Scientific Fraud becoming endemic?


Selene

Recommended Posts

[it couldn't have been easy for him [Patrick Moore] - PM must have made plenty of enemies out of old friends. What courage it took.]

I admire his honesty and courage.

Larry and I sometimes laugh over, and make plays on, a remark Patrick Moore made in the interview with him which appeared in "The Great Global Warming Swindle."

He tells how persons in Greenpeace, becoming concerned about fluorine, wanted to ban the element.

He says he said (quoting from memory), "Guys, I don't think that's in our jurisdiction, to ban a whole element!"

Ellen

That's hilarious!

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 152
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Second installment. Please see the first installment in post #89.

"Consensus" and Weart

This is from a review of the original, 2003, edition of Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming.

The review appears on a site called "Enthusiasm, Scepticism and Science" - home page link.

A header line describes the site's general purpose as being:"on the origins and impacts of Global Warming Alarmism in the history and philosophy of science".

It's now settled science: Global Warming Alarmism has been, and will continue to be, more harmful to science and to mankind than global warming. It's a scientific fact, and those who disagree aren't legitimate scientists or rational thinkers, but kookie deniers.

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where is William, btw? I always appreciate his pov.

He is out seeding the clouds for the next "climate change" assertion.

I am plodding along in the background. There's a lot of questions above that I haven't yet answered adequately.

In the meantime, irrelevant weather photo:

beach.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Krauthammer piece Jonathan linked to in post #103 starts:

Two months ago, a petition bearing more than 110,000 signatures was delivered to The Post, demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming. The petition arrived the day before publication of my column, which consisted of precisely that heresy.

Here's the start of a piece about the petition posted on "Forecast the Facts."

link

February 20, 2014

110K Call on The Washington Post to End Climate Change Denial in its Editorial Page

WASHINGTON, DCThis afternoon, activists delivered a petition signed by 110,000 people to the editors of The Washington Post, calling on the newspaper to implement a policy that refuses to publish editorial content denying climate change. The Post routinely prints inaccuracies on climate change and is home to prominent climate change deniers George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and the Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Sponsored by Forecast the Facts and CREDO, the petition urges the Post to follow the The Los Angeles Times' lead by refusing to publish letters to the editor that deny climate change. However, the Post has yet to extend this policy.

"Every scientific academy in the world accepts that humans are warming the planet, yet the editors of The Washington Post still provide a platform to climate change deniers," said Brant Olson, campaign director of Forecast the Facts. "There ought to be rigorous standards at the Post disallowing editorial content featuring misinformation, especially on an issue as important as climate change."

Folks,

Please notice the Tower of Babble mush-up of terminology. Krauthammer's guilty, too, of not being clear.

Is there anyone in the world who actually denies that climate changes?

And is Krauthammer's thrust questioning that there was any warming in the 20th century? It is a serious question if there was or if, instead, the appearance that there was is an artifact of faulty measurement and general method of arriving at the "global mean temperature anomaly." But I doubt that this issue is what Krauthammer is talking about.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The petition which was sent by "Forecast the Facts" to the Washington Post and the New York Times is hard to get to, since the link on the site is broken.

I pasted a link together.

Furthermore, the page on which the petition appears is somewhat chopped off on the left side.

Judging from what I can see of the graphic on the left, however, the petition as of now has 82,375 of a target 100,000 signatures, so I don't know where the 110,000 figure given by Krauthammer came from.

Here's what's said on the petition page. I suppose that the italicized part is the petition itself and the rest is explanation to prospective signers.

TELL THE WASHINGTON POST AND NEW YORK TIMES: DON'T PROMOTE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL

TO: EDITORIAL BOARDS OF THE WASHINGTON POST AND NEW YORK TIMES

It is the job of newspapers to inform readers of factual information, not promote lies about climate change. Please join with the Los Angeles Times in implementing a formal policy of refusing to publish any letters to the editor or other content that denies climate change. This common-sense policy will enhance the discussion and debate in your pages.

Why is this important?

The Los Angeles Times recently announced a common-sense policy of refusing to publish letters to the editor that promote climate change denial. But unfortunately, among major newspapers, the L.A. Times stands out as an exception.

The New York Times and Washington Post have tremendous influence on the discourse in our country, and I've been an avid reader of both for years. But neither paper has an explicit policy against publishing letters to the editor that include factually inaccurate statements about climate change.

I've seen firsthand the corrosive effects of the well-funded climate change denial effort. I worked in the Senate for John Kerry, and I spoke to many climate scientists who were physically threatened, harassed, and slandered just for doing their jobs. I've seen our nation's political machinery brought to a halt and our discourse poisoned by cynical efforts to hide the scientific facts behind a smokescreen of spin.

Newspapers and other media outlets can play a critical role in our political process by acting as a check against unscrupulous politicians, corporations and others who intentionally lie to the public. But by "reporting both sides" and giving climate change deniers equal space to promote their lies, large swaths of the news media have failed to do their job of informing the public.

With the science on climate change becoming increasingly grim and time running out to prevent catastrophic extreme weather events from becoming near-constant occurrences, we can't afford to let major American newspapers mislead the public by printing errors of fact about climate change.

Earlier this month, the L.A. Times' letters editor wrote, "Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying 'there's no sign humans have caused climate change' is not stating an opinion, it's asserting a factual inaccuracy."

While the L.A. Times' announcement is a welcome step in the right direction, we need to put pressure on the New York Times and Washington Post to follow suit, given the influence they have on decision makers in our political and financial power centers.

CITATIONS:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-climate-change-letters-20131008,0,871615.story

http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/10/10/study-media-sowed-doubt-in-coverage-of-un-clima/196387

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v502/n7470/full/nature12540.html

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lately I've heard a lot of AGW activists pouring their hearts out in concern for their fellow man. They claim to be very concerned about the livelihoods and lives that, in their opinion, will most definitely be lost if we don't impose all sorts if restrictions on mankind's activities right fucking now. Only horrors await. Incalculable wealth and lives will be destroyed. Oceans of blood will be on the hands of the deniers if they succeed in preventing "the consensus" from doing what's right. And the cost of implementing the restrictions on human freedom and productivity would be minuscule in comparison to the apocalypse that will result from not restricting all of mankind.

But what if they're wrong? What if they impose their restrictions on mankind, costing trillions and trillions, and imposing immense hardships, poverty and death on billions of people over a threat which existed only in their minds? What consequences do they think that they should face for being so stupid, arrogant and destructive?

Why are they betting with others' lives, placing blame, and now even proposing banning dissent, jailing "deniers," and otherwise punishing those whom they believe are sending the human race to its doom, yet they bring no skin to the game themselves -- they propose no consequences for the possibility of their being fooled by pseudoscience into being the ones who will have destroyed lives and livelihoods?

It's easy to be certain when there's no accountability. But would "the consensus" scientists and activists be willing to put their own fortunes and lives on the line? If they succeed in imposing massive economic hardships on mankind, and it turns out to have been done for no reason other than their own gullibility or short-sighted greed, will they agree to compensate their fellow men by surrendering everything they own and blowing their own brains out in the public square?

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lately I've heard a lot of AGW activists pouring their hearts out in concern for their fellow man. They claim to be very concerned about the livelihoods and lives that, in their opinion, will most definitely be lost if we don't impose all sorts if restrictions on mankind's activities right fucking now. Only horrors await. Incalculable wealth and lives will be destroyed. Oceans of blood will be on the hands of the deniers if they succeed in preventing "the consensus" from doing what's right. And the cost of implementing the restrictions on human freedom and productivity would be minuscule in comparison to the apocalypse that will result from not restricting all of mankind.

I am glad that I read this Jonathan at this particular time because I have always been uncomfortable with a basic underlying contradiction in their assumptions.

First, the apocalyptic results they predict is well stated by you.

And as you point out, this is to save humans.

Secondly, however, their left hand is arguing that humans are pretty much a plague that needs to be eliminated to save Mother Gaia.

Seems a tad contradictory to me/

A...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lately I've heard a lot of AGW activists pouring their hearts out in concern for their fellow man. [...]

But what if they're wrong? What if they impose their restrictions on mankind, costing trillions and trillions, and imposing immense hardships, poverty and death on billions of people over a threat which existed only in their minds? What consequences do they think that they should face for being so stupid, arrogant and destructive?

I don't know which activists in particular you're talking about, well-known ones, people you're talking to personally, a mixture.

There is a variety of motivations and degrees of knowledge. For instance, I think the guy who runs "Forecast the Facts" (Brian Young, I think his name is) is as blinking ignorant as he sounds - i.e., I think he's sincere in his stupidity.

On the other extreme, I think that some prominent persons pushing draconian cuts in energy consumption anticipate and want bad results for humans at large. Paul Erlich is one I strongly suspect of being of this type.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lately I've heard a lot of AGW activists pouring their hearts out in concern for their fellow man. [...]

But what if they're wrong? What if they impose their restrictions on mankind, costing trillions and trillions, and imposing immense hardships, poverty and death on billions of people over a threat which existed only in their minds? What consequences do they think that they should face for being so stupid, arrogant and destructive?

On the other extreme, I think that some prominent persons pushing draconian cuts in energy consumption anticipate and want bad results for humans at large. Paul Erlich is one I strongly suspect of being of this type.

Ellen

Ellen, Undoubtedly they are few, the most lunatic of a crazy fringe whom the considered AGWers must feel embarrassed to associate with. How does one deal with them? The most radical terrorist at least believes in a 'good' for some people, even in heaven - this type is probably atheist, and all the 'good' he sees, is mankind - well...gone. It's on the furthest limit of nihilism: extreme intrinsicism. Literally, to them the only value for Earth will be when no 'valuer' remains - to hold a value.

Somewhat more sane is the Evangelical AGWer. Al, the Gore, pitched up a month or so ago in South Africa to deliver the usual schtik. (Hmm - SA is usually the touring destination of rock stars a little past their peak of popularity: is he becoming desperate?) I only caught a snatch of him on TV, and of course he was orating from a huge stage as usual, in a style I have to think of as "Charismatic Preacher".

(One assumes he arrived here by sail boat to reduce his carbon footprint. I don't know if any journalist was bold enough to ask.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ellen, Undoubtedly they are few, the most lunatic of a crazy fringe whom the considered AGWers must feel embarrassed to associate with.

I've very rarely seen AGWers embarrassed to associate with the lunatic preachers of doom.

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Question: If the subject of discussion were whether or not substance A was harder than substance B, would anyone other than moron politicians go along the claim that it was "settled" science if 97 percent of a group of government incentivized people who call themselves scientists agreed that substance A was very likely harder than substance B?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many people doubt that the "hockey stick" graph represents the actual temperatures of the past. But, with the push to pretend that the science is "settled," many AGW supporters don't seem to remember that the "hockey stick" graph's margin of error used to be included in the graph back before alarmists realized that making any reference to the margin of error, whether visual or verbal, wasn't good for their cause, since it quite clearly illustrates how unsettled the science of measuring past weather is.

Here's an old post of mine which illustrates the point (keep in mind that AGWers always err on the side of panic: their predictions of future temperatures are way too high, so I've corrected for that in my interpretation of the data below by pushing to the high end of the margin of error for past temps, which is generous given that AGW scientists' predictions of future temperatures are sometimes higher than their own declared margin of error):

This is the gloomy "hockey stick" graph which represents Al Gore and his leftist buddies' interpretations of the data:441143509_c7cb555cd6_o.jpg

The black area in the image below is the chart's margin of error, as stated by those who collected the data and made the chart, and as reported by some in the media when the chart was first released to the press (I first saw it in US News and World Report):441143507_ee5886a420_o.jpg

And this line, which falls within the margin of error, is my interpretation of the data:441143503_87726784e1_o.jpg

It looks like everything is going to be OK!

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Hockey Stick will prove to be as big an embarrassment when we finally get real climate science as was spontaneous generation of life was prior to Pasteur's studies.

The AGW crew made the medieval warming period disappear in order to produce the "Hockey Stick". It is a scandal and a disgrace.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ellen, Undoubtedly they are few, the most lunatic of a crazy fringe whom the considered AGWers must feel embarrassed to associate with.

I've very rarely seen AGWers embarrassed to associate with the lunatic preachers of doom.

J

Let's use Ellen's example of Paul Ehrlich, author of the Population Bomb [and to me, one of the more despicable "experts" ever to trod the last fifty (50) years of "science."

This link supports Erlich with a reference to Walter Williams columns that allegedly assert quotes that cannot be verified to Ehrlich:

Williams wrote:

Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, widely read on college campuses during the late sixties. Ehrlich predicted that there’d be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were worse: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

Walter Williams, More Liberty Means Less Government: Our founders knew this well, Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 453, 1999, p. 134

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/pure-political-smear-from-walter-williams-or-is-there-any-factoid-to-back-his-claim/

This is a Forbes interview of Erlich from 2013:

Michael Tobias: Paul, 45 years ago you published your book, The Population Bomb. It was no bomb, but a bestseller – millions of copies sold. Since then, a few things have changed for the better, much for the worse. How do you stack up the pros and cons of the human condition, and that of the biosphere, since publishing that provocative little book of yours?

Paul Ehrlich: Sadly, the book was much too optimistic. When Anne and I wrote it, for example, we expected climate change to be a problem for the end of this century, and now we’re in the middle of it. We didn’t know about ozone depletion or the accelerating loss of biodiversity. We predicted AIDS-type epidemics, but AIDS hadn’t yet arrived. We were too pessimistic on the food situation in the short term, but probably too optimistic in the long term. The population has more than doubled since we wrote the book, and the basic message is the same except that much time in which we could have worked to avoid a collapse of civilization has been wasted.

So, he uses a phrase in 2013 that no one used when he and his wife wrote the book...hmm.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2013/01/16/the-ehrlich-factor-a-brief-history-of-the-fate-of-humanity-with-dr-paul-r-ehrlich/

Continuing, with I will now call Naomi speak, Dr. Erlich asserts that:

Paul Ehrlich: Even with the decline, we’re still headed for about 9.5 billion people in 2050. Because each person added to the human population puts disproportionate stress on environmental systems, that growth (combined with increased consumption by those who have already achieved wealth) might well bring down civilization. Just think of the currently staggering climatic disruption worsening as each added person demands more energy use (as, on average, they do).

Therefore, it is pretty simple. Cull the population by two thirds [2/3] and crisis solved. We would need to do this with a selection process.

Hmm, do I hear the plaintive death speak of Dr. Strangelove?

I just love the carbon dioxide line!

A...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Erlich did us all a favor he got a vasectomy so he could not have children.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[....]

On the other extreme, I think that some prominent persons pushing draconian cuts in energy consumption anticipate and want bad results for humans at large. Paul Erlich is one I strongly suspect of being of this type.

Ellen

Ellen, Undoubtedly they are few, the most lunatic of a crazy fringe whom the considered AGWers must feel embarrassed to associate with. How does one deal with them?

Paul Erlich one "whom the considered AGWers must feel embarrassed to associate with"!?

Erlich is touted, respected, interviewed by major magazines, a "big gun."

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Erlich dislikes the human race. In some respects I cannot blame him. The human race is generally not a lovely group. We have some of the genetic bad habits passed down to us by our primate ancestors. Humans have to work hard to NOT be like our closest biological relatives, our cousins, the chimps, a monstrous, violent lot. Part of the civilizing process is to divest ourselves of our chimp-like impulses and be governed by reason at least some of the time.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paul Erlich one "whom the considered AGWers must feel embarrassed to associate with"!?

Erlich is touted, respected, interviewed by major magazines, a "big gun."

Ellen

Indeed. I think that we could take the average leftist and ask him to rate Ehrlich versus anyone who points out how hilariously wrong his predictions and croakings of doom have been, and that average leftist would answer that Ehrlich is a true scientist who is deserving of great respect, and has only been slightly somewhat off in one or two of his predictions, and, in comparison, any hateful denier who attacks Ehrlich's errors is a non-scientific kook who deserves no respect, and should probably be forcibly silenced.

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, something like the above, Jonathan. How a person ranks Ehrlich probably would serve as an approximate bellweather for identifying those who want to be running the world.

I see that I've misspelled the name in my earlier mentions - Ehrlich.

Out of curiosity I did a Google search on "Ehrlich kook" (without the quote marks). The only references I found calling him a kook are from anti-alarmists.

One example comes from a piece dated January 13, 2013, at a site called "motorcitytimes".

The piece quotes from a paper by Ehrlich which appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, also from Ehrlich and Holdren's book Ecoscience.

link to the motorcitytimes article

[From Ehrlich's Royal Society paper - direct link]

[bold emphasis added by motorcitytimes]

But today, for the first time, humanity's global civilization - the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded - is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems. Humankind finds itself engaged in what Prince Charles described as 'an act of suicide on a grand scale' [4], facing what the UKs Chief Scientific Advisor John Beddington called a 'perfect storm' of environmental problems [5].

[....]

The critical importance of substantially boosting the inadequate current action on the demographic problem can be seen in the time required to change the trajectory of population growth humanely and sensibly.

[The next part is an excerpt from Ecoscience by Ehrlich and Holdren.]

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

[returning to the Royal Society paper]

The needed pressure, however, might be generated by a popular movement based in academia and civil society to help guide humanity towards developing a new multiple intelligence [135], 'foresight intelligence' to provide the long-term analysis and planning that markets cannot supply. Foresight intelligence could not only systematically look ahead but also guide cultural changes towards desirable outcomes such as increased socio-economic resilience. Helping develop such a movement and foresight intelligence are major challenges facing scientists today, a cutting edge for research that must slice fast if the chances of averting a collapse are to be improved.

If foresight intelligence became established, many more scientists and policy planners (and society) might, for example, understand the demographic contributions to the predicament [136], stop treating population growth as a 'given' and consider the nutritional, health and social benefits of humanely ending growth well below nine billion and starting a slow decline.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now