Why the GWPF clicks

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is pretty cool. This is Benny Peiser setting the ground for its discussion with the Royal Society:

Integrity, openness and objectivity need to be introduced to the conduct of the scientific debate to restore the damage done by the Climategate, Hockey Stick, Gleick, Gergis, Lewandowsky and Marcott episodes.

You can bet dollars to donuts there’ll be no one in the firmly-establishment Royal Society with any clue what the above items might be.

There may be a clutch of alternative thinkers like Roger Pielke Jr, who, along with their Hartwell and Breakthrough friends have tried years selling such absurdities as a ‘carbon tax’. Or the notion that ‘climate sceptics’ are not ‘relevant’. But the climate sceptics are driving the debate forward.

Global warming denier! Vaxxer! …etc

One of the ways of detecting you’ve entered a scare campaign domain, is that you suddenly become stupid. You are just getting along swimmingly, and all of a sudden, you will either get the strange feeling, ‘oh, this looks like something I should have known or been concerned about’. or, you will be told directly, ‘you ought to have known this!’. Or, even laughed at: ‘you don’t know this? hehe’.

The second feature is, you’ll find yourself in the presence of fake experts. I know the warmers have preemptively cornered this explanation as though it works in their favor but we’ll ignore it for now. When a strong orthodox line is made accessible and attractive, it becomes easy for noisy busybodies to speak with authority, whereas under normal circumstances, anyone but genuine experts and knowledgeable amateurs would be moved open their mouths. Good examples are Keith Kloor and John Cook, a journalist and a cartoonist, respectively, bloviating on vaccines, and Mark Hoofnagle spreading pronouncements on ‘denialism’. There are numerous others.

Examine in this light a recent article by Peter Doshi in the British Medical Journal. The introduction characterizes how the influenza vaccine is currently presented:

Today around 135 million doses of influenza vaccine annually enter the US market, with vaccinations administered in drug stores, supermarkets—even some drive-throughs. This enormous growth has not been fueled by popular demand but instead by a public health campaign that delivers a straightforward, who-in-their-right-mind-could-possibly-disagree message: influenza is a serious disease, we are all at risk of complications from influenza, the flu shot is virtually risk free, and vaccination saves lives.

But, Doshi says, the real situation is different:

Closer examination of influenza vaccine policies shows that although proponents employ the rhetoric of science, the studies underlying the policy are often of low quality, and do not substantiate officials’ claims. The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated.

The evidence on benefit from influenza vaccination in reduction in elderly deaths is non-existent. This is observational studies in such journals as The New England Journal of Medicine notwithstanding, where high figures for percent reduction in mortality from vaccination (mindbogglingly at 27-50%) have been published.

Though known for a while, Doshi summarizes how these high numbers are the product of bad statistical inference making, owing to the healthy bias effect. Of course, if you had asked questions about it, you will be given the ‘you-must-be-crazy’ look.

Remember again, the main reason influenza vaccination came into practice is protection of the elderly and children. Influenza mortality can strike any age group (the 1918 epidemic is a good example, though infected individuals likely died owing to an immune overreaction that is not usually seen). The extremes of age, however, are more commonly affected in serious or potentially fatal disease. This is where the evidence is weak.

Now, where have we come across similar situations before?

Lewandowsky et al 2013: surveying Peter to report on Paul

In 2012, Stephen Lewandowsky and co-authors submitted a paper to the journal Psychological Science, generating widespread publicity. Here, I address a simple issue/question that has hovered around the paper from the time it made its appearance. The issue is at the heart of Lewandowsky’s first ‘Moon Hoax’ paper and the in-limbo second paper in Frontiers in Psychology.

The ‘Moon Hoax’ paper (a.k.a LOG12, LOG13 etc) draws a number of conclusions about climate skeptics (called ‘deniers’). A major portion of the data and analysis is devoted to ‘rejection of climate science’. The paper’s title advertises its findings about ‘deniers’.

So the question is: how did Lewandowsky and co-authors study climate skeptics?

The paper draft (pdf) stated simply that authors ‘approached’ 5 skeptic blogs to post a survey, but ‘none did’. This led to a hunt to find who exactly these bloggers were (Lewandowsky wouldn’t tell). Lewandowsky spread significant amounts of distraction and smoke on the matter, raising hue and cry that he did email skeptical bloggers:

First out of the gate was the accusation that I might not have contacted the 5 “skeptic” bloggers, none of whom posted links to my survey. Astute readers might wonder why I would mention this in the Method section, if I hadn’t contacted anyone.

What matters however, is not whether or not Lewandowsky contacted skeptics but what came of such contact. The whole point of contacting the bloggers was to get surveys posted on their websites to ensure skeptic participation. This never took place. Through the noise, the question of non-sampling of skeptics remained unresolved‡.

As a way of providing answer, the paper itself appeared in final form about a month back. When examined, the authors appear to have settled on a remarkable method of addressing the defect. In the supplementary information, Lewandowsky et al (LOG13) make a startling claim. They state the blogs that did carry their survey have a broad readership ‘as evidenced by the comment streams’:

All of the blogs that carried the link to the survey broadly endorsed the scientific consensus on climate change. As evidenced by the comment streams, however, their readership was broad and encompassed a wide range of view on climate change.

The authors claim to have analysed reader comments at one venue to determine this. They state:

To illustrate, a content analysis of 1067 comments from unique visitors to http://www.skepticalscience.com, conducted by the proprietor of the blog, revealed that around 20% (N = 222) held clearly “skeptical” views, with the remainder (N = 845) endorsing the scientific consensus.

Extrapolating, the authors infer further that close to eighty-thousand skeptics saw Lewandowsky’s survey on Skepticalscience alone (see below). Owing to such broad readership, enough skeptics are said to have been exposed to the survey.

Readers of climate blogs will at once see several things that are off. However, these are the assertions forming the basis on which Lewandowsky et al 2013 rests.

Analysis

To start, the authors’ premises are accepted. It is deemed that comment streams can be analysed to determine whether a blog has a broad readership, or a more polarized one.

Comments on six blogs where Lewandowsky et al’s survey was posted were analysed. Commenter names and comment counts were obtained from web pages using R scripts. Following the authors’ method, this was carried out for the entire month the survey was posted. For each blog, duplicates were removed.

Commenters were classified as (a) skeptic, (b) ‘warmist’ (c) ‘non-skeptic’ (d) lukewarmer, (e) neutral, or (e) indeterminate. Regulars whose orientations are familiar (e.g., dana1981 – ‘warmist’) were tagged first. Those with insufficient information to classify, and infrequent posters with singleton comments were tagged ‘indeterminate’†.

The results are presented below. A total of 614 commenters contributed 4976 comments to six blogs in the month the survey was posted (range: 2 – 2387 comments/blog). An estimated 111 commenters posted across blogs, with 504 unique commenter aliases from all blogs.

The results show a skewed commenter profile. As a whole, there are 59 skeptical commenters, amounting to about 9.5% of total. Individually, skeptics range from 5-11% of commenters between blogs, with one venue (Hot Topic) showing 19% skeptics. Closer examination shows this to be made up by just 10 commenters. Non-skeptics are close to 80%, i.e., 480 of 614. Neutral posters are 9%, and indeterminate 3%. Of the 59, more than half are from comments posted at one blog (Deltoid).

The same pattern can been seen to repeat by blog:

The marked difference in comment number between the blogs obscures underlying similarities. When commenter proportions are made equal, these become plain:

From the data above it is evident these blogs are not places where readership is “broad” or encompasses a wide range of views on climate. To the contrary, these are highly polarized, partisan blogs serving their cliques. One half of the blogs hosted comments from all of 6 skeptical commenters in total (Scott Mandia, A Few Things Ill Considered, and Bickmore’s Climate Asylum).

The non-surveyed Skepticalscience.com

What about Skepticalscience’s comment stream? Lewandowsky et al state that John Cook at his website analyzed 1067 comments to identify 222 skeptics and use this to buttress claims of broad readership in survey blogs. One wonders how Cook got the fantastic figures! When commenters for Sept 2010 are analysed, there are 36 skeptical voices of a total 286. Cook’s estimates are inflated six times over. In reality skeptics form 12.58% of commenters for that month, and a mere 0.03 fraction of John Cook’s 1067 unique commenters.  These results verify with independent analysis performed by A.Scott.

Furthermore, close to 90% of commenting viewers are not skeptics. Contrary to Lewandowsky et al, Skepticalscience is not a place where readership is “broad and encompasses a wide range of view on climate”. In fact Skepticalscience exactly matches Deltoid, a virulently anti-skeptic website, in commenter profile.

Importantly however, John Cook never posted the survey at Skepticalscience (see here and here). In the face of this false claim, the authors’ post-hoc exercise of computing skeptic exposure becomes counterfeit.

How would the picture have been had Lewandowsky et al actually obtained survey exposure with a skeptical audience? As a comparative exercise, I pulled comment counts from widely read skeptical blogs Wattsupwiththat, Bishop Hill, Joanne Nova and Climate Audit for the same period. Traffic figures provided by Anthony Watts indicate close to 3 million visits in August 2010. The results ought to be eye-opening:

Conclusion:

A number of things can now be confirmed. The authors of Lewandowsky et al 2013 did not survey skeptical blogs. The websites that carried the survey have neither a broad readership, nor represented skeptical readers and commenters. The authors did not survey any readers at the website Skepticalscience, but represent their data and findings as though they did. Lastly, the authors’ calculations in assessing survey exposure, which they base on the same Skepticalscience, are shown to be wrong.

With the above, conclusions drawn about skeptics by Lewandowsky et al by sampling a population of readers and commenters who are not skeptic can be termed invalid. At best the study’s skeptic-related analysis is meaningless, arising from non-representative sampling. At worst the possibility of false conclusions owing to flawed survey exposure arises. The above data combined with Lewandowsky et al 2013 survey results, in fact, show one possible outcome of displaying loaded questions relating to climate skeptics to a non-skeptical audience. Conclusions about non-skeptical ‘pro-science’ commenters and their psychology are probably more appropriate.

Notes:

‡ The list of surveyed blogs (from Lewandowsky et al 2013 SI):

Skepticalscience – http://www.skepticalscience.com
Tamino – Open Mind http://tamino.wordpress.com
Climate Asylum – http://bbickmore.wordpress.com
Climate change task force – http://www.trunity.net/uuuno/blogs/
A few things ill considered – http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/
Global Warming: Man or Myth? – http://profmandia.wordpress.com/
Deltoid – http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
Hot Topic – http://hot-topic.co.nz/

Note that (a) there is no record of Skepticalscience having posted the survey, and (b) the Climate Change Task Force entry is available on the Waybackmachine (for e.g., here)

† Batch Google searches (e.g., http://google.siliconglobe.co.uk/) and keyword searches on scraped HTML blog posts were used to search for commenter output. Multiple entries were frequently required for each commenter to be satisfactorily classified. Wherever possible (which was so in almost all instances), results during August and Sept 2010 were employed. Comments supportive of consensus, critical of ‘deniers’ and ‘skeptics’ and/or unequivocally appreciative of article (e.g., “great post, now I can use this in my arguments with deniers”) were classified as coming from ‘warmists’. Comments approving of main thrust of a ‘warmist’ blog post, but with no further information available were classified as ‘ns’ – not skeptic. Commenters questioning basic premises of blog post, being addressed to by ‘denier’, ‘denial’ etc, whose stance could be verified by similar mode of behaviour in other threads, were classified as ‘skeptics’. In most instances they were easily recognized. Those, in whom no determination could be made, owing to various factors, were classified as ‘indeterminate’. Commenters explicitly professing acceptance of consensus but posing relatively minor question, etc – classified as lukewamers. Entries required reading at least two different comments for almost every commenter, except in instances commenter orientation was known from prior experience. Certainly there will be errors to a degree, and subjectivity is involved. It is unavoidable that infrequent (and singleton) commenters, and those with non-unique names (‘tom’, ‘john’) are resistant to classification. Validation of method was available when blogger A.Scott arrived at similar results working independently on portions of the data.

This article was published at WUWT.

Lew and Cook: recursion in the climate ghetto

One of the main indicators of the ‘ghetto-ization’ of climate blogging is a complete lack of response to criticism one encounters. John Cook’s Skepticalscience is a prime example in this regard. These people won’t respond to criticism even if their lives depended on it.

But, on occasion, they will, If they think such criticism might reach important ears, or if they feel there might be blowback

Cook is currently in the middle of one such episode. He has had to respond to Bishop Hill revealing (via Barry Woods’ work), that he and his fellow author Lewandowsky identified Richard Betts, Chief of Climate Impacts of the Met Office UK, as a ‘conspiracist’.

Cook claims on his blog that Betts is not a conspiracist. Betts’ comment on the other hand, made it into the main data table in the supplementary information of his peer-reviewed academic paper.

How does he explain this?

The paper’s methods are quite clear on what was done.

1. Authors define ‘recursive hypothesis’ - “…any potentially conspiracist ideation that pertained to the article itself or its author, unsubstantiated and potentially conspiracist allegations pertaining to the article’s methodology, intended purpose, or analysis “
2. Authors use Google searches, Alexa rankings and direct site visits and gather recursive hypotheses
3. Authors excerpt ‘blog posts’ that published recursive theories into a master table with, and this is key, ‘each excerpt representing a mention of the recursive theory’

Examine point#3 again, just in case. The authors claim that “all recorded instances” of recursive theories are in their supplementary data table. Betts’ qualifies under a specific conspiracist idea – ‘didn’t email deniers’.

The thread with Betts’ comment focused entirely on Lewandowsky’s data and has over one hundred comments. The table contains 9 entries for “didn’t email deniers” excerpted from the thread. All excerpted comments meet the authors’ criteria for ‘recursion’, i.e., express some judgement about Lewandowsky’s method, purpose, analysis or motive. This includes Richard Betts’ comment.

Lewandowsky and Cook now claim

1. “we are certainly not claiming that [Betts] is a conspiracy theorist”
2. Betts’ name being in the table “attests to the thoroughness of  daily Google search”
3. the supplementary table just represents “raw data”. 

None of the above can be correct.  It is not possible for the table to just be “raw data”, as their own description of method shows. The comment selection does not reflect on the thoroughness of Google search; rather it does on the faithful identification of comments/posts with recursive conspiracist ideas as defined. As a result, this does imply that Betts is a conspiracy theorist.

If we accept that Betts is not a ‘conspiracist theorist’, then the same would apply to other contributors found by the authors’ searches as well. The Betts comment is qualitatively no different from the others.

It would be interesting to see how Lewandowsky and his co-authors show this not to be true.

Anne Jolis asks questions to Michael Mann

Can you guess what might happen if you ask a climate scientist a tough question?

He will set his pals on you, that’s what.

Post-Climategate 3.0, emails between a journalist and a climate scientist came to attention (again). In the exchange, you can see Anne Jolis of the Wall Street Journal asking a handful of questions to Michael Mann, a climate scientist of very high repute. Who wouldn’t? Too many questions keep coming up about the same person’s work, people get curious.

This is what Michael Mann did. First, he informed the journalist that all her questions were wrong, and she was committing an ‘offense’.

…premise of essentially everyone of your questions is wrong, …

Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense, …

Second, he threw a whole bunch of material – links to reports, newspaper clippings, Congressional hearing gossip, and Realclimate blog posts – at Jolis. Funnily, most of the material was dated and irrelevant to her questions.

Stuff flung at journalist by a climate scientist. Note the kitchen sink in the middle.

Third, Mann copied the following people into the conversation:

Joe Romm
Media Matters’ Erikka Knuti
Dan Vergano
Bud Ward
George Monbiot
AJ Walzer
Paul D. Thacker
Chris Mooney
Stephen Schneider
Gavin Schmidt
Stefan Rahmstorf
Phil Jones
Tim Osborn
Andy Revkin
Henry Pollack
Gabi Hegerl
Benjamin Santer
Richard Littlemore
Someone called ‘DarkSydoftheMoon’

A scientist here and there one can understand, but half the activist world? Chris Mooney? And Richard ‘ we’re all about PR, not much about science’ Littlemore?

Littlemore’s answers are funnier. In response to Jolis’ queries, Littlemore asserts the ‘unprofessional, haphazard or amateurish manipulation of data’, ‘machinations’, ‘motivations’, and ‘professionalism’ of Steve McIntyre, tries to sell his book, and offers to set up an interview with … himself or Jim Hoggan.

Anyone left with doubts about the intellectual bankruptcy of the climate movement at its highest levels?

Incidentally, Anne Jolis won the Bastiat Prize for journalism for 2012. Surely someone who knows to ask good questions.

Why is John Cook not responding?

This relates to Skepticalscience‘s John Cook who has co-authored a academic peer-reviewed paper in the Frontiers in Psychology journal with Stephen Lewandowsky.

There are two simple, yet serious questions about his paper. Question number one: where is the ethics approval section of the paper?

Now, I might be mistaken. The section could be in the paper. After all, the paper is 57 pages long and ethics review section could be hidden someplace. On top of it, I am a ‘denier’. So I might be not seeing what’s there.

On to question number two. Why are there what appear to be fabrications and falsifications in the paper?

Again, this has to be clearly understood. People make all sorts of mistakes in research. The kind of errors that are considered serious enough to constitute scientific misconduct are hard to pin down. As a shortcut, the US NSF for instance makes the determination that any act that constitutes fabrication, falsification or plagiarism, would qualify.

The kind of usage of comment material Stephen Lewandowsky, Cook and others appear to have employed in their paper seems to fall squarely in the falsification and fabrication territory. Brandon Shollenberger’s post is published at a prominent outlet WUWT.

Shollenberger’s evidence doesn’t rely on interpretive grounds to support this conclusion: the excerpted quotes and the full quotes with their context are provided in the open.

Cook usually does not answer to criticism. But this is about a scientific publication in the public domain. Of the questions above, the second one, is serious. It requires a response.

Is this the same scientist that created the hockey stick?

The Michael Mann Show has turned into a hoot. The reluctant, accidental public figure that he is, there is now virtually no pause.

Here is the latest from Mann:

The disinformation machine finally appears to be going into full gear now to discredit latest study striking a critical blow against the industry-funded climate change denial campaign.

[...]

I mean, the guy even carries a picture of a little pyramid, courtesy his favorite Sourcewatch. Only the all-seeing eye is missing from the top.

Quote fabrications from Australian academic climate communicators Lewandowsky and Cook

Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook are two extremely well-respected academics. The former operates out of University of Western Australia and the latter, from University of Queensland in addition.

This post by Brandon Shollenberger shows Lewandowsky and Cook to have fabricated quotes from material left by commenters on blogs. The quotes were then used to imply entirely different meanings from what the original comments intended, in their peer-reviewed climate communication paper in the prestigious Frontiers in Psychology stable.

How is this possible? The peer-review process usually has a strong track-record of trapping errors such as the above.

Lewandowsky and Cook’s paper, a draft of which is available, also lacks description of an institutional review process or approval for their study. Usually reviewers are prompt in asking for such things and rarely, if ever can anyone get past them. Even the lowliest of studies involving human subjects entails an ethics board or an institutional review board examination.

How did this happen? Maybe, there is a simple explanation. Perhaps Lewandowsky and Cook obtained institutional review via proper channels but failed to mention them in their paper.

Why burn coal? Why not chemically combust it?

There is an unscientific and misleading story released by Ohio State University that has been carried at WUWT. It is getting a good clobbering in the comments.

The Ohio professor behind the research wants you to know that burning coal is bad. Specifically, he wants you to know that he thinks it is bad. More specifically, he wants you to think, when it comes to coal, it’s the burning of it that is evil.

None of the above are true. Burning coal and chemically combusting coal, … are the same. This type of research, it seems, is prompted by a spineless attitude toward a regulatory monster that seeks to choke off production of energy by squeezing down on the exhaust. Stand up and fight.

Instead of Chamberlaining “CO2 is bad for the environment”.

Circular reasoning in temperature adjustments

You’d think that the average weather of a location is climate? You’d be wrong. The real deal goes like this: there is something called climate which influences weather the effect of which we see in everyday readings such as temperature.

Speaking from a climatologic sense, both statements may be true. From a standpoint of measurement however, the second one makes no sense. It is false. The ‘climate’ is unknowable to us except via measurement of the weather points that constitute it.

This distinction is lost in several climate discussions and even amongst brilliant scientists. An outcome of the distinction, and a basic principle one might add, is that measurements need to be performed independent of effects the generated data are used to infer. Measurement precedes inference.

Standard climate thinking however has proceeded in opposite directions when it comes to creation of temperature series. Under this method, a local station will be ‘adjusted’ if it is deemed, by some metric, to not reflect underlying climate. (Whereas you might  think underlying climate is inferred by a measurement of a given station)

I am stating nothing new here. David Stockwell presented the same basic earth-shattering logic (for climate science practitioners, that is) in this elegant write-up: Circularity of homogenization methods

He writes (emphasis mine):

If S is the target temperature series, and R is the regional climatology, then most algorithms that detect abrupt shifts in the mean level of temperature readings, also known as inhomogeneities, come down to testing for changes in the difference between R and S, i.e. D=S-R. The homogenization of S, or H(S), is the adjustment of S by the magnitude of the change in the difference series D.

When this homogenization process is written out as an equation, it is clear that homogenization of S is simply the replacement of S with the regional climatologyR.

H(S) = S-D = S-(S-R) = R

While homogenization algorithms do not apply D to S exactly, they do apply the shifts in baseline to S, and so coerce the trend in S to the trend in the regional climatology.

Stockwell further states (emphasis mine):

I would think the determination of adjustments would need to be completely independent of the larger trends, which would rule out most commonly used homogenization methods

There is proof confirming this diagnosis. Censorship-meisters Realclimate published a post by Zeke Hausfather on his paper co-authored with an US federal government NOOA employee.

They state the rationale underpinning the paper’s methodology:

Any major changes over time in individual stations that are not reflected in nearby stations are likely due to local (rather than regional) effects such as station moves, instrument changes, time of observation changes, or even such things as a tree growing over the thermometer stand. By removing any artifacts of individual station records not shared with other stations in their region, we can get a more accurate estimate of regional climate changes.

I read this thread (with 620 comments), where Hausfather explains the thinking, more directly:

anomalies only work well IF the station records are not subject to localized changes due to non-climatic factors. In practice, at least over time spans of decades, this is rarely the case. So additional work (e.g. homogenization) must be done to remove any local perturbations that are not reflected in the regional climatology. Again, because longer-term climate changes occur regionally (not locally), and perturbation of a local record not reflected in other nearby stations is likely a non-climatic factor and should be removed if your goal is to calculate an unbiased estimate of regional climate changes over time.

This is circular.

An unbiased estimate of ‘regional climate change’ should emerge from well-curated, unadjusted temperature records of stations. Hausfather thinks the signal of climate change should be teased out by the guiding hand of adjustments made to stations.

What adjustments you do to a station, should have nothing to do with climate. Any reasoning that violates the above fails. Such adjusted series may per chance be representative of regional climate. But we would lack the means of knowing them to be so.

It is sobering to realize that most homogenization methods in use could be afflicted by this logic.

Here’s a nice little story

A group of people met together, and discussed global warming, or the lack of it. One of the group told the outside. The rest got on his case right away. Everything was taken back. Now no one knows anything about it.

How does one trust an Australian climate scientist?

Let us get this:

1) A certain number of climate scientists in Australia receive emails. These are characterized as ‘death threats.’ The alleged threats are publicized worldwide in Nature and the Guardian

2) Much after the news is disseminated and public sympathy garnered, the threatening emails are released under FOI to the blog owner of Australian Climate Madness

3) The emails contain no threats. Understandably enough, those at the centre of the event, still, do not want to be seen condoning any form of abuse. Discussion is stultified by reaffirmations of the virtues of civility.

… but …,

4) There do not seem to be any death threats.

The WWF, REDD and Tanzania

At the peak of the claim and counter-claim thrown around over Amazongate Simon Lewis a forest researcher at the University of Leeds emerged briefly at its centre. Lewis’ defense of the actions of the IPCC helped the organization avoid confronting its use of advocacy and environmental pressure group material from the WWF. A little-examined fact at the time was that Lewis’ parent department was involved along with contributions from the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Royal Society, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and other non-governmental organizations in a UN REDD+ pilot project in Tanzania. Called ‘Valuing the Arc’, it was designed to work out putting a ‘price on carbon’ to provide ”input to the policy process, … including PES mechanisms”. ‘PES’, is payment for ecosystem services, i.e., REDD. The most prominent NGO at the the centre of the project? WWF-Tanzania.

Chris Mooney offers climate wisdom, world’s top climate scientists immediately correct record

More in the vein of the Realclimate zinger a couple of days back.

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum thinks that climate science is being used to promote agendas of global political control. The wise Chris Mooney disagreed with him:

Appropriately, the scientists who study the climate are trained—and often, temperamentally disposed—to see the world in gray, rather than black and white.

This was yesterday. Almost the same time, a bunch of ‘top’ climate scientists were saying this (via Tom Nelson):

We can say categorically that this [Keystone] pipeline is not in the nation’s, or the planet’s best interest.

 

PS: How can something be ‘the best’ for a planet?

Realclimate blows irony gasket

I ran across this in Realclimate today. Realclimate has a history of doing this kind of thing (see here, and here).

Michael Mann’s book: The Serengeti Strategy applied

The Serengeti Strategy. In scientist Michael Mann's world, it is the lions that are fossil-fuel powered

Peter Gleick, I felt sometimes, was a guileless warmie. He exemplifies the multifaceted, contradictory things that human beings are – he is both father of Ursus bogus, and scourge of bottled water. Quite unlike Michael Mann, who seems to only exist unidimensionally in the pages of Congressional hearings and local newspapers.

Skepticalscience.com quote surgery on Pat Michaels

I read with amusement Skepticalscience’s latest in their lineup of posts on climate scientists whose views diverge from the consensus. First it was the ‘Michaels Mischiefs’ series. Now he’s been turned into a ‘serial deleter’. Michaels’ probably getting off easy – John Christy is stuck with ‘Christy’s Crocks’. I guess if you run a website, you can call people whatever names you want.

You know who owns the story of Climategate II?

It is not some investigative journalist, or journalists who have free time on their hands and demand money to follow their hobbies.

It is Tom Nelson.

Don’t play jujitsu with people’s lives, please

Donna Laframboise alerts readers to Canadian Environment Minister Joe Oliver’s insightful remarks. Oliver notes how environmental and other pressure groups “ hijack [our] regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda”. Oliver, of course, is laying his finger at the crux of the matter. Western regulatory systems, with their high compliance rates, lack of safety valves, and paucity of democratically elected oversight are perfect vehicles for subversion and capture of power.

Which brings us to the question: Radicals hijacking a regulatory system is obviously bad. Is it Ok then for regulatory systems to be hijacked to achieve a moderate political agenda?

That is exactly what the Hartwell group and Roger Pielke Jr advocate. They both want to play ‘policy jujitsu’ – i.e., do something no one likes, but in a way no one can see it being done, and use their own energies for doing it.

Roger Pielke Jr: When the debate gets over

Roger Pielke Jr: from the website of THE BEAST

Lot of people think the climate game is fun: caring for the planet, reading climate science papers, arguing about statistics, ‘sensitivitiy’, radiative physics and the like. Well, … let’s just leave that be for now. Behind the scenes, the climate game is played by ratfucking and retractions. People are not angling for ‘genuine debate’ or trying to ‘solve problems’, they are trying to shut the other guy down and have things their way.

A request to Roger Pielke Jr to correct the record

As a few of you might know, this blog carried an article that was critical of Roger Pielke Jr, a science and technology policy scholar who runs a popular eponymously titled blog, for his claim that ‘the climate debate is over’. Pielke Jr made the claim in this form:

Michael E Mann: Quite the professorial tweet

Twitter messages by Prof. Michael E Mann

Twitter statistics for Prof. Michael E Mann

I wonder how Michael Mann claims he feels harassed by the instrument of the law, and yet is pleased at the prospect of others in the same plight.

Pielke Jr: The climate debate is ‘over’

One characteristic of academics is that they never waste a good argument. They would give it as project to a graduate student, carve out a review article with favored colleagues as co-authors, or write a whole book on it. This brings multiple benefits: you can forever hang around making half-baked public statements to draw attention, and simply wave away questions with “The answers are in my book”. Your h-index keeps going up while your opponents waste their time figuring out your cryptic statements.

Climategate II: Contradictions and hypocrisy

As it became obvious that Climategate II was the release of more emails from the same 2009 leak many prominent news outlets have tried adopting an ‘ostrich position’. But just as with Climategate 1.0 the contours of the climate debate change right in front of our eyes. The change  is leaving some of the expert pissants stranded in their own wake.

Climategate II: More skeletons in the closet of anthropogenic global warming

From Part I

What did Climategate do? Well, apart from instigating lots of ‘inquiries’ and ‘exonerations’ and generating employment to damage control public relations firms like Outside Organization, it opened a lot of eyes.

Climategate altered the landscape of the climate change debate.

News comes from Tallbloke’s blog that there has been another email release. Again, the same caveats apply: we don’t know if these emails are authentic, and, we don’t know how they were released.

A few things however seem to be clear. Climate scientists entertain the same kinds of questions that the skeptics ask around on blogs. They have a conscience, they are human, and they are emotional. As observers and members of the lay public skeptics may freely criticize anyone, but as working professionals, scientists cannot be as free and open with their fellow colleagues. Would you run around your office or workplace loudly gossiping about your co-worker?

But these scientists do criticize, and they do recognize the points that the skeptics have to make. A few of them unfortunately appear to be victims and continue to want to be victims of an earlier archaic worldview, that ‘data belongs to the scientists’. One is reminded of the case of Geoffrey Chamberlain, who unwittingly lent his name to a dubious case report, simply because ‘that is how things were always done’ and had to resign. But that bane of the modern world called ‘global policy’, and countless lives literally depend on open access to data and methods now. The old style of squirreling away data and publicly-funded professors hiding behind ‘intellectual property rights’, is going out of fashion.

And then, there clearly are the bad apples. A bunch of a new breed of scientist-activists, with whom it is difficult to discern what hat they are wearing, even in private. One feels sad for their colleagues who have to read their messages and keep a straight face.

Surely, more madness will soon follow. Confirmation of authenticity should be the first step. God bless the Internet.

‘Richard Muller was a climate skeptic for many years’

People are excited that Richard Muller, lead scientist on the BEST group, was a ‘skeptic’.

Why do they think he was a skeptic? Because at one time, Muller criticized the makers of the hockey stick and supported McIntyre.

Just pointing out that there is something wrong with the hockey stick does not make you a skeptic. You can be a supporter of the consensus (i.e., ‘warmist’) and still point out dishonesty. It is allowed.

Supermandia: Holy Rapid Response

In November 2010, scientist John Abraham told a news reporter from Minnesota:

“All the technology is already here, it’s a matter of political will,”

You don’t have to think too hard to know who says these kinds of things. It is most certainly not scientists.

In October 2011, a climate science teacher in Abraham’s group has appeared thus:

Roger Pielke Sr at the SS.com: A dark day in the climate science debate

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The propaganda website ‘SkepticalScience.com’, or SS.com in short, strives to serve as a ‘one-stop shop for all consensus communication needs’ kind of an outlet. Emerging ideas based on published papers or opinions, that run counter to a perceived consensus are monitored for, and various authors who work for the website churn out superficially plausible, scientific-sounding ‘rebuttals’ to these positions.

PR, climate science and climate activism

The Coyote blog picks on ‘The Pattern’ here. He calls it “the Global Warming Hype Process’:

The science editorials of Jack Trevors

Jack Trevors is a distinguished scientist at the University of Guelph. He’s had a decorated career in microbiology research, and unlike many scientists, has pursued research into more broader topics such as the question of the origin of life and the genetic code.