Robert Grumbine finds icecap.us to be unreliable

I read his blog and he writes;

"The thing is, science is done by scientists, not institutions."
Is he saying that Nasa does not do science? Of course institutions do science.

Looks like Robert Grumbine is unreliable.

kent:

Do you ever see a paper written by "NASA et al."?

Or, kent, you could try reading it again and perhaps actually learn something.

Or are you an institution?

The first time I went to icecaps'R'us (or whatever it is), I saw an article by Stephen Milloy in which he announced his intention of hunting down and personally suing each and every climate activist (for loss of income, I think).

Grumbine said "The thing is, science is done by scientists, not institutions."

Yeah, correct. The IPCC and the "consensus" is not science. The various claims about CCC (catastrophic CC) by or attributed to the IPCC are propaganda, not science.

Demesure agrees with kent who says Grumbine is wrong, and then says Grumbine is correct.

Inactivist 'logic' rocks again...

Yeah, correct. The IPCC and the "consensus" is not science.

The IPCC reviews are ... well, you figure it out. Dictionary.com may be of help.

And the consensus among climate scientists is ... again, you figure it out.

Neither is "doing science", nor "propaganda".

That's right, the IPCC are a bunch of communists, who only want to take away your rights as a human being. It is 1984, but a reality. They also get paid millions by Al Gore, just to lie and make Demesure have a bad day.

" the IPCC are a bunch of communists, who only want to take away your rights as a human being"

in the same spirit:

"we've failed with national socialism; we've failed with communism; we've failed with the Baathists; we've failed with global cooling; but this time, comrades, we cannot fail in our dream of world domination in order that we may prevent humankind from driving their SUVs, since the public cannot fail to be terrified by the prospect of global warming! why didn't we choose this before!"

i mean, it's not like the real and solid risk of Saddam unleashing his anthrax stockpiles and all that.

Ugh, I need to fill one (and only) missing word into this thread: BULLSHIT.

icecap.us is an epitome of bullshit (in case nobody has noticed).

Regarding being bullshitted: You (we) can no longer afford that (this being c21st). If you want to do your share of fighting bullshitters, just say BULLSHIT! when ever you see/hear/read one. Don't be shy.

The archive of Robert Grumbine's blog is still small, but already holds quite useful posts for the layman
petitioning on climate (part 1) and part 2 give examples of how to identify the worst disinformation articles and how to expand a personal black list of unreliable sources from there. I think those articles are useful to people, who do not have much background in science. Thank you, Mr. Grumbine.

"icecap.us is an epitome of bullshit (in case nobody has noticed)."

... I noticed ...

Once again, you guys amaze me. Icecap is one of the few sites that someone can go to get information that is NOT slanted to the AGW belief. It certainly has a bias, which they are very open about, but that side of the issue is vastly unreported. When research/findings comes to light that counters many of the claims made by AGW'ers, it is never reported on by the mass media and to a certain extent, not addressed by the 'scientists' on the AGW side. Icecap serves a very important role in keeping this whole thing honest.

monsoonevans,

Who wants a site that is deliberately "slanted", as you put it, in any direction? For some strange reason you seem to.

The problem with Icecap is a major one. It quotes a 2006 paper as significant but ignores the subsequent (published) correction to that paper.

Why? Just to keep a "slant" even if it's not accurate?

Sorry, but I can't even begin to understand that.

"When research/findings comes to light that counters many of the claims made by AGW'ers, it is never reported on by the mass media"

and yet, somehow it manages to find its way to be posted here. te weather underground, i guess.

Monsoonevans.

Consider this:

Once again, you guys amaze me. [CreationismTruth] is one of the few sites that someone can go to get information that is NOT slanted to the [evolutionary] belief. It certainly has a bias, which they are very open about, but that side of the issue is vastly unreported. When research/findings comes to light that counters many of the claims made by [biologists], it is never reported on by the mass media and to a certain extent, not addressed by the 'scientists' [?!] on the [evolutionary biology] side. [CreationismTruth] serves a very important role in keeping this whole thing honest.

There. Now do you understand?

So I take what Monsoonevans is really trying to say.. 'why can't you guys accept websites that agree with what I am trying to say, even though it is blindly obvious that the sites are incorrect, who cares, as long as they agree with me, who cares about science'

I also take it that Monsoonevans has not read much mass media, if Monsoonevans thinks that it is slanted in the way of real science.

Monsoonevans loves it, Americans generally love it, as long as it supports a favorite world view (e.g. effective flatness of Earth). What was that word?

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/poll_bullshit_is_most_important

talking ice, i just stumbled over the "doughnut" theory:

The Antarctic ice cap should melt even faster with all the volcanic activity beneath it. Only, in its case, as molten lava is squeezed out from beneath the Antarctic ice cap, it will eventually cool and build up like a doughnut to create a solid barrier surrounding the ice cap.

http://tinyurl.com/5n3kro

meanwhile experts expect the northwest passage to open again soon:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080806.PASSAGE06/TPS…

My grandmother read newspapers compulsively. Unfortunately for the rest of us, she tended to ignore the reality part of the paper and focus on the editorials. And she read only those papers which agreed with her already set notions about how the world worked (its those commies and liberals and Democrats and the UN and . . .). She would come off with the most outlandish statements and then, after we tore her precis apart, would claim, "It has to be true, I read it in a newspaper/magazine." Isn't it nice that there are enough websites out there that anyone, no matter how deeply in denial, can find a website that agrees with the preset thought pattern, point to it, and say, "It must be true. I read it on a website that has science in the name/title/description." Aaaaah, progress.

Mike #14- I said places like THIS have a slant. I actually used 'bias' for icecap. Not to be nit-picky or anything. My point was that the 'mass' media is ALL slanted. Its human nature. TV, newspapers, magazines, movies, music, et al. are run by humans. It is almost impossible for there to un-biased reporting.
Case in point, there was an article today referencing climate modeling. The title was something to the affect that Climate Models forecasting global warming are getting better. The meat of the research, however, is that climate models have been terrible and there is so much data missing that the models cant accurately predict future warming. This is an example of how one 'interprets' information and then reports on it as they seem appropriate. Appropriate for who?
Icecap makes no bones about it-they feel that AGW is hogwash and what goes on there supports that belief.
NASA/IPCC/et al dont do it that way. They portray themselves as objective and impartial. Quite the contrary though. We know that Hansen and the IPCC have a clear agenda and that they will only report on things that bolster their campaign. I'm more than happy to provide a reference to the post regarding the models if you would like.

Tushara #17-I never said that the material on icecap is bull crap. I have also read too much of the mass media for my likeing (see above note for that). Icecap, in addition to having 'editorial' type of material, provides scientific research that IS factual in nature. They just seem to be one of the few places you can go to find it.
Think about it this way- If you plug 'global warming' into your Google search engine, what pops up first? A wikipedia entry. Why is that do you suppose? Did the supreme chancellor come down and make them the authority on all things AGW? Well, thats what the 'masses' would come to think. In reality though, it works much differently. The location of ads/entries in search engines in not by accident. Companies pay for 'order' and 'placement' with google/ask.com/excite/et al. This isnt some conspiracy stuff, its actually how it works. Go to one of those sites and check it out yourself.

Bernard J #16- What? Are you trying to claim that your scientists are better than their scientists? Icecap uses articles written by well respected climatologists, engineers, climate modelers, yes biologists, meteorologists, and many more qualified to discuss this issue. You dont have to be a MD or climatologist to read temperature charts. Or to understand PDO and ENSO.
By the way, do you realize that we have just come out of close to a 30 year warm cycle PDO? Yea, something like 1977-78 through 2006-2007. Hmm. One would have to think that we would have gone through a pretty warm past 30 years, especially considering the strong ENSO events occuring during this period. I would actually like a repsonse to the PDO/ENSO issue. Very interested to hear all your thoughts on that.

"...Icecap uses articles written by well respected climatologists, engineers, climate modelers, yes biologists, meteorologists, and many more qualified to discuss this issue..."

The original post suggests that Icecap was misusing at least one such article. Do you not see what is wrong with that?

Holly
I think your missing my point. Every site like icecap/deltoid uses bad/old information from time to time. What's important is that the information gets out there. Once out it can be critiqued and vetted out if needed. Hansens projections for example. The mass media isn't critiquing ANYTHING coming out by the AGW side.
Think about it, if ENSO and PDO shifts play an integral part in mid to long-term global temps, why hasn't that gotten ANY exposure in the media?
A lot of you bash me for being an American anti-AGWer. I got news for you, the vast majority of my yankee brethern are on your side. There is an unending avalanche of AGW material being shoved in our faces on a daily basis. From what I can tell, there's much more questioning going on on the other side of the pond. Americans can be a very gullable/trendy/minipulated bunch. How else do you explain 'American Idol', reality TV, and bottled water?

Think about it, if ENSO and PDO shifts play an integral part in mid to long-term global temps, why hasn't that gotten ANY exposure in the media?

Perhaps because, unlike indefinitely rising CO2, they can't produce an indefinitely rising temperature.

A lot of you bash me for being an American anti-AGWer.

I don't bash you for being America. I bash you for lying that the IPCC reduced its total sea level rise estimate between the last two reports. You don't seem to realize that you're not going to get anywhere by lying.

blue (#11), I'm glad you got from the articles what I was hoping. The world is hard enough to understand without spending time on sources which aren't trying to help that. I'll be doing this sort of thing occasionally, but there are more unreliable sites and repeaters than I could ever do. But if people can do their checking on similar lines ... well, there are a lot of us out there. As I mentioned in the petition article, I welcome suggested additions -- documented on the order of what I did so that people can see for themselves what the problems are. Or, if not up to that, suggestions of sources for me to take a look at. Note, though, that for this list, I'm not looking at subtle points of whether this expert or that, speaking in their area of expertise, is the more accurate one. This list is for things that you don't need to be an expert to see what the problems are, but maybe having someone point them out is a help.

plutarchspam at aim dot com is the address to use. So far, nobody has taken me up on this, but these are early days.

A different thing I'm trying to do over at my site is keep it accessible to, say, jr. high students. One part of that is that labeling things bullshit (#10) is not a comment I'll pass through. (Not that the kids don't know the words, but parents and teachers are liable to not recommend such sites. Plus, well, there are plenty of other words in the language available.)

For a related reason, vacuous comments like #1 also wouldn't be passed. Come on. Put meat on the table! As #2 asked, where's that paper authored by "NASA et al."? Instead I have many written by scientists who were at NASA.

Hasn't been a problem, anyhow, as only one comment of each sort has been bounced. People disagree with me, and one has corrected me. But with substance, not mere assertion.

Robert: you do good stuff.

*Seriously* consider providing an explicit discussion policy, of which a good example might be John Quiggin's, and then be ruthless within whatever bounds you set.

Thanks John.

I'm definitely going to be putting up a more explicit comment policy. The thing is, Eli Rabett put it well in his link to me in calling it 'Bob Grumbine joins the 21st century'. Not sure I've quite made it there, maybe late 1990s. Before getting to an explicit policy, I wanted to get some experience on what kinds of things I needed to be explicit about. My (also recent) reading of others' blogs didn't really help that much because it wasn't my blog. Kind of the difference between being a passenger and a driver.

But now I'm starting to get a feel. I'm also getting a fair number of comments encouraging ruthlessness and high standards. That surprised me since most blog comments I've seen elsewhere have tended the other way.

Apparently the icecap story is not done with. D'Aleo ... takes exception to my article. You can see his comments, of course, and now my response. Bleah.