Pundit & Pundette: Hiding the decline: Deniers made them do it

November 25, 2009

Hiding the decline: Deniers made them do it

Some Climategate commentary.

Victor Davis Hanson on the fraud of it all:

While the president is sermonizing on global warming in connection with his Asian tour and the visit of India's head of state, we get the release of hacked emails from the British climate research center that seem to make a mockery of the entire climate-change debate — reducing it to the nasty level of academic infighting, fraud, and con games that we have become accustomed to in the postmodern Western university. At a time when the president is asserting the need for radical changes in our lives, the "science" that he once insisted would be the cornerstone of his new administration, appears shaky at best, and at worst a sort of 19th-century phrenology.

Jonah Goldberg on the corruption of science and journalism:

But what seems incontrovertible at this point is that the global-warming industry (and it is an industry) is suffused to its core with groupthink and bad faith. For many of us, this is not shocking news. But it is shocking evidence. Proving bad faith and groupthink is very hard to do. But now we have the internal dialog of those afflicted made public (I hope some intrepid reporters are asking other climate institutions whether they are no erasing their files for fear of being similarly exposed). It is clear that the scientists at the CRU were more interested in punishing dissenters and constructing a p.r. campaign than they were in actual science.

This should be considered not merely a scientific scandal but an enormous journalistic scandal. The elite press treats skepticism about global warming as a mental defect. It uses a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy to delegitimize people who dissent from the (manufactured) "consensus." Dissent is scientifically unserious, therefore dissenting scientist A is unserious. There's no way to break in. The moment someone disagrees with the "consensus" they disqualify themselves from criticizing the consensus. That's not how science is supposed to work. Skeptics who've received a tote bag from some oil company are branded as shills, but scientists who live off of climate-change-obsessed foundations or congressional fiefdoms are objective, call-it-like-they-see-it truth seekers. Question these folks and you get a Bill Murrayesque, "Back off, man. We're scientists."

Mark Steyn on the impossibility of hiding the decline:

Jonah, further to earlier discussions about the degree of scandalousness re Warmergate and the CRU, I think "Hide the decline" is a pretty hard phrase to "interpret" in any benign way, and a pretty easy way for anyone to get up to speed with what what's going on. It's already a song [watch the video], and a T-shirt.

On the other hand, the dullards at the dying US monodailies seem to be working overtime to hide the decline. In Fleet Street and on Australian TV, the statist warm-mongers are at least acknowledging that they have a problem. Over here the brain-dead twits doing their best to turn the Boston Globe circulation figures into Michael Mann's phony hockey stick upside down are going with "Boston Faces Deep Risk From Sea-Level Rise". Why not build protective dikes with unsold bundles of the Globe - or the delivery trucks?

In the comments section of both the Globe and The Houston Chronicle, readers seem to have a better nose for news than the J-school bores. Some declines can't be hidden.

Case in point: A Washington Post poll can't hide the decline in America's faith in global warmism but the reporter can omit any mention of the email scandal, and does.

What's worse is this editorial which minimizes the fraud and blacklisting and blames it on those provoking deniers:

By our reckoning -- and that of most scientists, policymakers and almost every government in the world -- the probability that the planet will warm in the long term because of human activity is extremely high, and the probability that allowing it to do so unabated will have disastrous effects is unacceptably large. The case that governments should hedge against that outcome is formidable enough. Climate scientists should not let themselves be goaded by the irresponsibility of the deniers into overstating the certainties of complex science or, worse, censoring discussion of them.

Back to the Boston Globe, the comments via Doug Ross on the paper's rising sea-level scare-article are indeed hilarious. Even northeastern liberals are having trouble swallowing this.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

Most recent posts here.

3 comments:

Wesley M.Nov 25, 2009 08:29 AM
Since the East Anglia material came out, one thing that has struck me is how knee-jerk many of the defenses are. There's a lot of material to wade through, and it's good not to get too far ahead of ourselves. But others are definitely making far too little of this.

I agree that "trick" is most likely just an unfortunate choice of wording. Having been a science editor/ghostwriter for more than 20 years now, I've dealt with a lot of peer-review studies and publications. And I’ve seen enough unfortunate wording from brilliant people who should know better to last me a lifetime. “Hide the decline” seems a lot harder to explain away, though, and should throw up enough red flags to make even the hardest-core anthropogenic global warming proponent demand that a second, closer look be taken at the specific work in question.

I agree that a lot of these e-mails are cases of smart guys with big egos behaving like utter and absolute a-holes. And that should surprise no one who has ever worked with noted scientists at the top of their field. But when they start talking about deleting e-mails, data, and code to keep them out of anyone else’s hands, that should also throw up enough red flags that make anyone, on either side of the AGW debate, who actually does care about legitimate science demand a second, closer look at the work by these particular researchers.

I also agree that the majority view among scientists is that AGW exists, especially in the peer-reviewed literature. So when you have noted researchers not just complaining about AGW-skeptical papers making it through peer review, but also discussing having the journal editor in question removed, how to prevent other skeptical articles from seeing print in the primary literature, and how to de-legitimize a peer-review journal that has published such articles, well, one would think that might give those who uses the "consensus" of the peer-reviewed literature as their argument for AGW at least a moment’s pause. And, again, want the work of those researchers to be thoroughly reviewed -- if only to protect the integrity of the argument for AGW and show there really is no room for “bad” science on their side.

I don’t know if these researchers have been deliberately committing fraud. I get the impression, though, that they’ve become so convinced they already know the answer, they’ve stopped looking for problems and holes in their own data and methods in the way that they should. And that’s usually when a lot of bad science starts to happen.

There’s a lot to be concerned about in this hacked material. And whatever their intentions, the people who are denying that fact aren't defending good science.
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Mike FunkNov 25, 2009 09:44 AM
The CRU source code says it all. See the American Thinker article: CRU's Source Code: Climategate Uncovered

As we say in software engineering: Use the source, Luke!
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murphNov 25, 2009 11:27 AM
"Since the East Anglia material came out, one thing that has struck me is how knee-jerk many of the defenses are."

You could say the same thing about the resulting attacks on climate change science. Not a lot of original analysis, just a reflexive assumption that these emails change science.

There are thoughtful responses out there, if you're willing to read them.

-And I'd add this observation:

A smash and grab on a university's email could very well undo the reputation and careers of those involved. It could even lead to criminal charges.

But it does nothing to findings that can be independently verified.

By all means, if these emails cast doubt on the work of any of those involved - re-evaluate their findings. If they don't hold up - trash them in favor of those that can.

But if science teaches us anything it's that the existence of doubt is not proof.

You can have any theory you want - but if you can't show data to back it up, there's no reason for people to believe it.

Assertions that climatologists are engaged in wholesale fraud would require extrordinary proof and the UEA hack is not that.

I really do hope that the world is not warming - it would make a lot of things easier. But the science we have says the world is getting warmer because of man. Science isn't majority rule, and one finding could shatter the current consensus.

But it would take a scientific finding, not some random collection of office gossip.
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