Hardly more than two weeks after the United Nations Climate Conference known as COP15 global warming has virtually disappeared from the world’s front pages. First was Climategate, then the inconvenient truth of Siberian winds bringing record breaking cold to Beijing (not to mention Miami, of all places) and virtually everywhere else and poof (!) AGW is gone, more than likely for a long time to come. It’s almost as if it never happened, all those drowning polar bears and glaciers receding forever and a day. Now, only crickets.
Not that the Gideon Rachman has the gotten news. Considering what he wrote in a Financial Times article today he must be the last person in the world (other than Al Gore) to believe anthropogenic global warming is settled science:
But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport.So Mr Obama must have felt something of a chump when he arrived for a last-minute meeting with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, only to find him already deep in negotiations with the leaders of none other than Brazil, South Africa and India. Symbolically, the leaders had to squeeze up to make space for the American president around the table.
There was more than symbolism at work. In Copenhagen, Brazil, South Africa and India decided that their status as developing nations was more important than their status as democracies. Like the Chinese, they argued that it is fundamentally unjust to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of poor countries at a lower level than the emissions of the US or the European Union; all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.
Wait a minute. Stop right there. Could it be that Singh, Wen Jiabao, etc., just knew the whole thing was nonsense? I don’t know whether Mr. Rachman was in Copenhagen, but I was. I didn’t speak to Singh or Wen or anybody quite that august, but I did speak to a number of third world delegates and it was commonplace among them to admit the AGW was hooey, therefore acknowledging the obvious – that they were there for the money. In fact, I was stunned at how easily they admitted it.
But speaking of the money and the strange saga that allowed it to become conventional wisdom that the CO2 we all know and love from photosynthesis was a treacherous greenhouse gas about to turn us all into baked potatoes, PJM and PJTV promise not to let this subject go. In the coming weeks and days, we’re going to be following that money – and there’s a lot of it to follow indeed. We’re going to name names too. That should be fun – even if we don’t get our money back (less likely, alas).
In Copenhagen, Brazil, South Africa and India decided that their status as developing nations was more important than their status as democracies.
Boy, there’s a damn fool thing to say. Say rather it’s a reflection of their status as democracies: they know that if they tell their constituents that they have to accept never having electricity, clean water, or the local equivalent of the two-bedroom cottage with a white picket fence, the constituents will turn them out and put someone in with a little more sense.
As confusing as it seems to be to a lot of these folks, “democracy” doesn’t actually mean “those little people do what we tell them.”
“…as COP15 global warming has virtually disappeared from the world’s front pages.”
There are two reasons to explain this sharp decline of media interest. It is very cold in various parts of the planet. Some areas are experiencing record breaking low temperatures. Polling numbers also indicate a freefall in the general public’s gullibility regarding the global warming hysteria. The odds of a reversal in the present direction are not likely. I expect these fanatics, at most, to continue focusing on “climate change.” What in hell does that mean? Who knows? It sounds rather threatening and the fear of the unknown might keep a good size minority of people uneasy. However, most voters will not be swayed. They are now immune to the bovine excrement. The scam job has been played to the hilt.
David Thompson #2:
Yep, you got it. It’s cold. Here in Florida nothing like this cold spell has happened for 22 years and this one probably will break that record.
And such an attitude is appropriate, too, as well as doing justice to the whole scam. Global Warming as a political concern arose in the summer of 1988 in Wash DC. I was there then, and Lord, it was indeed Hot. As the Congressmen in their coats ands ties struggled to get to the Capitol for votes without expiring they talked about how hot it was. And someone said “A guy at NASA can explain this.” And so hearings followed and a whole new scam was born. NASA was struggling to recover from the Shuttle Scam, so the AGW Scam was very timely. When Communism came totally unzipped a few years later a whole new set of pigs lined up at the new trough.
The scammasters moved the term from “AGW” to “Climate Change” because they realized one day it might get cold and the whole thing would come crashing down. By then they hoped to have huge grants to favored scientists, enormous taxes in place, and, most importantly, a bureaucracy that would dwarf the Military Industrial Complex. It would then swing right into Preventing the Next Ice Age.
And Bravo! to PJ Media on following the money trail of AGW. The biggest scam ever should be a club we can beat the Left with until they expire – which they would anyway, most likely by freezing in the dark.
Every winter the same. A conveyor belt of idiots see some snow and go “Where’s teh global warming now?! Hur hur hur!”. Clue: weather is not climate. Google it.
Instead of displaying your ignorance, why not do a little reading to alleviate it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/04/science-behind-the-cold-weather
RWE:
> The scammasters moved the term from “AGW” to “Climate Change”…
The IPCC was formed in 1988. Can you guess what the ‘CC’ stands for?
Re Hansen: Climate Skeptic has put together an excellent educational presentation on AGW — http://www.climate-skeptic.com
At pp. 64-65, he shows Hansen’s predictions as of 1988, and how they were immediately falsified. As CS also notes, the hoaxers in the IPCC are tricky about predictions — they keep revising them, and dropping the old ones down the memory hole so that their errors will be obscured. So this graphic depiction of the reliability of the predictions is useful.
Every winter the same. A conveyor belt of idiots see some snow and go “Where’s teh global warming now?! Hur hur hur!”. Clue: weather is not climate. Google it
Please remind yourself of that next summer when every heat wave is touted as proof of global warming.
Also, you might want to study some geology. The Earth’s climate has been changing constantly throughout geologic time, sometime hotter, sometimes far colder (e.g. ice ages). The climate will continue to change with or without human interference. The real question is how do we adapt to changes in the climate. Roughly 12,000 years ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered in deep sheets of ice. Then, global warming happened and most of the ice melted. The humans living at the time had to adapt to severe changes in the climate. If they could do it, we should be able to as well.
“..I did speak to a number of third world delegates and it was commonplace among them to admit the AGW was hooey, therefore acknowledging the obvious – that they were there for the money. In fact, I was stunned at how easily they admitted it.”
We need to compile many many examples of this, a la the BigGovernment.com undercover ACORNgate video.
Get the small cameras and mics, talk to these leaders, officials, poobahs and scamsters. Save up a big database of these scammers from all over the world and then release these videos mostly at once.
It seems we have too many AGW cultists who will not open their minds until they see some video of these lying liars, lying.
“Weather is not climate” — the new mantra of the AGW cultists — will not succeed in hypnotizing the masses. AGW has been, and continues to be, exposed for the fraud that it is.
What I have not seen, and have been hoping to see…is someone connecting the …uh..sunspots…
If it is junk science, bundled up and packaged as a Trojan horse for the purpose of something else, then…let’s point at the something else.
In a thorough, detailed expose’ of where the lies and distortions end and the truth begins.
If AGW is really a Trojan horse for wealth redistribution, scientists without moral borders working toward the pickpocketing of developed free market nations…then let’s blow it wide open.
Global Warming is the long con, nationalized health care and powergrabbing banks and auto industry the short con…let’s pull back the veil.
Asking the reason it has gone dark in the corrupt global media environs after yet another pack of lies and distortions is uncovered, is like asking why cockroaches dive behind baseboards when you flick on the light.
It’s time to build a media distortion roach motel.
Roger, have you seen Clarice Feldman’s post about an article in the Telegraph referring to an e-mail sent to Michael Mann’s colleagues?
“When [Mann] turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/hockey_stick_manns_new_years_s.html
“all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.”
Where do the newspapers get these bozo journalists? 3% is “the great bulk of the ….. atmosphere”?
“PJM and PJTV promise not to let this subject go.”
I’m looking forward to that.
PJM keep your eye on and report on:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
http://justdata.wordpress.com/
Roger I clicked this article because I had noticed the exact same thing; no mention anywhere in the MSM. I suspected this would be their exit strategy. As the others are saying here, we rely on PJM not to let this one go. I’ll come back to this site every ten minutes to see another one of these guys roast.
My doctor said today it was just like the SARS scare several years ago. The media were claiming 50% fatalities in China. Cases in North America started popping up. Total media frenzy predicted the imminent demise of 25% of the US population. His clinic’s phone rang off the hook and people were lined up in front with terrified ‘symptoms’.
Turns out the Chinese health bureau had sampled a population subgroup of only a hundred or so people, all from the same village, and all with widely varied conditions and symptoms.
Suddenly the MSM just stopped reporting on it. No admission. No retraction or correction. And for some time afterward he would hear from patients still concerned.
He had to squeeze in at the table? President Obama’s advance team did not make sure that there was room, or if there wasn’t room they didn’t keep him away?
That is how a ‘fifth wheel’ is treated. I wonder if Pres. Obama has ever known what it is to be a fifth wheel?
Now that Global Warming is playing out it’s last days as the greatest disaster ever to be faced by mankind what will be next, asteroids? Russia is toying with this. Anyone ready to trade in their carbon credits for stock in an asteroid destroying system?
I could be paddling a rowboat down Market Street in San Francisco after the poles have melted, and there will still be conservative fanatics who deny that humans are responsible for Global Warming or that it is even real. I invite you to my web-pages devoted to raising awareness on this urgent issue: http://pltcldscsn.blogspot.com/2009/12/conservatives-still-deny-global-warming.html
spoke too soon seen the weather lately
“I could be paddling a rowboat down Market Street in San Francisco after the poles have melted…”. San Francisco, melted Poles…my, my…all the ingredients for a wild fantasyland dream. All that is missing is a long beard and sandwich boards.
The facades of man-made global warming conspiracy theory may be crumbling, but it still so neatly fits many peoples templates for mankind’s original sin and redemption that they cannot and will not let go of it. I predict that it will stay alive for many decades as an underground cult religion, to reemerge at some point in the future under another guise.
When he started his Global Warming Con game, Al Gore was claiming that the oceans would rise to disasterous levels within ten short years.
That was back in 2005. If the ocean levels were rising as he claimed, surely it would be noticable by now. But there hasn’t been any evidence of these rising levels, and the only ‘proof’ offered has been ‘studies’ (funded with taxpayer dollars naturally) on far off Pacific islands. Now if the oceams were really as rising as fast as Gore claimed, you could go anywhere and perform measurements. You could take a couple of students and go to Long Island or Seattle anddo measurements. But when you’re a university ‘climate specialist’ with government grant money burning a hole in your pocket, I guess a nice trip to a warm Pacific island is much more inviting than freezing your tail in New York in the winter.
Wotta abuncha geniuses you guys are. Who needs science when we’ve got the know-it-all wingnutz to tell us what reality is – “it’s cold out – those climate scientists don’t know what they’re talking about!” Peer reviewed? We don’t need no stinkin’ peer reviewed!
Just listen to us swell heads! Those glaciers aren’t really melting! That’s just the sweat pouring off our miserable skulls!
Wolfe, if they were doing actual science, their work would be transparent and reproducable. It isn’t. They can’t produce their original data set because they deleted it. They have no documentation of the changes they made to the original data set, but we’re supposed to just trust them. The computer code released in the ClimateGate scandal was absolute garbage. Their models don’t replicate what has actually happened but you believe they’re still good for predicting the future. Based on what, wishful thinking?
Perhaps if you weren’t so laughably ignorant about what is and isn’t science, you could look like something other than a fool.
Is it my imagination or are you offering, as yet another proof that AGW is a hoax, that it isn’t appearing on various front pages today or in the past week?
I seem to recall that the frequent appearance of AGW stories on the front pages of major newspapers was cited as proof that it was a hoax. Mr. Simon, do you deny making that claim?
I also noticed that in the original post you offered as a suspicious observation that there was little mention of AGW in newspapers on that day. You then supported the claim with a lengthy quotation from a story in the Financial Times. Today. Would you care to comment on this apparent contradiction?
Toothfairy says this:
“Weather is not climate” — the new mantra of the AGW cultists…
Now it isn’t a requirement as far as I know that mantras be true, so I suppose there’s a slight possibility that Toothfairy is correct, that “weather is not climate” could be both a mantra and correct. Because it is a true statement that weather and climate are very different things. Cold weather proves nothing about climate. A 100 plus year record of cold weather, established through dozens of different temperature mechanisms, would prove something about climate. I’ll even give you this–a twenty year trend of colder weather would damage or refute the current scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
But frozen oranges do not. The only thing frozen oranges prove is that someone who suggests that cold weather in Florida disproves AGW is a fool, just as someone who asserts that hot weather proves AGW is a fool. Climate is not weather, you see, and science is not gabbling anonymous lunkheads finding confirmation in every scrap of information they have on hand.
Another commenter above argued that hot congressmen had something to do with AGW. It does not. AGW is operating regardless of headlines, frozen oranges, hot congressmen, or the bleating inanity of five thousand denialists dancing on the head of a pin. E-mails and headlines and Copenhagen and congressmen are not relevant to grownup discussions–science is. 19,000 studies say it’s happening, and denialist twaddle like the post above goes nowhere near refuting or failing to replicate those studies, even one of them. CRU E-mails don’t either, not even close. Lord Monckton has zero science; his charts are documented lies. Ditto most everybody else.
ice9
> CRU E-mails don’t either, not even close.
Really? The world’s most celebrated climate scientists are caught out acknowledging that they have fixed and lied about their results, are completely unable to explain the discrepancy between reality and their models, have deleted data, have and continue to stonewall FOI requests, and have been doing this for most of the last decade, doesn’t refute any of the studies based on their “work”?
When you grow up you will look back and be embarrassed that you were so easily taken.
Y’all should check out David Scott’s link above. It is a hoot. Commenter after commenter take him down. Hard. In response all he has is a big bag o’ nuthin held by discredited AGW advocates. At one point he even replies, “I will not debate the science.” Funny stuff.
Yes, really. Your ‘fixed and lied’ is false and unprovable and easily explained–all in one. RealClimate has all that, and more; but I’m willing to bet my age you haven’t tried to understand it. You can’t dismiss science and understand it at the same time; it takes a particular kind of poisoned mind to oppose AGW on a computer, taking antibiotics, and changing the channels on your flat screen with an infrared remote remote control.
‘caught out’–that refers I guess to the fact that their private e-mails, when parsed mercilessly by people who are persuaded that the scientists are lying, yield proof that they are lying. That proof is not persuasive to anybody else, of course, but we can hang that problem on a conspiracy as well. I heard that if you mention too many conspiracies on the web, Janet Reno will come into your bedroom at night and kidnap you to a Fermi camp.
As for the discrepancy between reality and their models, little explanation is needed. Models are for smart people; I’m tired of explaining them. Shoot, you can have the models–Climate science doesn’t need models because they have thermometers. Several million actual measurements confirm AGW conclusions. Dozens of other lines of inquiry, from rising sea levels to melting permafrost to the tiger mosquitoes in Minneapolis support the conclusions. You can’t wrap your mind around how much data there is, and how beautifully consistent it is; the fixation on CRU guys bitching about bad peer review and weak-kneed editors and computer science has fully occupied your conspiracy circuits. Well, you have work to do. Say we spot you tree rings and computer models–IPCC describes nineteen other separate and completely independent lines of research that confirm warming. Some confirm greenhouse gases too; many index well to the industrial age and so confirm the man-made component.
I used to play Moses Malone 1-on-1–once I even scored on him.
If, when I grow up, I find that I was taken, well, I will be embarrassed. And honest about it. Here’s one for all of you. If I’m right–and 90% of climate scientists say they’re 90% sure I am–will you be embarrassed? Because we’ll know then that you should have seen it now.
You could write one of these:
http://storyarc.squarespace.com/a-denialist-writes-to-his-chil/
I’m so wee and small I don’t have to–I’ll be there to see.
ice9
> Yes, really. Your ‘fixed and lied’ is false and unprovable and easily explained–all in one. RealClimate has all that, and more…
Ahh yes, RealClimate! Now THERE’S an objective, reliable source of information!
(http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=622&filename=1139521913.txt)
> …but I’m willing to bet my age you haven’t tried to understand it. You can’t dismiss science and understand it at the same time…
You can if the “science” has been poisoned by politics and ideological zeal, in which case it’s no longer science and not worth trying to understand. This is what’s happened here, and it is obvious to all but the most devout. Anyway, where did I claim to “dismiss” science?
> …it takes a particular kind of poisoned mind to oppose AGW on a computer, taking antibiotics, and changing the channels on your flat screen with an infrared remote remote control.
What an idiotic argument. Because I have a computer and a TV and take medicine, my mind is poisoned if I question a scientist? Is this what you’ve been reduced to?
> …‘caught out’–that refers I guess to the fact that their private e-mails, when parsed mercilessly by people who are persuaded that the scientists are lying, yield proof that they are lying.
Yes. Yes, it does. Just because you’re sneakily caught on tape lying doesn’t mean you weren’t lying. How sad that you would think this argument negates the positions taken and statements made by these “scientists”, which, just to repeat, none of them have denied.
> That proof is not persuasive to anybody else, of course…
Well, it’s proof to anybody who thinks about it critically. If you want to deny it, that’s your business.
> … but we can hang that problem on a conspiracy as well. I heard that if you mention too many conspiracies on the web, Janet Reno will come into your bedroom at night and kidnap you to a Fermi camp.
Cute, but no substitute for an actual argument. Actually it’s not even cute. As noted, the scientists involved have not denied their words and actions as their emails, code, and comments made clear.
> As for the discrepancy between reality and their models, little explanation is needed. Models are for smart people; I’m tired of explaining them. Shoot, you can have the models–Climate science doesn’t need models because they have thermometers…
Geez, it wasn’t that long ago that we were assured that the models were infallible — hell, Actual Scientists created them using proxy data! — and that we could use them as an precisely accurate predictor of the climate decades and centuries into the future. Anybody who questions the Models is a Denier! Oh, their predictions turned out to be wildly inaccurate? Well…shoot, don’t worry about it. No explanation is required!
Are you seriously trying to pretend that models haven’t formed the basis of the entire AGW disaster scenario? And now, having proved themselves wrong, well, they don’t matter at all? Seriously?
> Several million actual measurements confirm AGW conclusions. Dozens of other lines of inquiry, from rising sea levels to melting permafrost to the tiger mosquitoes in Minneapolis support the conclusions.
Many of those “several million” actual measurements can’t be verified, having been discarded by the East Anglia “scientists” and their colleagues. Anyway, I haven’t made the argument that the climate isn’t changing; on the contrary, the climate has been changing since the Earth cooled into a solid.
> You can’t wrap your mind around how much data there is, and how beautifully consistent it is…
And you seem to be having trouble wrapping your mind around how useless it is, that it has been compromised. It’s easy to be consistent when you rig an algorithm to arrive at the same results regardless of the data — and then discard the data. To paraphrase Mark Steyn, if you have a barrel of ice cream and a quart of s**t, and mix them, you have a barrel of s**t.
> The fixation on CRU guys bitching about bad peer review and weak-kneed editors and computer science has fully occupied your conspiracy circuits.
I can sure understand why you don’t want any of the corrupt peer review, hiding/fixing/deletion of data, and rigged software to have happened, or for anybody to have noticed it. Also — and this wouldn’t have to be pointed out to anybody who was genuinely interested in the truth — the bad peer review, science, etc. — was admitted to by the CRU guys themselves, and they haven’t denied it.
> Well, you have work to do. Say we spot you tree rings and computer models–IPCC describes nineteen other separate and completely independent lines of research that confirm warming.
Sorry, no deal. You’ve been using this proxy data and these models as the basis of your entire position for a long time now — pretend you haven’t, if it helps you sleep — and you can’t just toss it off now. Nice try.
As for the other data, well, it may indeed have value. AGW may indeed be happening; I just don’t think it’s been proved. Maybe I have higher standards of what constitutes “proof” than you do.
And if I’m skeptical of its value, it’s because the dreadful, constant predictions of doom and catastrophe which were to have happened by now have not happened. Tuvalu still exists, its shoreline intact. Britain did not endure a “barbecue” summer, nor is she enjoying a “mild” winter, nor is anybody else in the northern hemisphere. No killer hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico; no monster tides wiping out the Solomon Islands. Polar bears continue to thrive; the ice in the Arctic hasn’t disappeared. Even Al Gore has had to quietly remove some of his more insane claims from his little slide show. (Did you know he just bought a large property right on the Pacific? Guess he’s not all that worried. When the alarmists start acting as though they’re alarmed, I’ll start being alarmed.)
> Some confirm greenhouse gases too; many index well to the industrial age and so confirm the man-made component. I used to play Moses Malone 1-on-1–once I even scored on him.
Some? Many? Wow, what used to be an easy lay-up is now a tough shot from well back of the 3-point line. I don’t get the Malone reference, but congratulations are nonetheless in order; that’s no small feat.
> If, when I grow up, I find that I was taken, well, I will be embarrassed. And honest about it. Here’s one for all of you. If I’m right–and 90% of climate scientists say they’re 90% sure I am–will you be embarrassed? Because we’ll know then that you should have seen it now.
I’m sorry about that “grown up” thing, that was a cheap shot. I apologize. But to answer your question, if I am wrong, I will admit it. I may even be embarrassed, although I feel justified in my skepticism, for reasons I outlined above.
I didn’t read the whole “letter from a denialist”, as it’s nothing more than a cheap, pathetic appeal to emotion. You, devoted to Truth and Science as you are, should have been reluctant to post it.
Ice9:
It’s over.
Crap. If it’s over, why didn’t somebody tell me?
Also, nobody told me that arguments from emotion were out. All those wasted tea parties. Crap.
PS–logical fallacy guy–quart-of-crap/barrel of ice cream–that’s on your list too. If ‘many’ of the millions of data points–Deltoid counted, it’s actually hundreds of millions–if ‘many’ of those are invalid, well, welcome to science. Hundreds of millions kick the ass off of many. Interpretations may vary, of course, and you’re right to be all diahrreay about interpretations that spoil your day, but, honestly, we’re talking about 90 percent of scientists 90 percent sure, based on 150 years of hard work by people who are at the top of their fields. None of that is in dispute, I think. Dispute it if you like. The CRU e-mails are third-order information on climate change. Seizing that as evidence to refute everything? That makes you clinically deranged.
If you’re so bloody logical, how about an amen to the choir of dumbasses who think AGW is a hoax because today it’s cold in Savannah (where temps are running 1.9 C above normal over the past nine months)? You seem to have missed fisking that gem.
ice9, demoralized and nearly dormant with dismay
And it was too cute.
Ice9:
“why didn’t somebody tell me?”
You’re embarrassing yourself.
Embarrassing myself? Here? that’s rich. Governing philosophy of this website is that Jesus already saved the world, so we don’t have too. [sic] Even Jesus would be embarrassed at that.
[Editor's Note: As most readers know, the proprietor of this site is Jewish by ethnicity AND an agnostic. What follows is illiterate trolling and can be ignored.]
Let us not fall back upon credentials, fellas. You’ve aptly disputed the worthlessness of credentials, so we’re all experts now. Explains why you don’t understand science.
For example–the ice cream analogy is wildly inappropriate for an evaluation of science, as any high school student could point out. Science is not mixed together; the studies all stand alone, wearing their data proudly and publicly. (the data is public, not lost, not hidden, not shredded. Exceedingly dumb claim.) Lots and lots of data–but it takes time and trouble to manage data by the rules. So the peer reviewers check your work. That’s troublesome for charlatans and perverts, who package data for the consumption of a populum who already believe that dinosaurs were on the Ark.
If one or ten or a thousand studies or papers are refuted or unreplicated, you have a case against the conclusions. But if you have a quart of crap, it sits there in plain view, being crap, unmixed. The only people who mix it are those who hope to poison (hence poisoned minds) public opinion or to preach to their choir on the vast but invisible and illogical conspiracy behind Global Warming and Al Gore is fat. If you detected a quart of crap–and you didn’t, but just for the sake of argument–it wouldn’t adulterate anything. It would sit there stinking, awaiting the public proof of its crapness. Well, there it sits. You alone have identified this crap science, so to be persuasive to people who don’t type in all caps, you alone need to demonstrate the flaw. Not some mysterious omission, or some suspicious inconsistency that takes some Socialist math to grasp. ie, science. When you do the science, you can cast that study out. If you did cast out a study, or even all the Russian tree-rings, you would then have 18,999 studies to go, or even just three or four thousand, to create a reasonable doubt. Get to it, PhD.
Shortcut–subscribe to the focused ad-hom style of denialism in which any minor flaw in an individual’s work corrupts everything he’s ever touched, including his date to the junior prom. Again, an effective way to persuade those who pray to kill senators perhaps, but still not science, or anywhere in a scientific neighborhood. And a tricky standard to live by, except of course it applies only to other folks, because consistency is for liberal weepers.
You could also score one bucket on Moses Malone, declare victory, and retire from the court. The all-cappers would probably throw you a parade for that.
They’re highly motivated, those scientists–if somebody offers crap in their field (either bad-science, cheaty-science, politicized science, or sharply-contrary-to-their-pet-conclusions science) they attack it. That’s how science works, and has worked. That’s the science that produced your computer and your antibiotics, Mambo, and that’s why it’s an excellent argument against tribal denialism–apply your standard of “scientific critique” to modern antibiotics and you’re stuck with WWII-era Gramicidin-6 or you’re a hypocrite. Can’t be both. Unless consistency is for wimps.
Peer review evaluates methodology, not conclusions. Scientists hate it when they fail peer review; they squawk and bitch (because publication means tenure, funding, etc.) Where’s all the squawking and bitching from unfairly excluded warming-contrary studies? It’s not that they were excluded in peer review as part of a grand conspiracy. It’s that they simply haven’t been done. Not done, not published. Not published, and not done.
I am embarrassed, by the way. It’s motivating. Don’t trust anybody who doesn’t admit to occasional embarrassment, my dad says. He’s an expert too.
Re: Steyn
I do applaud him for standing up to the Canadian PC board, or whatever it was. But both his journalism and his deft turns of phrase are not especially persuasive, especially if he’s held to the “Other Side” standard.
Journalists undergo peer review, too. It’s de rigeur for journalists to claim ethical superiority by demanding others retract or correct their errors. Steyn does it all the time–but he makes mistakes himself (I’m not talking about his casual bigotry, which is his own lookout.) But he refuses to retract or correct, preferring to ignore. By your standard that casts his entire line of reasoning into the ‘crap’ category.
Steyn is dissected here:
http://mediaculpapost.blogspot.com/2010/01/were-used-to-warnings-about-european.html
Cue Ken’s one-liner.
ice9
Nice article! You can track all kinds of global warming data on our site.
This is a great effort to point out a serious matter. We are doing nothing for it and we should think seriously about global warming and certain steps/measures must be taken.