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Heartlandgate, memos, and writing styles — 29 Comments

  1. “”I’d be hopping mad at him for actions which have the possibility of casting doubt on the integrity of scientists in the entire field””

    Too late. Climate scientist are now running neck and neck with ambulance chasing lawyers.

  2. Psychologists could do a service for humanity if they could pin point the personalities that are susceptible to becoming fanatical about religion, science, technology, etc. and provide treatment to those who are panicked over the evils of technology, fossil fuels, high voltage power lines, or nuclear power.

    When you read comments on the Warmist sites such as Real Climate at: http://www.realclimate.org/
    you can feel the panic and desperation that many of the commenters feel. They have convinced themselves that tragedy is imminent unless we return to 19th Century living standards. Few are able to look dispassionately at the changes that have occurred in climate in the last 150 years and conclude that, “Gee, things really haven’t changed that much. Maybe we shouldn’t panic until we have more hard evidence that there is a problem.” To be sure, many cynical politicians (Al Gore, I’m looking at you) look at this as merely a way to gain power and riches, but there is a certain type personality that seems to let the fear seep into their bones. They become desperate to, “Do something!” You would think that Gleick would be more rational, but many of the leading proponents of AGW have let the fear of imminent disaster get the best of them. They remind me of the seers who predict the end of the world, or the Rapture, or the return of the Mahdi. They always have “irrrefutable evidence” that it’s imminent.

  3. J.J.- I think the typical global warmist is someone immersed in some form of subconscious self hatred or disgust that gets projected onto mankind in general. It never has really been about the climate or the planet.

  4. “the EPA has scrubbed its Web site of the grants Gleick has received”

    These people obviously have no concept of how the Internet works.

  5. One of the hardest things for a scientist to do is beat on a beloved hypothesis, but doing so is absolutely critical to the scientific method. The temptation is to go easy on it, handle it with kid gloves, and never subject it to brutal testing. But if the hypothesis has validity, it will withstand such testing. And conversely, if it doesn’t withstand such testing, it doesn’t have validity.

    Emotionally it’s hard, very hard indeed, to do this. At the risk of being too graphic, it’s like grabbing a newborn baby, swinging him by the heels and smashing his head into what appears to be a brick wall when your hypothesis predicts that the baby will come to no harm. So researchers will putter around, putting off the crucial experiment (“must get everything ready”), or sticking to trivial straw man experiments, because they’re afraid that they might kill their pet idea.

    AGW proponents exhibit this protectiveness in spades. They don’t dispassionately consider the merits (or otherwise) of alternative explanations and perspectives, and they don’t offer falsifiable predictions (not retrospective rationalizations of historical observations) and compare the results of those predictions with later observations.

    Instead, they react emotionally, viscerally, resisting calls to release their data and data reduction algorithms, and attacking the intellect, integrity, and motivation of those who question their assertions. They play the man, not the ball.

    This is not how science is done. That’s not to say that even some famous scientists haven’t descended to that level, but that is aberrant behavior that impedes, rather than promotes, the progress of science.

  6. I don’t think AGW has ever been about science. It’s been a leftist political movement from Day 1, with some scientific veneer laid on top.

    The Warmists are modern day Lysenkos, trying to make the science fit their ideology.

  7. The real tragedy of this is that it will discredit science and scientists in the minds of millions of people, which we can ill afford. There’s already too much ignorance and superstition running amok as it is.

  8. SteveH beat me too it. If scientists won’t defend the integrity of their craft, then the public will lose confidence in scientists as a group. I think this is happening, and the shame of it is that it is completely justified.

  9. Science is prone to fads and fashions, generally driven by the funding climate (no pun intended). Solar energy (back in the 70s), cancer, industrial catalysts, and AIDS are just some of the fads that hit chemistry, for example.

    “Fad” in this context is operationally defined as the justification cited in most grant proposals for the doing the proposed work, which typically is a further extension of whatever the principal investigator has been doing his entire career. Now, mirabile dictu, his lifelong research area just happens to have relevance to __________ [cite latest funding fad here]. It used to amuse me to see how the same research has been packaged for the disparate fads listed above. Fischer-Tropsch catalysts are out, anti-retrovirals are in? OK, well here’s how my research on Fischer-Tropsch catalysts bears on AIDS …

    The hard part is keeping a straight face. Everyone (including program administrators) knows the whole thing is rubbish, but everyone plays the game. Research funding is to researchers as making movies is to actors and actresses: oxygen, without which careers die.

    Hell, if I were still active in research, I’d be pitching my research as having some tie-in to addressing global warming. No question about it.

  10. We need to stop calling these rent-seekers scientists in the first place.

    I’d have to go all the way back to Dr. Venkman’s ESP ‘laboratory’ to find it so roundly abused.

    —–

    The typical poster at unrealclimate.orgasm lives a life driven by the herd – using social proof to inform their truth tables.

    —–

    The absolute kicker for me: carbon dioxide is plant fertilizer. It is established fact that rising partial pressures in carbon dioxide stimulate plant growth right through the entire range of concentrations.

    Biofuel research gooses yields by glutting their algae with carbon dioxide. ( Something that they can’t possibly scale up; so all of the news videos are effectively lies. )

    It is also established fact that most chemical reactions shift logarithmically / exponentially with concentrations until other factors choke a reaction back.

    Meaning, that todays global crop yield has been enhanced by rising carbon dioxide levels. However, since, like fish in the ocean, we’re entirely immersed in a bath of air we don’t perceive this fact.

    No farmer ever says,” I’ve applied x tons of fertilizer this year resulting in a terrifically high yield… But I’m going to attribute some of this gain to the 0.01% boost in carbon dioxide partial pressure.”

    But we know that some such effect does occur because NASA spent large generations ago studying ways to close the food cycle in outer space. Their conclusion was that it would be necessary to use Lithium cycle carbon dioxide extraction and eventual super elevation inside closed growing tanks.

    —–

    And then Game Theory tells us that until Red China sees the light absolutely NOTHING we do in the West will remediate carbon dioxide levels.

  11. Comment by “MfK” at Transterrestrial Musings:

    Every once in a while, the irony of the AGW movement overwhelms me. Purporting to be a “Green” movement, they are nevertheless hell bent on eliminating the two things a green planet needs to be green: warm temperatures and plenty of CO2 in the air….

  12. “”If scientists won’t defend the integrity of their craft, then the public will lose confidence in scientists as a group.””
    chuck

    Pick any group or profession and insert an influx of immoral narcissist and you’ll get the same result. Science was just vulnerable to the influx because it can easily offer years or decades of cover from wrongheaded incompetence.

  13. When politicians look for places to cut the budget (I’m not holding my breath), they should take a big axe to federal grants. Venture capitalists could use their money to develop algae power or the other next big thing.

    “Grant-writing” is a career, and it’s one that should be made less lucrative.

  14. I agree with Occam about the all too common unwilllingness of scientists to challenge a beloved hypothesis. But AGW goes well beyond that. It is: hypothesis + money (LOTS of money) + politics + power.

    The original scientific hypotheses have long been a side issue. What really propels the AGW movement is the potential for an almost unparalleled amount of power and control for left-leaning politicians, bureaucrats and academics. As I’ve said many times before, without power (in government, the MSM, the non-profit sector, educational institutions, etc.), most left-wing ideologies (from hardcore Marxist-Leninism to squishy Obamaesque “social democracy”) would have been cast in the dustbin of history long ago. Lefties know this all too well. And they will seek and maintain any and all power as ruthlessly as they can. From “An Inconvenient Truth” all the way up to the Copenhagen Conference, AGW seemed to offer the greatest prospect in history for social control and an ability to implement leftist social-engineering over Western democracies (particularly the United States).

    But there has been a shift in attitudes. I see it even among my left-leaning friends. Five years ago, they dismissed any AGW skeptic as a Neanderthalish boob or worse a shill for Big Oil. Now, in an often muted and restrained manner, I hear more restraint, more willing to say “if” AGW is true.

    But the leftist elite was so close. As they see this golden opportunity slowing evaporating, they are not going to give up without a fight; a dirty, desperate, no-holds barred fight. This sloppy and juvenile attempt at slander will only be the beginning. It’s going to be brutal for the next several years; brutal and ugly.

  15. This is a bit off topic from the post itself but it did get me to thinking that some of life’s unending mysteries/unfinished business do indeed end at a certain point.

    I lived long enough to see the Unabomber unmasked and captured. At the time, it didn’t necessarily seem like a given.

    I lived long enough to eventually learn the identity of Deep Throat.

    I lived long enough to see Osama bin Laden located and eliminated. (Ditto with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.)

    Josef Mengele was eventually located (unfortunately only after he died and therefore never captured).

    I lived long enough to see Ted Bundy go to his reward.

    And the BTK killer in Kansas was eventually unmasked, as well as the Green River Killer. The Zodiac is still out there (or at least unidentified) but there’s movement in the case of D.B. Cooper. (I always found this bit on the TV series “NewsRadio” amusing. See the part that starts at 4:35. News radio)

    Whitey Bulger is no longer on the lam.

    What are the other enduring mysteries out there of the last 40 years?

    Who that song by Carly Simon was really about?

    P.S. I am also glad I lived long enough to see close-up pictures of all the planets. That’s something easy to take for granted considering 100 years ago we barely even had flight.)

  16. Getting back to distinctive writhing styles and the apparent inability/disinclination of Dr. Gleick to ‘assume’ another voice in generating a convincing memo … I think his problem is the same one that turns up on comment threads on libertarian/conservative websites. The ‘moby’ trying to sound like what they assume a real libertarian/conservative sounds like, and getting it so wrong that the regular commenters instantly pick them out. The fake memo instantly ‘sounded’ so wrong to people like Megan McArdle. I think ordinary people are pretty good and picking out this kind of fakery.

    On the other hand, I know that a writing style can be mimicked; I am very good at doing it for my own books. I can read up on certain 19th century authors and writers, and then ‘do’ page after page in their style. For one of my books, I did a series of letters and the diary of a character leading a wagon train so convincingly that there are a lot of readers who were sure that I had found a genuine cache of letters and the diary someplace!

    I guess we’re lucky that Dr. Gleick wasn’t skilled that way, eh?

  17. RE Sgt Mom:

    Evidently your ability to mimic different styles far exceeds that of most people (including writers) and especially that of technical people, such as scientists, engineers and programmers. Having worked for a long time in a technical field, I can tell you that a large percentage of techies cannot write at all, a fair chunk are marginally competent, some are reasonably capable and very few are good or excellent. And I’d bet that most of the latter group are good-excellent exclusively in their own distinctive voice.

    So fortunately, I think the luck runs the opposite way. That is, Dr Gleick (or someone like him) would have to be very lucky to concoct a convincing memo in a style significantly different from his own.

  18. “Many AGW proponents and their political supporters in the press and elsewhere have alleged that the Climategate emails were hacked, although there’s no evidence of this and most on the right believe that dump was an inside job.”

    Well, I guess it really must take an insider to hack into the servers they already have access to using an exploit, and then use an exploit to hack another website, take it over, and upload the ZIP file there, all via servers in Russia and Turkey. Not really your run-of-the-mill whistleblower.

    “But AGW goes well beyond that. It is: hypothesis + money (LOTS of money) + politics + power. “

    Actually, it’s older than relativity and quantum mechanics and based on fully accepted physical laws and theories. Look up John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius.

  19. Sgt. Mom:

    I guess we’re lucky that Dr. Gleick wasn’t skilled that way, eh?

    Yes, we are.

    One of the many indicators that the memo was fake was where it said that Heartland would push a curriculum “dissuading teachers from teaching science.”

    This is how the warmists view the skeptics. According to the warmists, the AGW skeptics are against “settled science,” and thus against “science.”

    While this may be a warmist view of AGW skeptics, it is not how AGW skeptics view themselves. It is thus a good indication the memo was fake.

    While most of us are not adept at imitating writing styles as is an experienced writer like Sgt. Mom, I suspect that wingnuts at this blog can do a more credible job of constructing libs’ arguments than libs can do of constructing wingnuts’ arguments. The reason at least at this blog is that a lot of us used to be libs, so we are familiar with lib ways of thinking.

  20. Dr. Gleick was – as Gringo pointed out – was trying to write as he thought an AGW skeptic would; not as an AGW skeptic actually does write. And that’s the weak point for someone trying to do a ‘moby’ on a libertarian/conservative site. They’re basing their writing ‘voice’ on the caricature that they have in their own minds. It’s as if I were about to get in the mind-set to write some Victoriana by going to read some bodice-ripping romance novels, instead of some genuine period Victorian letters and memoirs.
    It’s like listening to accents … you know when an actor is faking it badly.

  21. I think this sordid affair does say something about AGW. Or, rather, about the type of “scientists” who are pushing AGW.

    This fake memo is not out of line with the various efforts revealed by the Climategate e-mails. It isn’t surprising, and it reinforces the “ends justifies the means” mindset of the AGW “scientists”.

    This implies the actual weakness of their factual AGW argument.

    If you have the facts on your side, you don’t have to lie and make shit up.

  22. J. Bowers,
    Nice to see a fan of realclimate.org joining in the conversation.

    Gavin, Kevin, Michael, and all the others (The Hockey team) have admitted that they must use guesstimates in their climate models, which they tinker with until they get the results that they want. Then they cry foul when people point put that we should not be making trillion dollar economic decisions based on these models that are really nothing more than estimates.

    You really need to read Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog and his latest book, THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING BLUNDER. It’s here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/
    Dr. Spencer is is probably the best of the climate scientists that disagree with the Hockey Team. However, there is also Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit or Dr Richard Lindzen here: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf
    Do some reading of other voices, it might give you some perspective.

    In spite of what the Hockey Team says, the debate is just getting started. They have dominated the field (and the finances) up to this point, but the uneconomic mitigation solutions they are calling for have raised questions as to whether the predictions and science on which they are based is sound. Until more certainty is established, in the words of Bjorn Lomborg, let’s “COOL IT.” See here: http://www.lomborg.com/cool_it/
    The amount of warming observed and predicted calls for adaptation not mitigation.

  23. “Until more certainty is established, in the words of Bjorn Lomborg, let’s “COOL IT.” See here: http://www.lomborg.com/cool_it/

    “The IPCC’s regular reports are the gold standard in climate change science. Each report — the latest was in 2007 — is the result of years of writing, reviewing and consensus-building among hundreds of scientists.

    This process is robust and custom-made to weather criticism. Its consensus findings are incredibly difficult to ignore, and have done more than anything to spread the vital message that climate change is real and it is caused by human impact.”
    Bjorn Lomborg, How to save the world in Copenhagen

    “You really need to read Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog and his latest book, THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING BLUNDER. “

    Maybe.

    Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 1
    Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 2
    Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 3
    Just Put the Model Down, Roy

    Then again, maybe not 😉

    “Gavin, Kevin, Michael, and all the others (The Hockey team) have admitted that they must use guesstimates in their climate models, which they tinker with until they get the results that they want. “

    “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” — George Box.

    All scientific theories and laws are models at their basest level. All science is probabilistic with uncertainties.

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