Monday, July 06, 2009
CENSORED BY REALCIMATE.ORG
Realclimate is the blog always quoted by alarmists (Monbiot defends his rubbish regularly by quoting them. It's best known name is Michael Mann author of the Hockey stick graph which the IPCC used extensively. It was subsequently proven not merely that it was wrong & incompetent but that Mann had deliberately hidden the method of calculation which he should have known were false. One can see why it is the top alarmist site then. Neither my comments or the reply contain anything as amusing as a former editor of Nature saying the government's chief science advisor should be inn kindergarten as happened in the Deltoid discussion but the degree to which their "debate" depends on insulting is obvious:
149 - You say this report was – apparently “suppressed” – by the EPA & that it – supposedly – undermines what the EPA case.
Is there any actual doubt that the EPA did suppress it & that it, despite it coming from EPA personnel who clearly weren’t on message to what was required, not only undermined the EPA claims but flatly disagreed with them?
[Response: The Endangerment finding was open for public comment for months, no comments were 'suppressed' and Carlin could easily have put in his paper there. Instead he wanted it to be the official submission from his unit (NCEE) to the process which was not approved by his boss. How is that suppression? Who has an automatic right to get their institution to give their non-official musings on any subject they care to write about an imprimatur? No-one I know. But in any case, the real issue is whether there is any credible science in the document. There isn't, and so whether the NCEE was or was not embarrassed to be associated with this is not really my concern as a scientist. - gavin]
As for calling Friends of Science an “a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group” – by “astroturf” do you mean it involves only a small number of people who all work full time for some organisation (government or industry) because if so Realclimate is astroturf. he “anti-climate science” line is even stranger. Science is a process of comparing differing theories so if climate science is a genuine science it must welcome examination. The only way it would be possible for Mr Gregory to be “anti-climate science” is if he claims the subject doesn’t exist i.e. that this planet has no atmosphere & thus no climate which can possibly be scientifically examined. If this is what you are really claiming that would indeed be extraordinary.
[Response: I might suggest that Gregory's and the FoS's connection to the practice of true science is somewhat ambiguous.... - gavin]
That Carlin & Davidson’s conclusions reflect those Friends of Science hold is not, obviously a reasonable criticism. All science is based on standing on others shoulders & it is no more a criticism of what they say than it is of Realclimate to say appear to be directly that same as the IPCC’s. Indeed the opposite is true & there actually is some limited value in being able to show that your views hold a consensus position.
Proper criticism in science involves disputing the facts & the closest you come to that is saying they show a “complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales” which actually isn’t disputing facts but merely stating that the 11 years of cooling isn’t enough to count. If that is your position presumably the 18 years from 1980 to 1998 when we had warming isn’t enough to count either. By your own argument the whole alarmist cause has, from the start, been guilty of exactly the fault you complain of except magnified since alarmists take this short period as evidence of a change unparalleled in human history, likely to make Antarctica the only habitable continent & justifying our destruction of most of the world economy (as we can all see) whereas sceptics are merely sceptical of such claims.
[Response: "Destruction of most of the world economy" - and you are accusing me of being alarmist for pointing out that climate sensitivity is not negligible? Funny that. - gavin]
CENSORED REPLY:
Re the responses to my post 149:
1 - You seem to now be disputing not whether the the report was suppressed but merely asking me to say why the author should think his bosses shouldn’t have done so. The answer is not because the author has right to be heard but that the EPA, as a body funded by the taxpayer, has a duty to put up all the evidence not merely what supports their programme. This should also be the self enforcing duty of all scientists.
2 - You might indeed “that Gregory’s and the FoS’s connection to the practice of true science is somewhat ambiguous” & I might make a similar suggestion about the Hockey Stick theory & Realclimate but if one does so without producing evidence one is simply dropping to the level of schoolyard insults. What exactly is your evidence that all those involved in Friends of Science, including Mr McKittrick, have no good relationship with science?
3 - Alarmists are calling for the ending of around 80% of combustion on the planet. There is a strong correlation between economic capacity & power usage & thus those who don’t publicly support a massive extension of nuclear power (admittedly there are a handful who do) are in effect calling for the destruction of around 80% of the world economy. This would indeed be “most” of the world economy & before doing so we should have undisputable evidence that warming, on a catastrophic scale such as would render “Antarctica the only habitable continent” is actually happening. There is a theory & there are computer models (ie a theory calculated on a computer) but where is the evidence of catastrophic warming?------------------------------
This was hardly a surprise since I have been censored by alarmists on Deltoid & the aptly named Brave New Climate but it does seem enough to establish a statistical conclusion - that alarmists are almost wholly unable to sustain their claims without censorship & so opposed to the principle of science to be willing to use it in scientific discussion, after lies & personal vituperation have failed them.
Gavin who put up the first answers will be Gavin Schmidt who has clearly learnt by his experience debating Michael Crichton in New York, that honest debate cannot serve the alarmist's cause.
If any reader knows of a single eco-fascist or alarmist site, anywhere in the world, which actually deals with science & doesn't believe in censorship I hope you will let me know because I find it difficult to believe that there isn't somebody both competent & honest selling this.
149 - You say this report was – apparently “suppressed” – by the EPA & that it – supposedly – undermines what the EPA case.
Is there any actual doubt that the EPA did suppress it & that it, despite it coming from EPA personnel who clearly weren’t on message to what was required, not only undermined the EPA claims but flatly disagreed with them?
[Response: The Endangerment finding was open for public comment for months, no comments were 'suppressed' and Carlin could easily have put in his paper there. Instead he wanted it to be the official submission from his unit (NCEE) to the process which was not approved by his boss. How is that suppression? Who has an automatic right to get their institution to give their non-official musings on any subject they care to write about an imprimatur? No-one I know. But in any case, the real issue is whether there is any credible science in the document. There isn't, and so whether the NCEE was or was not embarrassed to be associated with this is not really my concern as a scientist. - gavin]
As for calling Friends of Science an “a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group” – by “astroturf” do you mean it involves only a small number of people who all work full time for some organisation (government or industry) because if so Realclimate is astroturf. he “anti-climate science” line is even stranger. Science is a process of comparing differing theories so if climate science is a genuine science it must welcome examination. The only way it would be possible for Mr Gregory to be “anti-climate science” is if he claims the subject doesn’t exist i.e. that this planet has no atmosphere & thus no climate which can possibly be scientifically examined. If this is what you are really claiming that would indeed be extraordinary.
[Response: I might suggest that Gregory's and the FoS's connection to the practice of true science is somewhat ambiguous.... - gavin]
That Carlin & Davidson’s conclusions reflect those Friends of Science hold is not, obviously a reasonable criticism. All science is based on standing on others shoulders & it is no more a criticism of what they say than it is of Realclimate to say appear to be directly that same as the IPCC’s. Indeed the opposite is true & there actually is some limited value in being able to show that your views hold a consensus position.
Proper criticism in science involves disputing the facts & the closest you come to that is saying they show a “complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales” which actually isn’t disputing facts but merely stating that the 11 years of cooling isn’t enough to count. If that is your position presumably the 18 years from 1980 to 1998 when we had warming isn’t enough to count either. By your own argument the whole alarmist cause has, from the start, been guilty of exactly the fault you complain of except magnified since alarmists take this short period as evidence of a change unparalleled in human history, likely to make Antarctica the only habitable continent & justifying our destruction of most of the world economy (as we can all see) whereas sceptics are merely sceptical of such claims.
[Response: "Destruction of most of the world economy" - and you are accusing me of being alarmist for pointing out that climate sensitivity is not negligible? Funny that. - gavin]
CENSORED REPLY:
Re the responses to my post 149:
1 - You seem to now be disputing not whether the the report was suppressed but merely asking me to say why the author should think his bosses shouldn’t have done so. The answer is not because the author has right to be heard but that the EPA, as a body funded by the taxpayer, has a duty to put up all the evidence not merely what supports their programme. This should also be the self enforcing duty of all scientists.
2 - You might indeed “that Gregory’s and the FoS’s connection to the practice of true science is somewhat ambiguous” & I might make a similar suggestion about the Hockey Stick theory & Realclimate but if one does so without producing evidence one is simply dropping to the level of schoolyard insults. What exactly is your evidence that all those involved in Friends of Science, including Mr McKittrick, have no good relationship with science?
3 - Alarmists are calling for the ending of around 80% of combustion on the planet. There is a strong correlation between economic capacity & power usage & thus those who don’t publicly support a massive extension of nuclear power (admittedly there are a handful who do) are in effect calling for the destruction of around 80% of the world economy. This would indeed be “most” of the world economy & before doing so we should have undisputable evidence that warming, on a catastrophic scale such as would render “Antarctica the only habitable continent” is actually happening. There is a theory & there are computer models (ie a theory calculated on a computer) but where is the evidence of catastrophic warming?------------------------------
This was hardly a surprise since I have been censored by alarmists on Deltoid & the aptly named Brave New Climate but it does seem enough to establish a statistical conclusion - that alarmists are almost wholly unable to sustain their claims without censorship & so opposed to the principle of science to be willing to use it in scientific discussion, after lies & personal vituperation have failed them.
Gavin who put up the first answers will be Gavin Schmidt who has clearly learnt by his experience debating Michael Crichton in New York, that honest debate cannot serve the alarmist's cause.
If any reader knows of a single eco-fascist or alarmist site, anywhere in the world, which actually deals with science & doesn't believe in censorship I hope you will let me know because I find it difficult to believe that there isn't somebody both competent & honest selling this.
