Like Rick Perry, for example:

“I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

Luckily, he’s out, but srsly, he was the top runner for a while.

“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. …And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”

This is most distressing to those of us who acknowledge the reality of climate change / global warming because one of these folks could ultimately lead the US next year and to the man and woman, they are all in denial.

So what is denial? As the saying goes, “It ain’t a river in Egypt”…

Denial:

denial [dɪˈnaɪəl]

Denialism: the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none. These false arguments are used when one has few or no facts to support one’s viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are effective in distracting from actual useful debate using emotionally appealing, but ultimately empty and illogical assertions.

We believe there are five simple guidelines for identifying denialist arguments. Most denialist arguments will incorporate more than one of the following tactics: Conspiracy, Selectivity, False Experts, Impossible Expectations/Moving Goalposts, and Argument from Metaphor/violations of informal logic.

“Follow the money and understand what’s really going on. This is a hoax. It’s junk science. It’s being portrayed as something to make you scared to death we’re all going to die. You’re supposed to vote liberal for this; supposed to make some sacrifices; pay higher taxes; drive a car you don’t want to drive; live in a house you don’t want to live; live where you don’t want to live … I don’t know who’s in the crosshairs on this, the US government, but it’s going to be various industries who are said to be polluting and Big Oil will probably be the big target here, Big Oil, Big Natural Gas, electricity, utilities, this sort of thing, it’s coming, you have been warned.”  Rush Limbaugh

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“The billion-dollar hoax: global warming rapidly falls from the ‘great moral challenge to our generation’ to ‘the great con that’s falling to bits’.”

Marc Morano

“much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.” I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” a statement that, to put it mildly, was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and their elitist organizations. I also pointed out, in a lengthy committee report, that those same environmental extremists exploit the issue for fundraising purposes, raking in millions of dollars, even using federal taxpayer dollars to finance their campaigns.” Inhofe

And Ken Cuccinelli:

“We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground”.

“Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century. “

“While it is true that global temperatures have risen somewhat during the past 100-plus years since the Little Ice Age ended, there was little room for temperatures to go at the time but up. The Little Ice Age, lasting from approximately 1300-1900 A.D., brought the planet’s coldest extended temperatures during the last 10,000 years. Saying that temperatures have risen by 1 degree or so since the end of the Little Ice Age tells us essentially nothing in the long-term temperature context because the arbitrary baseline of the Little Ice Age was an exceptionally cold climate anomaly.” Heartland Institute

“Yes, the decline had been disclosed in the “peer reviewed literature”. Indeed, that was how I became aware of the trick – long before Climategate and why, as an AR4 peer reviewer, I asked that IPCC not use the trick once again in AR4.

IPCC presentations are how the climate science community speaks to the world. Climate scientists, including CRU scientists, have a far greater obligation of full, true and plain disclosure in IPCC reports than even the specialist literature. Oxburgh pretends that (partial) disclosure of adverse results by CRU in specialist literature is sufficient. It isn’t. There was a continuing obligation to disclose adverse results in IPCC graphics.”

Filed under: Uncategorized ]]> http://metaclimate.org/2012/01/22/climate-denialism-for-dummies/feed/ 7 thepolicylass images-14 images-29 images-30 images-18 images-19 images-21 images-26 inhofe Unknown images-24 images-25 images-27 images-28 http://metaclimate.org/2012/01/08/the-top-ten-signs-that-youre-a-denier/ http://metaclimate.org/2012/01/08/the-top-ten-signs-that-youre-a-denier/#comments Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:05:37 +0000 Policy Lass http://metaclimate.org/?p=1539 ]]> There’s a lot of confusion out there in the climate denialosphere over the title “Denier” vs. “Skeptic” and their proper application. Many deniers seem unable to recognize themselves in the mirror while others deny their denialist tendencies, like an addict who says they can quit anytime they want — really!

Some get really really upset that we call them Deniers.

Just to help them figure it all out, I decided to post the top ten signs that you’re a denier.

Public servant to the core, or what?

10. When you watch a story on the telly about global warming, you look out your window and see snow and heave a huge sigh of relief because snow means it’s cold out and therefore, there can be no global warming.

A climate scientist would say that weather is not climate and will warn you that even though the average global temperature may be warming, there will still be winter and there will still be snow and there will still be a change in temperature between summer and winter, day and night.

For more on this story, you can visit the inimitable Anthony Watts who regularly mines the “weather is a sign that there is not AGW” meme.

For the antidote, you can visit Skeptical Science: Does Cold Weather Disprove Global Warming?

9. When a climate scientist points out that weather is not climate, you point out that the climate scientist is living high off the hog at the public trough.

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This meme suggests that climate scientists make the claim that the average global temperature is warming in order to keep lining their pockets with all those trillions of dollars.

In other words, climate scientists are primarily liars and cheaters and fraudsters who cook the books and create a false view of their work in order to rake in the dough. You know, like the folks on Wall Street.

A person with half a brain keen observer would point out that climate scientists spend at least 10 – 12 years getting their educations, then spend some years as underling research fellows before getting tenured positions at universities, where they get grants to do research and tend to live off a salary that, while it may be above the average wage, is far from the kind of income that would tempt corporate psychopaths, who tend to go into executive positions in banking or commerce. In other words, it’s far too much work and takes far too much education to get a job as a climate scientist for the average social psychopath to bother. They go where the money’s a lot easier to get and much bigger in magnitude.

It’s far easier to go into politics or business, where the rewards vs. effort expended is much more enticing.

That denizen of fair and unbiased reporting The National Review is a place to find this meme being replicated.

8. When some alarmist tells you that its warmer today than for at least 500, 1,000 or 2,000 years, you say “the hockey stick has been broken” and mention Steve McIntyre.

According to Steve McIntyre, the infamous “hockey stick” papers produced by Mann, Bradley and Hughes in 1998/99  used flawed data, methods and deliberately misrepresent the uncertainty in their findings. This was done, he argues, to make sure that the medieval warming period was wiped off the climate history books so that today’s warming would seem unprecedented. In other words, he’s suggesting that this was done deliberately and to mislead the public and policy makers. The hockey stick graphic and papers were then used to promote the theory of anthropogenic global warming at the IPCC and in governments around the world.

A climate scientist would argue that while the de-centered PCA method may be inappropriate as a methodology, this is a methodological debate not grounds for claims of fraud. Using a properly centred PCA analysis makes little difference in the end. A climate scientist would also point out that McIntyre and McKittrick use an improper “red noise” model to do their own analysis, thus their conclusions are flawed. A climate scientist would point out that other analyses not using the same proxy measures also find hockey-stick-like graphs of paleoclimate reconstructions.

Tim Ball, Canada’s Climate Denier Extraordinaire is the exemplar of this, although Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick started the meme and keep propagating it.

You can get the antidote by reading at Real Climate and Skeptical Science.

7. When the IPCC is mentioned on TV or in print, you froth at the mouth and point out that its just a front organization for a world socialist government.

This appears to be the great obsession of the more libertarian-minded climate deniers, who fear that any intervention in the market will result in the apocalypse itself. They fear that if people accept the reality of global warming caused by CO2 emissions, governments will intervene in the market and regulate CO2. The average libertarian, fed on Randian breast milk, fear government more than death itself, since, they believe, government is antithetical to freedom.

You’ll find many libertarians among deniers. It almost seems a pre-requisite for membership.

Viscount Moncton of Brenchley is a key spreader of this meme.

A social scientist would point out that the market which libertarians worship is not free and exists only because of massive government intervention in society to ensure that capital is mobile and protected. One of the most basic roles of modern governments is to ensure that conditions continue to exist so the market can function as it does. Capitalism is not the natural expression of human nature. If it were, we wouldn’t have needed a revolution to free the merchant class from the traditional bonds of feudalism and to allow people to own capital and dispose of it as they see fit. Because it is not natural, we must continually police it to make sure it doesn’t transgress those conditions which allow it to exist.

I’ve written about this many times before, but for the credible journalist’s take, you can read George Monbiot: Why libertarians must deny climate change, in one short stroke

6. When the news reports that average global temperature was once again in the top ten hottest on record, you pull out your hair and shout that the temperature record is flawed, that it is biased by station moves and station drop outs and bad siting.

This meme was largely created by Anthony Watts and Joseph D’Aleo, who spread unfounded alarmism about the quality of data used, and made outlandish claims that undermined some people’s confidence in the temperature record.

It doesn’t really matter that this meme has recently been debunked by none other than the Denialist’s once-golden boy Dr. Richard Mueller and the team at BEST — the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Group.

Watts claimed that he would accept the findings of the BEST analysis, no matter what they were. However, he’s backtracking now and finding fault with BEST.

Surprise surprise surprise…

5. When someone mentions Al Gore, you mention a) the size of his mansion b) the energy use of his mansion c) his green energy business interests and d) that he’s fat.

This is particularly hilarious when repeated by libertarians who otherwise laud the free market and market and capitalism and claim that it’s all a socialist fraud meant to destroy the free market. There’s money to be made in the green market, for sure. People will continue to make profits even if CO2 is regulated. Al Gore is rich and rich people tend to consume more than average income or poor people. The American Dream is carbon-intensive.

This is just more denialists talking out of both sides of their mouths. Google “Al Gore” and “Mansion” and you get over a million hits. This is prime denialist crack.

If you find yourself responding to it as outlined above, take the first step and admit you’re an addict. You’re a denier. Seriously.

4. When someone says that CO2 emissions grew yet again this past year, you point out that CO2 lags temperature.

This is often repeated by folks who have no real understanding of the difference between past climate change, which was natural and the result of larger geological, planetary and solar influences and current climate change, which is largely anthropogenic. It is also indicative of a lack of understanding regarding the role of CO2 as a forcer as well as a feedback.

Climate science understands this quite well. The glacial cycle is dominated by shifts in the earth’s angle to the sun over longer periods and how increases and decreases in solar insolation resulting from these shifts warm the earth, leading to the release of CO2 from the oceans and land masses, wherein CO2 becomes a feedback.

You can get the antidote at Skeptical Science: CO2 Lags Temperature.

That CO2 is also a forcer is supported by past climate change events wherein huge infusions of CO2 into the atmosphere led to climate change and global warming. Most of these events took far far longer than our current infusion of CO2, which is cause for concern, but that’s for another post.

3. When someone says that glaciers are melting and Greenland is losing ice mass at an unprecedented rate, you mention that Leif Ericson called it Greenland and therefore, Greenland had even less ice than today and hence it was once warmer than today.

Yes, and Greenland was once partially covered in a forested paradise — 450,000 years ago.

Historians like to point out that Ericson called it Greenland as a way to entice unsuspecting Norse farmers to go there.

It didn’t work because Greenland’s a fricking cold icy place.

However, that’s changing and you can watch this amazing video record presented at a TED Talk:

Repeating this meme works only because people are generally ignorant.

2. You get all your news on global climate at Fox News, Climate Audit and Watts Up With That.

Nuff said.

And the top reason you know you’re a denier:

1. You ignore the vast preponderance of evidence in the peer-reviewed climate science literature and post about every one-off contrarian paper that comes along before it’s even been replicated.

Like Watts Up With That.

You see, deniers deny the consensus opinion of established science and fail to appreciate the difference between real skepticism and faux skepticism — or cynicism.

A real skeptic bases their opinions on THE BALANCE OF EVIDENCE. They go where the preponderance of evidence leads them. They read the peer reviewed literature and base their opinions on the data and research as a whole, not on a single paper or scientist’s opinion.

In the matter of climate change, the consensus among climate scientists — real climate scientists — is that the world is warming and it is largely the result of human burning of fossil fuels.

All scientists are skeptics. They understand that no theory is ever perfect and that there is always room for opinions to be revised as new data comes in.

And they certainly don’t trumpet every contrarian paper that manages to get published.

That’s what deniers do.

Purporting to be the website of a grassroots movement of tens of thousands of “energy citizens” who are up in arms about the plans of those nasty anti-freedom un-American types to tax oil and GAS AND DESTROY JOBS OMGWTF!!!11 it’s nothing more than an attempt to protect its tax breaks by creating a false sense of threat to fossil fuel industry jobs.

It’s so crass and blatantly misleading that I’m disgusted and disheartened to think that anyone in his or her right mind would believe it.

Pure bunk.

Mother Jones covers the story here:

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Have you heard about the massive public uprising to protect Big Oil’s tax breaks? No? Oh, probably because it doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean the American Petroleum Institute won’t try to convince you it does!

API has launched a “new” Energy Citizens campaign to convince you, the average American, to help the oil industry trade group protect the lavish tax loopholes they currently enjoy. With that whole oil disaster in the Gulf, it looks like Congress might cut off the gravy train for oil companies when it comes to billions of dollars in tax breaks and direct subsidies every year. Now API has launched a new ad campaign to protect the handouts, as well as a new “grassroots” campaign to protect them. One big problem: Their latest astroturf effort looks a whole lot like their last astroturf effort.

In an attempt to counter this bunk Greenpeace through Polluter Watch has launched its own bunk-countering campaign, Vote 4 Energy.

Seriously, I don’t know how these people in the API and Fossil Fuel Industry / Denialists can live with themselves. But, as I read recently in the online version of the newspaper The Independent, the heads of many big corporations are likely morally deficient Corporate Psychopaths who have no moral conscience.

You’d have to be to so blatantly misinform.

Here’s an excerpt from that article:

My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.

He then makes an astonishing confession: “At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles.”

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

You can watch the Polluter Watch video Vote 4 Energy here:

Apparently, the Norfolk Constabulary made a visit to Tallbloke’s home with warrant in hand and a request to see his computer cache.

I gotta say it — 20 computers in his attic?

The response in the comments of Tallbloke’s post are hilarious!

Here’s Smokey:

Science blogging:

Encrypt
Encrypt
Encrypt

The feds couldn’t get Al Capone on his criminal syndicate, so they got him on income tax evasion. Word to the wise.☺

What’s funny is that Smokey refers to Al Capone, which isn’t the kind of comparison I’d like made about me – especially when there’s a criminal investigation of actions in which I may have been involved.

I’ll post updates as we get them.

UPDATE:

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Apparently, the UK police are collaborating with the US Dept of Justice, who has issued a “formal request” to WordPress.com to preserve evidence for the wordpress blogs for Tallbloke, The Hot Air Vent and Climate FrAudit.

Here’s The Guardian’s coverage:

Both Tattersall and a US-based climate sceptic blogger known as Jeff Id said they had received a “formal request” via the blogging platform WordPress from the US Department of Justice’s criminal division, dated 9 December, to preserve “all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession” related to their own blogs as well as to Climate Audit, a climate sceptic blog run by a Canadian mining consultant called Steve McIntyre. All three blogs had received messages from “FOIA” last month pointing to the link hosting a second tranche of emails first taken from the UEA in 2009.

For a good yuk, here’s Delingpole, speculating on who’s behind the recent action on the climategate matter:

Why this is the sledgehammer being used to crack a nut?

We can but feverishly speculate. My personal favourite theory so far – lent credence by several of the wise comments at Watts Up With That – is that it concerns all those encrypted emails that FOIA 2011 claimed to have in his possession when he unleashed Climategate 2.0. In other words, there may be more juicy stuff – much, much more juicy stuff – to come. It may also be that the names incriminated are not merely those of low-rent types like Phil Jones and Michael Mann, but senior politicians and businessmen with much more to lose if they’re ever found out.

So let’s hope they are, eh?

More updates as I get them…

UPDATE:

Over at WTFIUWT, William Old has a very sane thing to add, but apparently, William Old is new to WTFIUWT because what he’s accusing the commenters of doing is something that happens all the time at that site and other denialist sites:

Here’s the comment in whole [my emphasis]:

Case in point, the most recent post by none other than His Nibs, Viscount Christopher Moncton of Brenchley. The following excerpt is the most ideologically loaded pile of steaming bollocks analysis I’ve seen in quite some time. The way the Viscount portrays the Durban climate talks, you’d think a group of Bildersberg elites had teamed up with Lord Sauron himself to plot the total domination of the world!

The Viscount is clearly playing to the loonies, as the following shows.

I’ve bolded and italicized the pertinent words and phrases.

Here’s the Viscount:

The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Let’s do a little deconstruction, shall we?

.

First, we have the reference to “profiteering UN bureaucrats” who have made highly profitable careers out of what is lovingly called “the process”. Each term is, in itself, enough to start a whacko slathering, but together they’re almost like a strobe light to an epileptic. Those profiteering UN bureaucrats!

Just to be clear, the top level bureaucrat salary at the UN is $204,000 while the lowest salary is $47,491 (USD).  By comparison, the Chairman of Capital One made $242,000,000 – over a thousand times more than the highest paid UN bureaucrat. Michael Watford of Ultra Petroleum made $186,000,000.

I love it when deniers spout drivel on the money motives of scientists and government bureaucrats. It points out how vacuous their arguments really are.

So much for the profiteering UN bureaucrat. Remember, these are red flag words to the anti-government anti-environmental anti-climate science nutters.

More:

“establish a world government” paid for by “the West”.

YO Viscount!

You and your denier cronies don’t like government?

Have I got a country for you — Somalia!

You want freedom from those pesky government types? There are barely any to be had in Somalia. Nor are there reliable police or firefighters or doctors, or roads, or bridges or railways or cities with clean potable water, or electricity or sewage treatment plants or, well, pretty much everything else that makes modern civilization the gem of human evolution. OK, maybe there are a few of these here and there in Somalia for a while at some points in time, but nothing like you’ve grown used to. So shut your gob.

You see, government, especially the bureaucratic type we in the West complain about, is the solution to the problem of human barbarism, arbitrary power, and insecurity. Back in 1215 or thereabouts, we started to develop this thing called government and all its bureaucracy as a way to put limits on the ability of the inbred cretinous hereditary nobility to impose its psychopathic will over the rest of us, keep all the best land and food and products for themselves.

Considering you’re posting such drivel on a webpage read by millions, it obviously hasn’t gone far enough.

The rest of his post is just the usual denialist drivel and is far too vacuous and repetitive of the usual sad denialist tropes to bother with dissecting. It is fun, however, to witness the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on in the comments about these godless socialists out for one world government and to beggar the West…

Here’s a sample:

Since the Illustration, the western world gave itself freedom and individual rights as the base for progress. Now these climate alarmists want to destroy all we achieved, entering in a kind of global governance through the back door. Nobody voted them. They were not chosen by we the people. However they want to rule the world. To take us back to the Middle Age. To convert us in peasants. These climate alarmists and the eco-wackos and the civil servants that make a luxury living of this swindle are totalitarians. Excuse me, I feel like vomiting.

And more where that came from. I can practically hear those feathers ruffling and the panties twisting, can’t you?

This is outrageous! Why ANY western nation would even be in the same room talking with these criminals is beyond me. And thanks to WUWT and Lord Monckton for getting this desperately needed knowledge publicly available to the rest of us.

I am shocked at the naked ambition of the UN at their deliberate attack on western democracy, at the UN’s attack on Freedom, [note that's Freedom with a capital "F"] and the UN’s subversive attempts at world domination and even worse – NOT ONE WESTERN NEWS SOURCE EVEN ATTEMPTED TO INFORM THEIR OWN PUBLIC! And not one single western government source attempted to inform their voting public of the enormous stakes at this conference. That alone can be considered traitorous and all should place on trial for subversion.

Moreover, the UN should be disbanded immediately. And western nations should never pay a cent to that den of corruption ever again.

Dave has this to offer:

Call me crazy [OK, you're crazy. Bona fide nuts] but I am starting to think these warmist are sociopaths.
Many WUWT Readers have made reference to Orwell s 1984 – Here is further evidence in black and white of the socialist hordes storming the walls. These people are criminals paid for by hard working taxpayers worldwide. It;s time for brain scans of all politicians, bureaucrats and NGO;s you will find they exhibit the same low frontal brain activity that criminals murderers, and unreasoned people. History is filled with these delusioned individuals that have caused pain and suffering to millions of people with their unreasoned and frightening ideology’s. We are in another make or break period for freedom loving people the world.

Oh, NOES! US poor freedom loving peoples of the world! All those warmist sociopath hordes storming the walls, those criminals murderers and unreasoned UN people!!!!111

Help!

James sez:

It is rather astonishing that people like that exist, and they are a great threat to the human experience. They have thwarted humanity’s progress for some time now. Their misanthropy is palpable. They are scumbags and should be treated as such.

I do agree with one part of their demands. I believe an international tribunal should be established. (Outside U.N. control) It should assess the damage these people have done. Count the lives they have cost, and then execute swift Justice.

So now we have a call for executing swift justice, and I believe the term executing was chosen purposely.

This is the kind of craziness that nutters and crackpots and deniers incite — throwing out their bait and chum and standing back to watch the poor mindless sharks come to the taste and smell of blood.

Poor dears, all of them. I do hope they remember to take their meds tonight and calm down a bit.

Say no more…

I had a little fun with Picasa…

What’dya think’s the real problem? Donna or my idea?

Perhaps you, like me, have this very strong feeling that we’ve been here, done this, read the emails, saw the inquiry reports and realized it was all just a bunch of climate chum meant to confuse the issue and cast suspicion over the science to protect the interests of a select few among the 1% who reject regulation of their industries and their paid and/or intellectual lackeys who, while they may not benefit directly in bribes from continued burning of fossil fuels, are ideologically or politically biased…

So, more of the hacked emails are being circulated, with the usual bits and bobs cherry-picked to try to mislead the unsuspecting or credulous into thinking there is no global warming, no anthropogenic cause, and nothing to worry about — all of this due to selectively snipped emails that are taken out of context.

In other words, just more denier bait.

I’m shocked — shocked and appalled to my very foundations that scientists might express disdain for the work of their colleagues, question the value of data and methods, and disagree on what data means and how to present it!

I thought that they were just a great big happy family! Imagine my utter dejection at realizing that there are disagreements and debates between scientists when preparing their work for publication!

.

Wait a minute — we, the public, only see the end product of science and the scientific process. We see the papers after they’ve been published, after they’ve been written and edited and reviewed by peers, after the data has been collected and processed and analyzed, debated over, shared amongst colleagues, after the experiments and field work has been done, and after the first gleam starts to glow in the scientist’s eye as s/he considers what to study.

We never see inside the process and it surprises some that scientists are, well, dare I write the words — human? With biting wit, ungenerous comments, snide asides? Who are concerned about their work being misrepresented by vested interests and hope to ensure that the real seriousness of their findings is conveyed to the public?

I’d like to see the thousands of emails between McIntyre, McKitrick and their ilk on their process and thoughts over the years. And while we’re at it, why not all the emails by the various denier news media types as they discussed story topics? And how about all those paid shills from the fossil fuel industry and PR corporations? And how about EXXON Mobil’s emails discussing strategy on how to delay climate legislation to regulate their industry?

In the end, there have been eight inquiries into the conduct of climate science and climate scientists and none have found academic misconduct.

More and more we see stronger evidence of the threat to the global climate from continuing the current rate of fossil fuel emissions.

Nothing in this newest pail of denier bait changes the science. None of it questions BEST or the other temperature records.

Ultimately, there is one take-home thought I have about the current release of this recycled chum — there can’t possibly be any link between the release of this rehashed second-tier denier bait and the talks in South Africa?

Oh, no! That would be a crass and cynical attempt at manipulation of the whole process!

For more on this, see the following:

Leo Hickman: The Guardian

Kate Sheppard: Mother Jones

Richard Black: BBC

Real Climate: Two Year Old Turkey

Shawn Otto: Neorenaissance

Jocelyn Fong: Media Matters

Scott Brophy: Say What?

Stephan Lewandowski: The Conversation

Richard Littlemore: DeSmogBlog

Shawn Otto at The Huffington Post

Get Energy Smart Now

Joe Romm at Think Progress

Peter Sinclair – Climate Crock of the Week

Barry Bickmore — Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah

Scott Mandia: Global Warming: Man or Myth?

Tck Tck Tck

Union of Concerned Scientists

A long detailed post about the a scandal around one of Yale’s star academics and its failure to deal with the allegations of child molestation raised against him. McIntyre links this to the current Penn State scandal. Of course we’re all familiar with another Penn State academic and inquiry …

Say no more. A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man!

As usual, he’s chumming, throwing bait out in the water so that it’s bloody enough to attract the sharks and then standing back all innocent-like to deny he meant anything sinister.

But his sharks circle and can’t resist — they’re drawn by the scent of blood and here’s Richard Drake with the first real bite:

Posted Nov 15, 2011 at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Reply

The way things come to prominence is a mystery. But eventually they do. The fact that abuse of minors can be tolerated or overlooked by ‘upstanding academic leaders’ is something that should not only attract national press attention but cause a lot of hard questions to be asked about how these institutions have reached such a pass.

That’s the link with the very different concerns we have with climate academia. Atrocious leadership in one area is unlikely to excel in the other.

And in the involvement of Neil Wallis in the phone hacking scandal still unfolding in the UK and in lending a hand to UEA’s dreadfully dishonest PR efforts post-Climategate we have another example where one part of the story is very prominent within the mass media and the other completely ignored.

Till now. Such artificial boundaries between openness and self-censorship cannot forever endure.

Never mind that no one has been charged with anything when it comes to climate science inquiries and all have been exonerated of any charges of academic misconduct. We won’t let that stand in the way of a convenient smear! Unwilling to accept the conclusions of the various inquiries, McIntyre and his followers continue to chum and churn, hoping to keep the appearance of wrong-doing alive, despite the official findings.

But it’s Geoff Sherrington who stirs up the waters the most and takes the biggest bite:

Posted Nov 15, 2011 at 3:42 AM | Permalink | Reply

We are in strange territory here. Earlier I posted (while travelling and away from my library) that Lasaga was not a name tossed around at the time in the geochemical world that I infested. Given Steve’s longer header above, the reason is probably because geochemists fall into two main groups, those who aim to dicover valuable goods (exploration) and those who aim to publish (academic). This classification is a little rough on individuals in both groups and nothing personally insulting is meant to anyone.

No, no personal insult meant! Just one huge sweeping smear against those who do academic work! Pedophiles and perverts all!

See — chumming really works!

Wait — there’s more!

Because this is a blog about climate auditing, it comes to mind that there seems to be a personality type that inhabits the climate science world, just as in academic geochemistry. Maybe the strong point in common is the immersion of this psychological type in matters of science that are hard to impossible to prove. I know some eminent geochemists and geologists who would contest even the presence of water in silicate melts in Nature, let alone publish extensively among a close group that awards mutual medals. One wonders how much Science can be advanced with the apparatus and opportunities available in a prison cell. Is there such a place as a dreamland for scientists, a dreamland that forms into a clique with a cloak of respectability?

Those academic geochemists! One is a pervert and therefore one concludes that the field attracts perverts!

It is too difficult to generalise far down this path, [but note that he does anyway] so we won’t go into the unacceptable private conduct area. In the exploration geochemistry world, I have never encountered strange sexual or intellectual conduct, not even gossip about it, nothing I can recall about anyone going to the little room to break big rocks into small rocks.Climategate was something of a window, albiet an alien one, into the minds of several. For example, read the sign-off from Keith on Mon May 12 21:26:29 2003. This was probably a joke, but Climategate did give a strong impression a cult behaviour; and when there are cults, who knows how strange they can be.

Exploration geochemists are normal red-blooded men! Men of normal tastes!  It’s those damn academic types, wot! Cults! Perversions! Pedophiles!

Steve, thank you for once more drawing attention to the strange personal properties that can be acquired by some scientists. The one that bothers me most is the departure from the generally accepted “scientific method” in the loose sense. It seems that it is often accompanied by departure from the norms of general social conduct, such as a reticence to conduct an honest inquiry, a dogged defence of inventive methodology that is plausibly flawed and so on to areas seldom discussed. [my emphasis]

Yes, be very afraid of those academic types who do not follow the rigors of science and its methods — down that path lies perversion!!!!

CHE has this to add:

Posted Nov 15, 2011 at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Reply

A month or so ago, Judy Curry had a thread on a study of Jungian psychological profiles of climate scientists vs other physical scientists, and the results were quite striking. They are indeed, very, very different. It isn’t just your imagination.

You can read that Jungian drivel here.

Of course, the denizens of CHUM-O-RAMA deny they mean to link the Penn and Yale sex scandals to Mann and the various inquiries — O NOES! That would be very very bad! So when such a thing is suggested at Deep Climate, they’re all a-twitter about being so misunderstood!

In keeping with the sexual theme, Steve has a new post up in which he features a “deep throat” source into the Penn State Inquiries into Michael Mann – whom Steve calls PS. More porn-chum for his sharks.

Seriously gobsmacked here. This really must be preserved for posterity.

The two are very different realms and sadly, operate on different principles. O, that pubic discourse was as skeptical and rigorous as scientific discourse! It isn’t, for a variety of reasons, primarily due to inadequate public education in science and reason.

In his last interview before his untimely death, one of my favourite science communicators, Carl Sagan, said the following:

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us something is true – to be skeptical of those in authority – then we’re up for grabs by the next charlatan political or religious that comes ambling along.

The development of science is an historically central development in our species’ history and civilization. Science is a method for producing knowledge about and understanding of the natural world in such a way that the knowledge produced is more likely to be accurate and valid. It’s also a stance towards knowledge, in that it demands that knowledge claims be put to the test and if they are found lacking, then they must be reconsidered.

One of the oft-repeated claims of the climate science contrarians/deniers is that climate scientists are not good scientists and climate science is not good science. Neither, they claim, follow the main precepts of science, primarily skepticism and rigour with methods and free sharing of data. This is McIntyre’s claim to fame and his entire focus in attacking the “hockey stick” and “team”, the IPCC and the temperature record.

.

Another contrarian/denialist claim is that climate scientists  not only do bad science, they are advocates of a particular political or ideological perspective (evil environmentalist liberal socialists statists) and as such their work cannot be called science.

James Hansen is the scientist most often slandered thusly, but also Mike Mann and others involved in publishing climate science papers or scientists who blog about climate science.

These contrarians/deniers often sound good, and to the unsuspecting and those who don’t know better or don’t want to know better, they can be convincing. There is a valid point to be made about the role of skepticism in science, and the rigour of scientific methodology and ethics, but the denier/contrarian arguments are disingenuous.

They’re bunk.

The Urban Dictionary puts it succinctly:

Bunk — nonesense, utter rubbish, BULLSHIT

That definition expresses my emotional response to such contrarian/denialist blather, but I find the following to be more complete definitions:

[Note: I've included a translation into the current situation for clarity]

Substances (Denialist nonesense) duplicitously sold (portrayed incorrectly) as illegal/illicit/recreational chemicals (as valid analysis) that do not produce the desired effect (that is bollocks).

Illegal/illicit/recreational chemicals (Scientific principles) cut to such an extreme (adulterated) that their effect is severely reduced (to create codswallop not fit for intellectual consumption.)

Science, as explained in a recent article in Scientific American, ”…begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise.” However, even rejecting the null hypothesis or failure to do so is not evidence of certainty about the claim being investigated.

This is also critical because science is never finished or complete. It is always provisional. New evidence can and often does overturn or result in revision of previously held ideas about the natural world and its processes. As Feynman wrote, ”Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.”

This is in complete contrast to belief systems such as religion and ideological approaches or traditions, in which there is a body of knowledge and claims about human nature that are considered to be true for all time, without revision, and completely certain. The whole purpose of religion or ideology is to not question, not to doubt but to accept the claims on faith, without evidence. Evidence isn’t necessary for religion or ideology. These systems negate the need for skeptical consideration of evidence. They provide useful templates through which to pass evidence and if the evidence fits it’s accepted, and if it doesn’t, it’s rejected.

Complete opposite of science.

In science, the null hypothesis rules. In politics, there is no hypothesis — there is a thesis and it is used to evaluate the evidence and select that which is kept and that which is jettisoned. Hence, a radical libertarian operating with the thesis that government is the enemy of freedom and the market its true expression rejects the best scientific evidence on principal.

The best scientific research and evidence is known as anthropogenic global warming. It suggests that greenhouse gasses produced through the burning of fossil fuels are leading to a warming of the climate and if the emissions continue, they will be a major threat to the global climate. Our civilization emerged in a relatively stable period of climate within a narrow range of temperature. A significant increase global temperature — which the best science says is above 2C – could possibly lead to climate upheaval.

This logically leads to the need for intervention of some kind to address the threat.

Given the global nature of the fossil fuel industry, this suggests logically that there is a need for global action, necessitating some kind of international governmental cooperation and intervention in the fossil fuel market and economy through actions such as taxation and regulation to address the threat.

For a libertarian of a certain bent, this is sacrilege because it goes against the most basic precepts of the ideology, that are taken on faith and accepted as dogma. So you see, political ideologies such as libertarianism are like religion in a previous era — they have their faith and anything that challenges that faith must be labeled as heresy and quashed.

This is anti-science. It puts political ideology ahead of evidence.

The development of science is the greatest human achievement. Science allows humanity to move beyond belief systems that are arbitrary and based on the use of force or threat of force to the production of knowledge of the the universe that is more or less objective. Not perfect truth, but much closer to it than had been achieved prior to its development.

Skepticism is a very important part of science.

Until the rise of science as a method for producing knowledge about the universe, we were all up for grabs, to put it in Sagan’s terms — primarily by those in authority and who had power. Religious leaders, the elites of all stripes, political leaders, and those who had skill in rhetoric or force of personality were able to impose their interests over the rest of us. Loosening the grip over truth held by religious leaders, political and economic powers by those demanding that evidence for claims be produced and verified, was perhaps what led to the flowering of human knowledge and the advancement of our civilization.

However, science is something that is separate from what most ordinary citizens experience or know much about. Research has shown that humans are by nature perspectival and inclined to select evidence to reinforce our own interests and support our biases. But our advancement from being merely another animal adapted to nature to a technologial being who shapes nature depends on our ability to understand nature as objectively as possible, how it works, and how our actions affect it and ourselves.

In other words, using science.

Sagan also said the following in that amazing interview:

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

This is my big fear. I find Sagan’s point to be so very significant and cautionary, especially in these times and when we citizens must decide who will make decisions for us about issues such as climate and the economy. We have advanced technology and scientific knowledge such that we can re-engineer humanity, alter the climate and cause species that have been around for millions of years to disappear through our actions. Yet, the average citizen is largely ignorant of what science is and what it does.

They are open to whatever political or ideological charlatan comes along, spouting sciency-sounding bunk.

A combustible mixture of ignorance and power indeed.