There have been quite a lot of interesting conferences and comments on climate science, confirmation bias, trust worthiness of the IPCC and its consensus crew. On top of that two “rushed into the media” papers by R. Muller from the BEST project and A. Watts from the well known www. wattsupwiththat.com blog.
Lets start by a comment in Matt Ridley’s series on “confirmation bias” published in the Washington Post.
in “Three cheers for scientific backbiting” he cites psychologist Raymond Nickerson of Tufts University in a 1998 paper: “It is not so much the critical attitude that individual scientists have taken with respect to their own ideas that has given science the success it has enjoyed…but more the fact that individual scientists have been highly motivated to demonstrate that hypotheses that are held by some other scientist(s) are false.”
How true, and how different from statements of a climate scientist who told Mc.Intyre in essence this: “Why should I give you my data if all you want is showing me being wrong!”. If an absolute believe in a majority held theory is a must for being recognized as a scientist, this science has become a cult.
Nobelist Yvar Giaever presented an excellent presentation at the 2012 Lindau meeting of Nobel price laureates: The Strange Case of Global Warming where he concludes (going strongly against the opinions of other nobelists) that actual climate change science is a pseudo science.
Prof. R. Muller from the Berkeley BEST project started with an excellent idea: recheck and reassess the validity of the numerous temperature measurement done over the globe and make a definitive statement if there is any global warming and if it is mostly caused by human activity. Before the first paper was peer reviewed, he rushed before the media, telling that he has converted from a “global warming skeptic” to a “believer”. And this despite his paper did not pass the first peer review. The problem is that in the new validation check of station integrity, he ignored a new procedure from Michel Leroy proposed as an ISO method by the WMO to validate/homogenize/correct raw station data.
Anthony Watts and coauthors followed this “pre-peer review” publication strategy with a paper showing that the BEST conclusions are wrong, and that the warming trends in the USA have been overstated by nearly 100% !
Prof. Muller must accept harsher critics that A. Watts, as he directed a projected extremely well-funded and was supposed to use the latest scientific procedures in checking station data; he should have known of M. Leroy and his most recent WMO proposed method.He did not, and so his validation of the traditional NOAA/CRU etc. data had to be expected. A. Watts “Blitz” also should take some critique (as for instance well formulated by Lubos Motl), even if timing seems to be an essential cause of this rush to publish and if it is labeled a “pre-publication discussion paper”.
Both happenings clearly show that climate change science is NOT functioning as it should: More than twenty years of politicization have transformed scientific integrity into activism, or as Y. Giaever said, into a pseudo-science.
_________________________
added 02 Aug 2012:
1.
A really clear example of this obnoxious politicization of climate science is the testimony of Stanford professor C. Field to the US Senate, were he clearly lies in presenting IPCC findings that are not in the official report. See R. Pielke’s Jr. report on this here.
2.
Let me add some quotes that have been made by very influential people in the past and that show how climate change becomes a cult, when “saving the planet” is at stake: (source here, comment by Allan MacRae):
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
”Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
Lead author of many IPCC reports
”Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton,
First chairman of the IPCC
”It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson,
Co-founder of Greenpeace
”We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong,
Founder of the UN Environmental Program
”Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Professor Maurice King
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. it played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis,
Editor of Earth First! Journal
meteoLCD Weblog 