Category Archives: "Political" Science

McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in

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“McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in“. Anthony Watt’s favorite Aussie crank ‘journalist’ Andrew Bolt tries to throw the “smear” accusation back at political scientist John Quiggin, who dares to complain that “Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.”

Prof. Quiggin accuses Steven McIntyre of orchestrating the Climategate leak. Where’s the evidence, cries Andrew Bolt. Anthony joins in with some practical ethics – “Somebody needs to educate Quiggin on the CRU ftp security blunder that was “the mole”. Anthony, even if your description of the ‘method of acquisition’ is correct it is still theft to take a wallet from an unlocked car.

Guess which photo Anthony chose to depict the despised Prof. Quiggin?

Ever-helpful Anthony concludes by pointing his readers to Prof. John Quiggin’s contact information to aid their harassment.

Academics fight back on climate issues

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“Academics fight back on climate issues“. Hoping it sticks in his reader’s throats, Anthony Watts copies and pastes a statement from mainstream academics calling for “credible science, rather than invented hyperbole”.

Guess what? His readers are enraged at the thought… Cue the flooding of in-boxes and harassment of administrative assistants.

IPCC announces “independent” review

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“IPCC announces “independent” review“. Surprise, surprise: Anthony Watts is treating this as simultaneously proof that the “mainstream” is going to whitewash all the errors (two? three? five?) in AR4 and that the repeatedly declared sea-change in public opinion against the corrupt climatologists is underway.

Because this news wasn’t instantly displayed on the IPCC’s home page, Anthony knows that the IPCC is trying to slip something by the public. Read the IPCC PDF here.

When the IPCC disappeared the Medieval Warm Period

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“When the IPCC disappeared the Medieval Warm Period” Frank Lansner offers a limp implication of conspiracy theories against the IPCC. Anthony Watts thinks it’s good stuff. Frank’s own website is “Hide the Decline”, so you can see the debunked starting point that he’s coming from…

Where's the warm spot Frank? 1000 - 1400 can be colder or warmer even among your "selected" data sets. How is this IPCC manipulation?

It’s funny that we have to keep saying this, but the “IPCC” doesn’t do any climate research, they gather independent scientific conclusions and amalgamate them. The whole point of each revision of the IPCC reports is to merge new evidence and better understanding of existing evidence.

But Frank thinks that accusing the IPCC of differences between reports(!!!) is the same thing as proving manipulation. I think Frank would have better luck with his position if he stopped hunting for charts that he can spin to suit his bias and focussed on what actually drove the updates. You know, things like when new data was available or if a more correct interpretation of old data was found or perhaps the introduction of an improved error correction. But as nothing remotely like this is apparent in his post, we must assume that he’s incapable of doing it.

Former Apartheid Spy Appointed to Head UN Climate Change Effort

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“Former Apartheid Spy Appointed to Head UN Climate Change Effort“. Charles “the Moderator” doesn’t like the political background of Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the South African politician who is a candidate for head the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, so he links to a right-wing pundit’s blog about it.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, UNFCC candidate and former South African Minister for Environmental Affairs & Tourism.

I have no opinion on the Mr. van Schalkwyk or the reasoning for his nomination, but I’d have thought that the Denialists would be smart enough to hold their fire until after the election and complain about whoever is actually chosen. Criticizing now just dilutes their “anger”…

Emails from “attack ad” science group posted

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“Emails from “attack ad” science group posted“. Anthony Watts is happy to report that a new batch of scientist’s private e-mails have been “obtained” by The Washington Times and are being quote-minded for juicy bits. Somehow the Competitive Enterprise Institute has “independently obtained” the e-mails too. Anthony says that the “e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate.” I say that the Climategate thing has coasted to a halt and the disappointed denialists are giving the tactic another try to get the hit of attention they crave.

So who are these Machiavellian “prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science”? Well, actually they seem to be biologists not climatologists, and they are simply members of NAS, not representatives of it. What is their “scheme”? Raise money to pay for a newspaper ad that would highlight the unaccountable falsehoods and character assassination that the denialists deal in. Now that’s nefarious!

Because everyone knows that scientists shouldn’t be allowed to have political opinions, or even worst, express them. That’s reserved for “think tanks” and cranks.

The ‘damning’ quotes Anthony presents are almost comically tepid. Here’s a typical one: “Op eds in the NY Times and other national newspapers would also be great.”

Grasping at Straws

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“Grasping at Straws“. Charles Rotter (the “Moderator”) posts a newspaper article from USA Today called Scientists misread data on global warming controversy. The “data” in question is not temperature records or CO² levels, its opinion polls that show dropping public concern over climate change.

The article suggests that public confidence in ‘scientists’ is actually quite high, presumably excluding the denialosphere, and that people are simply focussed on the harsh short-term economic situation. The concern of climate scientists is that political resistance and misinformation are obscuring the highly probable negative consequences of AGW and encouraging dangerous inaction.

Charles’ entire insight is “If you try really really hard to ask questions a certain way, then you’ll get the answers you want.” He’s trying to spin this two ways. Firstly, he’s implying that the mainstream is trying to position the bad news of a drop in public concern over AGW as an understandable and temporary matter. Secondly he’s implying that climate scientists are panicking over losing funding. Them Ferrari’s ain’t gonna buy themselves!

However his odd remark seems more like advice to fellow denialists. Their anti-AGW positions are often the result of looking at a particular fact or set of data from every possible angle and finding one perspective that if they squint just right looks like it supports their desired conclusion, regardless of how crazy or dishonest it is. Then they discard all the other rational perspectives.

That’s why, for instance, denialists have lately latched onto the “no warming since 1995” claim. We posted on this back on February 16th. The 1995-2009 temperature rise happens to be short enough and modest enough that it falls just short of 95% statistical probability. This can be used to maneuver honest scientists into “admitting” that considering only that arbitrary period, there has been no statistically conclusive warming. Proof!

Swedes call out Jones on data availability

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“Swedes call out Jones on data availability“. Anthony Watts wants us to think that The Stockholm Initiative is an objective scientific institution commenting honestly, and of course critically, on the Climategate false controversy.

In fact, The Stockholm Initiative is simply a collection of Swedish denialist cranks. They claim “For more than 20 years, a few dozen researchers, but above all, politicians and media, have spread the notion that carbon dioxide emissions will cause a global climate catastrophe.” (Their website was down while writing this, the quote is from Google’s cache.)

Ah, cranks with Photoshop and a poor grasp of English.

Their accusation is that Dr. Phil Jones was lying when he said that Sweden had refused to allow their climate data to be released. According to The Stockholm Initiative, it is actually already in the public domain.

This leads to some interesting questions. If this claim is true, why were the denialists demanding the Swedish data from Dr. Jones? Why did they never contact the original data holders? Why was their Freedom of Information demand necessary?

My answer is that they weren’t really interested in the data, they simply wanted to harass a researcher whose conclusions didn’t suit their agenda.

2010-03-17 Update: There’s a good look at this deception on Stoat. He draws attention to the fact that The Stockholm Initiative’s legal submission about the availability of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute’s data is false. The data was not publicly available until a few days ago. Sadly, The Stockholm Initiative is out of reach of the British legal system.

Ad hoc group wants to run attack ads

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“Ad hoc group wants to run attack ads“. At first I thought Anthony Watts was trying to help his “think tank” friends raise money for some more “CO² is good for you” TV spots, but he’s actually complaining about some scientists proposing to respond to attacks on conventional climatology research.

Stanford University biologist Paul R. Ehrlich says that “we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules”. True, true. It’s maddening to see the unchallenged denialist bunk that reaches the public. That’s one of the reasons for I started this humble website.

But I’m reminded of the George Bernard Shaw quote: I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.

Anthony, you’re the pig.

Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop “persuading the public”

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Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop “persuading the public”. Reading a New York Times article entitled Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate, Anthony Watts concludes that Gavin Schmidt’s realclimate.org, the climatology website that explains climate science, should stop doing it. Climatologists should stick to their thermometers and leave the ‘splainin’ to Anthony, because he’s so good at it. Actually Anthony, I think you’re just wishing you could prevent reality from interfering with your fantasy world.

This quote about denialists from Energy Secretary Steven Chu puts Anthony in context: “What standard are they being held to? It’s very asymmetric. They get to say anything they want.”

Anthony’s also delighted that one of his blogging buddies, “citizen-scientist” Willis Eschenbach, is quoted in a NYT article: “I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret – I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored”. He apparently wants scientists to “stop trying to pass off garbage as science.” Psychologists call this projection.