that has almost proved that they won't? Surely that is a no-brainer? And that's what sceptics/deniers/delayers have got - no brains.
Oh, BTW, and finally, to return to anonymous' post about the relative merits of Dr Curry and me.
Einstein received a lot of criticism from some established physics scientists, when he introduced the new ideas that rewrote Newtonian physics. His new approach was recognised as valid by many who had "lesser" science qualifications than some of his critics (but better maths quallies instead).
If anonymous and me were back there in the early 1900's and anon was sneering that recognised scientist XYZ had said that there was still a debate to be had about Einstein's ideas whilst I said the theory looked robust, and I (to anon) couldn't hold a candle to scientist XYZ's science quallies so therefore my views were of lesser significance than XYZ's, how would history have judged the relative correctness of XYZ and me? Would anon have been recognised as a biased fool?
Anonymous attempted to use a version of the appeal to authority logical fallacy, known about for over 2 thousand years to make their point.
So, to summarise, anonymous cherry picked the apparent view of Dr Curry (without realising that that view was not as it seemed). They then failed to realise that the political views (on suitable strategy) of a scientist are not necessarily more significant than those of Joe Bloggs down the pub. Then anon used a logical fallacy to prepare to launch a further logical fallacy - an ad hominem - against me.
Actually, anon had had an effect of sorts. I am now fed up with arguing against anonymous shadows, never being sure if it's the same anon or another anon.
In a week or so, I will no longer allow posts without an ID attached.
Nick
Post a Comment