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When scientists put their hands over their ears and shout loudly “We don’t want to hear you”

By: Joliphant (Diary)  |  July 26th, 2010 at 06:04 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Or when the leftists in science decide to scientifically blacklist everyone that disagrees with them, especially the most credible dissenters.

First:
From the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Expert Credibility in climate change

Second: The list

Skeptic Authors Table

Abstract of the paper.

Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

Lets look at what we are talking about here. The National academy of sciences decided to publish in its proceedings a list of researchers that should not be considered credible and whats more the basis for inclusion in this blacklist was the fact that they don’t agree with the “consensus” and their research disputes it.

This is astonishing, and by astonishing I mean I am still trying to put my eyes back in my sockets from when I saw this. This concept not only throws away every ideal of how science is supposed to work, it replaces it with an instant list for character assassination. There is no consideration for strength of argument validity of data its all these people don’t agree with us ignore them. Its what you might expect from a political site like the democratic underground or the daily kos, not the National Academy.

Now Lets look at some of the names on the list

  • Freeman Dyson
  • Frank Tipler
  • Roy W Spencer
  • Willie H Soon

    • If you don’t recognize the names well Freeman Dyson is probably one of the most respected living physicists, Frank Tipler is amongst the foremost cosmologists in the world, Roy Spencer is a leading expert in the use of satellites to measure the temperature of the earth, Willie Sooon is a leading expert on the effect of changes in solar radiation on the global temperature, whats even more incredible is that as you go down this list you find renowned experts in just about every scientific and technical field listed, and listed on the basis of the fact that they disagreed with the consensus on man made global warming.

    Now you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what is happening here. The AGW proponents haven’t been able to make their case on the facts, they have been rocked back on their heels by the revelation that the scientists tasked with finding the truth about climate change actively hid data, and skewed results to reach a preconceived conclusion so they have decided to hit back at the people they think are the cause of their pain. Their problem isn’t the scientists on that list with the courage to say “I call B.S.”, their problem is that they are no longer scientists but advocates and politicians.

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    • http://www.criterionchemical.com Chemical Sam

      Somewhat less appalling is the fact that I am not on their list. Not yet, anyway.

    • texasgalt

      and then they hide from credible dissenters. Foolish consistency . . .

    • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

      It reminded me of the Mikado. He has a little list, he has a little list…

      Perhaps that’s how the evil, little needle-dick got himself on God’s Little List.

    • Brian Hibbert

      then state that 98% of the people that AREN’T blacklisted agree with them.

      I wonder how they got such a high percentage? Faking data seems to have become their modus operandi.

    • http://www.criterionchemical.com Chemical Sam

      The abstract of “Expert Credibility in Climate Change” the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science says it all:

      http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract

      As a form of “proof” that their views on (what they now call) Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC), they conclude that they evoke the spectre of concensus:

      an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97?98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

      The abstract is searchable under the categories of “climate denier” and “scientific prominence”. Forgive me, but I won’t be spending money to download a copy of the full article.

      My impression is that the scientific community is being overrun either by fascists, or high school cheerleaders, one. Agree with us, or your name goes up on the bathroom wall, and you’re OUT.

      For starters, the IPCC didn’t produce tenets of ACC, it produced “tenets” on AGW. Scientists had to scramble and recast the name from “global warming” to “climate change”, because the IPCC “tenets” were crumbling under the pressures of physical reality. The oceans weren’t rising. The Earth started cooling despite the continued rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The ice caps started growing back. Hurricanes were decreasing in number so much that a new category of named storm, the Sub-Tropical storm, was invented to keep the naming rate up. The AGW and the ACC community has gotten every last prediction wrong since the day James Hansen announced we’re all going to die. This is hardly a record to be proud of.

      At the end of July, there’s been precisely one hurricane (Alex), and one Tropical Storm (Bonnie), both of which petered out ahead of prediction. (A pitiful beginning for the 2010 hurricane season, and let’s pray it stays that way!)

      It should be obvious that the rate of consensus in the field is high because only those scientists that agree with the IPCC, only scientists that accepted research grants to gather evidence on (but not against) global warming, are given the opportunity to publish a the IPCC and the PNAS, respectively.

      Ideally, proceedings are designed for scientists to go and display some progress in their field, among their peers. The process has been hijacked.

      Ever been to a Proceedings-type gathering? I have. People submit articles, which get published without question in a Proceedings-type journal, just like the PNAS. Authors, then defend (if they choose) said articles in front of peers, and probably get a few questions. However much of an attack or refutation authors publicly receive in these fora, there is still the article to cite as a legitimate publication. Substandard scientists, like climate scientists, don’t regard what the counterargument meant to their work, they view the forum as nothing less than another feather in the cap of their body of evidence. A respectable scientist would be embarrassed to get called out for an obvious error in their work.

      Climate scientists and other pseudo-scientists avoid that problem by packing the audience, and “standing by their work”, plain and simple.

      The PNAS and the IPCC are where one goes when one doesn’t want to be bothered with things like evidence, proof, or a counterargument. You’ll find a lot of people that use statistics on large, incomplete data sets there, because, well, evidence, proof, and a counterargument isn’t tractable under abstract, physically meaningless circumstances.

      Finally, we should remember that the term “climate scientist” is relatively contrived. People who claim they are “climate scientists” are self-styled. . When I was in school (up through 1996), there was no such animal. There were no degrees in the field. There still aren’t any, as far as I know.

      To somebody that studied physical chemistry, organic chemistry, the chemistry of small molecules and statistical mechanics, like I have, saying you’re a climate scientist is like saying “I got me a degree without having to study any of those science thingies!”. Generally, climate scientists spend a great deal of time in an air-conditioned room with a computer that models the sky, with equations that have precisely nothing to do with physical law. Climate scientists are, from my standpoint, statisticians.

      All the people I’ve heard of that disagree with “climate scientists” have good degrees in hard physical sciences, a solid argument, want to discuss their work, can actually provide a detailed explanation of their work, and are searching for a real, self-consistent, and truly predictive understanding of how the atmosphere really works.

      With whom do you stand?

    • E Pluribus Unum

      Really, they created a category called sub-tropical storm so they could give it a name? That makes me laugh out loud. Those people are the sorriest excuse for scientist imaginable. Stupid AND unethical is a pretty toxic combination.

      There’s a reason you don’t post all this as your own diary.

      Right?

      Because I’m not seeing that reason.

    • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack
    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

      I’ve not paid the proper attention to Climate Change lately, due to the little situation in the Gulf.

    • renny

      cosmologists have been writing for years that the sun’s increased radiation (a cyclic phenomenon) has warmed to some degree all of the planets, including little planetoid Pluto. You can Google it.

      The “climate scientists” cannot yet tell us how and why the earth has changed from a ball of lava with orange methane skis to ice-ball planet earth to having its latest ice age as recently as 10,000 years ago. My guess is space dust, that nebulous whiff of space debris we stumble across while spinning through the various fields of our galaxy. Actually, some cosmologists think so.

      At the last glacial period, ice walls were as far south in NJ as Morristown (leaving a glacial lake, now the Great Swamp) and dropping off moraine–piles of debris–on today’s Long Island. In THAT time period, there were still summers with temps. in the 100 degrees. So, WEATHER and climate are not the same.

      I could tell the hysterics that the seas were not rising as I live near a barrier reef that is 18 inches above sea level and it is not submerging. The sea-rising hysteria in the Carolina isles is common beach erosion, not rising sea levels. NATURE did not intend barrier reefs to be permanent. They are to take the brunt of storms and oceanic aberrations for the continent. Of course, once we?ve built on them, we want them to remain the same forever.

      Environmental “science” as practiced in the US (and elsewhere) is a sub-category of 19th C. Romanticism and has little to do with actual science and a whole lot to do with emotions and feelings, especially about the “pristine” Americas that were treasured by the non-technological Indians (Noble Savages) and despoiled by the ravages of European white men. There?s a whole ?lotta? theory there and NO science. The EPA and ilk are stuck in 1850.

      The warming/climate change aspect is just an infusion of defunct Marxism into enviro nannyism that wants to take over more lives and dictate more rules and regulations and accumulate more taxes. The global warmist/changers cannot give up the charade because in Chicago here and Europe, huge “markets” have already been set up to trade carbon and transfer wealth.

      Al Gore was in at the start of that scam. The marketeers are already counting trillions in ephemeral “footprints” and probably building palaces in Switzerland–how can they just throw up their hands and leave all that wealth in the mitts of little people who run air conditioners in their one-bedroom apartments on hot nights?

    • http://www.criterionchemical.com Chemical Sam

      First let me just take the compliment graciously, and say I’d love to, but I’m holding up my pants here as a small businessman in NJ, trying to get funds to keep my chemical company alive. I’d rather just add to the people that get a chance to investigate for the sake of RS for now. Plus the wife thinks I’m on the computer too much already, keeping an eye on our scumbag statist politicians. When I get the time, I’ll start a separate blog and crosspost. Nothing would please me more than to be the guy that brings the (E)nvironmental movement down and puts (e)nvironmentalism back in the hands of responsible level-headed scientists, trained in physical law.

      It’s the most flagrant thumb on the hurricane scale you can imagine.

      Wikipedia tells the sordid tale.
      I give you the officially listed Sub-Tropical Storm Andrea in 2007.

      I give you Erin of the same year, whose maximum sustained winds was barely 40 MPH (which does not rise to the level of tropical storm status on the Original Beaufort scale). She was upgraded to tropical storm status before it made landfall in Texas nevertheless. She then transiently formed an “eye” again over Oklahoma for three hours with 60 MPH winds after it had been dropped as a storm to watch. (This is puny. Oklahomans know 100 MPH winds from normal thunderstorms.) Still they listed it before landfall.

      This year Bonnie got called early, actually made landfall in FL as a TS, but completely petered out over the swamps. Predictions were all for becoming TS again and hitting LA. Anybody guess why they were wrong? Because they assume trends now based on AGW as an aggravating factor. Because of that, they nearly always overestimate the strength in recent years.

      You all you understand that the goalposts have been changed over the years for the definitions of Tropical Storm and Hurricane, yes?

      Look up the original Beaufort Scale, the one I learned as a kid, also listed on Wikipedia. Apparently the propagandists are too young these days to remember what the Beaufort scale was to properly dispense with it.

      Convenient tactics for keeping the enumerated storms up, nicht wahr?

    • rbdwiggins

      Leftist political hack with self-proclaimed expertise in their chosen field.

      Unless, and until, they can falsify Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, they will forever be relegated to political hack because the planetary mechanism required to support their conjecture of Anthropogenic Climate Change does not exist.

    • ceili_dancer

      She turned me into a newt.

    • Joliphant

      Even happier that it looks like the posts on this topic will be chronicling its implosion.

      Best of luck with things going forward thankfully it looks like the democrats will have too much trouble of their own to cause more problems for others.

    • http://www.veronicaestrada.com Veronica

      My Dad was the HS Chemistry teacher, an amateur astronomer and Mr. Science Club — I ended up taking chem 1 & 2 all four years, growing up on the Texas Gulf coast.

      Every year, ever since I could remember, we’d break out the tracking maps and study the barometric pressure as these things crossed the Gulf.

      You said:

      “Hurricanes were decreasing in number so much that a new category of named storm, the Sub-Tropical storm, was invented to keep the naming rate up. ”

      I’m shocked to learn this, although I’ve known for years the number of predictions always fell short.

      But just as yout said here about researchers falling inline:

      ” only those scientists that agree with the IPCC, only scientists that accepted research grants to gather evidence on (but not against) global warming, are given the opportunity to publish a the IPCC and the PNAS, respectively.”

      the same can be said about all progressive administrative picks, lefty think tanks and liberal schools of policy.

      Their research is meant to drive, support and legitimize progressive policy.

      The solution is to inform the public and out the progressives.

      Thanks for your comment, Chemical Sam .. I wish I could talk to Dad about this.

      Excellent work, Joliphant.

    • http://www.veronicaestrada.com Veronica

      It’s not letting me reccomend.

      Excellent piece.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir
    • pjshifty

      And Russia burns.

      Welcome back and excellent timing…:)

    • Joliphant

      I really should know better than to go off topic but this is a little too easy. Moscow is having a drought a heat wave and fires ? So its Global warming ?

      Oddly enough the global warming thats causing the problems in moscow managed to miss our cornbelt

      http://www.cattlenetwork.com/National-Weather–Below-Normal-Temperatures-Slow-Crops-On-The-Plains/2010-07-13/Article_Latest_News.aspx?oid=1157050&fid=CN-LATEST_NEWS_

      It seems that to celebrate independence the global warming gremlins took the day off and much of the country had its lowest temperatures on record.

      Ooops silly me I forgot the rules of this game, only record high temperatures matter.

    • pjshifty

      …where do you find those links?

      But, you’re right – it may not have to due with global warming since a) Moscow (or the corn belt) is not the globe and b) you can’t link a short term single event to a decade-long process.

      So, I hope you’ll join me in repudiating all the global warming diaries that were posted here during Snowmageddon – you know, just for consistency now that you’re back.

      And you’re right again – we should collect a list of the record high temps and record low temps around the world just to see which way the globe is headed. Looks like it’s gonna be a hot year around most of the globe – except in the stratosphere of course.

      PS Interesting that your esteem of cosmology has grown in your absence – perhaps you climate denialism is also starting to wane?

    • Joliphant

      If I recall correctly you have referred to yourself as a scientist in the past, wasn’t fluid dynamics supposedly your field of study ? Doesn’t it bother you to be on the side of people making blacklists. What next will skeptics be called perpetrators of “Jewish Science” their work burned (In a suitably carbon neutral furnance) and their positions and grants revoked ?

      Anyway I know you won’t reply to the actual issue you can’t. Even you consciously realize that the position is indefensible so its to be anything else.

      On the off chance you legitimately don’t understand why what these people are trying to do is a very bad idea and you actually have some allegiance to the scientific process ill try to enlighten. Probably wasted breath on my part.

      You have scientists trying not to argue their point but to make an appeal to their colleagues not to listen. Why is this bad thing ? Well any competent scientist should be able to make an evaluation of paper or an argument based on the logic used or the data presented. Unless you have evidence of fraud http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3021, or deliberate attempts not to provide the data needed evaluate http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/23/data-stonewalling-resumes/. Even at that point it would merely discredit the research in particular and raise the bar for any other work the researcher had done.

      By trying to chill the debate the authors of the paper I cited in the diary have given up any claim they want to make. They have said their arguments are fine as long as no one challenges them and for all that is sacred don’t listen to these people because they challenge it.

      Anyway just to address the mud you are slinging my way.

      When you say its going to be a hot year you mean based on a data set the Mr. Mann maintains and gets to make correction on ? http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/07/another-correction-from-upside-down-mann/. Now reasonable people might argue that when he became an advocate of a political position it would have been a sensible idea to at least put more checks on his ability to retroactively change the recorded world temperature.

      As to cosmology my relationship to it is a little different than yours. I am actually familiar with the subject, hence the poor reception I give to people that say they know what happened in the first femto seconds of creation when we don’t have a proper model of the physics involved that would let them say anything of the kind.

      Mr Tipplers work is mostly concerning the anthropic principle and the evolution of the universe going forward. This takes him out of the world of untestability and puts him firmly in the falsifiable predictions column. At least in principle I probably won’t be around to do any falsifying of the Omega Point.

    • pjshifty

      to your point – yes blacklists bad. Feel better….

      But largely irrelevant given that the globe continues to warm and none of the people you have listed has been able to formulate an alternate to the standing theory of AGW.

      Sad that all you have left are conspiracy theories. How about an alternate theory? Why is it that the hottest year on record (last 12 months) has appeared so close to a solar minimum? Inquiring minds want to know.

    • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

      Yeah, you don’t get to accuse our side of conspiracy theories, like that.

      Hitler claimed his fascism was driven by science, too .

    • Joliphant

      Just so you understand the differentiation between whats going on here, Redstate provided you a forum where you could and did express your viewpoint as both diary and commentary on global warming. The operators of the site much to their credit never acted to censor you or anyone else that wanted to present material supporting the case for man made global warming and I doubt that there is a single reader here that has ignored or would ignore any such evidence.

      I know you wont be able to process this but saying that people are putting their hands over their ears and shouting that they dont want to hear you does not require them to be part of a conspiracy. It just means they are brittle and defensive. In this case some members of the community in question felt so threatened by dissent they felt the need to draw up a list.

      In general I laugh at crazy theories, in my time I have laughed at heironymous machines, von daniken, pyramid power, dean drives, EST, crystal, and man made global warming, I have no need to draw up lists of not credible people who are associated with these things, any person of a skeptical bent can see the problems with associated with these ideas.

      When someone comes up to you and says they can tell you what the temperature of the world was in the year 1066 to within half a degree, you need to ask them where their time machine is and then you can call for the men in white coats. You don’t need a list of farmers to sort the wheat from the chaff.

    • rbdwiggins

      I realize I’m talking to a ghost, but to answer your question…

      Shut down inconvenient temperature recording stations across the planet, move the “official” recording stations next to heat islands and discard contradictory historical temperature data.

      It was very effective… before CRU’s whistleblower exposed the global pseudo-scientific fraud.

    • Flagstaff

      Score one for Repair Man Jack.

      Now, to just remember it.

    • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

      who pronounced anyone who disagreed with communism mentally ill?

    • aesthete