Conspiracy theories for sceptics?
According to parts of the climate sceptic movement, the world is not as it seems.
The CSIRO is a tool of international bankers, who over the past century have also orchestrated every major financial boom and bust since 1913. The United Nations was created at the urging of international bankers, who are using it as a vehicle to usher in a New World Order.
The Rockefeller and Rothschild families have been working behind the scenes for centuries manipulating events. These same banking families instigated both the First and Second World War in order to profit from the chaos. Every Australian Prime Minister of the post-War period – except John Howard – was a Fabian-socialist-Manchurian candidate.
Or so claims Malcolm Roberts, project manager for the Alan Jones sponsored Galileo Movement .
In early February Roberts published a report titled CSIROh! Climate of deception? Or first step to freedom? (CSIROh!). I would point readers to Graham Readfearn’s brilliant post detailing Robert’s activities and his strange exchange with Sydney Morning Herald journalist Ben Cubby.
CSIROh! is only 25 pages in length, however it is accompanied by 30 frenzied, barely comprehensible and obsessively detailed appendices.
Roberts has distributed electronic and hard copies of his report to politicians, journalists and scientists across Australia. Those lucky enough to receive the fruits of Robert’s research include David Karoly, Tim Flannery and Ross Garnaut. Many prominent members of the media have also received his report: Andrew Bolt was on the distribution list, as well as many ABC and Fairfax journalists.
The patron of the Galileo Movement Alan Jones also received CSIROh! Indeed, in an email dated 8 February 2013 Jones thanked Roberts for his report, calling him a “magnificent” worker. We know this because Roberts published the email from Jones on his website.
What is going on here?
Background: the perceived antisemitism of Roberts conspiracy theories
For those readers not familiar with Roberts, he is the project manager for the climate sceptic group the Galileo Movement. The mission of the Galileo Movement is to see the “carbon tax” repealed and to cast doubt on the science of climate change.
Last year in an interview with Sydney Morning Journalist Ben Cubby Roberts claimed a cabal of international bankers were behind the climate change “scam”. This revelation ultimately lead to conservative columnist Andrew Bolt repudiating both Roberts and the Galileo Movement due to the implied whiff of antisemitism of his claims.
Since then Roberts has clearly been smarting, and in CSIROh! he attempts to set the record straight and vindicate his claims.
However, CSIROh! is not an ordinary report. In it Roberts creates an alternative history of the world, in which the Rockefeller’s and Rothschild’s have been working behind the scenes to wreck and profit from financial chaos, incite major wars and build the foundations of a tyrannical world government.
The international bankers conspiracy to control the world
Most of CSIROh! and its supporting documents contain the usual dross generated by the climate sceptic movement: CO2 is not a pollutant, the globe stopped warming etc. There is little need to review these claims as they are easily debunked.
But it is not his attacks on the science we should be concerned about: it is the motivations he ascribes to the dark satanic forces allegedly behind the entire “scam”.
The most telling document is Appendix No. 14 titled Why? Motives driving the climatefraud (Why?). In it Roberts makes the following claim:
“The UN’s forty-year campaign fabricating climate fraud used strategies and tactics proven 100 years ago. They’re similar to those used by international bankers in their thirty-year campaign from the 1880’s to gain control of the USA’s money supply, finances and economy. Their campaign succeeded in forming the USA’s Federal Reserve Bank in 1913.”
In this document Robert sketches out the links between the CSIRO, international bankers, the IPCC and every government, financial and non-government organisation (NGO) in existence today:
Such power is extended through the bankers’ global creations including the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Through these the European-American banking alliance controls global finances. The alliance’s global organisations dictate to other nations outside America and Europe, including Australia. (Why? pg.13)
This is conspiracy theorizing on an epic scale. Indeed, Roberts rewrites the entire history of the world since the late 19th century. Presidents and Prime Ministers have either colluded or been manipulated by the international bankers:
“Both Woodrow Wilson and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt benefitted from support from this cabal of narrow financial and political interests. Woodrow Wilson later regretted his reliance on their favours and entrapment into doing their bidding under their control.” (Why? pg.14)
According to Roberts the international bankers have manipulated every financial boom and bust since 1913:
“With this tight and complete control over national economies the international bankers have used their power to create every boom and every bust since 1913. They have wreaked havoc and misery on millions and now billions of people. In every boom and every bust they have profited enormously. They do so at the expense of the people.” (Why? pg.15)
Roberts also taps into problematic tropes about Jewish banking families:
“…as a result of deceit over many years involving secret meetings led by prominent German bankers colluding with the influential Texan Colonel Edward Mandel House, congress delegated it to a group who they did not fully understand: a group of European and American bankers. The alliance featured Germany’s Warburgs and London’s Rothschild’s. Passage through congress of The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was achieved when many congressmen were absent prior to their Christmas break. The President at the time was Woodrow Wilson who owed bankers a favour for funding his 1912 electioncampaign.” (Why? pg.16)
Ah yes, the Rothschild’s.
Not content with taking over the globe via financial means, Roberts claims the Rothschild family and other international banking families have corrupted the American education system in order to create a subservient class of serfs – or sheeple in conspiracy language:
“In The Underground History of American Education (2000), educator John Taylor Gatto traces how Rockefeller, Morgan and other members of the financial elite influenced, guided, funded, and at times forced compulsory schooling into mainstream America. They needed three things for their corporate interests to thrive: (1) compliant employees, (2) a guaranteed and dependent population, and (3) a predictable business environment. It was largely to promote these ends, says Gatto, that modern compulsory schooling was established.” (Why? pg.17)
Roberts also recycles some of the most shameful myths of the last century, that international bankers were behind the world wars and profited from them:
“Increasingly investigators and historians are discovering that international bankers played a major and highly destructive role in initiating and benefitting from wars, genocide and devastation in the twentieth century. The century was mankind’s bloodiest with more deaths than in all preceding centuries.International bankers own major armament manufacturers and made fat profits financing both sides in World War 1 and again in World War 2.” (Why? pg.54)
The same bankers are also behind communism:
“As Anthony Sutton, Gary Allen, Ellen Brown and others have revealed, international bankers funded, enabled and drove communism.” (Why? pg.58)
Putting aside the absurdity of his claims, Roberts has done us all an enormous favour by citing his references. At the very least it gives us the opportunity to evaluate his claims based upon the evidence he presents.
Indeed, reading through Roberts turgid conspiracy theory is beneficial as he cites the texts, articles and YouTube videos that inform his world view.
And what a read it is. Roberts synthesizes nearly every conspiracy theory and canonical text of conspiracy culture from the last 100 years. No conspiracy stone is left unturned by Roberts in his monomaniacal pursuit of “the truth” – or at least, his version of it.
Most disturbingly he uses one most notorious antisemitic texts of the 20th century to buttress his arguments.
Roberts and The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins
Roberts has repeatedly claimed he is not antisemitic – we should accept his claim on face value. Thus I do not claim Roberts is anti-Semitic.
However, throughout Why? Motives driving the climate fraud Roberts quotes The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins as an important source that underpins his arguments:
“The cabal of international bankers wield massive financial power across industries internationally. They control all three American TV networks through direct ownership and/or through cross-directorships. They own the major and most influential American newspapers. They own many of America’s major corporations and control others through cross-directorships. Please refer to references by Gary Allen and Eustace Mullins above and to the book entitled The True Story of the Bilderberg Group by Canadian investigative reporter Daniel Estulin.” (Why? pg.16)
Next to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Secrets of the Federal Reserve is one of the most notorious antisemitic texts of the twentieth century.
More than likely Roberts has weaved together a vast array of conspiracy literature, real world facts and the hackneyed plots of B-grade thrillers and fused them into CSIROh! and its 30 appendices.
This is how conspiracy theorists work – they are completely indiscriminate in their use of materials, often ignorant of their historical context of sources.
Roberts may not be a bigot, but he is clearly a fool when it comes to basic historical research and evaluating source materials. It is why he is unable to correctly read the intent of tone of works such as The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Indeed, Roberts appears completely tone-deaf to the blatant antisemitism of Mullins work – who by the way was completely open about his prejudices.
This explains why Andrew Bolt ran a mile from the likes of Roberts and the Galileo Movement: Bolt may be a dunce on the science, but he is not an idiot.
However, as stated context is important. Thus, what follows is an examination of the historical context of the claims of Roberts and the sources he draws upon.
Toxic legacy: international bankers and antisemitic roots of the Federal Reserve conspiracy theory
As I noted last year, the Federal Reserve conspiracy theory originated in the early to mid-twentieth century. Indeed, I speculated that the likes of Roberts were drawing upon texts such as Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Roberts confirms my initial hypothesis.
Until 1945 such claims were the staple of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. After the Second World War and the Holocaust such overt antisemitism was impossible due to its association with the barbaric crimes of the Third Reich. Later incarnations of the Federal Reserve conspiracy theory have shed their overtly antisemitic overtones, however to this day it remains popular among the extreme right and conspiracy crowd.
The earliest manifestations of this claim first surfaced in early 1920′s in the writings of Henry Ford. Ford – yes the Ford of Model T fame – was notorious for his antisemitism, publishing his rants and material from Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the weekly newspaper he owned, The Dearborn Independent.
In 1921 Ford published an article titled Jewish Idea Molded Federal Reserve System in which he claimed:
“The Federal Reserve System is a system of private banks, the creation of a banking aristocracy within an already existing autocracy, whereby a great proportion of banking independence was lost, and whereby it was made possible for speculative financiers to centralize great sums of money for their own purposes, beneficial or not.” (Henry Ford, The International Jew, pg. 361)
And that:
“Certainly enough has transpired to render it desirable that the American people look again into the purposes of those Jews who were instrumental in reorganizing our financial system at a most critical time in the world’s history.” (Henry Ford, The International Jew, pg. 371)
As prominent conspiracy scholars Chip Berlet and Mathew Lyons note in their work Right-wing populism in America: too close for comfort, this theory was prevalent in the 1930s:
“The overt British-Jewish conspiracy theory continues to be pursued in many publications, based primarily on tracts “written by British fascists in the 1930s, according to Denis King… The most energetic purveyor of this theme is Eustace Mullins, the antisemitic author of the 1952 book Mullins on the Federal Reserve and the 1954 book The Federal Reserve conspiracy. Mullins writes in two styles, one ostensibly focusing on banking practices, the other expressing open and vicious antisemitism.” (Berlet & Lyons, Right-wing populism in America pg. 195)
Mullins took the conspiracy ball and ran with it: to this day his work remains influential.
Old wine in a new bottle: repackaging old conspiracy theories
Move forward to the early 1950s, and the immediate post-War period.
The Cold War is heating up, while McCarthyism and “Reds-under-the-bed” paranoia is gripping large sections of the American public and political elite.
The genesis of contemporary conspiracy culture took place in the period between 1950-1960. Conspiracy theorists not only feared communists, but the United Nations as a precursor of a coming one world government. Many of the motifs used in conspiracy culture today were germinated in this intense period of Cold-War conflict and paranoia, including ideas about the New World Order, banking conspiracies, secretive Communist plots and that the US Government itself had been infiltrated and held captive by demonic forces.
During this period conspiracy theorists started to examine the works of Ford and other conspiracy theorists of the pre-War period and re-purpose their theories. In order to make them more palatable to a post-War audience they shed the overt references to Jews and replaced them with references to international bankers.
Into this intense political environment comes Library of Congress researcher, one time helper of Senator Joseph McCarthy and anti-Semite Eustace Mullins.
[Note: For further background see this 2012 WtD post on some of the materials being created in the 1950s and 1960s by conspiracy theorists.]
Mullins and the Federal Reserve
Mullins, born in Virginia in 1899, served in the armed forces during the Second World War and obtained a number of college degrees. In 1950 he became a researcher at the Library of Congress and worked with Senator Joseph McCarthy in investigating the sources of funding for the Communist Party.
Prior to this Mullins became intrigued with and befriended the poet Ezra Pound. Pound is one of the great poets of the twentieth century, but he was also an anti-Semite and turned to fascism during the 1920s.
In 1924 Pound decamped to Italy and became infatuated with fascism and Mussolini’s regime. During the war Pound broadcast on Rome Radio in support of the Axis war effort. Unsurprisingly, at the end of the war in 1945 Pound was arrested for treason by the US government.
In 1949 (seriously, are you following this?) Mullins decides to visit Pound in an insane asylum where the latter is being incarcerated and they strike up a friendship. Pound then sets Mullins off to research the Federal Reserve. Mullins details the event himself;
“In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten-dollar bill marked “Federal Reserve Note” and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government. After he was denied broadcasting time in the U.S., Dr. Pound broadcast from Italy in an effort to persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally ordered Pound’s indictment.” (Mullins, Secrets of the Federal Reserve)
Mullins tootles off to research the Fed and Pound’s claims, and voila, in 1952 produces the book that becomes Secrets of the Federal Reserve. As Wikipedia explains:
“Like Pound, he had sympathy for Fascism, because of its apparent anti-Usury and anti-Communist measures, though he later withdrew that sympathy, as he came to believe that without the Nazis, Zionism would never have been a powerful force, and that the Nazis were puppets of Jewish bankers, specifically Max Warburg, who he claimed financed them to build up the Nazi war machine, as well as the leaders of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, who were facilitated by the Dulles brothers, and that Nazi opposition to these bankers, insofar as it went beyond rhetoric, occurred only well after they had ascended to power. In his book Secrets of the Federal Reserve, he also claimed that World War One was contrived and managed by a triumvirate consisting of Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, Eugene Meyer, and to a lesser extent, the leaders of Morgan banks, in the United States, and men like Max Warburg in Germany, so that they might increase their profit and power.” (Wikipedia)
Secrets of the Federal Reserve is riddled with anti-Semitic claims and freely borrows from the work of Henry Ford (the full text of it can be seen here) and other pre-War anti-Semitic literature.
Mullins text is freely floating around the internet, a favorite of conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, neo-Fascists and the like. It is worth noting that Mullins also denied the Holocaust, and stated America owed Hitler a favor for instigating the Nazi “war” on Jews:
“America will never forget that the Jewish International bankers, together with Franklin D.Roosevelt, their tool, led us into World War II. Why? Because Hitler drove the economic leeches of the Rothschild and Warburg families out of Germany. The Jewish “refugees”poured into America and enlisted us as cannon fodder and errand boys in Europe. Hitler warned America in 1945, that we would have to face the ultimate battle against the Jewish Frankenstein Monster of Communism alone. America had helped created the monster, now it would destroy her…” (Mullins, Hitler an appreciation)
This brings us back to today – and the conspiracy theories of Roberts in CSIROh! His work is peppered with the same claims about the Warburg and Rothschild families working behind the scenes:
“Yet as a result of deceit over many years involving secret meetings led by prominent German bankers colluding with the influential Texan Colonel Edward Mandel House, congress delegated it to a group who they did not fully understand: a group of European and American bankers. The alliance featured Germany’s Warburgs and London’s Rothschilds. Passage through congress of The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was achieved when many congressmen were absent prior to their Christmas break. The President at the time was Woodrow Wilson who owed bankers a favour for funding his 1912 election campaign. (Why? pg.16)”
Roberts absorbs and retells the conspiracy narrative of Mullins.
Roberts other influences: Gary Allen and the New World Order
Simular claims can also be found in the work of conspiracy theorist Gary Allen (None dare call it conspiracy, 1971), another author Roberts approvingly cites.
Allen, an American conspiracy theorist, was a prolific writer producing many books and articles between the late 1960s and 1980s. Allen specialised on writing about the plans of the “global elite” and that hoary old favorite of contemporary conspiracy theorists, the Bilderberg Group.
Unlike Mullins, the writing of Allen is not normally classified as anti-Semitic. J. Byford and Michael Billig in 2001 paper titled The emergence of antisemitic conspiracy theories in Yugoslavia during the war with NATO(Patterns of prejudice, 2006) note:
A distinction can be made between the conspiracy theories of Gary Allen or Avramov, that concentrate on organizations such as the Bilderberg Group, and more mystical, quasi-religious theories, such as those being propounded in Yugoslavia by Đurđević. The former have a more ‘reasonable’ appearance: they cite existing organizations as the hub of the world conspiracy. They do not necessarily see these organizations as ciphers for the hidden esoteric workings of Jews, Freemasons or the Illuminati. Most crucially, Gary Allen and others have not identified an ethnic group as being in control of organizations like the Bilderberg Group. (Byford & Billig pg. 312)
However they do note troubling and problematical nature of Allen’s writings:
“However, on closer examination, the differentiation between nonantisemitic,‘reasonable’ conspiracy theories and antisemitic theories is not hard and fast, especially as the ‘reasonable’ writer attempts to understand the present political situation in terms of a longer history of conspiracies. To do this, that writer often draws on earlier theories, including those belonging to the antisemitic tradition….” (Byford & Billig pg. 312-313)
Byford & Billig are writing about the emergence of anti-Semitic theories during the NATO conflict with Serbia, when extreme Serbian nationalists drew upon older conspiracy narratives in their attempts to make sense of the conflict. Some did so unwittingly, while others were more explicit in their anti-Semitism.
This point is worth emphasising: in times of crisis, conspiracy theories flourish. Again and again, we see the same pattern.
Roberts has committed the former sin: driven by a conspiracy world view and ignorant of historical methodologies when it comes to using sources, Roberts unwittingly draws upon the most toxic legacies of conspiracy culture.
This is par for the course for all conspiracy theorists: no matter how toxic or stigmatized their original sources are, they will find a way to weave them into the alternative reality they create.
Fusion paranoia: pseudo-history, climate scepticism and the failure to evaluate sources
Roberts has stepped outside climate scepticism and into the realm of pseudo-history in constructing an alternative narrative of world events since the late 1800s. He unwittingly draws upon narratives and materials associated with the world view found within anti-Semitic literature.
In the world constructed by Roberts, historical events are tied together to prove the carbon tax is not a tool designed to reduce the amount of heat trapping gases in the atmosphere, but one of the cudgels wielded by a global cabal wishing to usher in a world government.
Roberts failure is common to all pseudo-historians and conspiracy theorists: he fails to understand source materials and their context. Even to the most casual reader, the Mullins text is a deeply paranoid piece of crack-pottery.
Like its source materials, CSIROh! is a muddled and paranoid re-imagining of world history. However Roberts takes old myths and filters them through climate scepticism.
Today’s conspiracy theorists fuse contemporary paranoia with myths and older conspiracy theories in an attempt to explain the world. Sometimes they know what they are doing, dropping in coded references to “international bankers” as dog-whistle racism for the knowing.
More often than not, conspiracy theorists look back to the previous ideas within conspiracy culture and fuse them with their own interpretation of world events.
Roberts takes preexisting conspiracies and weaves them together with climate scepticism. It is a textbook example of what scholars of conspiracy culture call fusion paranoia.
Times of crisis, toxic legacies and pathways to hate: why I’m not laughing
Sceptics will see this as merely another attempt to besmirch their good name. Thus I stress I do not equate climate scepticism with antisemitism or holocaust denial. However, I would argue that much of the climate sceptic narrative is framed in terms of conspiracy.
Many will see this as an opportunity to laugh at Roberts expense. But honestly, I’m not laughing.
What terrifies me is the new life given to some of the worst ideological excesses of the last century. Roberts and his patron Alan Jones are helping – inadvertently or not – to inject the ugly intellectual baggage of the twentieth century into contemporary politics.
Conspiracy theories are toxic to democracy: they are not merely the product of the fringe. They distort public debate, and even worse lead to the scapegoating of individuals and groups.
They can also act as pathways to hate: by demonizing one group within society (scientists, environmentalists and international bankers) it makes it permissible and acceptable to hate others.
In times of crisis – war, economic downturns and massive societal changes – conspiracy theories flourish. That we are seeing an upsurge in conspiracy theories in relation to climate change and mitigation policies is to be expected: climate change is a time of crisis.
Hence, we should expect the flourishing of conspiracy theories as equal, if not more, lurid as those propagated by Roberts.
What I fear in coming years is the rise of a vicious form of right-wing populism, with demagogues riding a tide of conspiracies and hatred to positions of power. Our public debates are toxic enough when it comes to refugees and marriage equality. The climate debate is equally toxic, if not more so.
The work of Roberts falls squarely in the tradition of both conspiracy culture and right-wing populism: for this reason I’m neither laughing nor dismissive.
CSIROh! is gaining an audience and is bound to become the accepted truth by numerous individuals. It will be picked up and promoted in areas of our culture most politicians, journalists and academics never see. The criticism Roberts receives will only drive him to greater efforts to promote his theory and reinforce his belief about a grand conspiracy: this is the pattern of all conspiracy theorists.
Without doubt, his words will flourish in the dark corners of the internet. Don’t believe me? Then look at how CSIROh! is already being embraced by the conspiracy community of Australia here, here and here. Or perhaps this glowing review of CSIROh! by the Climate Sceptics Party?
How did the climate debate come to this?
We like to imagine that our society is the product of the Enlightenment. Because our society is so dependent upon science, we hold fast to a naive faith that reason will prevail over ignorance and the old primitive hatreds.
And yet we stare in transfixed horror and disbelief at the coming storm. We watch aghast, or avert our eyes, in a state of disbelief as this familiar beast, its hour come again, slouches once more towards Bethlehem.
The sleep of reason produces monsters; it opens the gates for old hatreds.
Here – here is the genesis of future monsters.
Osama Bin Laden once infamously called on concerned Westerners to help him combat climate change.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/29/strange-but-true-bin-laden-on-global-warming/
The Unabomber was a fan of Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”.
Should we then conclude that alarmists are typified by freaks like the Unabomber and Bin Laden? Or should be take a more balanced view that alarmists by and large are normal people who are concerned about the environment?
Eric, I’ve noted I am not equating all sceptics with Malcolm and his claims.
I take it you completely reject the idea that “international bankers” are behind the climate scam?
I do.
Certainly there are banks, or individual divisions of banks, which try to promote the idea, to maximise profits in their now rather anaemic climate portfolios, and Goldman Sachs probably did what it could to protect its now failed investment in CCX, but the idea of bankers forming a SPECTRE like cabal to run the world is utterly implausible.
The bankers I’ve known are strong alpha types – individualists, misfits, brilliant egotists. They barely acknowledge their bank’s authority, let alone the authority of some secret group of rulers. Any attempt to organise them into a shadowy global conspiracy would be like herding cats – and about as successful. It would fall apart the minute one of them saw a way to make money by ripping off their fellows.
As opposed to scientists? In my experience, scientists are intensely competitive individualist misfit egotists. Organizing a global conspiracy of scientists should be the urban dictionary entry for “herding cats”.
@ Dumb Scientist – your point is spot on. Having the good fortune to meet many scientists – not to mention having some good friends in science – the probability of the science community organizing around some SPECTRE like cabal to run the world is utterly implausible.
I never suggested there is a SPECTRE like conspiracy of climate scientists. What I believe is occurring is an episode of group hysteria, not unlike the group hysteria surrounding the pseudoscientific Eugenics crisis in the 1930s.
The dreadful history of Eugenics does not prove that climate alarmism is also an episode of irrational hysteria. What it does demonstrate though is that such episodes are possible, and can affect even scientists and scientific institutions.
The evidence I have seen in the Climategate archive is that climate scientists believe in what they are doing, and believe in their mission to save the world – so much so, that when they encounter an observation which contradicts their theory, their response is to discard the observation.
Oh, so you’re just comparing me and my colleagues to eugenicists, and saying we’re hysterical, irrational and ridiculously incompetent at our own lives’ work. Thanks for clearing that up, Eric. Posterity will remember this.
Invoking Godwin’s law is his fallback position. Every single comment thread in here has Eric bringing up eugenics.
Not just me DS.
http://www.crichton-official.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html
Do you really want to be Next to CriTTon in the history books?
Oops, I meant to spell Crichton’s name correctly. For some reason I can’t ever remember and have to look it up…
Misspelling to insult opponents is an old game in the Climate fraternity.
For example, this email in which Tom Wigley suggests a name calling smear campaign against Willie Soon.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1061300885.txt
Might be interesting to see how frequently Soon and Baliunas, individually, are cited (as astronomers). Are they any good in their own fields? Perhaps we could start referring to them as astrologers (excusable as … ‘oops, just a typo’)
Tom.
But I accept that in this case you made an unintentional slip.
Are you serious? Did you even follow my link? You’re seriously changing the subject away from the relevant link I posted to a spelling mistake that I already acknowledged?
Seriously, follow that link and ask yourself if you want to be Next to Crichton in the history books. Please, Eric. Please!
“Or should be take a more balanced view that alarmists by and large are normal people who are concerned about the environment?”
How about practically any expert with any tertiary education and working history on the subject? I’m certain their views are more critical than purely emotional ones.
The Science of Climate Change:Joint Statement
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1261.short
The Royal Society: The Science of Climate Change
http://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2001/science-climate-change/
Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change
http://www.nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Joint science academies’ statement on growth and responsibility: sustainability, energy efficiency and climate protection
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/aktuelles/nachrichten/dateien/G8_Academies%20Declaration.pdf
Joint statement by the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) to the G8 on sustainability, energy efficiency and climate change
http://www.interacademies.net/File.aspx?id=4825
Joint Science Academies’ Statement: Climate Change Adaptation and the Transition to a Low Carbon Society
http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/climatechangestatement.pdf
G8+5 Academies’ joint statement: Climate change and the transformation of energy
technologies for a low carbon future
http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
I could, if you like, produce many dozens more such academic statements, however, to persist with your delusion I suspect your mind has already shut up shop for the list above… Hence the immensity of the scale of the conspiracy!
Don’t bother.
Cheers for that! Saved me the trouble
The following is the report of the 3rd International Eugenics Conference, held in 1932. Be patient with it, its a slow download.
http://ia700402.us.archive.org/2/items/decadeofprogress00inte/decadeofprogress00inte.pdf
If you look through it, you will see a similarly impressive lineup of scientific organisations and institutions, all putting the case for urgent action to avert the Eugenics crisis.
I’m especially unimpressed at the Royal Society’s position on Climate Change. Their motto “nullius in verba”, roughly translated means “take nobody’s word for it”. Yet their position on Climate Change pretty much amounts to a demand that we should take their word for it – a violation of their ancient tradition.
Reductio ad absurdum Eric.
Prior to Einstein scientists the luminferous aether was how light was propagated, right until the early 20th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether
I’m sure that was the position of the Royal Society at the time as well.
Based on that analogy all scientists are wrong today. Does that mean the germ theory of disease is also incorrect, as 150 years ago doctors thought the vapors from swamps caused cholera?
Science advances Eric, ideology does not. We’re are always going to be discovering new things, and even abandoning old theories. But until then the consensus position of science – be that on germ theory, climate change, the age of the universe, evolution – is the best understanding we have of the universe. Abandon that, and you abandon all science.
Some theories are so well tested, and the evidence so overwhelming, we consider them true facts; say the existence of atoms and the heat trapping properties of CO2 molecules.
Do you ever worry that Godwining yourself every day isn’t the best route to credibility?
We’re winning, you’re losing. Carbon markets have either collapsed or will soon collapse around the world. Noone important bothers to attend climate conferences anymore. Kyoto now only covers nations emitting 25% of human CO2 emissions. I doubt there will be another Kyoto.
Its not the credibility of skeptics which is in peril.
Physics can’t be violated by mob rule.
Perhaps, but as the pseudoscience Eugenics crisis demonstrates, failed theories can be propped up by means other than supporting evidence.
Something happens to our minds when we face a “crisis” – in the wrong circumstances it turns our reason into jello. My personal speculation is that it is a legacy from our distant ancestors.
Our ancestors didn’t have time to work out if that shadow was really a lion about to spring at them – the consequences of jumping out of the way of an imaginary lion are a lot less severe than than the consequences of failing to jump out of the way of a real lion.
You’re basically correct Eric: that is the purpose of the “flight or fight” mechanism. There is strong evolutionary reasons for such behavior.
But that scales very differently with groups and societies – especially when it comes to analyzing and managing complex risks. In such cases you have to take a different and more considered approach, using a variety of tools to make informed judgments.
The military takes such an approach, as they plan for uncertainties using the best information to hand – even if the uncertainties are high. Exactly what the US military is doing – and you’ll love this. They’re even using computer models: http://www.army.mil/article/96483/Army_leaders_plan_for_uncertain_future/
Hix serves as director of the concepts development and learning directorate within Army Training and Doctrine Command. It is TRADOC that sponsored Unified Quest 2013, or UQ-13.
In plotting out a future for the Army, planners used a variety of statistical analyses, algorithms, models, computer simulations and their own subject matter expertise to explore and test a range of scenarios across the globe and within specific countries.
“We’re trying to narrow the cones of probability and uncertainty,” Hix said. “We don’t want to be surprised.
“Who could have anticipated the Arab Spring?” he continued, illustrating how events can change with great rapidity and unexpectedness, leading to changes in planning.
It is the same with climate change: the task is not to get it exactly right, but not get it so wrong. Then you plan accordingly, guided somewhat by the precautionary principle.
This is why every military on the planet includes climate change scenarios in their planning (see Planning for climate change: the security community’s precautionary principle @ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-009-9639-6?LI=true)
And
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force
I’ve speculated about the higher evolutionary cost of false negatives in pattern matching. That’s not the issue. The issue is that you’re accusing the scientific community of being so ridiculously incompetent that they’re ignoring evidence and propping up a failed theory with something other than evidence.
Why are you doing this? What scientific experience makes you think you’re judging the evidence better than the overwhelming majority of scientists who study this evidence for a living? I’d really like to know.
Perhaps you would prefer to listen to the words of Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s greatest living physicists, on why he thinks climate scientists are delusional.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
“The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models,” Dyson was saying. “They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.”
The same Freeman Dyson, with the terrible track record for supporting pro-industry positions against the standing science, such as tobacco – human health, ozone depletion and of course, climate change?
Are you really willing to think his pro-industry opposition to the standing science, again on which none of the leading academic bodies refute (again, the statements referred to are of value), is going to be right this time when he has such a lousy track record?
Who’s delusional here?
Well I didn’t have to go far for a DCOD. Congrats Bozo, you qualify with this one…freeman dyson ppffffttttt
Dyson doesn’t have any experience in climate science either. But I was asking about you, Eric.
Eric: why are you doing this? What scientific experience makes you think you’re judging the evidence better than the overwhelming majority of scientists who study this evidence for a living? I’d really like to know.
I will see your $1 opinion eric
and raise you $101 PRS
http://tinyurl.com/ar97ess
Mike:-
Science advances Eric, ideology does not. We’re are always going to be discovering new things, and even abandoning old theories. But until then the consensus position of science – be that on germ theory, climate change, the age of the universe, evolution – is the best understanding we have of the universe. Abandon that, and you abandon all science.
This doesn’t mean you should accept anything an expert says without question. I like to think that I would have been one of the few people who questioned the expert findings of Eugenicists in the 1930s – but who knows, I might have been one of the believers.
Some theories are so well tested, and the evidence so overwhelming, we consider them true facts; say the existence of atoms and the heat trapping properties of CO2 molecules.
I’m not disputing whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But CO2 only takes you part of the way to the IPCC climate sensitivity estimate – slightly over 1c / doubling.
What happens next is where the dispute lays – whether water vapour amplifies CO2 warming, or whether it forms clouds which dampen it (couldn’t help that
). The IPCC assumption that a slight increase in water vapour enhances the greenhouse effect is highly speculative. The absence of the equatorial tropospheric hotspot, an expected consequence of water vapour amplification of the CO2 forcing, suggests there is something fundamentally wrong with model treatment of CO2 forcing amplification.
For example, the models don’t handle clouds and storm activity very well. As actual measurements of Hurricane Irene showed, powerful storms are potent heat transports, moving large amounts of excess heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere, where it can radiate into space, unimpeded by greenhouse gasses. Irene caused the ocean temperature in its path to drop by 1c.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/11/inverse-hockey-stick-hurricane-sandy-cools-the-ocean/
So its entirely possible the net result of CO2 forcing is a slight increase of storm activity, rather than temperatures enhanced by an implausibly strong positive feedback loop.
DS:-
Eric: why are you doing this? What scientific experience makes you think you’re judging the evidence better than the overwhelming majority of scientists who study this evidence for a living? I’d really like to know.
Why is guilt or innocence decided by a jury of randomly picked amateurs, rather than say a panel of expert judges?
The reason is the risk of groupthink and political bias – bitter experience has taught society that the best way to produce an objective judgement, even in complex cases, is to bring in outsiders to help evaluate the evidence.
So far the case is not going your way.
Nobody’s talking about guilt or innocence. You’re dodging the question that I (and likely posterity) would like answered.
Eric: why are you doing this? What scientific experience makes you think you’re judging the evidence better than the overwhelming majority of scientists who study this evidence for a living? I’d really like to know. For instance, your website says you’re an IT consultant. So, no scientific experience whatsoever, then?
Because I believe in the wisdom of the ancient motto of the Royal Society – “take nobody’s word for it”.
Because I believe the balance of evidence is against you, and have as much right as anyone else to make a case that this is so, and have that case judged on its own merits, rather than demanding others take my word for it because of my qualifications.
You contradict yourself eric,
“I do not believe in the OWG conspiracy”
“I do believe that NASA is fudging the evidence” temp graph
same same eric
Uncritically regurgitating nonsense from Monckton and Watts is a sign that you’re employing motivated reasoning, not skepticism.
Nobody’s making such demands. Free speech gives you and many others the right to regurgitate whatever nonsense Watts and Monckton spew out, but are you really prepared to accept the resulting stain on your legacy? That’s what I’m asking. What scientific experience prompted you to risk your legacy on this absurd hunch that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is ridiculously incompetent, hysterical and irrational?
Aren’t there more enjoyable hobbies than endlessly playing punch-the-scientist? Like… I dunno… spending time with your kids?
Aren’t there more enjoyable hobbies than endlessly playing punch-the-scientist? Like… I dunno… spending time with your kids?
Equating expressions of doubt about scientific findings and method with “punch the scientist” says a lot about what is wrong with modern climate science.
If you had no political voice I’d simply ignore you, as I ignore UFO cranks and other people who profess odd beliefs.
But climate alarmism does have a substantial influence on the future quality of life of my kids and myself. The vast sums of money wasted on white elephant desalination plants or other climate boondoggles is money which either I or the government cannot spend on say my children’s education, or better hospitals.
And we’ve barely had a taste of what you would do if you had your way. Personal carbon credits, like in Norfolk Island? Massive taxes on air travel, such as are imposed by the UK, to choke off opportunities to see the world. All in all, a poorer world, with fewer opportunities – unless you are a climate scientist or fatcat bureaucrat, of course, in which case you get to swan off to swanky events and live it up at public expense.
The Norfolk Island carbon credits? Garry Eggar, the chap who devised this crackpot scheme did not see the need to personally participate – he got to swan off to Cancun to boast about what he had done.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/green-ration-is-ludicrous/story-e6frfhqf-1225946912097
What I can’t stand is the waste, the lost opportunities, the corruption (Gleick, self confessed identity thief, is still a hero to you guys – crazy!) and the blighted future which would occur were you to have your way. So a bit of my time to try to stop this from happening is an investment I’m willing to make.
Are you seriously equating your comparisons to eugenics and baseless accusations of dishonesty and incompetence with expressions of doubt about scientific findings and methods?
Eric,you are barking mad if you think you can get away with lies. You words are all recorded here,and they prove that you do play “punch the scientist” all too often.
Are you seriously equating your comparisons to eugenics and baseless accusations of dishonesty and incompetence with expressions of doubt about scientific findings and methods?
Sloppy adherence to scientific method is part of the problem. Consider the following excerpt from New Scientist, a strongly pro alarmist publication:-
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18599-climategate-scientist-questioned-in-parliament.html
[Phil] Jones conceded that he did not usually publish raw data from weather stations, which was often covered by confidentiality agreements, nor the computer codes he used to analyse the data. “It hasn’t been standard practice to do that. Maybe it should, but it’s not,” he said.
Asked whether other climate scientists reviewing his papers ever required such data, he said, “They’ve never asked.” In response to a specific question about why he had failed to grant freelance researcher Warwick Hughes access to data, he said simply, “We had a lot of work and resources tied up in it.”
If Phil Jones is to believed, none of his papers have ever been properly peer reviewed. Peer reviewers simply waved through his papers without checking his calculations or data.
This is one of many abuses of normally accepted scientific practice which seem to prevail in at least some sections of the alarmist climate community.
DS, maybe the scientists you work with adhere to normal scientific practice – they thoroughly check papers they are asked to review. But if you and your colleagues incorporate perverse conclusions from sloppily reviewed papers, if you build your findings on an edifice of the defective work of others, just how sure can you be of your conclusions?
The tie in with Eugenics – how do you think Eugenics survived so long, deceived so many trained scientists and leading academic institutions into thinking humanity faced an imminent crisis?
Scientists of the early 20th century laid the foundations of Quantum Physics, of many modern fields of science, so they obviously knew how science should be practiced.
The only way I can think of that so many well trained scientists were deceived so badly, is they trusted others to be honest and competent – and that trust was misplaced.
Eric, Jones did not develop CRU datasets by himself,in isolation. They were worked on by various teams made up of those employed by UEA CRU over many years. The datasets were used by many others over many years. He drew his raw data from national meteorological organisations around the world,who of course retain that data,distribute it to others researchers and generate their own products from it. Jones datasets have in effect been challenged by others in the course of generating their own. If there were consistent or significant disagreements between Jones’ work and others then it would trivially have stimulated re-working and correction as a matter of course. Yes ,he did not want to give Hughes any of his data,because he knew what you don’t Hughes is a crank and time-waster.
UEA CRU data for all their products is available,and has been in toto for a couple of years. Hughes and ‘auditors’ have done nothing with it…nada,zip,zilch.
I’m rather tired of your naivety. You don’t understand much of what you’re complaining about.
I see – so your view is, Phil Jones team is so big, they didn’t really need a peer review – so the peer reviews were just a formality.
Then why bother having meaningless peer reviews?
You are making unsubstantiated leaps from the ‘evidence’ you provide. Firstly,the journalist has not provided much,nor has he provided sufficent context. You do not know the details of each papers review what was reviewed what was commented what was sought and amended or clarified. Next,you’re constantly editorialising as you go: NS is an ‘alarmist’ rag ,so it must be kosher in this case,etc. It’s all accusatory and superficial. Jones’ unit output data and codes would be under challenge from other workers in the field if it was not good. Science does not stand still,stuff needs to work,peer review is just one step on the way
Jones was slimed by various journalists: one had him [or UEA scientists] ‘admitting’ that they had destroyed the raw data after the email leak was public. This is false ,they had destroyed their COPIES of raw data years before when rationalising storage space. And they had publicly,though obscurely,stated this at their web site regarding data availability.
Again,all the data is now available,and oddly the eager auditors are too busy doing something else to follow up their great crusade to ‘free the data’. They can create their own code–as a few less crazy people have done– and replicate away to their hearts content. You,too.
You are making unsubstantiated leaps from the ‘evidence’ you provide. Firstly,the journalist has not provided much,nor has he provided sufficent context. You do not know the details of each papers review what was reviewed what was commented what was sought and amended or clarified.
Phil Jones gave specific answers to specific questions. Based on his answers, at least to that point in time, Phil claimed reviewers had never asked to see his method or data. As in never. nada. zilch.
Its possible Phil’s papers were perfection itself, but my point is, by Phil’s own admission, they were never properly reviewed.
Next,you’re constantly editorialising as you go: NS is an ‘alarmist’ rag ,so it must be kosher in this case,etc. It’s all accusatory and superficial. Jones’ unit output data and codes would be under challenge from other workers in the field if it was not good. Science does not stand still,stuff needs to work,peer review is just one step on the way
But some scientists have challenged the findings of alarmists – you call them “deniers”. To criticise alarmist science, even to suggest that climate sensitivity is substantially less than 3c / doubling, is to invite a torrent of personal attacks.
If anyone who disagrees with alarmist science is a “denier” whose work can be disregarded, then all you will ever see is a consensus of alarmist science – because you will disregard anyone who deviates from that consensus.
Eric Worrall says:
Eric, the only way that the global warming theory can have a future is if people don’t think for themselves. All the comments here about “believing the scientists” show a propensity on the part of those making the comments to just accept anything they are told.
There’s only two types of people in this world… the skeptical and the gullible.
I don’t think I’d go that far
. Mostly they seem to place too much faith in authority, and a lot of the time thats not a bad approach to life – obey the law, obey the boss, be fair in your dealings with others. Its very success as a life strategy is why IMO they are so blind to the flaws of authority which has been corrupted.
Obey the law – yes
Obey the boss – yes
Believe a snake oil salesman – hmmm, maybe not.
Let me get this straight, Eric. Immediately after insisting that you’re not playing punch-the-scientist, you respond to my question by once again comparing me to eugenicists, and saying that I’m so ridiculously incompetent that I was “deceived so badly” by your latest repetition of the Phil Jones conspiracy theory? (The one you just claimed not to endorse at the top of this page, remember?)
Eric, you and Monckton and Watts are simply playing punch-the-scientist. For instance, your alarmist accusations that the scientific community is trying to usher in a new dark age are similar to the last paragraph of Monckton’s turn accusing scientists of genocide.
You’re not playing the role of constructive skeptic doubting methods. You’re simply playing punch-the-scientist. Why, Eric? Why?
DS, I gave an explanation of one of the reasons why I think the scientific method of at least some climate scientists is sloppy and unreliable, backed by evidence, and why I thought this sloppy incompetence was comparable to the sloppiness which allowed the rise of the pseudoscientific Eugenics crisis.
Instead of answering my point, you simply repeat your ridiculous assertion I’m playing “punch the scientists”, and add an assertion that my explanation is the “Phil Jones conspiracy theory”.
FFS, its not a “conspiracy theory” when I quote the scientist himself admitting his work was not properly checked by reviewers. Its an admission of sloppy scientific practice.
If you have ever included any papers produced by Phil Jones in your work, or any of the people who reviewed Phil’s work, then your work is in jeopardy – because by his own admission, Phil’s work was never properly check by peer review.
So stop levelling baseless accusations that I am “punching the scientists”, and start checking any work you produced which is based on findings of the CRU, and who knows what else – because there is a real risk it is flawed.
Don’t be absurd. Peer review checks the text and reasoning, not the code and data.
Thanks for admitting that you practice science in a sloppy way as well.
How can you possibly test the correctness of the results of a paper, unless you at least repeat the calculations which produced those results? Or at least perform an eyeball inspection of the code which produced those results?
Even Phil admitted that method and data “probably should be published, but it isn’t”.
And as we’ve seen in “Harry Read Me”, some of the code used to produce climate research results is ugly and almost certainly defective – something which, since peer reviewers failed to ask to see it, has only come to light thanks to Climategate.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
The fact that you think peer review in any field of science works like that is just more proof that you’ve never worked in science. Read the last paragraph of Monckton’s paper (about genocide) and compare it to your dark age accusations. That’s punching-the-scientist. So are all your petty insults, like saying that If interest in climate seance withers much further, interest in the field will dry up, and climate scientists will get interesting jobs in other fields – flipping burgers and suchlike.
Why are you continuing to insult me by saying I practice science in a sloppy way without knowing the first thing about my work, or how science actually works? You told me to start checking any work I’ve produced which is based on findings of CRU, when anyone can tell that my CV contains no such work. I’ve published two papers, and one is on ocean tides via GRACE data that doesn’t involve CRU.
Your other bizarre accusation that climate science is somehow less rigorous than quantum physics is ironic, considering that my other co-authored paper is on the transverse spatial quantum wave function of a single photon. It reports results from a new type of interferometer that I helped design, build, and operate. I’ve worked in both fields, and they both seem equally rigorous. Have you?
Eric, the reason I’m asking about your scientific experience (not qualifications) is that I’m trying to figure out why you seem to think that you understand how science is practiced better than actual scientists. My current hypothesis is that you’re so biased about the climate for non-scientific reasons that you’ve overlooked your complete lack of experience studying the physics of the climate.
Because I’m a scientist, I’m willing to admit that this hypothesis could be wrong. You could convince me (and posterity) that this hypothesis is wrong by critiquing my comments about physics that aren’t related to the climate. This would remove the bias, letting your brilliance shine through more brightly.
Here’s an article I wrote describing inflation, baryogenesis, dark matter, dark energy, neutrino flavor oscillation, inertia in special relativity, the Casimir effect and the Alcubierre warp drive, the fact that the three quarks in a proton only make up ~2% of its mass, a speculative new source of energy based on rotating hoops in general relativity, etc.
Could you please point out the mistakes I’ve made regarding those physics? Doing this will help convince everyone that your insights regarding climate physics are based on general expertise, not bias.
If you don’t check the code matches the reasoning described in the paper, you don’t know whether the results produced by the code were produced by the described process. So your peer review is incomplete.
And as “Harry Read Me” shows, sometimes that code was very ugly indeed.
Frankly I wouldn’t want someone that careless to flip my burgers – I might catch salmonella, thanks to poor adherence to procedure.
You keep insisting that you understand how scientific peer review works better than an actual scientist. What’s the basis for that confidence: bias, or general expertise?
Here’s an article I wrote describing inflation, baryogenesis, dark matter, dark energy, neutrino flavor oscillation, inertia in special relativity, the Casimir effect and the Alcubierre warp drive, the fact that the three quarks in a proton only make up ~2% of its mass, a speculative new source of energy based on rotating hoops in general relativity, etc.
Could you please point out the mistakes I’ve made regarding those physics? Doing this will help convince everyone that your insights regarding climate physics are based on general expertise, not bias.
I clicked your link and saw a long rambling conversation between yourself and an electric universe advocate – something which doesn’t interest me.
And you have no answer to my point, other than a meaningless appeal to authority.
Because if you had an answer, you would explain how scientists can check the results of a calculation without inspecting the working, or attempting to perform the calculation themselves.
I’m not a qualified scientist, but I studied science for several years, at high school and university level. And one thing I remember is we always had to show our working, to facilitate checking of our results. It wasn’t enough to describe the process, we had to make it possible to check that the steps we actually performed matched our description.
Its called Reproducibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility
I guess though that verifiable, reproducible procedure might be too old fashioned for modern climate science.
In school, replication is how one checks results. Professional scientists don’t just replicate results because independently writing the code from scratch in other papers reduces the possibility of sharing bugs and mistaken assumptions. It’s understandable that someone who never goes beyond undergrad non-major classes could miss this difference. Hopefully posterity will understand too.
I’m not appealing to authority, I’m just asking you to critique comments about general physics in the same way you’re critiquing comments about climate physics. This would remove the potential climate bias, letting your brilliance shine through more brightly.
There is a lot of physics on that page, perhaps too much. Here’s a direct link to my explanation of how rotating hoops in general relativity might provide an energy source that could allow our civilization to outlive the stars.
Just start with that one. Impress me, and everyone else, with what you learned while studying science at university level. Or are you only capable of critiquing one particular subfield of physics?
If general relativity and energy sources that could allow us to outlive the stars aren’t interesting to you either, just choose from these topics and I’ll provide a direct link:
inflation, baryogenesis, dark matter, dark energy, neutrino flavor oscillation, inertia in special relativity, the Casimir effect and the Alcubierre warp drive, the fact that the three quarks in a proton only make up ~2% of its mass.
I’ve also written an article explaining that any FTL signal can be sent back in time.
The reason I listed these topics is because (as a major physics geek) I thought that anyone as interested in physics as you would be interested in one of them. Unless you’re not actually interested in physics?
In school, replication is how one checks results. Professional scientists don’t just replicate results because independently writing the code from scratch in other papers reduces the possibility of sharing bugs and mistaken assumptions. It’s understandable that someone who never goes beyond undergrad non-major classes could miss this difference. Hopefully posterity will understand too.
Reproducibility is one of the keystones of the scientific method – the ability of other independent scientists to follow the steps in your experiment exactly, to produce the same result you did, to verify the method you describe yields the results you claim, and to intimately inspect each step of your procedure.
As the Harry Readme experience shows, ugly things happen when scientists fail to demand reproducibility.
However I agree that sloppy, sloppy irreproducible science is widespread. Its disappointing that you can’t see a problem with this.
The following paper describes attempts to address this issue in medicine – another field which is rife with poor procedure and irreproducible results. A climate scientist could learn something from their experience.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucebooth/2012/09/26/scientific-reproducibility-begleys-six-rules/
Here’s a more accurate version:
Reproducibility is one of the keystones of the scientific method – the ability of other independent scientists to independently follow the steps in your experiment exactly, to independently produce the same result you did
Notice that this process doesn’t require sharing source code. If it did, the results wouldn’t be independent.
Eric, I’m spending many hours answering your accusations about the physics of GRACE. And I’m noticing that you only seem to think you’re an expert in one particular subfield of physics.
How about showing that you’re not biased by providing a similar critique of other physics subfields, like the Casimir effect and the Alcubierre warp drive?
Notice that this process doesn’t require sharing source code. If it did, the results wouldn’t be independent.
The sourcecode is the modern equivalent of hand written calculations – the steps used to produce the results. Without sourcecode, the experiment is not reproducible – you can’t follow the *exact* steps described to produce the results, nor can you examine each of the exact steps to try to find a possible flaw.
Without sourcecode, you can attempt to replicate the experiment, but you can’t attempt to reproduce it.
Your points about the Casimir effect, and its implication that it is possible to reduce the vacuum energy of regions of space, which might make stable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive possible – yes I’ve read the wiki articles, they are interesting phenomena – but this has nothing to do with my criticism of sloppy, irreproducible climate science, other than as a distraction from my point.
How bizarre that you don’t seem to understand that professional scientists write their own code from scratch based on algorithmic descriptions, and that this process is more independent than directly replicating the original source code and all its potential bugs.
If you won’t critique those comments, how about critiquing my comments on the three quarks in a proton only making up ~2% of its mass?
Or are you only capable of critiquing climate physics in particular, because of some kind of bias? Eric, please prove that you learned science at university level. Otherwise, why should we believe that you’re basing your accusations that I’m sloppy (ushering in a new dark age, etc.) on general expertise in physics, rather than some bias about this particular subfield of physics?
How bizarre that you don’t seem to understand that professional scientists write their own code from scratch based on algorithmic descriptions, and that this process is more independent than directly replicating the original source code and all its potential bugs.
As an IT expert, dealing with bugs in code, and procedures to minimise them, is one of *my* specialties.
And I say here and now, based on my expertise and over 20 years of experience, that the justification you give for not sharing code is BS.
If a scientist who attempts to replicate another experiment obtains a different result, and they do not have access to the original source code, they can only speculate where the code went wrong.
For example, a number of times Steve McIntyre has critiqued a results as wrong. Since in most cases he doesn’t have access to the original sourcecode, he can’t simply look through the code until he finds the mistake, instead he has to try several different potential mistakes, until he finds one which yields similar results – a much more complex and time consuming procedure.
Yes, blackbox testing (testing the output of code vs expectations, without knowing the internals) has its place. But code review is also critically important when producing high quality, bug free code. And its that code review step which is missing from the sloppy procedure you are describing.
I’ve already pointed out that McIntyre has also simply been playing punch-the-scientist. He attacks scientists regardless of if their data are available or bound by international agreements. He whined for years about code which could be written in a weekend by any competent scientist without any help from CRU.
Your accusation that I’m spreading BS about source code is really bizarre. When we first met I gave you a direct link to bryankillett.com where I’ve shared my GRACE source code. JPL couldn’t share their source code because it’s classified, but I didn’t spend years whining about it like McIntyre did. Instead, I dumbly spent years writing the Gravitational Accelerations Inverter and Analyzer in C++ and sharing it with the world.
I just don’t think sharing source code is part of peer review, partly because of my past experience in experimental optics. The reviewers couldn’t possibly replicate our laboratory setup, which is equivalent to replicating the source code. The true test in both fields is for independent scientists to write other papers using different physics and methodologies. This doesn’t require source code or reproducing $100,000 worth of optics equipment and labor. It never does.
If you won’t critique those comments, how about critiquing my comments on neutrino flavor oscillation?
Or are you only capable of critiquing climate physics in particular, because of some kind of bias? Eric, please prove that you learned science at university level. Otherwise, why should we believe that you’re basing your accusations that I’m sloppy (ushering in a new dark age, etc.) on general expertise in physics, rather than some bias about this particular subfield of physics?
I’ve already pointed out that McIntyre has also simply been playing punch-the-scientist. He attacks scientists regardless of if their data are available or bound by international agreements. He whined for years about code which could be written in a weekend by any competent scientist without any help from CRU.
Your denial of the need for code review is a defence of sloppy science. Code review, otherwise known as peer review, is widely cited in IT as an important step to ensure quality. But I guess scientists are too smart to make mistakes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review
“Capers Jones’ ongoing analysis of over 12,000 software development projects showed that the latent defect discovery rate of formal inspection is in the 60-65% range. For informal inspection, the figure is less than 50%.[citation needed] The latent defect discovery rate for most forms of testing is about 30%.[3]”
Your accusation that I’m spreading BS about source code is really bizarre. When we first met I gave you a direct link to bryankillett.com where I’ve shared my GRACE source code. JPL couldn’t share their source code because it’s classified, but I didn’t spend years whining about it like McIntyre did. Instead, I dumbly spent years writing the Gravitational Accelerations Inverter and Analyzer in C++ and sharing it with the world.
Did you receive any feedback which led to correction of mistakes? Or did you get it right first time?
I just don’t think sharing source code is part of peer review, partly because of my past experience in experimental optics. The reviewers couldn’t possibly replicate our laboratory setup, which is equivalent to replicating the source code. The true test in both fields is for independent scientists to write other papers using different physics and methodologies. This doesn’t require source code or reproducing $100,000 worth of optics equipment and labor. It never does.
If your code does not separate data acquisition from data analysis, then it is badly structured in addition to whatever other faults it has. The data analysis portion of the code at least should be executable without the need to replicate your laboratory setup – a setup which I hope is described in sufficient detail so that scientists with the means and budget to do so can replicate your experiment in its entirety.
Code partitioning – separating the code into logical components – is an important step in making code testable. But I suspect you knew that, right? And you do know what I mean by testable, don’t you?
If you won’t critique those comments, how about critiquing my comments on neutrino flavor oscillation?
Or are you only capable of critiquing climate physics in particular, because of some kind of bias? Eric, please prove that you learned science at university level. Otherwise, why should we believe that you’re basing your accusations that I’m sloppy (ushering in a new dark age, etc.) on general expertise in physics, rather than some bias about this particular subfield of physics?
I’ve read about Neutrino flavour oscillation, and how it explains the solar neutrino deficit. But I’m here to discuss issues with climate science. Your continuous attempts to distract this discussion into whether I understand Quantum Physics and Relativity to the same level as yourself (which I don’t) are simply an attempt to avoid answering the points I’m raising.
In my experience, no contrarian actually bothers with productive feedback. They’re all too busy accusing us of being eugenicists. That’s one reason why I’m losing faith in humanity.
All irrelevant, as you could tell if you browsed my logically separated code. The point you’re still missing is that you’ve been advocating a conspiracy theory on the assumption that peer review requires sharing code, when I’ve actually explained repeatedly that this would make peer review less independent. This isn’t about the independence of different functions in a program. It’s about the need for other scientists to use completely different physics to estimate the same observable in different peer-reviewed papers.
But that’s exactly the point. Why do you think you’ve leapfrogged past the overwhelming majority of the scientific community regarding climate physics, but don’t seem to understand other subfields of physics as well? Is it possible that your points are based on your assumption that science is just like IT?
Did you receive any feedback which led to correction of mistakes? Or did you get it right first time?
In my experience, no contrarian actually bothers with productive feedback. They’re all too busy accusing us of being eugenicists. That’s one reason why I’m losing faith in humanity.
Nice avoidance of my question – did other people help you find mistakes with your code, or was it perfect first time?
If it is perfect code first time, then you have a remarkable talent – people who can rattle off perfect bug free code without the need for procedural rigour and review are rare.
Code partitioning – separating the code into logical components – is an important step in making code testable. But I suspect you knew that, right? And you do know what I mean by testable, don’t you?
All irrelevant, as you could tell if you browsed my logically separated code. The point you’re still missing is that you’ve been advocating a conspiracy theory on the assumption that peer review requires sharing code, when I’ve actually explained repeatedly that this would make peer review less independent. This isn’t about the independence of different functions in a program. It’s about the need for other scientists to use completely different physics to estimate the same observable in different peer-reviewed papers.
You didn’t answer my question about what I mean by “testable”, because you don’t know the answer, do you? Writing high quality code is not your primary expertise.
Your continuous attempts to distract this discussion into whether I understand Quantum Physics and Relativity to the same level as yourself (which I don’t) are simply an attempt to avoid answering the points I’m raising.
But that’s exactly the point. Why do you think you’ve leapfrogged past the overwhelming majority of the scientific community regarding climate physics, but don’t seem to understand other subfields of physics as well? Is it possible that your points are based on your assumption that science is just like IT?
The point we are currently debating is very much related to the intersection between IT and climate science. Like it or not, climate science relies on software for performing model runs, and solving difficult large scale problems. So if an IT expert tells you there are flaws in your IT methodology, and gives a detailed explanation of why, arrogantly dismissing my views as irrelevant because I’ve never derived the solution to Alcubierre drive, and would probably get stuck on the math, is not a valid answer to my points.
The only people who helped me find mistakes did so by independently writing their own code and comparing the results to mine. Contrarians who whine about data they don’t intend to analyze haven’t helped at all. Obviously, this means that scientists recognize that we do make mistakes. But as I’ve repeatedly explained, that’s why peer review emphasizes other scientists using different physics and methodologies to estimate the same observable. To avoid spreading the mistakes around.
Don’t be absurd. I’m wasting many hours debunking your accusations about GRACE physics, which have nothing to do with IT, and preparing to debunk many of your accusations about water vapor, warming over the last 16 years, ocean heat content, etc. Why aren’t you capable of critiquing dark matter in the same way? Is it because of some bias regarding this subfield of physics?
Pretending that you’re only talking about IT isn’t helping your credibility.
But I guess scientists are too smart to make mistakes. … Nice avoidance of my question – did other people help you find mistakes with your code, or was it perfect first time? If it is perfect code first time, then you have a remarkable talent – people who can rattle off perfect bug free code without the need for procedural rigour and review are rare. … You didn’t answer my question about what I mean by “testable”, because you don’t know the answer, do you? Writing high quality code is not your primary expertise.
The only people who helped me find mistakes did so by independently writing their own code and comparing the results to mine. Contrarians who whine about data they don’t intend to analyze haven’t helped at all. Obviously, this means that scientists recognize that we do make mistakes. But as I’ve repeatedly explained, that’s why peer review emphasizes other scientists using different physics and methodologies to estimate the same observable. To avoid spreading the mistakes around.
You still don’t know what I mean by testable, do you? And why would all the people who helped you feel the need to write their own code – why didn’t at least some of them inspect your code, which you had published freely, and query anything they felt might be wrong? Is your code unreadable?
The Linux operating system, and many other free software systems, are outstanding products of massive open peer review. People didn’t write their own version of Linux to find bugs in Linus Torvald’s code, they inspected Torvald’s code, and helped him identify the mistakes.
Or is your code totally readable, but people always choose to do things the hard way, because they enjoy the pain?
The point we are currently debating is very much related to the intersection between IT and climate science. Like it or not, climate science relies on software for performing model runs, and solving difficult large scale problems. So if an IT expert tells you there are flaws in your IT methodology, and gives a detailed explanation of why, arrogantly dismissing my views as irrelevant because I’ve never derived the solution to Alcubierre drive, and would probably get stuck on the math, is not a valid answer to my points.
Don’t be absurd. I’m wasting many hours debunking your accusations about GRACE physics, which have nothing to do with IT, and preparing to debunk many of your accusations about water vapor, warming over the last 16 years, ocean heat content, etc. Why aren’t you capable of critiquing dark matter in the same way? Is it because of some bias regarding this subfield of physics?
Pretending that you’re only talking about IT isn’t helping your credibility.
Sure I criticise other areas which I have taken an interest in. But this specific chain of debate is about a defective IT quality control, and how it impacts the reproducibility of climate papers. You’re dodging my point, because you would rather shut down the debate by appealing to your authority as a scientist, than answer the points I am raising.
In your arrogance and overconfidence you allowed yourself to be led into an area in which I am the expert – and you don’t like it.
You could take a positive from this – my point is genuine, and if you bothered to give serious consideration to what I am saying, you might learn lessons which would genuinely help your future research.
But I doubt you’ll bother. For alarmists, ego is more important than truth. As we learned from Phil Jones, when he wished death and destruction on us all in one of his climategate emails, just for the satisfaction of being proven right.
Why are you asking me if my code is readable? I provided a link; it’s thoroughly commented and logically separated. It’s testable in the same way all science is: independent investigation by other scientists. The fact that I’ve provided the code, and you’ve decided not to bother looking at it in favor of lecturing me about linux, is just one more piece of evidence that nothing will stop you from regurgitating these baseless accusations. Why, Eric? Why?
I suspect Eric doesn’t recognize the overwhelming irony in his statements. No, I really don’t see how that’s possible. That’s one mystery I can’t solve.
Eric, you have claimed that Phil Jones papers were never properly reviewed ‘by his own admission’.
Jones made no such statement or admission. He said that reviewers had not asked to look at his code,and was non-committal on whether that was necessary or not…in other words,it was not important. You have ignored my comments about reproducibility of results and the robustness of Jones unit output demonstrated by the considerable amount of work built on it,and the independent work using the same raw data.
Your long subsequent exchanges with DS confirm your disturbing dogmatism and authoritarianism,and you have led yourself into deep hole. It has been explained to you that raw data and derived datasets ARE AVAILABLE,and why data is analysed with purpose-written code,something you have revealed you should be more than familiar with. You have decided against explanation and reason that ‘code review is peer review’,and reverted to form by once again misrepresenting stolen emails regarding what Jones’ ‘wished’ upon ‘you’. I can’t believe you are so obtuse that you cannot see the context and true sense of Jones’ remark: exasperation and black humour. Anyone who would try and pass of that email as literally intended is frankly not quite all there.
This has been a pretty sorry offering from you. In the time you have wasted here with your zombie talking points,you could doubtless have written your own code,sourced raw data,and run some analysis or another. Others have,and they have confirmed the worth of the work you dismiss. You have no arguments.
I produced evidence that peer review of code (usually referred to as “code review”) is the most effective way to remove defects.
Despite this, DS denies any need for peer review of code, and insists that all review should be performed by comparing results from different coding efforts. By doing this, DS is demonstrably greatly increasing the difficulty of resolving discrepancies between results (if you can’t inspect the code, your only option is to try to guess what *mistakes* the other researcher made), and ignores the opportunities for virtuous review / quality improvement cycles which are well established in the mainstream software world.
I asked DS a question about whether the code was “testable”. DS betrayed complete ignorance of modern software quality management by stating the following:- It’s testable in the same way all science is: independent investigation by other scientists.
Testability is a well known concept in computer science. It relates to the concept of test driven development – structuring your code in such a way that each individual component can be isolated and executed, and output compared to expected results. In test driven development,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development , a popular modern software quality paradigm, you actually build the tests before you write the code, to ensure rigorous adherence to design constraints.
DS could have asked what I meant by “testable”. But asking questions is something real scientists do.
The fact that you repeatedly assume that I need to be lectured about my life’s work is the root of the problem. I’ve already pointed out that units tests don’t test scientific results as rigorously as independent verification. Contrarians like McIntyre whine that this is the hard way, and that we’re only doing this because we enjoy pain. What you don’t seem to realize is that scientists test results using different physics and methodology because it’s more independent than performing unit tests.
Eric just punched another scientist. DS has told you why your views don’t hold water. Went straight over your head.
It’s like this Eric. Raw data is solicited from national collecting agencies by Jones or any other researcher,to perform research along lines explained in funding proposals. Raw data has been QCed by those agencies. Further QCing can emerge during next steps. Researcher[s] writes code[s] to perform functions according to lines of research. Independent researchers in other countries using same data are doing the same thing over. Results,derived from same data,using proprietary codes sometimes in different coding languages, agree closely: independent reproducibility of results noted. ‘Perfection’ [arbitarily ,unilaterally ajudged by 'critic'] of codes irrelevant.
‘Critics’ motivated by visceral objection to implications of research seek to undermine research and process by enshrining their ignorance on the interwebs,in the mistaken belief that they are actually making credible critiques. Such is life.
Macintyre for instance attempted to discredit MBH’s code by ‘reproducing’ that groups results using code he thought best approximated theirs. He claimed that MBH mined for and generated hockey sticks by default. In truth,Mac’s own efforts included writing code that deliberately chose and collected the most pronounced hockey sticks,so that he could make that charge. Nice guy. Fed it to an uncritical statistician who subsequently was caught out plagiarising others work in the production of his oh-so-significant report in to MBH’s paper. Nice guy number two.
Again,ERic,solicit the data,write your ‘perfect’ code and publish your results,here or elsewhere. Winters will warm,the glaciers will continue to retreat, and the sea-level rise,while you do.
DS:-
The fact that you repeatedly assume that I need to be lectured about my life’s work is the root of the problem. I’ve already pointed out that units tests don’t test scientific results as rigorously as independent verification. Contrarians like McIntyre whine that this is the hard way, and that we’re only doing this because we enjoy pain. What you don’t seem to realize is that scientists test results using different physics and methodology because it’s more independent than performing unit tests.
Given that you didn’t know what I meant by testability, your woeful belief that you are an expert on software quality speaks volumes about why climate science is in such a muddle.
When I worked in banking, a significant part of my work was helping PHD physicists and mathematicians produce stable, high quality analytical code. Thankfully, unlike you, they knew there were real personal consequences if they got it badly wrong, so they were happy to accept any expert advice on offer.
McIntyre noticed the same arrogant tendency of climate alarmists to reject outside advice, when he critiqued Mann’s hockey stick. He noted the lack of serious statistical expertise, which led to Mann using a methodology so flawed, it auto selected a hockey stick out of red noise.
Good grief Eric, I just posted a link showing that I’ve addressed unit testing (which is what you’re describing) three years ago. In exactly this context. And yet you persist in accusing me of betraying complete ignorance? Why, Eric? Why?
Do you ever wonder if hurling baseless accusations at climate scientists for years will have real personal consequences? Especially if the scientific community is right about this scientific issue, and you’re badly wrong? Does that warrant a moment of reflection?
Nonsense.
Good grief Eric, I just posted a link showing that I’ve addressed unit testing (which is what you’re describing) three years ago. In exactly this context. And yet you persist in accusing me of betraying complete ignorance? Why, Eric? Why?
Do you ever wonder if hurling baseless accusations at climate scientists for years will have real personal consequences? Especially if the scientific community is right about this scientific issue, and you’re badly wrong? Does that warrant a moment of reflection?
Nonsense.
It’s uncanny,Eric! You’ve just repeated the Macintyre lie that I mentioned just before your post! Mann’s algorithm did not automatically generate hockey sticks out of red noise but found HSs in data that actually had HSs in it.
Macintyre explicitly wrote code to collect the hockey sticks that inevitably are thrown up here and there in a run of many thousands in red noise. IOW, Macintyre intentionally biased his so-called random sampling to collate HSs,collected the biggest and said “look there, Mann’s process will make them out of noise.” Sleight of hand fooled you. You have a lot to learn. Start here
Good grief Eric, I just posted a link showing that I’ve addressed unit testing (which is what you’re describing) three years ago. In exactly this context. And yet you persist in accusing me of betraying complete ignorance? Why, Eric? Why?
Because you have no idea what you are talking about. You had no idea what testability is, and I doubt you would know what a good unit test was if you fell over it.
Do you ever wonder if hurling baseless accusations at climate scientists for years will have real personal consequences? Especially if the scientific community is right about this scientific issue, and you’re badly wrong? Does that warrant a moment of reflection?
Your continued defence of an indefensibly flawed process give me confidence that I am right. If you can’t get important components of your process right, components in which I have a deep understanding and expertise, I have no confidence you have gotten anything else right. It makes the criticism of McIntyre etc. more credible.
Science is fragile – it is far easier to get an experiment wrong than to get it right. Your arrogant disregard for and denial of problems with your technique to me is strong supporting evidence you are making other mistakes – it makes claims by other specialists that your technique is flawed, and your results utterly unreliable, more credible.
McIntyre noticed the same arrogant tendency of climate alarmists to reject outside advice, when he critiqued Mann’s hockey stick. He noted the lack of serious statistical expertise, which led to Mann using a methodology so flawed, it auto selected a hockey stick out of red noise.
Nonsense.
Yet you continue to defend a blatantly flawed process – because your ego is more important than getting it right.
I’ll go with McIntyre on this one. And I’ll continue to push to expose your sloppy technique, to do my bit to prevent society wasting more of my money on your dangerously wrong recommendations – money which could be spent on something useful.
Desalination plants and wind turbines are only a taste of the madness and atrocious waste you would force on us if you could.
You don’t even understand what Macintyre did…but you’ll go with it? You ignore the fact that ‘hockey sticks’ are present in numerous studies on palaeoclimate,including those without reference to dendrochronologies. Your position is indeed based on ignoring—ignorance of– research in the broadest possible sense. You don’t know the FUCK what you’re talking about [evidence throughout your posting history] and you HAVE THE HIDE to jolly along, referencing self-discrediting AMATEURS with behavioral problems like Monckton and Watts.
Then you would make climate science responsible for desalination plants?
Hysterical stuff! Now let’s see you change the subject . More irrelevance about how your side is ‘winning the debate’ perhaps,having lost the science? Anybody who would celebrate the triumph of ignorance in pursuit of their political agenda is in very sorry historical company.
Riiight – so if you find a handful of hockey sticks amongst a lot of contradictory proxy sequences, your idea of “good” science is to discard the other sequences because they don’t match the theory.
If the facts don’t match the theory, discard the facts.
No,that’s not my position and it’s not supported by what I just posted, try harder…like try just a teensy little bit to get up to speed on the subject that you feel so very certain about,eh?
Actually,it’s ironic that you should have made that comment,because it describes exactly what Macintyre did in trying to discredit MBH….M discarded the real results of his simulation in favour of selecting the biggest HSs from the top 1% of his model’s output. He’s a bad-faith operator,Eric.
Good grief Eric, I just posted a link showing that I’d addressed unit testing (which is what you’re describing) three years ago. In exactly this context. Even if you think my unit tests aren’t “good”, doesn’t this cast doubt on the notion that I “had no idea what testability is”?
You haven’t pointed out any problems with my technique or process, despite the fact that I’ve shared my code. You just baselessly accused me of not having any idea what testability is. Is that your idea of productive advice from a specialist with deep understanding and expertise?
Usually, accusing scientists of arrogantly denying problems requires pointing out actual problems first. However, anyone who tires of playing punch-the-scientist can skip this step.
Also, what “claims by other specialists that your technique is flawed”? Like I’ve said, I’m comparing the results of my GRACE source code with independent calculations. Our ocean tide phases agree very well and the spatial pattern of the amplitudes are nearly identical.
As my link explained, the National Academy of Sciences largely supported Mann’s reconstruction because McIntyre’s claims were all found to be mistaken or insignificant. Perhaps their egos were also more important than getting it right?
Also, didn’t you just insist that this specific chain of debate is about a defective IT quality control? Anyone who clicks my link about McIntyre will notice that you’re lecturing a physicist about principle component analysis selection rules applied to ARFIMA noise with a decorrelation time of ~350 years. That’s not about a defective IT quality control.
Do you ever wonder if paranoid speculation about what madness scientists want to force on you isn’t the best route to credibility?
Because you have no idea what you are talking about. You had no idea what testability is, and I doubt you would know what a good unit test was if you fell over it.
Good grief Eric, I just posted a link showing that I’d addressed unit testing (which is what you’re describing) three years ago. In exactly this context. Even if you think my unit tests aren’t “good”, doesn’t this cast doubt on the notion that I “had no idea what testability is”?
Testability is not about writing unit tests, its about how you structure your code, to ensure unit testing is effective. Your code, from what I saw looking at a few source files, is not structured in a testable way.
Testability is about structuring the code so that any component can be tested in complete isolation, using injected data, and using mocked dependencies, without any assumptions about file structures, or other components. The idea is to ensure each component of your code performs the required transformation correctly, by completely isolating it from other components which might produce a false negative (or worse, a false positive). So for say a linear least squares function, you would completely separate the function from its input, via abstraction – so you can test that the least squares function is correctly calculating the best fit, by feeding it predetermined input, and comparing the output with expected results. If a code change causes a defect, which leads to the least squares unit test failing, you know the problem must actually be with the least squares function, not with say the structure of the file you fed it, or some other dependency external to the function you are trying to isolate and test.
If you don’t do this, you create a serious risk of compound errors – your intelligence on what is causing an error is defective, so in trying to correct an error, you can inadvertently introduce another error, by “correcting” the error in the wrong place. This can lead to spuriously “correct” results, but only in the scenario you noticed and tried to address.
Perhaps if code review was commonly practiced in your field, someone might have explained this to you.
On the positive side, you’ve made an effort to isolate different parts of your process into functions, and not written your code as one long function, which is something non experts often do. I suspect you learnt your coding about 12 – 18 years ago (or whoever taught you did). Your code looks a lot like procedural code I used to deal with in the late 90s.
From what you have said, chaps in your field don’t review each other’s code, because they see no benefit in doing so. So by your statements, noone has ever reviewed any of your code and provided feedback, your only feedback has been people discussing the results of their code with you.
Think of this as a first.
Usually, accusing scientists of arrogantly denying problems requires pointing out actual problems first. However, anyone who tires of playing punch-the-scientist can skip this step.
For all I know your code is flawless perfection – I haven’t looked at it closely enough to tell, and I probably wouldn’t understand the math well enough to tell if you’d got it right.
What I was criticising was the sloppy procedure you are describing, of not considering code to be part of the method of an experiment, and your stated opinion of seeing no reason why code should be one of the deliverables for a peer reviewed paper.
Also, what “claims by other specialists that your technique is flawed”? Like I’ve said, I’m comparing the results of my GRACE source code with independent calculations. Our ocean tide phases agree very well and the spatial pattern of the amplitudes are nearly identical.
My criticism is directed at the practice you describe of not considering code to be part of the method of a paper, not at your specific work, and your continued unjustified defence of a blatantly flawed process.
Grow a pair and admit, as Phil Jones did, that your standard practice might be wrong.
As my link explained, the National Academy of Sciences largely supported Mann’s reconstruction because McIntyre’s claims were all found to be mistaken or insignificant. Perhaps their egos were also more important than getting it right?
Also, didn’t you just insist that this specific chain of debate is about a defective IT quality control? Anyone who clicks my link about McIntyre will notice that you’re lecturing a physicist about principle component analysis selection rules applied to ARFIMA noise with a decorrelation time of ~350 years. That’s not about a defective IT quality control.
My specific criticism is the deeply flawed process you describe of never reviewing each others code, of only comparing the output of code. I’ve given detailed reasons for why I think this is flawed. I find your continued refusal to accept a problem which should be obvious to someone of your intelligence rather disturbing.
I can’t have been the first IT person to point this out to alarmist scientists, yet you persist with your irrational defence of a defective practice which is obviously a deep rooted tradition in your field. The fact you don’t listen to IT people pointing out the blinding obvious suggests to me that you probably don’t listen to other specialists either – so your response adds weight to suggestions by other specialists, such as McIntyre, that alarmists consistently mishandle their statistical analysis.
Desalination plants and wind turbines are only a taste of the madness and atrocious waste you would force on us if you could.
Do you ever wonder if paranoid speculation about what madness scientists want to force on you isn’t the best route to credibility?
Birth control, personal carbon credits, restrictions on travel (enforced via punitive taxes) – all these things are already happening, at least on a small scale. Some scientists such as David Suzuki have advocated jailing politicians who “don’t listen to the science”. Hansen has praised totalitarian China as being the hope for the world, and criticised democratic western governments as being the pawns of big oil.
I have no desire for the future to be a totalitarian nightmare. So far the higher bills, higher taxes, and threats are just an inconvenience, but you have to ask what sort of world people like Suzuki and Hansen would create if they got their way.
Good grief, Eric. I already pointed out that experimental optics peer review doesn’t require replicating $100,000 worth of equipment and labor. In exactly the same way, computational geophysics peer review doesn’t require source code. I’ve experienced peer review in both fields. On some level, you even seem to realize why it works this way:
Exactly. No amount of unit tests could ever catch a mistake in the math. But if two people independently derive equations (ideally different equations) and then independently implement that math in different programs…
Condescendingly lecturing me about abstraction suggests you didn’t notice that create_least_squares_in_parallel() is separated from its input and checks matrix_debug[][] specifically so that regression errors (what you’re describing) can be caught inside that function. You also seem to ignore the fact that practically every other function in my code has similar features. A good percentage of the code I write is designed to catch regression errors.
You’ve also repeatedly ignored the fact that my code is producing results that are very similar to those from a completely independent program. So whatever errors you imagine are hiding in my code must have mysteriously jumped over to that other program which was independently written by other scientists. That’s why science works this way!
I write code the way I like to read it, which is a subjective preference. Many of my colleagues still prefer Fortran-77, which I find nearly unreadable. But I don’t complain if their code doesn’t fit my subjective preferences, because I recognize that testing their output with other programs is a more independent test.
Eric, a horde of programmers with Dunning-Kruger have been condescendingly lecturing me about my life’s work for years. Nothing you’re doing is a “first”, but you might want to consider not being the last person to hurl all these baseless accusations at scientists.
Do you ever wonder if paranoid speculation about the madness scientists want to force on you isn’t the best route to credibility?
What I was criticising was the sloppy procedure you are describing, of not considering code to be part of the method of an experiment, and your stated opinion of seeing no reason why code should be one of the deliverables for a peer reviewed paper.
Good grief, Eric. I already pointed out that experimental optics peer review doesn’t require replicating $100,000 worth of equipment and labor. In exactly the same way, computational geophysics peer review doesn’t require source code. I’ve experienced peer review in both fields. On some level, you even seem to realize why it works this way:
And I’m pointing out that is nonsense. I’ve already pointed out some issues with the way you structure your code, with 5 minutes effort. Imagine the benefits if someone who was interested took a look.
I described in detail why, without presenting code with papers, if there are any flaws in the code, reproducing a flawed experiment is horrendously difficult. Not only do you have to follow the published method, but you have to try to guess what mistakes were made – a process which would be far simpler if the code part of the experimental method was published and available.
And I presented evidence which shows peer review is by far the most effective means to find bugs, about twice as effective as testing.
For all I know your code is flawless perfection – I haven’t looked at it closely enough to tell, and I probably wouldn’t understand the math well enough to tell if you’d got it right.
Exactly. No amount of unit tests could ever catch a mistake in the math. But if two people independently derive equations (ideally different equations) and then independently implement that math in different programs…
I’m not disputing that independent attempts to solve the same problem are useful. What I am disputing is your ridiculous insistence that this is the only technique which should be used. I’ve given my reasons for disputing this, none of which you have meaningfully addressed.
Your code, from what I saw looking at a few source files, is not structured in a testable way. … for say a linear least squares function, you would completely separate the function from its input, via abstraction … If a code change causes a defect, which leads to the least squares unit test failing, you know the problem must actually be with the least squares function, not with say the structure of the file you fed it … If you don’t do this, you create a serious risk of compound errors – your intelligence on what is causing an error is defective, so in trying to correct an error, you can inadvertently introduce another error, by “correcting” the error in the wrong place. This can lead to spuriously “correct” results, but only in the scenario you noticed and tried to address. Perhaps if code review was commonly practiced in your field, someone might have explained this to you.
Condescendingly lecturing me about abstraction suggests you didn’t notice that create_least_squares_in_parallel() is separated from its input and checks matrix_debug[][] specifically so that regression errors (what you’re describing) can be caught inside that function. You also seem to ignore the fact that practically every other function in my code has similar features. A good percentage of the code I write is designed to catch regression errors.
You’ve also repeatedly ignored the fact that my code is producing results that are very similar to those from a completely independent program. So whatever errors you imagine are hiding in my code must have mysteriously jumped over to that other program which was independently written by other scientists. That’s why science works this way!
I didn’t notice this. Embedding tests inside code is poor technique, because it increases code complexity. its such a bad technique, it didn’t occur to me someone would use it. Silly me.
I suspect you learnt your coding about 12 – 18 years ago (or whoever taught you did). Your code looks a lot like procedural code I used to deal with in the late 90s.
I write code the way I like to read it, which is a subjective preference. Many of my colleagues still prefer Fortran-77, which I find nearly unreadable. But I don’t complain if their code doesn’t fit my subjective preferences, because I recognize that testing their output with other programs is a more independent test.
Testing code against other parallel efforts should be part of your approach to testing, but so should peer review and proper testability. Your ignorant insistence on sticking to your comfort zone rather than considering better techniques is a good insight into why climate alarmists regularly get it so wrong.
What I was criticising was the sloppy procedure you are describing, of not considering code to be part of the method of an experiment, and your stated opinion of seeing no reason why code should be one of the deliverables for a peer reviewed paper. …
My criticism is directed at the practice you describe of not considering code to be part of the method of a paper, not at your specific work, and your continued unjustified defence of a blatantly flawed process.
Grow a pair and admit, as Phil Jones did, that your standard practice might be wrong.
… My specific criticism is the deeply flawed process you describe of never reviewing each others code, of only comparing the output of code. I’ve given detailed reasons for why I think this is flawed. I find your continued refusal to accept a problem which should be obvious to someone of your intelligence rather disturbing.
I can’t have been the first IT person to point this out to alarmist scientists, yet you persist with your irrational defence of a defective practice which is obviously a deep rooted tradition in your field. The fact you don’t listen to IT people pointing out the blinding obvious suggests to me that you probably don’t listen to other specialists either
From what you have said, chaps in your field don’t review each other’s code, because they see no benefit in doing so. So by your statements, noone has ever reviewed any of your code and provided feedback, your only feedback has been people discussing the results of their code with you.
Think of this as a first.
Eric, a horde of programmers with Dunning-Kruger have been condescendingly lecturing me about my life’s work for years. Nothing you’re doing is a “first”, but you might want to consider not being the last person to hurl all these baseless accusations at scientists.
I see – so expert advice which relates to a field outside your primary expertise is the Dunning-Kruger assault of inferior minds. Dunning-Kruger indeed, but not on the part of people who are trying to help you.
I have no desire for the future to be a totalitarian nightmare. So far the higher bills, higher taxes, and threats are just an inconvenience, but you have to ask what sort of world people like Suzuki and Hansen would create if they got their way.
Do you ever wonder if paranoid speculation about the madness scientists want to force on you isn’t the best route to credibility?
So you don’t think a policy of throwing politicians in jail if they disagree with David Suzuki would be even slightly totalitarian? That forced birth control, interference with freedom, and higher bills to force a response is in any way undesirable? That praise of a totalitarian dictatorship, coupled with disdain for western representative democracies is in any way advocacy for totalitarianism? What a happy pink bubble you must inhabit.
So Eric, let me see if I have this straight.
You linking to some ice maps that you hadn’t even looked at closely and which didn’t even support your position is not “sloppy science”.
Anthony Watts drawing a line from a cherry picked data start point to the bottom of an error bar in order to manufacture a horizontal trend line (arguably fraudulent), is not “sloppy science”, (Talk about tortured data!).
But, actual working code written by a professional scientist; code which has the correct output that is confirmed by independent sources is “sloppy science” because it doesn’t conform to your idea of how code should be structured?
Notice a hint of double standards here Eric? Not even a hint?
Can you even spell hypocrite?
Huh? You just condescendingly lectured me about not writing tests which you later admitted actually do exist, then immediately switched to complaining about the fact that they’re embedded in the code. Is this 5 minutes of productive advice from an expert with deep understanding and expertise?
Once again, scientific peer review (which involves independent comparisons in experimental optics and computational geophysics, etc.) can catch bugs in the code that might be caught by software code review, and bugs in the math and data which could never be caught by software code review.
Good grief, Eric. That’s your position, not mine. When Jones said his code hadn’t been reviewed, you got sucked into an elaborate conspiracy theory based on your ridiculous insistence that scientific peer review is only valid if it uses the technique of code review.
I’m saying that both techniques are useful. In fact, that’s why I shared my code: I naively thought that people might read it and offer feedback other than finding endless excuses to call me ignorant and waste my time.
Yes, everyone’s a critic. But the tests you were scolding me about not writing do exist. You’ve got my source code. If you have productive changes in mind, just download the code and show the world that you’re an expert.
Incidentally, many of my colleagues gave up responding to contrarians or sharing code with the public because, as Gavin Schmidt explained:
The contrarians have found that there is actually no limit to what you can ask people for (raw data, intermediate steps, additional calculations, residuals, sensitivity calculations, all the code, a workable version of the code on any platform etc.), and like Somali pirates they have found that once someone has paid up, they can always shake them down again.
Eric, your comments and coding efforts will either support this cynicism, or be a breath of fresh air that encourages scientists to engage more with the public.
Weren’t you just saying that scientists’ “comfort zone” means they “do things the hard way, because they enjoy the pain”? Regardless of how painful my comfort zone(?) is, why are you accusing me of ignorantly insisting on sticking to it when I’ve already shared my code with the world?
Also, accusing the overwhelming majority of the scientific community of being “alarmists” is really bizarre. If anything, scientists tend to err on the side of least drama.
Who’s trying to help me, exactly?
I’m not disputing the ethics of those bizarre scenarios, just their connection to reality. Incidentally, I inhabit a “happy pink bubble” where we’re pumping out CO2 at least 10 times faster than during the previous record high, which was set 250 million years ago… right before the end-Permian extinction.
Seriously, do you ever wonder if paranoid speculation about the totalitarian dictatorship scientists want to force on you isn’t the best route to credibility? Especially if you’re supposedly trying to help me with expert advice?
You’ve been busy Mike. Awesome post and well researched. How’s your forehead?
Roberts has lost it. I cannot fathom the train of thought it must take to immerse onesself so thoroughly in this sort of garbage and come out the other end believing it. The mind boggles. Mental illness is a serious problem for some people and while I read CSIROh! I couldn’t help but get the feeling I was reading the scrawlings of a madman.
What I find not surprising is the denial by Roberts that he is antisemitic. I reminded of the words spoken to me by a gentleman I met in north Queensland who said to me, “Mike, I’m not a racist. I just don’t like Indians and coons.” I apologise if that statement offends anyone. It is appalling and it is not mine, but it does serve as an appropriate analogy for Roberts. “I’m not antisemitic, I just blame the jews for everything evil that has been done since the late 19th century.”
Thanks mate – I’ve been flat out as you say, but I felt this post had to be done.
It was planned nearly 200 years ago so scientists could buy condos in the Bahamas and have really big yachts,
Dumbscientists no doubt drives a Hummer and has a spare Merc to travel to his condo.
Actually, see the last 3 paragraphs of this comment. Or the last few paragraphs of my conversation with Reythia in my article Climate destabilization…
I’m a climate scientist. I live in a one bedroom apartment without a dishwasher or central air, and park my unsightly 12 year old Nissan Sentra in the dirt behind the building. What little time I have left after research, sleeping and eating is spent defending myself against a never-ending stream of baseless accusations, and drowning out the insults with Coors Light. I don’t socialize anymore because I don’t want to spread my depression.
A fashionable, fat career? Hardly; I’ve already burned out. If I could redo my education, I’d study anything but the climate. At this point, even foot fungus seems more interesting.
Tweed, please stop spamming humanity with all this misinformation. It’s staining your legacy and threatening the future of our civilization.
So we have all the Galileo mob believing it
All the climate sceptics party believing it
All the conspiracy theorists believing it
All the moncktonites believing it
All the Wattsonians believing it
Not our eric, cannot fool him
Forgot the jonovians,
All the jonovians believing it
Eric, stop digging .
How much evidence do these people need?
Global glacier retreat (Cogley 2009)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/GlobalGlacierVolumeChange.jpg
Ice sheet mass balance / sea level rise
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1183.short
Ocean warming to 2000M (slide 2)
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index.html
global near surface temperature NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/509796main_GISS_annual_temperature_anomalies_running.pdf
Arctic ice volume death spiral
They don’t need evidence. They have a position.
A fascinating read,Mike.
This pamphlet from Roberts certainly takes out the award for the most bizarre inclusion of the CSIRO’s name in any publication.
The man is stark raving.
Another interesting thing is the climate change deniers’ utter inability to see what happens to countries which do have a carbon tax. For example, Sweden have had it since the 1990′s and the swedish economy leaves the US in the dust… But wait, the actual data are of course a hoax created by bankers (LOL!). Also, the EU are managing the transition to renewables just fine.
See eric you make absurd claims that you cannot substantiate,
It was moronic of you to claim that the CSIRO predicted eternal drought,
are you really this deluded?
I find that mostly it is the creationists who will lie for god?
are you telling lies for god eric because you have not convinced me that you are not,
everything you say is out of the creationists handbook
John, then what was the justification for the desalination plants? Wetter summers?
I have told you before I am an atheist, and always have been. Your only evidence for thinking otherwise is your own personal prejudices. Your absurd tendency to try to fit people who disagree with you into your preconceived cartoon caricatures does not help your understanding of the world.
you mean like elizebeth flower and dr wes allen, no eric you are too much in the mould of a creationist, you think how they think, your arguments are their arguments
if it swims like……..
Now what about the CSIRO eric, duck like a creationist on that one?
You make identical claims about the CSIRO as the moron in the post but deny that you are one of them, pull the other one
You got me – I’m a fundamentalist Pastafarian. You nailed it when you noticed how fat I am
http://tinyurl.com/8vp3f
This is what I mean
This women was writing letters to the editor, against climate science, never once giving away that she was a religious nutter,
Her mother (now Passed away) Mrs Allen would write letters about creationism etc.
her brother is Dr Wes Allen ( wrote a crappy book against Tim Flannery) and many letters to the editor, but again never gives away his theology.
This is telling lies for god,
she believes that it is all about revelations yet quotes Plimer or Paltridge in letters never her distorted view of jesus
http://justgroundsonline.com/forum/topics/a-handy-hyper-heatwave-and-yet?commentId=3535428%3AComment%3A167874
Is it alright to quote the devil ,in the service of god?
Rushdie did
This is the Dr Wes Allen nonsense
water vapor is earth’s thermostat not CO2,
what is it with these medical practitioners like Allen and Pearson who think they know more than climatologists , creationists that is why.
http://www.irenicpublications.com.au/html/excerptsWMR.html
This book screams creationism
You really are being a d*ck head about this issue.
OK, “I call upon thee Lord Satan to take my soul freely as a gift when I die”.
Satisfied? Or are you going to suggest I had my fingers crossed when I wrote this?
Eric, it’s some strange activist tactic devised in the U.S. Either you believe the AGW theory or you’re some kind of religious freak. I tend to ignore john’s creationists comments as the ravings of a nutter. It’s kind of funny in a way… the global warming cult taking issue with creationists. It’s almost like a holy war.
Skeptical, we all know the flying spaghetti monster created the world – or are you mocking my faith?
No it is exactly the reply that I would suspect from a creationist,an atheist would not give a shit. it is your reasoning, just reading your comments to DS,
you are either a total moron or a creationist or both,
In your fanciful world you believe that you have debated a JPL scientist and will be telling your friends how well you did, meanwhile everyone reading your comments will shake their head at your utter inane replies, Eric there is no lord satan,, that was your first mistake, what is it with the capitals as well ?
Skeptical, your claim is exactly the same as elizebeth flower in the posted justgrounds link, and she is confessed as a nutter, you agree with her that
” It’s almost like a holy war.” , she believes that also.
Skeptikal, are you still laughing?
My $10 is still on the table…waiting for you to give me your odds.
Of course there is no Lord Satan John. Capital letters are simply correct English when stating someone’s name – though English was never my strongest subject, so I’m happy to stand corrected. And I’m not a creationist masquerading as an atheist.
Why do you find it so disturbing that an atheist might also be a climate skeptic? Why is it necessary for your worldview that anyone who disagrees with you be a religious nut?
It is simple. There are scientists and non-scientists.
Eric belongs in the engineering class.
Are engineers scientists? In general the answer is no.
Non-scientists often appeal to the scientific method as if only they understand it. Invariably they have no relevant peer reviewed papers of their own, think that the art of writing code is science, and that scientists engage in group-think/conspiracies.They do not understand that real scientists are truly sceptical and always on the look-out for flaws in the work of their colleagues and peers. They gain great pleasure (and sometimes kudos) in nailing these.
Non-scientists often appeal to the scientific method as if only they understand it. Invariably they have no relevant peer reviewed papers of their own, think that the art of writing code is science, and that scientists engage in group-think/conspiracies. They do not understand that real scientists are truly sceptical and always on the look-out for flaws in the work of their colleagues and peers. They gain great pleasure (and sometimes kudos) in nailing these.
The appropriate response to someone, whoever they are, finding a flaw in a work of science is “thank you”. Because each flaw identified and corrected is another step forward along the path of human progress.
OK Eric,what ‘flaw’ in a work has been found by you or your fellow travellers? Come on, a real or significant one,rather than a trivial,rhetorical or manufactured one trumpeted by winged monkeys and their organ-grinders..
I have demonstrated that the process of scientific review is substantially flawed. This itself should be enough for you to be concerned about the quality of their results.
You have made another sweeping claim without basis in reality, which anybody here can read and confirm. Masochist.
Eric Worrall says:
Eric, I had a suspicion that you were a fellow Pastafarian.
So you accept then that global warming is real and is caused by a lack of pirates…. speaks much to your comprehension of stats.
No he is a felow fundamentalist like yourself DeniKal.
an atheist would not swear allegiance to a satan to prove they were atheist, those slips up do not help his position at all
“Arrrr there me hearty”,Long John Silver
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/PiratesVsTemp%28en%29.svg/300px-PiratesVsTemp%28en%29.svg.png
Why are Eric and Skeptical deniers?
Eric flogs stolen emails and egg timers for a living, possibly here to increase sales to try to at least get a rating?
Denikal, old grumpy right wing fundamentalist
You have no proof the emails were stolen – as Richard Muller said, its more likely the Climategate emails were released by an insider.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/a-fascinating-new-interview-with-prof-richard-muller-quote-on-climategate-what-they-did-was-i-think-shameful-and-it-was-scientific-malpractice/
The evidence for this is someone put an awful lot of thought into which emails to release, and when. CG1 contained a lot of very damaging emails, including the infamous “hide the decline”, and was a much richer archive than CG2.
Given how recently some of the emails were sent before the release, there simply wasn’t time for someone to familiarise themselves with the emails to a sufficient degree to pick the good ones, between the sent time of the last email, and the time they appeared on the internet. Remember there are well in excess of 6000 emails in the CG1 and CG2 releases, and who knows how many thousands more in the encrypted archive which has not yet been released.
Whoever took them must have already been very familiar with the contents, and known exactly what they were looking for. Its taken us years to look through the emails, and we still turn up interesting new finds on a regular basis.
Of course, you exhibit complete double standards on this issue – identity thief Gleick is still a hero to you guys, despite him trying to spice up the swag by including a forgery.
But its not a crime if its committed against the untermench, right?
Don’t be a dickhead Eric, The Norfolk Constabulary stated that it was theft. Third parties will speculate,but just ask the investigators.
The collation was done by someone using keyword and name search,simply enough. Someone or somepeople with a good idea what they wanted the filtering to isolate,to match a narrative they had been developing in public,for the public. Your mob.
Another example of you guys selecting your ‘hockey sticks’,and lying about your modus operandi.
Gleick is a classic example of civil disobedience,and he struck gold. He took a personal risk to reveal the activities of a fake charitable-status group,and to reveal the donors who were too gutless to publicly do their own dirty work. The clowns have Donors Trust of course…the best democracy money can buy as they say.
Heartland won’t pursue Gleick because that would shine a light even further into their sorry activities. They blew hard about one document,claiming fake, but that only served to underline why it was real.If you attempt to champion those ass-clowns and protect their right to rip-off the taxpayer while attempting to debauch the education system [among other tawdry acts] ,you’d stand condemned really wouldn’t you?. And of course Heartlands ‘science’ director’ is one Jay Lehr,who was found guilty of systematically defrauding the US EPA twenty years ago…nice guy,eh?
The Norfolk Constabulary stated that it was theft. Third parties will speculate,but just ask the investigators.
Someone used hacking tools to crack into the server, so obviously not someone with authorisation to access the server normally. Or someone who didn’t want to leave their username in the server log.
But this does not rule out an insider.
Someone knew exactly what they were looking for, and exactly what to publish to cause maximum damage at Copenhagen. So someone who had expert computer skills, a desire to cause damage to the the climate conference, and who had enough knowledge of climate issues to pick out the most embarrassing dirty laundry.
Before you ask, it wasn’t me
.
“Dirty laundry” is just your prejudice talking.., their is bugger all to get exercised about in those mundane exchanges!
“Musta been an inside job” Hack email cache,search the names of the people and ‘symbols’ you hate “Jones”,Mann” Cook” Briffa” “reconstruction” “palaeo” etc. collate and dump for the small paranoid community of pseudo-sceptics to pick over. Yeah,extraordinary skills and insight, Err-ic.
An example of their paranoia is your arse-about interpretation of that email from a WWF chap to Mike Hulme. Full marks,crank-boy! Useful idiot!
My point Nick is that you have no evidence it was not an inside job. Unlike the Gleick fiasco, in which the serving chairman of the AGU ethics committee thought it OK to indulge in a little identity theft, there is no proof the Climategate emails were stolen by an external agency.
Professor Richard Muller, lead author of the BEST study, also thinks it was an inside job, for the same reasons I do – internal tensions over the lies and exaggerations reaching boiling point, until one of the scientists had had enough.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/a-fascinating-new-interview-with-prof-richard-muller-quote-on-climategate-what-they-did-was-i-think-shameful-and-it-was-scientific-malpractice/
In addition, since Gleick is still welcome to present at AGU conferences, and he is still a hero to you guys, so I don’t understand why you are criticising whoever released the Climategate emails. The AGU alarmists seem to condone or at least tolerate data theft, as do you, providing it is committed against untermench.
If I missed your condemnation of Gleick, and your statement that he should not be allowed to show his face at AGU conferences because of the shame of what he did, I apologise in advance.
We’re not likely to ask, it’s obvious you don’t have the skills.
Hilarious – a claim of “the new normal” from the 1970s global cooling scare.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/
And of course the usual calls for suspension of democracy for the duration of the crisis.
As even the idiot Watts points out,the compilation is from MEDIA reporting. As you know,the media shares/plagiarises syndicates and reiterates because it is a disseminating process that looks for catchy content to place amongst the advertising that funds the effort.
A review of the actual SCIENCE of the time finds that ‘global cooling’ was not the dominant meme in science that you f**kin’ liars keep trying to claim,explicitly or implicitly, it was.
The Australian just claimed a record, new sea ice growth during the northern H summer ( repeat) northern H summer.
and here is eric telling us that a daily mail dodgy graph is science, eric would be the one taken in by media claims of ice ages in the 1970′s in fact that is exactly what they all claim, to have been taken in, $10 on that ?
Did eric say “(ushering in a new dark age,) ?
.
yes
Where is the link eric for “The CSIRO predicted eternal drought? because that goes to the heart of your theology, without a reference it becomes a throw away creationist comment..
now justifying that claim might help your case, without it you again prove just how deluded you are
I see – the CSIRO recommended the need for desalination plants, because they look pretty, and the construction workers needed the exercise.
Nothing wrong with building desal plants. Apart from providing future-proofing, the money spent is a great stimulus to local economies. Unlike wasting billions on dud US F35 jets.
Still avoiding the claim you made that the CSIRO predicted eternal drought.
That was scientist punching without any credible evidence to support your claim.
now you have to cover up by just yelling look squirrel,
sad pathetic creationist that you are, When DS asked what is your bias, and you talk about ushering a new dark age, how is that not creationist idealogy,?
and your eugenics obsession, when Abbott talks of turning back the boats he is appealing to eugenics and his islam phobia, every reference to turning back the boats or being overrun by refugees refers to moslems in email that the right wing nutters spam every day,
this appeal to eugenics continues this week with the coalition calling for women to to warned when refugees are placed in the community lest they be raped,
This is the worst of the extreme right of american politics, a position that you fully embrace
you are a sick puppy eric and there is no cure because of your theology
Where are the explicit CSIRO recommendations to build desal plants. Why is Eric ignoring the input of local water authorities into the recommending of desal. CSIRO-bashing fool!
Nothing wrong with building desal plants. Apart from providing future-proofing, the money spent is a great stimulus to local economies. Unlike wasting billions on dud US F35 jets.
The “stimulus” effect was achieved by removing money from other parts the economy. The pain of paying for them will moderately reduce disposable incomes for years to come – add unwanted, unnecessary expense to the household budgets of many people who can’t afford extra expense.
Many more “stimulus” efforts like this and Australia will be bankrupt.
The CSIRO predicted the exact opposite to eric’s claim of eternal drought, their main contribution to the last QLD state of the climate report was the prediction of increasing heavy rainfall events in the mcpherson range and the mountains west of brisbane,
to maintain eric’s stance in the face of the evidence pointing to the exact opposite is a creationist trait
Go on John, explain how the desalination plants got the go-ahead, if the CSIRO was stridently stating in private and public that they predicted increased rainfall in Queensland, and that they would be an unnecessary waste of money.
A lot of background work went into planning for Sydney’s water needs over the next century. Population growth projections put Sydneys population past 5,000,000 by 2030. The CSIRO’s [in conjunction with the BOM] modelling input in the early to mid 2000s projected an increase in climate variability.
Relative to 1990 data,scenarios were set out for 2030 and 2070. They projected increased warmth and significantly increased evaporation,with considerable variability in rainfall with the likelihood that over the Wollondilly/Warragamba catchment average annual rainfall would fall. They projected more hot days, more bushfires,droughts and intense storms.
Couple that info with population projections and the simple reality that damsites are limited and the best ones have been developed,the rationale for desal augmentation is pretty clear.
Now,after some of the best rain over the catchment in decades,Eric will gamble that the next sixty years will be similar. That kind of childishness is not an option for water planners.
Relative to 1990 data,scenarios were set out for 2030 and 2070. They projected increased warmth and significantly increased evaporation,with considerable variability in rainfall with the likelihood that over the Wollondilly/Warragamba catchment average annual rainfall would fall. They projected more hot days, more bushfires,droughts and intense storms.
When I want to reduce evaporation from my swimming pool, I don’t build an expensive desalination plant, I cover the pool.
Couple that info with population projections and the simple reality that damsites are limited and the best ones have been developed,the rationale for desal augmentation is pretty clear.
So you are predicting the climate will dry out in line with predictions? That there will be the “eternal drought” I mentioned? Interesting – especially since it contradicts the latest predictions which always were, which is that Queensland will become wetter.
Now,after some of the best rain over the catchment in decades,Eric will gamble that the next sixty years will be similar. That kind of childishness is not an option for water planners.
Make up your mind – I’m going with the CSIRO’s prediction du jour RE increasing Queensland rainfall.
Eric,you are as usual straining credulity! I am more than a little worried about your comprehension…it has completely deserted you. And the fanciful ideas!
You want to “cover the pool”? A pool cover for Warragamba Dam’s Lake Burragorang? And the Illawarra escarpment dams? Hundreds of kilometers of varying reservoir edge. Hmmm….
Of course,more realistically…. Sydney Water chose to increase their annual effort on fixing leaks,minimising waste, and campaigning to reduce consumption,along with the state mandating water restraint. Down from former profligacy,but we still have to find 300-400 units/water per capita going forward. Even with no questions or likelihoods about CC,Sydney water would be considering desal..it’s about the cities growth over half a century.
“Predicting eternal drought” No,try reading! Please try reading what’s in front of you,not what you imagine you’d like to read……AS I was saying,more like a fall in annual average rainfall is likely over the dam catchment. It’s about sustainable yield,Eric. Droughts and floods are ‘pointy’,but in the end,water supply is a 365 days of the year enterprise. There is,surprising as it may seem to you, a difference between a trend to less rainfall annually and a trend to more drought. You cannot assume the two will show a direct relationship. That kind of childishness is not an option for water planners.
“Many more “stimulus” efforts like this and Australia will be bankrupt.”
As bankrupt as we were during the GFC?
If you would prefer the austerity approach to running the economy, try looking at how the the UK is faring with the tories in charge. Truly sad.
That is what I call irresponsible.
If you think the UK is running an austerity programme, your politics are somewhere left of Trotsky.
Under the UK Coalition government, government spending and the government deficit have increased. Despair at their financial mismanagement, and the growing realisation that if someone was going to be plucked to pay for the mess, it would be me, was one of the main reasons I left.
If you want to see the benefits of an austerity programme, consider the relatively benign state of Australia’s finances – something not even 1 1/2 terms of Labour has not managed to completely undo.
It’s an austerity program for everyone bar the bankers who buggered the place.
I see – in your strange world, an austerity programme is reducing the rate of spending rises.
My,you have lost contact with the Old Dart since you left!
This is not austerity?:
UK government annual spending decreased in 2011-12 by 11 billion pounds compared to 2010-11.
The civil service has been reduced by more than 60,000 (a 12% reduction).
Expenditure on social housing has decreased by 52% in the last two years.
These are facts, things you should pay more attention to.
The outcomes have seen a jump in the number of homeless people by 14% between 2010 and 2011.
The number of children being looked after by local authorities (due to parents having insufficient income) increased by 50% between 2010 and 2011.
It has been acknowledged by the International Monetary Fund that austerity measures can cause prolonged recessions without any real fiscal saving. The UK may be heading towards a triple-dip recession.
Don’t fall for the idealogical viewpoint that the only thing that matters is cutting spending and producing surpluses. That is just lazy thinking.
I can assure you that, if that is what the next government pursues, we are all going to suffer.
Here’s an article by the highly respected CityAM, a London newspaper for bankers, which claims government spending in the UK is increasing.
http://www.cityam.com/article/higher-public-spending-pushes-uk-borrowing
Granted this article is dated April 2012, but the fact Britain just lost its AAA rating suggests that all is not well with government finances.
Keynes’ theory that a cut in public spending in harmful has been repeatedly invalidated in the real world. In the real world, the reduced availability of cash is more than offset by a surge in business confidence, as evidence accumulates that the government is getting their finances under control.
This happened with Hong Kong under Cowperthwaite. It happened with Thatcher. It happened with Howard. It worked in Canada under Harper.
The opposite policy – spending money like water in the hope everyone will join in – is currently being tested to destruction by Japan, the UK, Europe and America.
Keynes works. Look at the American economy’s growth compared to the UK’s. Austerity failed in the 30s and it’s failing now. We will all grow by all shrinking = nuts.
Looks like my zombie farm successfully gamed the Bloggies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/mar/01/climate-sceptics-capture-bloggies-science?CMP=twt_fd
That’s the most frightening list I’ve ever seen.
Well,your admission of zombiehood is noted. Keep your frigging award,clown. The science is not yours.
Good grief, you actually leapt at the conspiracy theory bait I presented. At least DS was smart enough to avoid something so obvious.
It’s no conspiracy. It is clearly recognised gaming of a process. Have another award.
I don’t know why you chaps agonise over trying to make sense of the Eric Worralls of this world. I think some generalisations can be validly made even if Eric Worrall does not conform to them in every respect.
This kind of contrarian personality is encountered frequently on blog sites. They frequently make their living in IT and spend vast amounts of time in front of their screens. They frequently have obesity and exercise issues and apart from an obsessive interest in “playing” all day in cyber reality, need have no real intelligence or even qualifications. You will be hard put to find any original thought let alone published work but they are adept at googling sites and cutting and pasting into files anything that might impress others in their little blogging community. Nor sre they necessarily sincere in their stated beliefs. I think you will find they share certain personality characteristics to narcissistic individuals whose egos are intimately bound up with the degree to which they attract attention and enrage honest ernest scholars. I have browsed other sites where this particular gentleman has been subjected to more scrutiny than I have time for, and their observations strongly suggest Mr Worrall does not even bother to follow up and give an open minded read of any of the links you worthy gentlemen are keen to provide. Another thing. It is time you noticed this kind of recriminatory debate is almost exclusively a male thing. This is partly because intelligent women are pretty good at spotting posers. They see them every Friday night at the staff club or local watering hole and they don’t waste their time on them. I respectfully suggest we do the same.
I actually hope you guys do withdraw into a pink fluffy world where everything is going your way. Because back here, in reality, your religion is crumbling.
Kyoto, your only major international agreement, took wounds in Doha will will prove to be fatal – signatories to Kyoto agreement now only cover 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Carbon markets are crashing around the world, or soon will crash – the European Emission Trading Scheme will soon follow the Chicago Climate Exchange into oblivion.
Even if Gillard and her carbon tax somehow survive the upcoming election, she will have real trouble finding a carbon market to connect with, by the time she is ready to do so.
So retire into your pink bubble, your echo chambers. Stop trying to engage with anyone except people who agree completely with what you say. Because that will hasten the demise of your sad little cult.
Eric,it’s quite OK to point to the failure of political attempts to seek agreement on climate matters. It has always,obviously,been a hard sell against entrenched interests and their useful idiots. The entrenched interests and recalcitrant sovereignties,smarter than you, will move before you do. That’s for sure.
I don’t think anyone here has claimed that everything is going ‘our’ way. What we do know is that your rejection of the science is without basis,and that governments can’t afford your insouciance because they actually have to face reality,however reluctantly, on our behalves. The fluffiest,pinkest world is yours,and that’s been long obvious.
“What we do know is that your rejection of the science is without basis”
Nick, Eric isn’t interested in the science or the politics or anything other than seeking attention. He is a troll of the highest order and trying to engage him in debate or educate him just feeds his sad obsession. He never reads sources provided to him and you are all wasting your time. You will do more to discredit him by treating his comments with the respect they deserve. Which is to ignore them. By engaging him you elevate his status, which is a compliment he does not deserve. I struggle sometimes and feel the need to respond to him when my forehead gets sore from the constant facepalming but it is pointless and counterproductive. In the words of Tim Minchin, “Just because your ideas are tenacious, doesn’t mean that they’re worthy.” This can and should be applied to Eric. If a flatearther came in here or a moon landing denier came in here, their comments would be ignored and the individuals written off as village idiots. Quite frankly, anyone like Eric should be put in the same batshit crazy category and treated the same way. Feel pity for him, feel sympathy for him, but forget about trying to help him.
+1
Stuart, unknowispeaksense: you’re not the first people to suggest ignoring contrarians like Eric. The problem is that scientists have ignored them for years, with disastrous results. Merely asserting that they’re trolls looking for attention is probably less convincing than actually demonstrating this fact. And every minute they spend insulting me is one minute they can’t spend trying to confuse someone who’s even less scientifically literate than they are.
As I have said I write hundreds of letters to newspapers debunking their letters and cop tons of abuse and insult for that, it is sites like this where you find out what the main new crap that they have come up with and generally will appear in the papers within a fortnight,
well over 50% of those letters are from fundamentalist Christians.
Do not ask them how old earth is ask them how long humans have been on earth.
when martin asked Geoff brown at TCS if there were only fifty attending Moncktons lecture he replied that there were only 130 empty seats,
There were 40 people in attendance for a venue that held 170.
Another blow for the Climate Change Cult…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2285812/Most-people-longer-consider-global-warming-issue-financial-crisis-changes-priorities.html
And these are the people who believed newspaper stories of ice ages,
Is that true or did you read it in the daily mail?
16 years with no global warming has taken some of the heat out of the issue
.
Actually the Australian contribution to voting for those blogs is the combined effort of both the AOG and COC creationist churches as represented by the TCS party and Galileo movement, you often read their call to arms ” quick everyone go to Blolts blog and give him support” on the justgrounds site.
I do have evidence for that,.
They outnumber us yet refer to themselves as being Galileo loners.
even when it all falls apart, those like eric will never let go, they will be continually looking towards the heavens “god will be here soon”
They will obliterate themselves and take the rest of humanity with them.
You got me wrong. I’m waiting for Cthulhu to rise out of the ocean and restore his empire beyond the stars.
The good news continues – it looks like the Keystone project is going to proceed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/keystone-pipeline-passes-environmental-review-little-impact-on-climate-ecos-outraged/
The eternal wait for eric the creationist, CSIRO eternal drought link. cannot even admit that it does not exist. telling lies for god
ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
While the university of Adelaide produces good science why CSG will do nothing to prevent the warming this century,
the fossil fuel lobby pay Alfie Langer a bucket of money to tell Queenslanders that he knows better.
eric’s proof that he is an atheist.
Eric Worrall says:
March 1, 2013 at 12:50 pm
You really are being a d*ck head about this issue.
OK, “I call upon thee Lord Satan to take my soul freely as a gift when I die”.
Satisfied? Or are you going to suggest I had my fingers crossed when I wrote this?
creationist comment of the day
Counterproductive. Suggest using this unfinished list instead.
Assemblies of god in Australia
Christian outreach centre
Churches of Christ,
Family first
They do their work within the church though and send their minions out to promote confusion,
basically, if they are young earth creationists then by definition they will be climate deniers.in Australia.
We take the piss out of creationists in this country so they are wary not expose themselves, as such
we may do something like you have done or even Mike might do a reblog, it would be worth it
crowdsource information?, a lot of work in exposing the 36 deniers within our federal government
Sure, my whole site is CC-BY-SA. Thanks for the additions, I’ve got maybe 10 that I haven’t had time to add but those are new. Links for both positions would be helpful, but that’s what makes such a list annoying to write. And I still need to webcite them just in case they quietly change…
do not expect info straight away but will give it a lot of time this week,
instead of follow the money it is follow the theology
ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
That’s an excellent piece of work, WTD, exposing the crankery behind the deluded writings of Roberts.
What more will it take for the Galileo Movement to disown him?
Alan Jones, their patron, has come out on the side of the deluded, which surprises me. He does shoot his mouth off at times but he used to try to present himself as a sane version of a misogynistic, bigoted bully. Now it appears Jones is also a paranoid conspiracy theorist of the ugly kind.
Even Eric seems to have some sympathy with Roberts by attempting to divert attention from this article by derailing discussion from the topic with his very first post. Hope not and maybe that wasn’t his intention – but that’s how it appears.
He did not read the post Sou
Eric’s diversions are just his way of asking questions. He insists on getting his education,slowly, in public,it seems. What he and Jones must remember is that you are never too old to learn,despite your pride!
Some on this blog DS
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/category/creationism/
And this mod Rise up
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/02/13/climate-science-denier-lord-monckton-joins-creationist-pastor-launch-extremist-political-party
Wow, thanks. I’ll add these when I can spare time. Monckton’s digging so frantically that it’s only a matter of time before he rouses the Balrog…
Monckton is now claiming that Mike Mann has backed out of his case against Timothy “Tim” Ball and the Frontiers of Freedom loons…a search of the Supreme Court of British Columbia,where the case was lodged,reveals that Monckton is again fibbing. Digging,or burying himself?
Sorry,”the Frontier Centre for Public Policy,Inc.”is the other defendant…
probably our most famous theological denier of climate change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pell
while the catholic church endorses climate change science, it is less than twenty years since they embraced evolution, thus most catholics over the age of 30 thirty would still believe in creationism as taught by the catholics prior to that
the jesuits in australia educated tony abbott who will be the prime minister come september
he believes that “climate change is crap”
we do not have a lot going for us here
You got that right.
The Carbon Tax will be going… and that’s a good start.
Yes he has certainly painted himself into a corner with that one.
but do not worry, if abbott brings in his direct action plan it will cost you a lot more and as the CSIRO research concludes will have only little benefit up to 2020 and nothing beyond that,
He states that we cannoit believe him unless you have it in writing and then claims to have written the carbon tax will be gone in blood
have you seen that denikal ? where is the in blood copy?
unscramble the egg?
It’s still a better option than Gillard, who you just can’t believe at all.
“There will be no carbon tax….”
That $10 is still waiting.
I hope Abbott has the balls to shut down the CSIRO – I doubt he has, but its a nice thought.
As the following email shows, the CSIRO IMO is behaving as if it were the political wing of the WWF.
If I wanted to help fund the WWF I would pay their membership fee.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0933255789.txt
Hi Mike [Mike Hulme, UEA],
I’m sure you will get some comments direct from Mike Rae in WWF
Australia, but I wanted to pass on the gist of what they’ve said to me so
far.
They are worried that this may present a slightly more conservative
approach to the risks than they are hearing from CSIRO. In particular,
they would like to see the section on variability and extreme events
beefed up if possible. They regard an increased likelihood of even 50%
of drought or extreme weather as a significant risk. Drought is also a
particularly importnat issue for Australia, as are tropical storms.
I guess the bottom line is that if they are going to go with a big public
splash on this they need something that will get good support from
CSIRO scientists (who will certainly be asked to comment by the press).
One paper they referred me to, which you probably know well is:
“The Question of Significance” by Barrie in Nature Vol 397, 25 Feb 1999,
p 657
You speaking in tongues again?
Eric that email is from someone in the WWF in 1999 writing to Mike Hulme of UEA. How do you go from that to “CSIRO=WWF arm” and wishing to shut down them down [presumably in toto]?
Don’t bother answering,I know this one! Because you are an idiot ideologue of the first order.
Where is your evidence that the CSIRO,who in the context of this email WERE NOT singing from the preferred WWF songbook,subsequently modified their material expressly for the WWF,and if so, on the intervention of Mike Hulme in person,or UEA CRU as a group for that matter?
I’d like to see it.
Clearly the email show the WWF are wishing to get THEIR work into better agreement with the CSIRO’s amongst! F**k me ,Eric,you interpretation is mind-bogglingly stupid.
I see – asking Mike Hulme of the CRU to beef up his presentation because the CSIRO presents a less conservative (more alarmist) view, to ensure Mike’s presentation receives support from the CSIRO, is the WWF’s way of making sure they understand the issues.
You’re right,Eric.I’ve misread it. Your crankhood confused me! He’s trying to get the UEA to sing with the CSIRO. Wow, that’s sinister! In effect neither organisation is a wing of the WWF, and we are just seeing some lobbying with peer-reviewed references. Shocking!
Are we to believe that WWF has already monstered the CSIRO,and is now working over UEA and their milquetoast boffinry? With no [zip,zilch,nope] evidence? I’d need to be a bit paranoidy-woidy [you] to make that leap…
WWF asks Hulme to match the CSIROs ‘weight’…[and with no actual detail/observation/informed opinion from you about the validity of the CSIRO's work we don't actually know whether this is not a reasonable position from the WWF]…are we to believe that no scientifically informed interests ever attempted to influence presentations? We are to believe that the WWF is without scientific resources and is not an informed party and has no lawful right to contact researchers?
No doubt you will link to Hulme’s reply…..
Here you are,sweetie! You’ll flip your paranoid lid! Or you could read it carefully instead.
Hilarious – from your link:-
I should perhaps explain my delicate position in all this. As a retired
CSIRO person I have somewhat more independence than before, and perhaps
a reduced sense of vested interest in CSIRO, but I am still closely in
touch and supportive of what CAR is doing. Also, I have a son who is now
a leading staff member of WWF in Australia and who is naturally well
informed on climate change issues. Moreover, Michael Rae, who is their
local climate change staffer, is a member of the CSIRO sector advisory
committee (along with some industry people as well) and well known to
me. So I anticipated questions from WWF Australia, and from the media
later when the scenarios are released, regarding the scenarios. I did
not want to be in the position of feeling the need to seriously question
in public their presentation or interpretation. You have allayed my
fears on that score, so that is great.
If the message might cause embarrassment, change the message.
This isn’t the only climategate email where this sort of thing happens – there’s another beauty where Phil Jones urges downplaying of an adverse finding to avoid damaging the careers of colleagues. A real “you scratch my back” situation, in which being nice is more important than being right.
Another conspiracy!
Knew you’d love it Eric!! Of course it’s “hilarious” but really that’s just a reflexive blurt from you,because you really don’t know what’s going on.. Of course,you’ve glossed over what Hulme actually did to “fall in line” with his colleagues, and where Barrie Pittock talks about the differences in approach, target audience and the caveats in the text. Surprisingly, there has to be interlocutory process between the 0s and 1s and the final public document [sarc].
…. oh but you did reproduce the bit where there are “some industry people” on the advisory committee as well BUT FORGOT TO BOLD IT!….heaven forbid,an advisory committee of that includes industry!! Some are more equal than others clearly.
“If the message might cause embarrassment,change the message” But what WAS the change,Eric?
Have you ever noticed how many of the collated emails are of the most prosaic matters,ya know, the 99% of the dump that never gets referenced. .. thats 1% of 1%…the collation gathers according to name search,little more… it would take a real insider to manage that level of ingenuity! [sarc]
So your position Nick is if they only discuss intellectual fraud 1% of the time then you can rely on their science? Using fiddles like Mike’s nature trick – truncating presented data to fit the narrative – is OK, because they only pull that kind of thing sometimes – like at the recent AGU conference?
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/
Well,Eric, your charge of ‘intellectual fraud’ is not actually borne out by the above example. if you read the Hulme/Pittock exchanges the two agree that Pittock’s opinion about thresholds in their context [you'll have to read the work they were discussing] is actually misleading in its own right. So the presentation was less ambiguous than Hulme’s original and actually more realistic..
And Hulme had and does openly disclose his work commissioned by the WWF,so it was and is no secret that IPCC and WWF functions were served by it. It was no secret,it was sanctioned and all I hear are alarmists like you deciding their lack of knowledge about events and relationships is a result of secrecy and covert action.
You just were not interested in your favorite cause back then,face it.
Intellectual fraud? Just about all your efforts here are intellectually fraudulent,derived from deliberate and malicious re interpretations by paid disinformers! Look in the mirror.
Another biggy with links everywhere is
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/
google desmogblog cornwell alliance, even haves links in the US.
Heard this before on the comments here
An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming
On December 2, 2009, the Cornwall Alliance’s evangelical arm issued a statement called “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”.[2] In the statement, they declare,
We believe Earth and its ecosystems – created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
Prominent signatories include climate scientist Roy Spencer, economist Ross McKitrick, and The Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D’Aleo.[3]
Along with the “Evangelical Declaration”, Cornwall Alliance also issued a three chapter document, examining the theology, science, and economics of Anthropogenic Global Warming entitled “A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor”.[4] The “Executive Summary” of their document stated,
The world is in the grip of an idea: that burning fossil fuels to provide affordable, abundant energy is causing global warming that will be so dangerous that we must stop it by reducing our use of fossil fuels, no matter the cost. Is that idea true? We believe not. We believe that idea – we’ll call it “global warming alarmism” – fails the tests of theology, science, and economics.
wasn’t someone just praising the creationist Mckitrick here today?
.
http://yourclimatechange.org/
,
I still maintain the best tactic is address these characters collectively or generically. After all isn’t that the MO of the scientific method. Per that there is a good article in the latest DESMOG WEEKLY
http://desmogblog.com/2013/02/11/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-big-tobacco-and-billionaires
Which suggests where this stuff is really coming from. Best to focus on them. Not the inadequate little twerps who knowingly or otherwise are the witless dupes of the real schemers. And you don’t even need to mentions names which is an appropriately deflationary strategy. The more you don’t name them the more they will bluster. Anyway they probably won’t know what your talking about.
Great detective work, as usual. I didn’t realise how deep the anti-Semitism ran.
Is Roberts sincere in his bigotry or simply exploiting the not so smart’s paranoia?
It is interesting how the Tea Party wannabes are sinking from sight in the US as it dawns on people, even sincere Republicans what the real background agenda is. The Antisemitic dog whistling was always a potential disaster for the far right in the US as there is a well established pro Israeli lobby and sentiment. It may be that Republicans began to see Tea Party thinking was in fact a betrayal of Republican and American Ideals. We know from Nicky Hager’s book “Hollow Men” the reach of these people is well established in NZ. The same could be said for Australia. There is no shortage of helpful idiots in both countries as Stalin called them.
I think we are making a category error in trying to engage rationally with Eric. As others have noted, he is a classic “Google Galileo”. Though he claims to be an independent free-thinker, in reality, he is almost totally informed by the usual denier sites, and or right wing rags such as the Australian and the Daily Mail etc; whose views he accepts uncritically. (even though, without exception, they justify their opinions by misrepresenting the data and quoting scientists out of context).
Eric appears, on the surface to be rational and intelligent, but in reality has zero critical thinking skills. Some cases in point:
On the “Australia’s record breaking heatwave blog” (at this site), he started the blog off with a link to the GWPF site which mentions an obscure Siberian town which had just had a new record low temperature. The fact that he seriously thinks that one record low, at one particular location in the world, on one particular day negates an entire summer of record breaking AVERAGE temperatures across an entire continent (or perhaps even the entire southern hemisphere), shows how limited his critical thinking capacity is.
Then on previous blogs he has variously posted stuff from WUWT, without obviously scrutinising what he had posted. In one case he posted a link to WUWT purporting to show that ocean temperatures had paused this century as well. I reproduce it here because it’s so friggin funny and pathetic:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/25/fact-check-for-andrew-glickson-ocean-heat-has-paused-too/
Serial data deceiver Watts has drawn a (horizontal) line from a cherry picked data start point on the graph to the BOTTOM of an error bar for 2012, showing (voila!) no heating! Free thinking independent iconoclast Eric had not even noticed the double cherry pick that Watts had deviously snuck in. When the rest of us had picked ourselves up off the floor from laughing, Eric still couldn’t see how comprehensively he had been had.
Case in point number 3. Eric points to some ice maps at WUWT to attempt to show that the current catastrophically low polar ice extent is not really something to worry about, as “ice was at similar extents in the 1930′s”. He had obviously not even had a cursory look at these maps, because a quick comparison with a current satellite image immediately shows that there was at least 200% more ice in those days, even at absolute minimum.
At no point, even when these errors are pointed out to him does Eric even acknowledge that he might have been wrong; he just blasts off at a complete tangent on some other inane meme he has picked from another site. Classical denialist modus operandi. When proved wrong, never engage, just move on.
He says he believes in the Royal Society’s moto, “take nobodies word for it”, but then proceeds to uncritically, take the word of various denialist climate blogs run by unqualified and untrained individuals rather than the considered assessment of 97% of professional scientists working in the field.
Skeptical? Nope, just gullible….
Go on Debunker, give us an ice free arctic prediction, so I can laugh at you when you’re proven wrong.
Did you or did you not compare the Wattsian 1930s ice maps with current data and reconstructions [which draw on the same Wattsian references amongst many] before you made your claim that the 1930s was similar to present?
Yes/No?
No, but I was aware the arctic area in the 1930s was still larger than today.
What the ice maps do show is that large periodic fluctuations in ice extent occur, and there is no evidence we’re not in the trough of another large fluctuation.
Oh,good, you were aware that “the arctic [sea ice?] area in the 1930s was still larger than today.” Is that what you’re now saying?
“There is no evidence that we’re not in the trough of a large fluctuation” I suppose not…a large fluctuation cause by AGW,eh? Should start to return to average once most of the ACO2 is re-sequestered, Heh,heh…
Extraordinarily low VOLUME of ice nowadays,wot? Why?
It’s not me making the prediction Eric. It’s the data…. Personally, I wish it wasn’t happening. The current definition of ice free is 2000 cubic km, and that appears to be where the volume line intersects the x – axis on the graph below.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/10/naive-predictions-of-2013-sea-ice.html#more
Of course, this is just basically an eyeball fit, and scientists freely admit they don’t know why the ice is going so much faster than even the “alarmist” IPCC projections. Given that we have had a series of strong La Nina events plus a solar minimum, plus volcanic activity in the last decade and a half, all acting to slow down the increase in global temperatures; all of which, of course can’t continue, A strong El Nino must be just around the corner, causing global temperatures to shoot up again, so I can’t see where any major global cooling will come from which will facilitate a recovery of polar ice. You have to remember, the 2012 minimum was a fifth of what it was in the 1980′s.
Given also, that you have admitted that your ridiculous assertion that we had “similar ice extent in the 1930s” is wrong, (because you never even bothered to properly look at what you were linking to), I can’t see that you have any grounds for thinking that your hilarity will come to pass.
So it looks like ice free anytime after 2015. You won’t be laughing, and neither will I, though I will look forward to your abject apology.
Should have kept it but will find again
NEWSFLASH
PIOMAS is overestimating volume
However what can be said with the new data is that sometime between 2008 and 2010 something caused a substantial loss of thick ice off the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. So far only PIOMAS suggests that this was largely due to a discrete event in 2010, so far only PIOMAS suggests the massive losses of volume in spring of the years following this event.
But as noted in Laxon et al’s closing paragraph:
Finally we can speculate that the lower ice thickness and volume in February/March 2012, as compared with February/March 2011, may have been one factor behind the record minimum ice extent reached in September 2012.
In view of the current situation, it will be interesting to see February/March CS2 plots for 2013.
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Dr Wes Allen is a fundamentalist christian who hides his theology from public view
his agenda is to cause confusion,
excerpt from his book weathermakers reexamined
“On the dominant greenhouse gas
[Flannery says in The Weather Makers], “Earth’s thermostat is a complex and delicate mechanism, at the heart of which lies carbon dioxide.” If Earth does indeed have a thermostat, the heart of it has to be water – vast quantities of it. It takes more energy to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree than of any other common substance. The massive oceans, glaciers and lakes, comprising over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, stabilise Earth’s temperature. Water vapour, the dominant greenhouse gas, forms reflective clouds, precipitates as rain and transfers enormous quantities of heat vertically and horizontally around the planet. Compared to water in all its forms, carbon dioxide is a small peripheral player”
The question is
could someone who claims to have a high level of understanding of the science make such an idiotic claim displaying a less than high school students understanding or does he have an agenda?
Oh looky
http://irenicpublications.com.au/theology-worldview/articles-by-weston-allen-on-bible/
Just another denier site, check links to learn about climate change
http://irenicpublications.com.au/ecology-climate-change/carbon-dioxide-emissions-are-generally-beneficial-and-do-not-cause-extreme-weather-events/
Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas idiot. The missing equatorial tropospheric hotspot is supposed to be water vapour accumulating in the upper troposphere, amplifying the CO2 signal. The alarmist case rests on whether CO2 is the control level for water vapour, not whether water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas.
eric’s understanding, very creationist mindset
” If Earth does indeed have a thermostat, the heart of it has to be water”
and
” Compared to water in all its forms, carbon dioxide is a small peripheral player”
and now tell us that models are underestimating future warming?
The basic physics –the phase characteristics and radiative properties of the two molecules–tells us that it is.
The constant characterisation of the IPCC position as ‘alarmist’ is very boring,Mr Rejectionist. We heard it the first time….
Superficiality about ‘dominance’ is better sidestepped by reading Lacis et al 2010. It might move the discussion on a little [sarc]
and now tell us that models are underestimating future warming?
Yawn. Let me know when the equatorial tropospheric hotspot shows up.
One major falsifiable prediction, and they can’t even get that right.
The hotspot show up under any warming scenario,Mr Rejectionist. Try stratospheric cooling. Observed. Expansion of Hadley Cells. Observed. Polar amplification. Observed. Continuation of SLR. Observed,and etc. Typical of you to grasp at the straw of one area where quality observations in the long-term are lacking.
For the record that is easily the one thousandth time I’ve had to remind an idiot of that fact.
The largest collapse in the thermosphere ever observed occurred a few years ago, thanks to reduced solar activity.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/
So its a bit premature to rule out solar influence on the stratosphere.
Even if you can torture the data into occasionally showing a flash of hotspot, the data is in no way consistent with model predictions of a pronounced equatorial tropospheric hotspot.
Wondered, no not really where his lack of understanding came from
yes you guessed it
A Big Picture Look At “Earth’s Temperature” – Watts Up With That?
wattsupwiththat.com/…/a-big-picture-look-at-earths-temperature-extr…Nov 10, 2012 – Since 1979 Earth’s “temperature” has also been measured via satellite. …. “July 15, 2010″ “A Puzzling Collapse of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere” …
The cooling stratosphere was observed long before the solar influenced deflation further up Eric. Try again.
To say observations are in ‘no way’ consistent with predictions is unsupported absolutism. It’s actually clear that observations are largely consistent with predictions. That’s not good enough for you,Eric,but I know why…motivated rejectionism plus Dunning-Krugerish confidence is a predictable brew.
anti-semitism and christian fundamentalism
http://tinyurl.com/ayvj5t8
The difference between the right wing politics and creationism is blurred in Australia,
not so in America, where every second person you meet is a fundamentalist,
In Australia the creationist are seen for what they are, Morons so instead they hide behind what appears on the surface to be just right wingers even though on the more extreme side.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/creationism
Uknowispeaksense has started a tag of idiotic Australian politicians, The first one “Forrest’ clearly a fundamentalist,
As is Boswell who is though not well known, a creationist anti evolution twit,
They are not right wing nutters, first and foremost they are creationist nutters , none of them would ever, like eric accept that CO2 is the thermostat at present, (see eric above)
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fthagn
If anyone is actually interested in erics now long debunked myth about THS
here
http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/hot-spot-2-tropospheric-warming-continues/
eric still does not even understand the implications if the THS did not exist, hence his appeal to creationist ideology that god governs the global climate not man’s greenhouse emissions,
.
.
The hotspot does not exist. You see that blue patch in the observed chart? Thats a cold spot.
As for your model runs which show a hotspot in response to solar heating, I’m not impressed – this is a prediction of the same flawed science which predicted the a hotspot due to CO2 forcing.
There is obviously something seriously wrong with models which predict a hotspot. But do scientists revise their models in line with observations? No – instead they start torturing the data in the hope of catching a glimpse of something which might be a hotspot.
When the observation does not match the theory, discard the observation.
You seem to be opposed to the notion of torture, yet you continue to comment in here? Causing people to incessantly facepalm themselves is torture, Eric. Either you lack consistency in your value system or you are lacking self awareness.
“The hotspot does not exist” comes the cry…”see that blue patch”…yes Eric,the one surrounded by anomalously warm air from the equator to high latitudes.
What you’re expecting is that a simple model picture will be matched by reality perfectly or near perfectly. The reason for this expectation? A dominant ‘neatness’ gene,perhaps? Because there is no physical reason [reason in physics] to explain your presumption. Perhaps we should consider extra convective activity at the equator from warmer oceans is providing the cool patch.
And look at that cold stratosphere and upper troposphere,the lowered tropopause!
You’re looking at ACO2,Eric.
Hilarious – if you adjust and torture the data enough we can sometimes make a hotspot appear sort of.
And the prediction that a hotspot will appear regardless of the source of warming is based on the same flawed models which originally predicted the missing hotspot – alarmist circular reasoning at its finest.
Hey, Eric actually read a link!
Perhaps,but not very much of it…
Love it
come september eric will be voting for a real live accepter of climate science
the irony
Hide the women and children
eugenics within the liberal party
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has moved to justify his calls for neighbours and police to be alerted when asylum seekers on bridging visas are placed in the community.
Mr Morrison made the comments after a Sri Lankan asylum seeker living in Sydney on a bridging visa was charged with the indecent assault of a 20-year-old university student.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he supports Mr Morrison’s stance, but Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent says it amounts to vilification.
Government MPs described the comments as unpalatable and unacceptable.
Indecent assault on Bus 265 – South Australia Police News
http://www.sapolicenews.com.au/…/12603-indecent-assault-on-bus-265-.ht…Feb 20, 2013 – Police are investigating the indecent assault of a 14-year-old girl on a bus, … The man is described as Caucasian, 25 to 30 years old, 165-170 …
Scott Morrison calls for neighbours and police to be alerted whenever Caucasian males 25-30 move into a community
Morrison is a dim-wit dog-whistler. Abbott is gutless,but no doubt fuming about this crassness. Another low point in the Coalitions ‘progress’
Hilarious – “Nobel prize winner” Michael Mann is up to his old tricks, using truncated data series to hide divergence problems.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/
I agree with you,Eric,it’s not a good look…McIntyre exercising his obsession with Mike Mann again. It’s tantamount to stalking.
Weird innit? all the reconstructions, boreholes, sediments, coral etc are in basic agreement with Mann so eric’s conclusion is therefore they must also be wrong,
eric trying to claim that the MWP was warmer and therefore CS is much higher than we believe?
yet we see MWP was warmer than present
contradicted by
CS is lower than IPCC science
Actually,to me what Mann has done in that presentation is not right,if McIntyre’s explanation is real. It’s not right,but the onanistic piling on is of no illuminatory worth.. And of course McIntyre’s charges of lying by omission show him to be a hypocrite. As well his utter lack of interest in other peer-reviewed papers that are selective with their data choices is INTERESTING,no? Thinking Lindzen. Thinking the alliance with the hapless Watts,who is never looked over by the ‘auditor’…never….just a strained uncomfortable distance is kept. The idea that McI wants to promote better practice is cute,but he is not actually living it himself.
It’s just another example of why McIntyres issues with Mann should have been kept on a personal communication level,no matter how difficult that course might have been.
Here is actual model/data update, how do they justify a claim that projections have overstated the warming when the data is clearly within the model projections?
http://www.realclimate.org/images/model122.jpg
.
John,that’s not the issue with this specific AGU lecture presented in Dec 2012. Mann has used a set of surface observations to 2005 when comparing obs with Hansen’s scenarios. Why not to 2011 or 2012? It’s trivial,but it gets those arbiters exercised.
Ask him why nick?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/12/some-agu-highlights/comment-page-1/#comment-307984
If the deniers are trying to push it as a cover up then what else would be news?
fair dinkum, ask him,
‘” if deniers are trying to push it as a cover-up then what else would be news?”
Exactly. What else is news to the man with the ‘analytical skills’? Nothing seems to interest him. McI has zip to say about the AGU meeting and its many presentations. It’s a Mann-thing. The whole narrative is to frame it as a personal struggle against monolithic science,but the bitchy in-line comments are revealing.
I really would not waste Mann’s time asking him for his take.
Mann has dealt with the ‘issue’ on Facebook. As expected it’s trivial,and a further charge against Naomi Oreskes made by McIntyre has been dismissed as false by an attendee of her ‘offending’ lecture.
And I might observe that it’s taken McIntyre about three months to pluck up the courage to dredge up this bit of trivia and attempt to make an issue out of it. What a wanker!
McIntyre? Is he still around? Guess he’ll need to take some time out now to prepare his retraction.
No,he’s not retractable,the mechanism is broken. He’s collected some poo,which is now being thrown impotently by Watts’ monkeys.
Is Monckton still in Australia?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-05/fake-bishop-tries-to-sneak-into-vatican-meeting/4552784
Australian political party (nutters) to jail scientists.
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/time-to-jail-climate-scamsters.html
The only question left about the Arctic
Will it go in one catastrophic crash to zero or will there be a long tail over a decade or more?
http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/o728/OlTom67/crackUpdate_zps9cbba0b8.png
Date was the 3rd March 2013
If only that pesky Antarctic would start shrinking like it is supposed to.
Go on John, give us an ice free Arctic prediction.
How many times do you want it eric
I did not think that the collapse would occur prior to 2015, not so sure now
the Arctic storm of 2012 had a 4% influence on the 2012 collapse, so if the Arctic was to melt 4% less this year, watts would see that as a recovery no doubt.
The deniers have gone from claims that it was not occurring, now in the face of undeniable evidence have only the claims that it is just a natural cycle,
IF it is a natural cycle then it has never happened since humans walked on earth.
what is erics prediction?
eric three of the four Antarctic ice sheets are shrinking, overall the Antarctic is contributing to SLR
your argument from ignorance,
Now eric has promised to change his mind if the Arctic does collapse in the next few years, what a laugh, watts will tell him that it was due to eskimos with hair dryers and he will believe it
eric nothing will ever get through to you, you are in deep denial and the worse it gets will just push you even deeper.
I do not even laugh at your replies to DS anymore , it is so pathetic that it is quite sad to see a salesman of stolen emails and egg timers trying to tell a published scientist how to do science,
For Eric’s benefit. Watch it till the end…. Amazing but frightening…
http://www.youtube.com/embed/hC3VTgIPoGU?rel=0
largest glacier calving ever filmed.
What are the odds of Eric being right? What possible natural forcing can he dream up that will reverse 80% ice volume loss in the past 30 years? With Solar activity increasing and being overdue for another large El Nino, how is it possible that temperatures will decrease enough to replace that lost ice mass?
Go on Eric, astound us with your superior scientific acumen….
Is Watts still predicting a recovery this year?
If he is, he might be wise pfffttt wuuhahahaahaa..sorry…he might be wise to change his mind. http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/the-cracks-of-dawn.html#more
His report of a recovery was already printed in The Australian last week
“record arctic ice growth NH summer (sic)”
Here
‘Nothing off-limits’ in climate debate | The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/…/story-e6frg6n6-1226583112134Feb 22, 2013 – Subscribe now to access The Australian; Subscribe … interview on topics that included this year’s record northern summer Arctic ice growth, the ..
Oh Mr. Lloyd, you’ve done it again. Lloyd is skillful in framing narratives and facts – twisting the truth into the counter-reality that dominates the pages of the Oz.
Is anyone predicting Watts’ recovery this year? Vegetative state,no way back,but no one will turn off the life support from Donors Trust….
Check any city listed
http://water.bom.gov.au/waterstorage/awris/?ftr#urn:bom.gov.au:awris:common:codelist:region.city:perth