

Mon, 2011-05-23 04:22Chris Mooney
Chris Mooney's picture










But the thing is, we can tell from this mere snippet that Heartland's “scientific method” is unreliable. It’s screaming from the page.

If the scientific mindset means anything at all, it means trying to control one’s biases by never being too sure of one’s preconceptions. That's why Bacon, one of the pioneers of modern science, warned us to be wary of the "idols of the mind"--a series of prejudices that sound a lot like what psychologists now recognize as textbook cognitive biases.

Anyone who can call human-caused global warming a “failed hypothesis” isn’t paying very close attention to Baconian warnings. A very very large number of scientists see it as a very serious "hypothesis" indeed, so calling it "failed" sounds awfully hubristic. 


Heartland is thus misrepresenting its opponents--ironically claiming that they possess “certainty” when really, it’s Heartland that's willing to blithely to toss aside the idea that humans are causing global warming, despite the weight of expert opinion. If that’s not unwarranted certainty, I don’t know what is.

So yeah, the scientific method is notoriously hard to define--but sometimes we can know it from its absence. If you’re convinced you’re right and the bulk of mainstream scientists, expert bodies, and scientific societies are wrong on climate change...well, you’re not exactly making Francis Bacon proud.


Have you looked at all the proxies?

The hockey stick is correct:

"What is readily apparent is that this is a very, very noisy signal."

And scientists know how to get a signal out of the noise. YOU don't of course, but people who have had an education in this field have.

"The analysis has since been adjusted to show a weak MWP and LIA effect."





And if it were true? So what?

That merely means that the climate is more sensitive to changes in temperature and we're laying in far worse (and then catastrophic) climate change by listening to your drivel echoed from someone who has told you what to believe.


Absolutely not.
1) Tree rings are proxies. Not thermometers
2) They still used tree rings, just not ones poisoned by industrialised pollution in the northern temperate latitudes from the 60's when the pollution got so bad we needed clean air laws to clean up


"My understanding is that if you do that, the recent warming is much less apparent."

Guess what you'll get (they've done this): the same answer. Your understanding is worthless because you have a conclusion and nothing will be accepted unless it confirms your desires.

But you hate that idea, don't you.


Wow... The ignorance and gaul on this site is truely breathtaking.


Again ... WOW

Boy, that sounds a lot like basic wingnuttery. Don't you even have some made-up talking points to argue with?

the only good advice is:
Look it up yourselves...
Its easy to find....
Eventually it will dawn on you... you have been had.


The truth is out there....

(out there;not in here)

"sites like this will always take any statement that does not support the Religious doctrines"

Religious doctrine: AGW is wrong. No need for evidence (see the "poptart claim 'AGW alarmism exists on this site!'" with no evidence forthcoming days later even.

"or AGW"

Yup, the AGW claim isn't a religious doctrine. It's a consequence of the climate science that explains the past climate best of all in the face of current human activities.

"Start by looking up ENSO, AMO and PDO and look at the corrolations with global temps."

And you'll see that the various ups and down on this graph around the red smoothed curve:



Go see if you can find a cooling ocean, kids.

Deniers want to make bold claims in the hope that you won't check.

All you have to do to determine which is most likely to be telling the truth, have a look at the "lies" both sides have said:

Jones: I'd rather delete the data than give it to this bugger. (didn't delete the data, so AT WORST a thought crime, a pre-crime never committed)

"I'm a skeptic": Not at all skeptical of denialist arguments, though (see the "it's the PDO" above)
Ian Plimer: The sun is made mostly of iron
Poptart: AGW alarmism exists on this site!
Titas: I'm no denier (refuted by his many statements)
Applegate: The scientists in the 70's were all saying it was cooling (later changed without murmur to "the media showed us that there was cooling")
GoFigure: There is no hotspot, AGW is proven false! (the hotspot has been found and it isn't a fingerprint of AGW)


And then for statements you can't, use that knowledge as a guide.

Look for yourself.


Denialists always insist that it's only CO2 that changes the climate.

The IPCC meanwhile has:


What truth?

Where's the evidence?

Especially for the political agenda.



Either the denialidiots are right and it's all a scam to sell the west to the commies and Shrub and Reagan were in on it, or they're full of shit.

Occam's razor would indicate the simplest answer is the true one: he's full of shit.

you can also look here:

Of course, if you remove the trend, then you can see a cycle and match that to another known climate cycle...



If you like cliches, you'll love the above post.




Thats just embarrassing.


And he's basically saying "The IPCC is wrong! It's MUCH WORSE than they say! So neener!".


Odd take on this issue. I haven't seen AIT in a while, but did Al Gore not say that CO2 was causing temperature increase in the icecore record? A rather big point, as I recall. This video agrees with the skeptics of that film who said it was the other way around: that temperature in fact drove increases in CO2. You can now dismiss AIT as just entertainment and no one ever took it seriously, but I don't believe the Nobel Committee gives out prizes for comedy.




The paper below, oft refuted by Mann and his friends, points out that Mann's reconstruction is nearly indistinguishable from noise.


Well, depends on what they are a "source" of. They are policy makers. I'm sure many people respect them as a source of opinions. Why?

What? It depends on whether they agree with your opinion?

Of course. I tend to form my own opinions unless the matter is inconsequential and I trust the bearer of the opinion. Even then, it's not my opinion, just a working assumption.


I remember decades ago when the AAAS came out with a statement on a controversial matter. I won't give detail here because it would be off-topic and start a flame war I'm sure. But the AAAS announced that one side of this controversy was fact and the other side (the politically disagreeable one) was false. The AAAS would henceforth censor any submission that did not follow that edict. History has a way of revisiting these controversies, so decades from now that "fact" will probably change when the data is overwhelming and the politics irrelevant. But it stands to this day.


You've never formed your own opinion on anything.

If it had, you wouldn't have said that the science was saying it would be cooling in the 70's because you would have checked and seen that 7 out of 77 papers said that it might cool (MIGHT, and that the effect of CO2 might also change the picture) and 70 said it would be warming.




Now watch applesauce "form his own opinion" by not reading any of it and refusing to believe because WTFUWT says those arguments are fine.

" is not a particularly credible source."


They haven't yet said why they are not a credible source.

They can't go all ad-hom since they've already mounted one "you can't ad-hom" tirade.

It'll be interesting to see what they have that isn't just "Because they get paid" (which everyone does).

Applegate says he/she puts "little faith in august scientific bodies deciding truth from falsity based on political necessity."



I'm sensing you have some received opinions about skeptics.

"Climate Denial Spin Machine created and funded by the fossil fuel industry"? Where would I find such a machine? The world is at once simpler and more complicated than you imagine. You see vast sinister corporate conspiracies, when what you are probably seeing is many people on their own coming to the same opinion, one that you don't want them to have.




The reason I am here, is because I am baffled by what makes an AGW true-believer. I find the science behind it sloppy and it's defenders disingenuous. Is it really just the latest left political cause? Is that all there is? Do people give up their intellectual honesty so easily?






Just for starters.

You're extremely credulous and completely blind to what you don't want to know.


You're a conspiracy nut.

Have you got any proof? Or is proof not necessary for you when it's something you hold dear to your heart?

"The reason I am here, is because I am baffled by what makes an AGW true-believer"



"I find the science behind it sloppy and it's defenders disingenuous."


"Is it really just the latest left political cause? "

Didn't realize the conservatives in Germany, France, the U.K , Denmark & New Zealand who have all implemented a carbon tax plus clean energy schemes.......are now on the left. You just refuse to think don't you? You are fixated by this denial mantra you must repeat over & over.

"Do people give up their intellectual honesty so easily?"



And, since the IPCC was set up on Ronnie Reagan's watch, was HE a communist too, wanting to secede all power to the UN to bring in a Communist New World Order and give all American money to the third world?


Here's Applesauce's finding on science:

Applegate (not verified)

Let's see, 50 years ago these same underpinnings had them predicting global cooling and imminent glaciation?"



He saw it on telly.

We weren't discussing paper counts.


As AGW fans like to point out, the greenhouse effect that underpins AGW has been known for over a century. In the '70s when it was also known that CO2 was increasing, the MSM emphasis was on cooling because cooling what the trend. The same sort of people who are AGW believers now could well have been global cooling believers then.

And I hope you do know that science is not a democracy. And you don't judge the validity of a proposition by counting the number of papers that favorably mention it.

But obviously that was wrong since it was "the media said".


The idea that in the 70's "the science" was saying that we were heading for AGW is 10x more correct than your opinion.

Your opinion seems to be worth extremely little indeed.

"And you don't judge the validity of a proposition by counting the number of papers that favorably mention it."

Why? Because you'll be upset?


"the rest of the AGW believers got it from the likes of Al Gore and the evening news"


So why is their belief wrong but yours right?






You state that " is not a particularly credible source."

What is the basis of your assertion?

the basis of his assertion is that he doesn't believe AGW is real, therefore any evidence for it is either

a) wrong
b) false
c) incorrect
d) faked

and that any source that says otherwise is wrong too.

It's his faith, you see.

I'm not going to spoon-feed you.

And, BTW, neither it wikipedia a reliable source, which I see quoted by posters as well. You probably haven't wondered why pro-AGW claims remain unchallenged on wikipedia. But look at the "view history" tab on such a page. Wiki-bullies do a yeoman's job of goal tending. I wonder that they have jobs. I read that occasionally they get banned for it, but others loyal to the cause wait in the wings.

So you don't believe there is anything called a "Cloud Chamber"?


Can't answer, then, huh. Didn't think you could.








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