Andrew Bolt comes up a killer argument to refute the findings of Oxburgh's committee: Oxburgh's "choice of transport to the press conference". You see, Oxburgh drove there in an enormous SUV, so obviously he doesn't really believe that the CRU scientists' work is sound, else he would have come on a bicycle or something. Oh wait, Oxburgh did arrive on a bicycle, so Bolt deploys a slightly different argument:
Surely Oxburgh's choice of transport to the press conference on his Climategate findings should have made some journalists there wonder about his impartiality: ... You see ...
Lord Oxburgh is so concerned at the potential destruction from globalwarming that he wants to devote more of his time to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and the use of fossil fuels ...
'Domestically we all ride bicycles and use the car as little as we can,' he said. The family has also abandoned air travel for holidays - though Oxburgh still regularly has to fly on business matters.
Exactly what do you think he was likely to conclude about Climategate?
And journalist Keith Kloor takes the opportunity to speak up for the real victims in the affair of the stolen CRU emails: journalists. Yes, journalists. Apparently, they've been victimized by mean climate scientists criticizing them for getting stuff wrong. In a text book case of projection, Kloor accuses scientists of tribal behaviour and taking sides.
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Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What better way for Bolt to show he's a denialist?
Ah, I see - Oxburgh gets a place on the blacklist because he rides a bicycle. Also, he wears spectacles - a sure sign that he's part of the intellectual elite.
The Economist article linked to above manages to damm CRU by praising Oxburgh, a considerable achievement. It spends a bit of time saying that Dr Hand, a memeber of the committee is a fan of McIntyre and that the hockey stick is a crock. Can anybody verify if this actually are the views of Hand?
Ah, the old argument that you can't trust anyone who knows about a topic, because they must be invested in it to have made the effort to educate themselves.
Hand obviously has not read the NAS reports and the IPCC AR4, where it is pointed out that, in the words of the Oxburgh report, this falls into the case where had they "been more statistically au fait, have done some things differently. The panel doubted that better methods would have materially changed the results."
Been there, done that. Perhaps someone might send Prof. Hand a note.
If an investigation doesn't go your way but you can't actually find anything wrong with it, just shoot the messenger, call for a new investigation, rinse, repeat if necessary and if people just start ignoring you, just get more annoying. This is all just your common-or-garden conspiracy theory nonsense seen many times before with things like 9/11, 7/7, Lady Di, JFK, birthers, MMR, fluoride, chemtrails, etc., etc.
You'll never get the alarmists to see the whitewash. You can't conduct inquiries of this nature in one or two days. Anyone can see something this important needs a thorough going over. There are too many problems with the IPCC and the CRU to believe the climate wackos. Climate change is real but not man made.
We have a winner!
It must be hard to believe in conspiracy theories, Bob, when all the evidence is stacked against you. How do you do it? The petulance from you lot is astonishing.
"You can't conduct inquiries of this nature in one or two days."
A couple of hours reviewing the relevant emails and access to an internet search engine would be all that was needed to know the accusations were nonsense. That this witch hunt has dragged on for months is an obscenity.
Bob, the main thrust of your guys' conspiracy theory regarding the CRU is that they rigged data to show anomalous warming.
But you just implied you agree that it's warming. Therefore, I presume you agree the CRU data is not faked. Excellent. We're on the way to completely agreeing with each other.
Your theory of "it's all just natural" seems to be a little imprecise though. I mean, earthquakes are all just natural too, but for some strange reason we strive to scientifically understand exactly why, how, and where they will happen.
Strictly speaking Mike, humans are as much a product of nature as other life forms and elements bearing upon the ecosystem. Therefore, anthopogenically-forced climate change is of "natural" origin.
Of course, not all natural stuff is equally salient to us humans. When the people of Easter Island disrupted its natural balance so much that their society collapsed and they were even unable to escape, their demise was also a "natural" outcome of a "natural" process. Those stone idols stand as a "natural" monument to their quite literal "natural" ignorance and stupidity.
Jay Richardsâ âWhen-Not-To-Believe-The-Science-Of-Scientistsâ is the best rebuttal to the relentless drum beat of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) zombies. A personâs retort only has to quote one or more of a dozen of the reasons listed below, depending on the offending Eco-hype in question, to give Jay Richards' logic and common sense wings. His 12 point checklist should be taught in the classroom to inoculate our youth against the rising flood of propaganda manufactured by Big Government, Big Media and Big Academia working together against the best interests of the American people.
Let's see, what might fit the logical absurdities ladled out in many of todayâs AGW articles responding to ClimateGate revelations of scientific, political, media and academic misconduct and outright RICO ACT fraud? #10 looks pretty good to start with, but here, you choose the rest:
(1) When different claims get bundled together.
(2) When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate.
(3) When scientists are pressured to toe the party line.
(4) When publishing and peer review in the discipline is cliquish.
(5) When dissenting opinions are excluded from the relevant peer-reviewed literature not because of weak evidence or bad arguments but as part of a strategy to marginalize dissent.
(6) When the actual peer-reviewed literature is misrepresented.
(7) When consensus is declared hurriedly or before it even exists.
(8) When the subject matter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus.
(9) When âscientists sayâ or âscience saysâ is a common locution.
(10) When it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies.
(11) When the âconsensusâ is maintained by an army of water-carrying journalists who defend it with uncritical and partisan zeal, and seem intent on helping certain scientists with their messaging rather than reporting on the field as objectively as possible.
(12) When we keep being told that thereâs a scientific consensus.
For a better understanding go to:
http://thegovmonitor.com/world_news/united_states/when-not-to-believe-t…
Bob: where are your Nobel Physics awards for refuting Conservation of Energy and quantum mechanics?
Bob you say: "There are too many problems with the IPCC and the CRU to believe the climate wackos. Climate change is real but not man made."
CRU work on the temperature record, not the causes of the temperature record. So if you think that 'climate change is real but not man made' then the CRU can have absolutely nothing to do with that conclusion.
Tim, I know that you are very exhausted at the moment (at least Tom Fuller says so)
but if you recover a little, you might want to take a look at the perfect piece of journalism, that Fuller has written about you over on the [air vent.](http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/a-comparison-of-tier-2-clim…)
we also are curious about your reactions when you were interviewed by Tom Fuller. as we have seen in his CRU book, he is a capable investigative reporter, so he must have definitely contacted you for some feedback, before he went into print, eh?
Sod, thanks for the link to that well written and balanced article. So balanced, in fact, that it consistently sacrificed logical consistency to present both sides of the story. Even when those points of view are from the same person and mutually contradictory. Even when that "person" was the author himself.
My favourite bit of 'balance:
like any good journalist, he offers his readers the other side:
That, my friends, is what truly great, non-partisan journalism is all about.
sod,
I wonder if Tim would allow a guest post from me if I kiss his ass as much as Fuller kissed Jeff Id's?
What we learnt from Fuller's article, is that people find it more comfortable to hang around with people that agree with them.
Since tAV apparently discusses other scientific topics, I'm wondering if Jeff Id would allow me a guest post to explain my own recent groundbreaking scientific study, which provides for the first time empirical evidence that the volume of shit in the woods is directly related to the population density of bears.
Of course, Bolt could ask a cardiologist why everyone should ride a bike instead of driving a car whenever we can. Oh, hang on, would that make the cardiologist a biased climate alarmist?
Keith Kloor in a comment below the post linked to above: "The only people who have been framing this story in such fashion (akin to watergate) are the Moranos."
after Kloor just got done saying in his post
"In the volatile climate change debate, journalism has come under increasing attack in the blogosphere since the Climategate story broke in late 2009."
But terminology has nothing to do with "framing".
No indeed.
Oh Andrew more framing of the facts?
When report after report spells out the fact that there was no conspiracy, all they can do is resort to ad hominem attacks.
I once followed Ron Oxburgh on a vigorous hike around Tiburon as he commented on geological features. Many geologists get accustomed to physical activity, so it is unsurprising that he would ride a bicycle, especially as Cambridge is good bike country.
Kloor's been studying his Judith Curry. While Judith Curry's transformation into a McIntyre/Bishop Hill/Watts fangirl is what would seem to be worth studying to me ...
Case closed.
*Big* hat tip Deltoid, [Description](http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/herals-sun-war-on-sc…)
Herald Sun War on Science continues apace.
I agree with John Mashey - Cambridge is very fine bike country :)
Tom Fuller's lying about absolutely everything, as I said all along. Concern Troll 101 is to politicize and polarize an issue, deplore "both sides" you just created, claim you're on the opposite "side" to the one you really are, then spend millions of words trashing your supposed side.
Again - he's not a journalist. He's a completely disreputable cog in the denialist machine - the Regnery, Murdoch, Drudge, Morano etc. noise creation system. And xxx.examiner.com has nothing to do with journalism. It's a paid propagandist web site system masquerading as multiple newspaper affiliate web sites.
As for Kloor, Audubon should have fired him years ago, and that they haven't is a sign they're abandoning the fight for conservation, frankly.
I should also point out - again - that in scienceblog comments Fuller said checking for accuracy of a story with a source is not what he thinks journalism is or does, and Kloor said that when he interviews a source, he never has a preset story in mind, and you shouldn't, you should tell an editor you're doing a story "on geology," e.g.
In other words, even as journalists, let alone science commenters, Fuller is a total and absolute fraud and swindler. And Kloor is a dishonest incompetent.
The bar on the denialist side is so low it's recessed into the flooring.
The more "stories" Tom Fuller turns out, the more vindicated I am, and I'll settle for that. :)
I think Curry was led astray by the denial machine that Kloor's part of, not the other way, dhogaza.
Bolt's now [arguing](http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comme…) that air traffic should not be grounded over Europe as the spread of ash computer modelling is from the Met office who also produce climate change models...more killer argument.
Well I for one am not getting on one of those planes unless they have a really good trick for hiding the decline.
Bolt's a grubby gutter hack, Andrew.
He knows that no responsible airline would countenance the risk, even if it is not particlarly high, of flying a 'plane through ash and risk having it fall out of the sky with everyone on board. Thus, there will be no evidence that contradicts his imputation that it is somehow perfectly safe to do so.
I'd call him a maggot, but that would be disrespectful to maggots.
Oops, I guess Tom Fuller and JeffID will be on my case now, for being rude!
Fine then - let them come here and justify Bolt's despicable nonsense. If they believe that he should be showered in candy floss and bubbles for attempting to encourage the endangerment of humans by having them fly through volcanic ash, I'd love to hear their case, and to see their risk/cost-benefit analyses...
JeremyC, no, it can't be verified, and DavidK asked the same question on the other Phil Jones thread. AFAICT this came from a piece of fluff in the UK Daily Tele which has (not at all surprisingly) been copied and pasted by all the usual suspects, such as WTFWT, Blot, the National Post and for all I know the National Enquirer.
Blot muses:
Exactly what do you think he was likely to conclude about Climategate?
Blot's command of logic never fails to amaze. I'm not entirely sure I follow it all, but it seems to go like this:
A) Most bicycles are ridden either by professors with beards in Cambridge or the Dutch (many of whom also have beards, or know someone who has, and some are professors with or without beards, or both),
B) Cambridge and Holland are both flat, and
C) Holland is next to Denmark whose capital is Copenhagen.
Conclusion: Whitewash.[1]
Alternative conclusion: Al Gore.
[1] Whitewash, according to Wikipedia, is "a very low cost type of paint" that "...cures through a reaction with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere". Coincidence? I think not.
Or something.
According to Fuller, I've been blogging since 1991. No wonder I'm exhausted! And how he can claim that I moderate comments and and make arbitrary deletions when he was [given his own thread where he was allowed to freely [troll away](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/tom_fuller_and_senator_inhofe.p…) is beyond me.
Oh, and the Pat Frank who wrote this?
>I havenât visited Deltoid, but Iâd wager that Jeff is much more mathematically astute than Tim Lambert.
Frank came up with the concept of [asymptotic intercepts](http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01resources/c…). I am at least mathematically astute enough to know that curves don't actually intercept their asymptotes. Frank's error amounts to concluding that the log of 0 is 1 and armed with that and a starting assumption that climate sensitivity is 3, he conludes that the sensitivity is 1.
Bernard Said:
You never will, Bernard because they don't believe in computer models. Imagine that they tried to simulate the plane flying through ash at ground level and ran all sorts of tests and then got the plane up? Blot would have to say "unreliable" and of course, if the plane did fall oput of the sky ... well ... the commentary would be so predictable.
But for the risk to pilots and people on the ground and the environment it would be nice for Blot to be invited to fly and see how he responded.
Andrew Bolt quotes Lufthansa CEO Joachim Hunold saying
Showing the strong, critical thinking skills of Bolt and Co, they conveniently accept this at face value, ignoring the numerous [soundings](http://62.202.7.134/hpbo/sounding_europe.aspx) taken every 6 hours all over Europe, not to mention the collection of data on plume height, shape and composition undertaken by [satellite](http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/vaac/ash_detection.html) and [radar](http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/volcano-radar-i…).
That fact that volcanic ash is really, really, really friggin' dangerous to fly through, and maybe.... just maybe, requires an application of an ounce of prevention also seems to have escaped Bolt and his commentators.
Aeroplanes have always crashed.
If a plane flies through a cloud of ash and crashes, how would we know it's not just part of the natural variation?
Gaz @ 36
Plane crashes are caused by [sunspots!!!!](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19381201&id=L7MKAAAAIBAJ&…)
EleventyOne!!!!
Worse still, if no-one's there to hear it, how do we know it made a sound?
SteveC @ 32,
Funniest footnote of the year!
@ 32 - indeed, very funny :D
Yes well put #41 (although it'll all be Greek to Deltoid's motley crue of global warmists).
The volcano event has brought up some interesting issues.
Ryan Air seem to be very keen to stay on the ground for as long as possible!
Which is interesting because Michael O'Leary (Ryan Air) is usually the first one to complain about being stopped from doing something.
Meanwhile BA is desperate to get back into the air. Accusing scientists of getting it wrong. BA did a very scientific test and took an aircraft up to see if it would fall out of the sky.
Meanwhile, I'm guessing it is an ideal opportunity for scientists to measure the effects of contrails and aerosols in Europe.
A lot of people are very pleased that noise from aircraft has gone, some have said they can clearly hear the motorways now and other carriageways, which they couldn't before.
Environmentalists are happy for a lot of reasons, reduced imports, reduced carbon emissions etc.
#42 Is that because - translated - it is spam about Buddhist cuisine?
I wouldn't normally respond to drive-bys like the one at #13, but I'll confess it made me laugh. Not just because of the number of assertions that exist purely in the minds of deniers and hack journalists and the number of times he contradicted himself ("They only let the stuff be published that they want to be published... then they misrepresent it"), but because of the sheer bone-headedness of the anti-vacc-style unattainable criteria. If you follow what he says, science becomes invalid when it influences government policies and a consensus can't ever exist if someone says that it does. Anyone else see a problem with that?
People like that should just go away and join the Amish. I'm sure everyone would be much happier that way.
i for one am glad to be part of Deltoid's Mötley Crüe. death to false metal!
No. 41, how very droll.
As for Andrew Bolt, he is just the saddest lost cause around Melbourne, I'm afraid. He is about the purest example of ideology-driven journalism in Australia that I can think of.
Yes thanks Andrew and ligne - I for one do not really welcome our Chinese spamming overlords.
#47 "purest example of ideology-driven journalism in Australia" - come now, come now, I must put in a word for Devine, Mitchell, Jones, Albrechtsen, Sattler ....
All of these shock jocks (radio and print) are ideologically driven, nothing short of a pure neoconservative paradise in which they and their friends are obscenely rich; the poor know their place; the greenies are hanging from lamp posts; the whole world is concreted over; and nothing, but nothing, gets in the way (involving war if that's what it takes) of ever-increasing profits for the corporations, will ever satisfy them.
John in #13 offers this fascinating bit of logic:
"When should we not believe the scientists?
(12) When we keep being told that thereâs a scientific consensus."
Therefore, we should only believe the scientists when there is NOT a scientific consensus; i.e., when they don't agree. This does leave the question, which side should we believe?
Here in London we had a beautiful Sunday morning wandering around Hyde Park. It was hot and sunny with no sound of aircraft on their approach to Heathrow and everyone thought the air smelt cleaner.
Of course that proves I was in on the conspiracy that put a bomb in the volcano that caused it to erupt because we knew it ground every plane so forcing western civilisation to de-industrialize. Nick Minchin has forced me to admit this because he has proof that this is our game.
Gaz @36
rofl you win at the internetz.
Just to back up Bolt's take on the dangers of flying in europe, BBC news channel is reporting Nato F16s incurring engine damage after flying through volcanic ash cloud, which just goes to show how far the conspiracy in climate physics actually extends - not just the met and media organisations but NATO too. That probably explains the black helicopters i suppose.
Your problem Erasmussimo@49 is to assume that the answer to when we should not believe the scientists i.e. when we keep being told that thereâs a scientific consensus was one state in a boolean expression, when actually it was part of a multi-state expression i.e. when we don't keep being told that thereâs a scientific consensus and even when when we keep being told that thereâs no scientific consensus. We should never believe the scientists. That way we can believe any "scientists" we prefer or even non-scientists when ever we like.
Consensus is bad because it limits what we can believe. The scientists are kill-joys. No wonder they are in league with socialists.
FWIW after having a look at Blot's latest post I think he has really jumped the shark with this 'all-these-smart-arse-scientists-using-those-infernal-models-can't-be-trusted' meme.
I had a look at the comments thread and even some of the regulars are sounding just a little sheepish. Whilst his hard-core denialist coterie will lap up anything he spouts, all but the most extreme can see some sense in being cautious in this instance.
I thought Andrew (not Bolt) was joking till I saw the link.
Andrew Bolt is so bad that no matter how bad you are, you can defend yourself with "at least I'm not Andrew Bolt!" Except maybe Dellingpole. If Bolt can convince Dellingpole, maybe we should chip in and buy them 100 flights over Iceland.
And a bang-up job they did too! The anomalous warming they created was carefully designed such that all the other major temperature records have slightly higher warming trends. That'll put the keen auditors off the scent - dastardly clever strategy to hide the fraud amongst the non-fraudulent data by making it show LESS warming than the rest!
Bwaaahaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I had a look at the comments Think Big and they seem to be the usual - government scientists are deliberatly plotting to keep planes out of the air to begin the deindustrialisation of the planet. Other comments are suggesting that airlines should sue the MET office.
So yeah, the usual detachment from reality.
Bolt's now arguing that air traffic should not be grounded over Europe as the spread of ash computer modelling is from the Met office who also produce climate change models...more killer argument.
Well, given that commercial jets have actually suffered engine failure after flying through volcanic ash clouds -- thus reinforcing the ash computer models -- I'd say that makes the climate change models MORE credible, not less.
...should perhaps be dubbed "The Dummy's Guide to Becoming and Remaining Perplexed".
That really was an astonishing tour de force.
It's really inconvenient for those who wish to remain perplexed that (6) is routinely practiced by high profile "skeptics". I think the TDGTOBARP needs updating to plug this loophole ;-)
Re: John A. Jauregui
"(2) When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate."
You mean like you called proponents of AGW 'zombies'? Should that be re-phrased as 'When ad hominem attacks against me and the people who agree with me predominate'?
Still that is not a logical position but an opinion as to how debate should be conducted.
"(3) When scientists are pressured to toe the party line."
So when the Bush administration pressured scientists to toe the party line that proved AGW? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16886008/ Again, not a position of logic or evidence, but politics - which is subjective.
All the rest of these 'logical absurdity detectors' are subjective; i.e. down to the interpretation of the person involved; there is no logical framework at all, no reliance on data - it is a set of political guidelines designed to reinforce selection bias.
But also, didn't well known warmist conspiracy monger John Mashey say that he knew Oxburgh? What more evidence does anyone need of an environazi warmofascist cabal bent on establishing a leftist new world order? ;)
There's a quite detailed deconstruction of the Jay Richards nonsense [at Ill Considered if anyone's interested](http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/04/when_to_doubt_a_doubt.php)
Is this the same Jay Richards who is a creationist? If so, I can shorten his list to just one:
1. When they tell you something that conflicts with your dearly held prior beliefs.
Steve @#32:
"Blot". That's good; I like that. After all, a blot is a stain, is it not (the stain being on Australia)?
BTW, "Bolt" rhymes with "dolt", which is what he is.
Could there be a market, at home or abroad, for a bound volume of Bolt the dolt's collected stupid columns, critically dissected for the pleasure of the discerning reader? Legal issues possibly arising would, of course, have to be addressed.
ChrisC @35, and others:
And BTW, a relative of mine was on the British Airways aircraft that flew through the volcanic ash cloud over Indonesia in 1982, then plummeted several miles without engine power, before the engines were re-started. By some accounts, the unaided descent was not a wholly pleasurable experience. Pity we can't strap Dolt into an aircraft seat and put him through something similar.
@65 peterd
Coincidently some of the Aluminium of the 747 that flew through the Indonesia ash cloud was used last year to produce some 'tags' for the 10:10 carbon emission cutting campaign in the UK.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=555315743504
http://www.1010global.org/uk/tags
The most surprising thing I heard on this ash thing was some airline exec complaining how economically unacceptable it was to ground all those planes. Maybe someone should tell him about the Indonesia experiment.
On Andrew Dolt and computer models: someone should tell him that oil geology relies heavily on massive supercomputer models, then he'll stop believing oil exists.
Oh my, Bolt gets even more extreme. This time, [Com-puh-tahs is evil!](http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/herald-sun-war-on-sc…). (HUN War on Science #5).
The shut down of flights in Europe is the handiwork of warmists scientists in the UK. Tim, I'm sure you'd have a view on this one ;)
Seriously, the man is at war with pretty much all science. Anti-intellectualism in it's most basest form.
More from Bolt - this time, the fact that someone in the arctic gets frostbite disproves global warming:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/another-polar-rescue-must-send/stor…
My favourite part - he doesn't realise that this:
> And last week he had to be rescued by Canadian soldiers after falling through the ice sheet.
Might actually indicate that the ice is, oh, I don't know, thinner?
What happens to Bolt when he goes to dinner parties?
Do people mention to him that he's full of shit, or what?
In case anyone missed it, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce tried to talk sense into Bolt on Bolt's radio station. Very politely, but in vain, naturally.
Perhaps Alan Joyce was being a bit subtle for Bolt when he said in response to Bolt's idea of launching into legal action against the Air regulatory authorities:
"I don't think we'll be calling on the taxpayer to be funding us for this incident".
Indeed!
As to the question from Steve Price:
"Do you think this will end in legal action by the airlines?"
Bolt answered:
"Without a doubt".
We shall see.......
Clearly Alan Joyce was nowhere near sufficiently on message for Bolt's purposes. In his entire approach to the matter Joyce in fact epitomised the conservatism Bolt farcically claims for himself.
Bolt kept hammering the Niki Lauda quote ("It was one of the biggest mistakes in aviation history to close airspace for a long period without having the right facts and figures"), and practically goaded Joyce into taking a comparable position. Then after Joyce signed off, Bolt had of course to give it one more emphatic run to drive home the meme to which he's clearly now emotionally committed.
Bolt closed the segment saying that "without a doubt" litigation against civil aviation authorities will ensue, which if it eventuates he'll undoubtedly see as vindication of the moral panic he's whipped up over this.