Category Archives: Science And Society

Two Sets Of Ethos

An interesting example of how climate skeptics treat private documents versus the settled-science types:

…no skeptic I know of, including me, has yet “outed” the early drafts and author notes contained in Phil Jones JGR account. It would have been easy to do so, to publish Dr. Jones first submitted draft for the broadest peer review possible on the Internet. But no skeptic (that I know of as of this writing) did.

That’s a distinction of difference compared to the actions of people who created Fakegate via potentially criminal actions.

There’s a world of ethical difference between an Anthony Watts and a Peter Gleick. But we’re the ones they want to shut up, or herd off to the reeducation camps.

Climatologists Don’t Know Clouds

at all.

As I wrote a couple days ago:

I deny that we understand the complex and chaotic interactions of the atmosphere, oceans and solar and other inputs sufficiently to model them with any confidence into the future, and I deny that it is unreasonable and unscientific to think that those who [believe they] do suffer from hubris.

There may be some time in the future that we understand climate as well as they think they do, but I don’t think it will be soon, and I wouldn’t bet that it will ever happen.

The Green Movement Jumps The Shark

Walter Russell Mead:

Between Rajenda Pachauri and Peter Gleick, the international green movement has displayed a penchant for colorful personalities. But the root cause of the green meltdown is not the flawed personalities and eccentric ethical standards some greens display. The problem has been that the greens tried to stick the world with a monstrous and unworkable climate control system through the flawed medium of a global treaty. This project is so expensive, so poorly conceived and, in fact, so naive and unthinking, that greens increasingly felt their only hope to get their agenda adopted involved scare tactics.

Like Dean Acheson addressing the communist menace, they were “clearer than truth.” They stretched evidence, invented catastrophes — vanishing glaciers, disappearing polar bears, waves of force five hurricanes sweeping up the coast, the end of snow — to sell their unsalable dream. Not all greens were this irresponsible, but many prominent spokespersons and journalists working with the movement were; ultimately the mix of an unworkable policy agenda and a climate of hype and hysteria holed the green ship below the waterline.

Of contemporary mass movements, the green movement has been consistently the most alarmist, the least constructive, the most emotional, the least rational, the most intolerant and the most self righteous. What makes it all sad rather than funny is that underneath the hype, the misstatements, the vicious character attacks on anyone who dissented from the orthodoxy of the day, and the dumbest policy ideas since the Kellogg-Briand Pact that aimed to outlaw war, there really are some issues here that require thoughtful study and response.

Unfortunately, we’re not going to get it from people who are reflexively anti-human socialists, such as John Holdren.

The Climate Fraud

Ross Kaminsky called it:

If those climate alarmists who went after me (for what I said explicitly in my note was “my speculation”) had any honor, they would not just apologize, but feel some guilt for being associated with the religion of climate change whose high priests could sink to identity theft because they feel “frustration” at not being able to get the rest of the country to join their rent-seeking, anti-human cult.

In the meantime, I take some satisfaction in believing, though I’ll never know for sure, that my article gave Mr. Gleick some incentive to confess, before the FBI agent came to his door. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to spend the money on a new (non-Epson) scanner.

Note also the comments from Judith Curry, who has been one of the few people in the climate community actually acting like a scientist.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Johann Hari of climate “science.”

Kind of funny the sort of people they’ll hand out “Genius Awards” to.

[Update a couple minutes later]

But it was only a first offense: Gleick has apparently been removed from the AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics. Gee, I’d have thought he’d be a poster boy.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Don’t know much about science books.

[Update a while later]

In apologizing, Gleick blames his victims:

Once you begin to believe that the success of the Cause justifies deceit and theft, how long until you begin making excuses for other crimes committed on behalf of the Cause? I do not accuse Peter Gleick and his fellow fanatics of any Stalinist ambitions, but when we see them engaged in Stalinist methods — publishing forged documents to smear their critics – aren’t we justified in suspecting that they are not otherwise honest?

Actually, I suspect that some of them harbor Stalinist ambitions (e.g., Holdren). What a piece of work this guy is.

Appalling Nutritional Ignorance Among Doctors

on parade:

The event, which sold out all 4,000 tickets in 25 minutes, offers something to make every swine lover swoon: unlimited bacon samples, a bacon-eating contest, educational lectures, a bacon-themed songwriting contest and crowning of a new bacon queen. Organizers plan to serve up about three tons of the fatty strips.

They’re also prepared for a bit of oinking from outsiders.

A group of vegetarian doctors has been skewering Iowans over the event for months. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says he wants to publicize the flip side of bacon.

He says the PCRM plans to hand out fliers with warnings about how bacon “rotting in your mouth” potentially has various health risks, including cancer and diabetes.

I am aware of zero scientific evidence that anyone has ever gotten diabetes from eating bacon. And this is great:

Growing up in Fargo, N.D. …Dr. Barnard chowed down on bacon.

Both his father and grandfather were cattle ranchers. His palate changed, though, when he went off to Washington, D.C., for medical school.

A pathologist told Dr. Barnard, then 22 years old, to unlock a morgue freezer, pull out a body and help him examine the patient, dead from a heart attack.

The patient’s arteries were “hard as a rock,” Dr. Barnard recalls. The pathologist replied: “There’s your bacon and eggs, Neal.”

Soon, the medical student began to leave his carnivorous ways behind.

Primitive thinking like this is how ignorance is propagated. “You are what you eat.” “Big chief make crops grow.”

And we’re supposed to rely on these people for nutritional advice? And then let them force-feed our kids awful meals?

Hey, if you have ethical problems with eating animals, then be a vegan, but don’t delude yourself that it’s healthy, or that even if is for you that it will be for others. Now I’m curious as to what his cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels are.

For Everyone Who Wishfully Thinks That Michael Mann Was Exonerated

In light of all that’s happened, including continued UVA stonewalling, I say that he is the Jerry Sandusky of science.

[Update Saturday morning]

For those wondering, here are the parallels, that John O’Sullivan pointed out in November after the Sandusky case came to light:

Mann was never exonerated because the charges against him were never investigated. In both the Mann and Sandusky controversies the following points about Spanier’s stewardship are equally valid:

1. Both the Sandusky and Mann cover-ups involved a poorly executed investigation.

2. Both investigations saw the president making untrue statements.

3. Both involve an ethos that successful men can do no wrong; and the more famous and powerful they are, the more immune they are from scrutiny.

4. Both demonstrate a strong inclination to circle the wagons and seemingly show no interest in truth or justice.

5. Both involve extensive evidence going back years from a number of different sources and involving a variety of issues which should have raised red flags.

6. Spanier’s ‘investigations’ never interviewed witnesses against Mann or Sandusky.

But other than that, there is absolutely nothing in common.

[Bumped]

“Progressive” Bioconservatives

Thoughts on the strange political bedfellows of bioethics, from Ron Bailey:

These progressive bioconservatives fear that the rich and powerful will use technology, especially biotech, to outcompete and oppress the poor and weak. In their view, human dignity depends on human equality. It turns out that “the party of science” really is just the old-fashioned “party of equality,” science be damned (unless its findings conform to egalitarian ideology). Left-wing biocons seem to believe that protecting human dignity requires the rich and poor to remain equally diseased, disabled, and dead.

It’s always amazing to me to see the people who claim to be the “party of science” so fundamentally in denial of human nature. But of course, if they recognized it, their entire ideology falls apart. But this conflict is one more reason we need to expand off planet.