Just Your Typical Interview on Scientific Issues..

..typical, at least, if you are a skeptic.  Tom Nelson beat me to the punch on an observation I was about to make about this interview with Marc Morano

[Check out this selection of questions from alarmist Randy Olson]:
RO: Okay, so let’s start with this — do you have doubts about President Obama’s birth certificate?
RO: Would you vote for Sarah Palin for president?
RO: Are you an anti-evolutionist?
RO: So who funds you?
RO: There are literally hundreds of celebrities on the global warming bandwagon. Are they all mis-informed? And why don’t you have any celebrities on the skeptics side?
RO: Last question. So you don’t feel that you’re anti-science?

Can you imagine an interview of, say, James Hansen that asked things like

  • Do you have any doubts about the Bush National Guard memo’s publicized by Dan Rather?
  • Would you vote for Ralph Nader for president?
  • Are you an atheist?
  • Who funds you?
  • Are you willing to defend every statement Harrison Ford has made about global warming?
  • Don’t  you feel like you are anti-freedom?

The asymmetry of how skeptics are treated in the media is startling.

65 thoughts on “Just Your Typical Interview on Scientific Issues..”

  1. ADiff:

    Do you think the hacking of RC was not connected to the CRU incident?

    You say: ‘All this hack stuff is just a very lame diversion from the real issue facing the CRU and the larger AGW community.’

    Fair enough then. We will have to wait and see what the outcome is.

    ‘And if you can’t see the impact on AGW theory of recent developments of all kinds, all I can say is; keep telling yourself that…..’

    Can’t you show me? If it’s there than we should be able to see it just like you. What part of the emails or other developments have poked serious holes in the theory?

  2. Shills,

    First, you made the claim that “nothing has really changed beyond the sway of the mass media,” so its up to you to prove that or at least support that claim, not for ADiff to prove you wrong.

    Second, the change in mass media and public preception of AGW is pretty huge from my stand point. Six months ago how many people do you think knew who Rajendra Pachauri was? So while all this negative press isn’t going to change the EPA’s finding on CO2, it does make “cap and trade” or any similar legislation that much more difficult to pass, not to mention actually acting on the EPA’s finding. There is really no way to quantify many of these things, but I believe it should be pretty clear that pretending “nothing has really changed” is to shove your head pretty deep into the sand.

  3. Shills,

    I see nothing connecting the RC incident and the CRU incident at all, except it’s (claimed) one case involved someone trying to upload some of the email files….the only ‘connection’ there is that whoever it was had the files, which could have come (at that point) from any of several publicly open sources. So, it could have been anyone at all (even the RC folks themselves). There’s no evidence supporting suspicion it was the same parties or part of a connected effort or anything of the kind. It does suggest it was ideologically driven though, as scientists don’t hack disputant’s communications systems any more than they censor or vilify them. We don’t know the ideological bent though. It could just as easily have been ‘pro-AGW’ as ‘anti-AGW’… About all we can conclude is it was 1) someone who had obtained the CRU files (whether 1st, 2nd or 3rd hand is completely unknown) and 2) someone with something of an ‘axe to grind’ about the issue who’d happily dispense with any of the ethics normal in scientific communities. The 2nd point, in my view, makes it much more likely it was some NGO associated pro-AGW advocate than anything else, but then that’s purely a matter of personal opinion. Anyway it’s probably safe to conclude it wasn’t any proponent or skeptic of AGW in the scientific community, but someone from the larger, more vociferous and less principled policy advocacy communities.

    As to changes….well what you and I think isn’t really the point. But when Phil Jones publicly declares that the science’s not settled, and that there hasn’t been any warming since the mid 90s, and European leaders get wide spread press for calling AGW based policy advocacy the greatest threat to Freedom since the fall of the CPSU, I think it’s pretty hard to argue ‘nothing’s changed’…. But I agree with you, we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out. Who knows? Maybe the pro-AGW researchers will be able to demonstrate the criticisms of their proxies, handful of tree’s rings, missing heat, missing storms, missing droughts, missing warming, can be satisfactorily explained and honestly prove their theory isn’t completely shot full of holes…. If they did, I’d sure be willing to listen to what they’re saying. But until then, their just claiming all that shouldn’t count because it’s really just the Big Oil bogeyman out to get them does even less than preserve their credibility or their theory’s…..

  4. ‘so its up to you to prove that or at least support that claim, not for ADiff to prove you wrong.’

    I have to show that something doesn’t exist? Not sure how to. Should I show the absence of any new papers or data or scientist’s statements seriously against AGW? Okay I’ve found none, there you go.

    Also, I said ‘ beyond the sway of the mass media’. Meaning, not involving public perception/reaction. What damage has been done to the theory, the science?

    ‘when Phil Jones publicly declares that the science’s not settled’

    He was referring to uncertain aspects of the phenomena which were never claimed to be certain in the first place. No change there. Esp. against the theory’s central ideas.

    ‘and that there hasn’t been any warming since the mid 90s’

    Wrong. No statistically sig. warming in his data set, just. This is a short time interval, hence the difficulties. Try a greater time interval.

    ‘missing heat, missing storms, missing droughts, missing warming, can be satisfactorily explained’

    What? who said any of that is missing? From what I can remember all these things have shown evidence of change in line with the warming experienced, some other things exceeding projections.

  5. Let’s see….no significant warming demonstrated…no increase in storm number or intensity…data shows most glacial melting predates CO2 increases…many studies show no change in drought frequency…studies show no change in sea-level trends as CO2 has increased…

    These are all pretty well substantiated. All the disasters aren’t happening.

    It’s always better to check what’s actually going on instead of what someone’s ‘projections’ say should be going on.

  6. ADiff. Wanna share some source material instead of repeating your claims unsubstantiated? Namely, where the science predicted some of these things as certain, and where the science has shown no change.

  7. Shills,

    You continue to display a pretty fundimental lack of reasoning abilities:

    “I have to show that something doesn’t exist? Not sure how to. Should I show the absence of any new papers or data or scientist’s statements seriously against AGW? Okay I’ve found none, there you go. ”

    You aren’t trying to show something doesn’t exist, you’re trying to show something hasn’t changed. Remeber? You said, “nothing has really changed beyond the sway of the mass media.” Not existing and not changing are COMPLETELY different things.

    “Also, I said ‘ beyond the sway of the mass media’. Meaning, not involving public perception/reaction. What damage has been done to the theory, the science? ”

    UH? Since when does the mass media = public perception? If you meant public perception, say public perception.

    I think ADiff delt with the rest.

  8. Wally:

    You say: ‘ Not existing and not changing are COMPLETELY different things.’

    Sure, so for example you would give a before-and-after shot of things, right? But practically speaking how would you do that? Cite a lit. review before and after the events that happened mere months ago? We’re gonna have to wait for that one.

    The most recent synthesis of the science I can find apart from the AR4 is this:

    http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/default.html

    It would be nice if you guys just gave some evidence for the faults in the theory (none of the recent alleged mistakes even come from wg1 or do serious damage to wg2). Can you show me where the science is now deemed more doubtful than it was before? It doesn’t have to be a synthesis or anything, maybe just a few of the climate scientists expressing new doubt at the theory?

    You say: ‘UH? Since when does the mass media = public perception? If you meant public perception, say public perception.’

    It doesn’t seem to matter what I say you get it wrong: I said this: ‘…beyond the sway of the mass media.’
    And yet right after, you still said this: ‘…the change in mass media…’

    To address your point: Mass media has a very notable affect on public perception. By saying ‘beyond the sway of the mass media’ I mean beyond the things it affects, including public perception and politics.

    YOu say: ‘Much of these things have been presented on this website.’

    Umm. Do you have anything apart from blog science? Does Warren link to any papers or reference anything

    For my evidence you can just look at the relevant parts in the IPCC. Or there is the CopDiag. link. Both have ref. to peer-reviewed papers.

  9. “Does Warren link to any papers or reference anything”?

    Please read the content of the various presentations available on this site! (I really would have thought you’d have by now…)

    Warren’s references are extensive (& excellent, IMO)…much more so than those of the IPCC, to be a bit snarky….

    This is especially so considering his explicit intent to use exactly the same sources cited by AGW advocates, whenever possible, to try to reduce appeals to authority directed against those sources!

  10. @ ADiff:

    I’m sure he might ref. a graph that he borrows or something. But I can’t find any links to peer-reviewed papers that support Warren’s ideas or the like.

  11. Gee, Shills, you’re just wrong. If you review Meyer’s presentation and publications, you’ll find numerous references to scientific sources, most of these directly to these sources (a few are 2nd hand through other commentators works). Not only does these include the “peer-reviewed” publications you (quite mistakenly, I believe) see as some kind of ‘gold standard’, but many are from AGW sources themselves, including NASA, Hadley Centre, NOAA, and several university presses. Scan through these yourself and you’ll see…. I am afraid you’ll have to actually find them though, since there aren’t any indices or bibliographies. But then, as we’ve seen from IPCC’s work, such do not make sources credible or contextually appropriate pro forma.

    Some of Meyer’s graphs are borrowed from other material, but others are (apparently) original, too.

    Of course Meyer is a layman (which I’d argue provides greater rather than less credibility than a professional academic with all the vested interests and agendas accruing to the latter), but his work appears well documented and referenced (even if it takes a bit of work around the lack of spoon feeding some folks can’t manage without). Anyway I find them much more objective and apparently ‘honest’ than the blatently ideological stuff one encounters on Mann’s site, in Hansen’s work, and (apparently) is the standard at organizations like the CRU.

  12. @ ADiff:

    So you suggest his movie would be a good place to look? By pubs. to you mean his blog posts or is there other stuff?

  13. Nope, ADiff. Looking at Warren’s pubs. I see a lot of unsubstantiated claims. I can’t believe you think his referencing is better than the IPCC. But than again, the skeptics have their own weird standards for everything.

Comments are closed.