bullshit

2016: The year bullshit was weaponized

oracknows — Fri, 30 Dec 2016 08:25:11 +0000

2016: The year bullshit was weaponized

This will almost certainly be my last post of 2016. Unless something so amazing, terrible, or just plain interesting to me happens between now and tomorrow night, I probably won't be posting again until January 2 or 3. Many bloggers like to do "end of year roundup"-type posts that list their best or most popular post, trends noted in 2016 relevant to their area of blogging interest, or predictions for the coming year as their last post of the year, but that's never really been my style. I don't remember the last time I did a post like that, and I'm too lazy today to bother to go and look it up, given that I've now been at this blogging thing for 12(!) years, my very first substantive post having gone live December 12, 2004.

That's not to say that I don't sometimes become contemplative as the year ends, and if there is a year that makes me contemplative as it finally shuffles off ignominiously into history, it's 2016. Indeed, I'm having a hard time figuring out where to place 2016 in the annals of badness. Certainly it ranks up there in my lifetime. The last time I thought about it, I concluded that 2016 has been the worst year since at least 2001, and 2001, of course, was the year that roughly 3,000 people died in coordinated terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, leading to the "war on terror," the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq a year and a half later, and a whole lot of really bad things. Given the results of the election, we can't know how bad this year truly is, but I rather suspect that fifteen years from now in 2031 we'll be arguing over which year was worse, although, truth be told, 2017 is likely to be the real year to worry about. However, 2016 was still plenty bad. In essence, 2016 was the year bullshit was weaponized.

If 2016 were a person, it would be Mike Adams, the alternative medicine "entrepreneur" huckster who got his start selling Y2K scams in the late 1990s and for whom no conspiracy theory is too outrageous and no quackery is too ridiculous. Indeed, just check out his site now, and you'll see that, among the usual antivaccine crap and rants against science-based medicine, Mikey is peddling conspiracy theories about President Obama trying to start World War III before January 20, referring to him as "quite literally a 'sleeper cell' agent who has been trying to destroy America from day one" and how the feds are supposedly probing NaturalNews.com and InfoWars for DDoS attacks to take them down. That's because 2016 is the year that saw the rise in belief in conspiracy theories like the ones Adams peddles and their elevation into mainstream prominence, thanks to a presidential candidate and his followers who believe them, including all sorts of antivaccine nonsense. We now have a President who not only believes conspiracy theories like that but believes that vaccines are a "monster shot" that causes autism and has met with, of all people, Andrew Wakefield to discuss vaccine policy. 2016 was a year when Deepak Chopra castigated our new President-Elect for not being sufficiently reality-based. At the time, I said that irony meters everywhere exploded, but, having observed Donald Trump a while longer, I'm not entirely sure that he isn't less reality-based than Deepak Chopra. We all make mistakes, I guess. That doesn't change the fact that Trump appointed a man to run the Department of Health and Human Services who belongs to the premiere crank medical "society" in the US, the Association of American Physicians and Scientists (AAPS), which is still cranking out antivaccine nonsense as we speak, while the top to candidates to run the FDA include a man who doesn't think the FDA should require evidence of efficacy before approving a drug versus a man who is, quite literally, a pharma shill. No wonder I fear for science policy, and that doesn't even consider climate science.

If 2016 were a blog post, it would be this one, Autism Rates Skyrocket Since SB277 Took Hold In California or this one, Autism Rates in California Schools Jumped As Much as 17% Among Kindergartners Since Mandatory Vaccine Bill Was Signed. The idea is that SB277, the bill that eliminates nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, has already increased autism rates in California. Never mind that the bill was only signed into law in the summer of 2015 and didn't take effect until the 2016-2017 school year. Never mind that the median age of diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders ranges from 3 years, 10 months for autistic disorder to 6 years, 2 months for Asperger's, meaning that, even if vaccines cause autism (which they don't), the earliest we could expect to have a chance of detecting an increase in autism prevalence potentially related to SB 277 for at least two or three years after the law took effect; i.e., 2019 or so. Even then, it would be ridiculous to attribute such a marked increase in autism prevalence to SB 277, given that at most SB 277 could only be expected to increase vaccination rates by a few percent. Why? Because less than 10% of California kindergarten children aren't fully vaccinated and there will always be at least a couple of percent of children who need medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. That means that, at most, SB 277 will increase vaccine uptake a few percentage points, single digits. That's enough to make sure that herd immunity isn't compromised, but, even if you buy into the pseudoscientific belief that vaccines cause autism, it's not enough to cause a massive increase in autism prevalence as massive as these two reality-challenged antivaccine loons are claiming. Of course, given that vaccines don't cause autism, these are even dumber posts, perfect for 2016.

Or maybe this post by—who else?—Mike Adams best encapsulates 2016, The top 10 most outrageous science hoaxes of 2016. Indeed, when I first got the idea for this post, I thought that I would spend the whole post deconstructing these "top ten" science "hoaxes," but, as I wrote, my viewpoint switched to, "Why bother?" It's the same old, same old, some "hoaxes" so ridiculous that they are practically self-refuting, like the claim that the EPA intentionally poisoned the children of Flint, MI with lead in their drinking water in order to cause brain damage and, well, I'll let Mikey tell you:

The result of all this was the mass poisoning of mostly African-American children with a toxic heavy metal that’s well known to damage cognitive function and impede learning. What a great way to raise more democrats! It’s all part of the new “science” of keeping the sheeple dumbed down so they will keep voting for corrupt criminals like Hillary Clinton. Instead of “let them eat cake,” the new progressive Jon Podesta version is, “Let them drink lead!”

Any time you see the word "sheeple" used in an article unironically and without mockery of the word, you know you're dealing with a grade-A idiotic conspiracy theorist. The rest of the "hoaxes are a standard load of right wing, Alex Jones-style conspiracy theories, such as the idea that SB 277 is a plot by pharmaceutical companies, who claim that "vaccines pose zero risk to children (i.e. claiming they do not harm a single child…ever)," something no pro-vaccine advocate, to my knowledge, has ever claimed and that the Zika virus scare was also a conspiracy. Then, of course, there's the usual anthropogenic climate change denial and rants about transgenderism. (I wonder if any of the lefties who share Adams' bilge know just how viciously bigoted he is when he talks about transgender people.) The sole exception to the right-wing conspiracy mongering is one that made me chuckle, namely Adams' unhappiness with Republicans passing a law that banned GMO labeling. I mentioned my amusement with Adams' discomfiture back when I discussed the nomination of Tom Price to head HHS, given that Adams has reinvented himself as a darling of the alt right and a rabid Donald Trump supporter.

Finally, if 2016 to be described by a survey, it would have to be this one, which shows that Americans believe a lot of crazy things, with 31% believing that vaccines cause autism, 53% believing that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and 36% believing that President Obama was born in Kenya. Not surprisingly, nearly twice the percentage of Trump supporters believe that vaccines cause autism compared to Clinton supporters (31% vs. 18%), although pretty equal numbers of Trump and Clinton supporters believe that 9/11 was an "inside job" (between 15% and 17%). The point is that belief in things that, objectively, are not true is widespread and always has been. Anyone who's been involved in skepticism, either organized or not, knows this. Be it ghosts, Bigfoot, the claim that vaccines cause autism, alternative medicine quackery, 9/11 "Truth," Holocaust denial, or any of a number of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory, belief in things that can be objectively shown not to exist or beliefs that can objectively be shown noto to be true is rampant.

It's an old problem, too. I think back to a post I wrote about cancer quackery in the late 1970s and how little has changed in the list of alternative medicine cancer "cures" over more than three decades, and I can't help but think that three decades from now (if I'm still alive) I'll still be seeing the same stuff. Laetrile, antineoplastons, the Gerson protocol, Hoxsey therapy, and many more were all around then and will likely still be around long after I'm dead. Similarly, antivaccine tropes have been around forever. I was reminded of this yesterday when I saw a post by John Rappaport in which he republished a chapter on vaccines from a book he wrote in 1987, AIDS, Inc.. The same antivaccine misinformation and lies are there, such as:

The decline in vaccine-preventable diseases like polio is mostly due to improved housing, to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but, most importantly, a "higher host-resistance due to better nutrition." (In other words, vaccines never get the credit.)
In outbreaks, more vaccinated than unvaccinated children get the disease. (It's the same way antivaccine ideologues ignore percentages, which clearly show that in outbreaks, the unvaccinated get the disease at much higher rates than the vaccinated. The only reason that the absolute numbers are higher is because so many more children are vaccinated than unvaccinated.)
Serious, life-threatening adverse reactions to vaccines are common when in fact they are rare.
Measles and polio had been regressing before the vaccines, and the vaccines had nothing to do with their elimination.

There are several more. If these lies sound familiar, they should. I've discussed pretty much every one of them at least once, some many times over the years. I expect that I will continue to have to do so for as long as I manage to continue this blog.

So in one respect, the revelation that people believe nonsense is no revelation at all. I've known it for a long time, as have skeptics and critical thinkers. What was different in 2016 is that a perfect storm of politics, anger, a presidential candidate who believes a whole lot of said nonsense, and the facility with which the Internet can be used to spread conspiracy theories and fake news conspired to overwhelm all safeguards that had previously at least kept pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and conspiracy theories from achieving mainstream acceptance. In essence, in 2016 bullshit was weaponized, and it turned out to be an incredibly effective weapon indeed.

We saw the rise of fake news, which, remember, is not the same thing as bad and/or biased reporting, given that fake news is made up nearly completely from whole cloth for profit and influence, while bad and biased reporting at least starts from real events. Unfortunately, the term "fake news" has already been devalued as people like Adams are quick to label the mainstream press "fake news" and even skeptics mistake bad or biased reporting for bad news.

What can we as skeptics do? The weaponization of bullshit is not qualitatively different from anything we've seen before. It is, however, quantitatively much worse, and, as always, we remain woefully outmatched. Powerful political and economic forces are behind the weaponization of bullshit. There's no way we can match the resources they have. Fortunately, the Internet remains a great equalizer, which means that the misinformation can be countered, but that is not enough. What needs to be happen in 2017 and beyond is that skeptics and critical thinkers will need to study the BS and find ways to counter it. Countering pseudoscience and misinformation has always been a battle that will last lifetimes, but unfortunately 2016 just made it a whole lot more difficult.

Maybe Bluto showed us the way, all the way back in 1978:

OK, a really stupid and futile gesture is not the way to go, but we need to ignite this sort of spirit, even if the odds look long and the battle endless, if we are to find a way to combat the misinformation to survive the Age of Trump and minimize the damage done by him and the forces he's weaponized.

oracknows Fri, 12/30/2016 - 03:25

On skepticism, pseudo-profundity, Deepak Chopra, and bullshit

oracknows — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 03:00:31 +0000

On skepticism, pseudo-profundity, Deepak Chopra, and bullshit

Of all the slick woo peddlers out there, one of the most famous (and most annoying) is Deepak Chopra. Indeed, he first attracted a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence a mere 10 months after this blog started, when Chopra produced the first of many rants against nasty "skeptics" like me that I've deconstructed over the years. Eventually, the nonsensical nature of his pseudo-profound blatherings inspired me to coin a term to describe it: Choprawoo. Unfortunately, far too many people find Deepak Chopra's combination of mystical sounding pseudo-profundity, his invocation of "cosmic consciousness" and rejection of genetic determinism, and his advocacy of "integrating" all manner of quackery into real medicine (a.k.a. "integrative medicine, formerly "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM) to the point of getting actual legitimate medical school faculty to assist him with an actual clinical trial compelling. He is, alas, one of the most influential woo peddlers out there. Worse, he was once a legitimate MD; now he's a quack. Indeed, as I've described before, of all the quacks and cranks and purveyors of woo whom I’ve encountered over the years, Deepak Chopra is, without a doubt, one of the most arrogantly obstinate, if not the most arrogantly obstinate. Right now he's pushing his latest book, Supergenes: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Well-Being, which asserts that you can control the activity of your genes.

So it was greatly amusing to me to see Deepak Chopra and his pseudo-profound bullshit (and I use the term because the source I'm about to look at uses the term) featured so prominently in a new study by Pennycook et al entitled On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. The study was performed at the Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, and the School of Humanities and Creativity, Sheridan College. Indeed, Deepak Chopra's pseudo-profound bullshit is a key component of the study. I love the way the abstract starts, too:

Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.

First, what do the authors mean by pseudo-profound bullshit? I might as well quote their definition in full, even at the risk of a large block of quoted text:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines bullshit as, simply, “rubbish” and “nonsense”, which unfortunately does not get to the core of bullshit. Consider the following statement:

Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.

Although this statement may seem to convey some sort of potentially profound meaning, it is merely a collection of buzzwords put together randomly in a sentence that retains syntactic structure. The bullshit statement is not merely non- sense, as would also be true of the following, which is not bullshit:

Unparalleled transforms meaning beauty hidden abstract.

The syntactic structure of a), unlike b), implies that it was constructed to communicate something. Thus, bullshit, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth. This sort of phenomenon is similar to what Buekens and Boudry (2015) referred to as obscurantism (p. 1): “[when] the speaker... [sets] up a game of verbal smoke and mirrors to suggest depth and insight where none exists.” Our focus, however, is somewhat different from what is found in the philosophy of bullshit and related phenomena (e.g., Black, 1983; Buekens & Boudry, 2015; Frankfurt; 2005). Whereas philosophers have been primarily concerned with the goals and intentions of the bullshitter, we are interested in the factors that pre- dispose one to become or to resist becoming a bullshittee. Moreover, this sort of bullshit – which we refer to here as pseudo-profound bullshit – may be one of many different types. We focus on pseudo-profound bullshit because it rep- resents a rather extreme point on what could be considered a spectrum of bullshit. We can say quite confidently that the above example (a) is bullshit, but one might also label an exaggerated story told over drinks to be bullshit. In future studies on bullshit, it will be important to define the type of bullshit under investigation (see Discussion for further comment on this issue).

This is about as fantastic an introduction to a scientific paper as I've ever seen. It also defines a form of BS at whose production Deepak Chopra is expert at. But how does one measure the inherent "BS-ness" of a statement? The way the authors did this was absolutely hilarious. Some of you might be aware of a website, The Wisdom of Chopra, which is a random Deepak Chopra quote generator. As the generator tells us, each "quote" is generated from a list of words that can be found in Deepak Chopra's Twitter stream randomly stuck together in a sentence. This was one source of raw material for the authors. The other was the New Age Bullshit Generator, which was also inspired by Deepak Chopra and works on similar principles, but uses a list of profound-sounding words compiled by its creator, Seb Pearce. Examples include sentences like “Imagination is inside expo- nential space time events” and “We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself.” These sites were used to produce ten meaningless sentences.

Next, Waterloo University undergraduate students were asked to rate the sentences using the following 5-point scale: 1= Not at all profound, 2 = somewhat profound, 3 = fairly profound, 4 = definitely profound, 5 = very profound. Before the study started, the same students answered demographic questions and completed five cognitive tasks intended to assess components of cognitive ability. They also answered questions designed to assess religious beliefs. These students rated the ten meaningless pseudo-profound statements. This first study was to assess the BS potential of the statements and validate the internal consistency of the measures, specifically the new measure, dubbed the "Bullshit Receptivity" (BSR) scale, which had good internal consistency. Basically, the higher the BSR values attributed to these statements, the higher the, well, receptivity to BS demonstrated by the subject. The authors found that BSR was "strongly negatively correlated with each cognitive measure except for numeracy (which was nonetheless significant)" and that "both ontological confusions and religious belief were positively correlated with bullshit receptivity."

The next study looked at some real world examples. Participants were recruited for pay from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. In addition to the ten meaningless statements used in the above study, ten novel items were generated by the two websites, and the authors also obtained 10 items from Deepak Chopra's Twitter feed; e.g.:

Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation #CosmicConsciousness

— Deepak Chopra (@DeepakChopra) June 29, 2014

Subjects were also assessed by additional instruments, such as the Paranormal Belief Scale and measures of wealth distribution and ideology. In contrast to the first study, participants evaluated the meaningless statements before completing the cognitive tasks, and the items from Chopra's TWitter feed folowed directly after the meaningless statements. This time around, Chopra's Twitter items were rated as slightly more "profound" than the nonsense items, but the mean ratings for the two scales were very correlated. It also turned out that the BSR scale significantly correlated with each variable tested, except for the Need for Cognition. Specifically, BSR was negatively correlated with performance on the heuristics and biases battery and positively correlated with Faith in Intuition. As in the first study, cognitive ability measures were negatively correlated with BSR.

Finally, in the remaining two studies included in this paper, the authors wanted to test whether some people might be particularly sensitive to pseudo-profound BS because they are less capable of detecting conflict during reasoning. Basically, they wanted to try to get some insight into why some people are particularly prone to pseudo-profound BS and others aren particularly resistant to it. To test this, they did more studies in which they created a scale using ten motivational quotations that are conventionally considered to be profound (e.g., “A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence”) because they are written in plain language and don't contain the vague buzzwords characteristic of statements in the first two studies. They also included mundane statements that had clear meaning but wouldn't be considered "profound" (e.g., “Most people enjoy some sort of music”). They then compared the correlations they found before.

They found that those more receptive to bullshit are "less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)." The authors also assessed the same correlations using a measure of sensitivity to pseudo-profound BS determined by computing a difference score between profundity ratings for pseudo-profound BS and legitimately meaningful motivational quotations. Thus, people who rated the truly profound statements a lot higher than the pseudo-profound BS will have higher scores in this measure, which the authors propose as an estimate of how sensitive an individuals "bullshit detector" is. They found that BS sensitivity was associated with better performance on mesures of analytic thinking and lower paranormal belief. It was not, however, correlated with increased conspiratorial ideation or acceptance of CAM, which surprised the authors, who noted:

This was not predicted as all three forms of belief are considered “epistemically suspect” (e.g., Pennycook, et al., in press). One possible explanation for this divergence is that supernatural beliefs are a unique subclass because they entail a conflict between some immaterial claim and (presumably universal) intuitive folk concepts (Atran & Norenza- yan, 2004). For example, the belief in ghosts conflicts with folk-mechanics – that is intuitive belief that objects cannot pass through solid objects (Boyer, 1994). Pennycook et al. (2014) found that degree of belief in supernatural religious claims (e.g., angels, demons) is negatively correlated with conflict detection effects in a reasoning paradigm. This result suggests that the particularly robust association be- tween pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity and supernatural beliefs may be because both response bias and conflict detection (sensitivity) support both factors.

The authors make a point about different kinds of open-minded thinking, an uncritical open mind versus a more reflective open mind:

As a secondary point, it is worthwhile to distinguish uncritical or reflexive open-mindedness from thoughtful or reflective open-mindedness. Whereas reflexive open- mindedness results from an intuitive mindset that is very accepting of information without very much processing, re- flective open-mindedness (or active open-mindedness; e.g., Baron, Scott, Fincher & Metz, 2014) results from a mindset that searches for information as a means to facilitate critical analysis and reflection. Thus, the former should cause one to be more receptive of bullshit whereas the latter, much like analytic cognitive style, should guard against it.

Overall, the authors have made a significant contribution by coming up with their Bullshit Receptivity scale and Bullshit Sensitivity scale, but it is not without its limitations. For one thing, the authors focused on very brief statements, generally less than Twitter-length, which limits the statements to 140 characters. It isn't clear whether these results can be generalized to what the authors refer to as more "conversational" BS, which can be quite different than that of pseudo-profound BS. More importantly, this is preliminary work. The scales used contained relatively few items, and there was arguably way too much focus on one person's work or pseudo-profound BS inspired by one person: Deepak Chopra. While it's true that he is fantastically skilled at coming up with such seemingly profound but vacuous statements and is probably the most famous person doing it, Chopra is just one person. Surely there are so many more examples that could have been mined.

Despite these differences, I think this study is an interesting, albeit flawed, first step at elucidating what factors contribute to receptivity and resistance to BS. As the authors put it:

The construction of a reliable index of bullshit receptivity is an important first step toward gaining a better understand- ing of the underlying cognitive and social mechanisms that determine if and when bullshit is detected. Our bullshit re- ceptivity scale was associated with a relatively wide range of important psychological factors. This is a valuable first step toward gaining a better understanding of the psychology of bullshit. The development of interventions and strategies that help individuals guard against bullshit is an important additional goal that requires considerable attention from cognitive and social psychologists. That people vary in their receptivity toward bullshit is perhaps less surprising than the fact that psychological scientists have heretofore neglected this issue. Accordingly, although this manuscript may not be truly profound, it is indeed meaningful.

I tell ya, social scientists are far more tolerant of self-deprecating humor than biomedical scientists are. There's no way a statement like the last sentence would make it into a basic or clinical science paper.

Be that as it may, this study seems to confirm much that is instinctively known (or at least has been assumed): analytic thinking probably decreases susceptibility to BS; paranormal beliefs go hand-in-hand with such susceptibility. It also tells us that susceptibility to nonsense is quite widespread in the population, who tend to be far more easily persuaded by emotional, vague, seemingly "profound" appeals than they are by data, science, and evidence. The question that a study of this type always raises, of course, is whether correlation indicates causation in this case. Can deficiencies in analytic thinking and reasoning be remedied to decrease one's susceptibility to BS, and if so what is the best way to go about this?

These are the sorts of questions skeptics have been asking for a long time. They are questions with real world consequences, because BS is everywhere.

oracknows Tue, 12/01/2015 - 22:00

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Another example of psuedo-profound BS is a game invented by philosopher Julian Baggini - Zizuku. It involves taking a mundane and true statement and reversing cause and effect. The example I remember best is "If there were no antisemites, there would be no Jews." At first glance it looks profound, but closer looking reveals it for the nonsense it is.

What do you think of this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRFveea3khg

This video appeared on a non-believers site, the guy was recently featured in Smithsonian magazine. Then about half-way through the video he says his co-author is .... Deepak Chopra???HUH?

I think that any people with limited intellectual capacity tend to confuse form with substance. It is very common in biomedical science where fashionable technics and words become the criteria of judgement. It was also true when doctors spoke in Latin.

Marketing, marketing, marketing. It looks to me like promotion by association. Besides, mind over genes is right up Chopra's alley.

Great paper and the results tally with my personal observations of the woo prone. Most of them run workshops of one kind or another and trying to decipher what they actually teach from the descriptions they provide is like trying to unscramble an egg.

One of the worst offenders in my circle actually posted a link to the Deepak Chopra random quote generator as though it was somehow a good thing that Chopra remixed made about as much sense as original Chopra.

I took a linguistics course many, many years ago. We analyzed speeches for substance. Remarkable how little is actually said in some discourse.

Unfortunately, the study was heavily unbalanced for gender, with far more female (n= 222) compared to male undergraduate students (n=58). Still, it's a great start and bound to lead to further investigations. Between the study and the New Age Bullshit Generator, to say nothing of the Chopra-like statement generator, Christmas has come early. Now, if I can just find John Cleese's address, I'll be bringing it to his attention.

*My post above was meant for Daniel Corcos #3.

Chopra is the, as far as I can tell, simply the greatest bullshitter alive. I suppose that deserves some kind of respect.

Possibly because of ethnicity, I'm afraid, I often think of Dinesh D'Souza (aka "Distort D'Newsa") as Chopra's evil twin.

Is it possible that mentioning the subject of the article immediately kicks a comment into moderation? Here's a bowdlerized version of one I just submitted, but which waits in the queue:

Chopra is the, as far as I can tell, simply the greatest bee-yessir alive. I suppose that deserves some kind of respect.

Possibly because of ethnicity, I’m afraid, I often think of Dinesh D’Souza (aka “Distort D’Newsa”) as Chopra’s evil twin.

@ MikeMa

I took a linguistics course many, many years ago. We analyzed speeches for substance. Remarkable how little is actually said in some discourse.

Isaac Asimov wrote a scene in the first book of the Foundation series where the speech of a diplomat was computer-analyzed by the Foundation's psychohistory scientists. They were a bit sorry to report that his nice speech was free of actual content.

I suspect Asimov would have been positively delighted reading this study on pseudo-profundity. His writings left me the feelings he was a dedicated champion of science over fuzzy thinking.

Oh boy! Perhaps I can take it a step further.... let me see..

Production of profound-sounding BS requires particular cognitive abilities which involve verbal skill, abstraction and person perception in order to effectively scam others.

Chopra is apparently gifted in these capacities and in addition, has the advantage of a multi-cultural perspective- the West and Exotic India- which can be used to obfuscate material to those with a purely monocultural outlook ( either culture) with quasi-religious notions from the other system.

In my own travels, I have become very well acquainted with inferior BS which is pseudo-profound as well but on a much lower level based upon the decreased abilities of its perpetrators.

Occasionally, instead of quasi religious notions ( QRN) they will substitute misunderstood scientific concepts- which function as redeeming saviours- or generic floaty notions (GFN) such as spirit, soul, vibrations and gratefulness. Of course I'm referring to Teresa Conrick- who finds the universe in the microbiome and Gary Null ; their audiences most likely mirror their lower abilities. Thus, I'd rate them as one sd lower and 2 lower respectively compared with Chopra.

@Helianthus,
I remember that story. Might have to reread the trilogy to refresh the Harry Seldon stuff.

As part of the linguistics course, we analyzed some stock speeches from Kennedy, Hitler and others. Hitler was fascinating as the there was no substance whatever, at least for the assigned sections the professor gave us.

As part of the linguistics course, we analyzed some stock speeches from Kennedy, Hitler and others. Hitler was fascinating as the there was no substance whatever, at least for the assigned sections the professor gave us.

Out of curiosity, I once started reading the English translation of his autobiography (not mentioned so as not to trip the filters). I couldn't even get 30 pages in. He was a terrible, disorganised thinker.

Part of the problem with the sciency-sounding woo is of course that a relatively small number of folks understand what the terms being deployed actually mean. RationalWiki has a fine article on one aspect of this, which is about the "Igon Value Problem".

Mathematically-trained readers will already find this hilariously funny; others can read the short article to see what the fuss is about.

Sorry folks, but I think the study is an embarrassment and it will backfire spectacularly.

As Orac noted, it was far too focused on one target, that being Chopra. The very fact that the target was so damn "easy" makes the conclusions weak ("look what a great marksman I am, I can shoot a rifle and hit the side of a barn at 100 feet!"). It also threw in a gratuitous jab at religious believers in general, via the stereotype that they're basically stupid (try doing that about race and see where it gets us).

That makes it equivalent to a study done by members of one political party about the BS spouted by the other political party: easily dismissed as being nothing more than ideological rhetoric dressed up with numbers. In other words, more pseudo-profound bullshit (PPBS) itself. Self-congratulatory triumphalist PPBS with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

It frankly infuriates me because it could have been done so much better and would have stood up. As it is, a best it's an inside joke, and at worst it will be usable by Chopra to claim he's being singled-out and persecuted. Sheesh!

The real goldmine for PPBS is popular music. Just listen to the way teenagers and 20-somethings quote the lyrics as if they're quoting scripture.

But to be thorough, we should also look at songs from other eras as well, and no doubt there'll be much PPBS there, much of it in the form of subtle "adult" innuendo.

For that matter also look at film and television. Most of us here have a positive view of the Star Trek TV series (plural), and yet they're chock-full of examples.

It would also be interesting to disentangle pure PPBS from its verbal component, which could be done by looking at reactions to purely instrumental music, including classical music that's generally considered "profound," and including paintings (both portraits and landscapes).

Those kinds of studies would provide an objective basis for concluding that PPBS is real and that people who believe it do so earnestly.

That conclusion could be used rhetorically against Deepak and other woomeisters and their followers, and it would be fair game to do so. And, they couldn't claim they were being witch-hunted by mean people with grudges.

But the present study is not that. It's frankly crap.

I'm just gunna put it thought there that if as the creators of this study, this article, and as the readers of it, if we are stupid enough to think that meaning is only derived in language from the person who speaks we're idiots. Meaning is both in the intention behind the person who speaks, and in the judgements behind the person who hears. Not one or the other. What you could hear as having no "substance" at all, is simply a judgement based on your pre-conceived notions of what that means.

I am by no way saying we should all listen to Chopra, but a study cannot be done on "what has substance?". Who is anybody to say what substance is, and thus what has it and what doesn't. It's not that simple.

Whilst reading this, the long-ago physicist in me thought about the branch of applied mathematics called Information Theory (pioneered by Claude Shannon of Bell Labs in the 1940s). It was designed to look at communication of data over noisy channels, including the entropy of a messsage (where less entropy = more efficient transmission of message with least amount of overhead). B*llsh***, could be viewed as maximum entropy (ie no information conveyed), which is also true in a biological sense in that what the bull eats is of lower entropy then what it excretes. It may be that as computational linguistics accelerates in its ability to parse language, we may be able to run a true information theory analysis on what any expert in a field says. That's my 2 bit's worth.

Who is anybody to say what substance is, and thus what has it and what doesn’t. It’s not that simple.

Uh, this statement sounds like one that could have been included in the study.

Seriously, though. Words mean things, and, although it's hard to quantify "substance," lack of substance can certainly be identified. It's not as though linguists haven't been doing that for a long time.

I really want to like this study for a couple of reasons, the least of which is that Mr. Delphine is a Waterloo grad. I can't stand Deepak Chopra. That said, I tell ya, social scientists are far more tolerant of self-deprecating humor than biomedical scientists are. There’s no way a statement like the last sentence would make it into a basic or clinical science paper. this pretty much sums up a lot of why I don't, plus it gives off more than a whiff of sneering condescension and smug look-at-me-aren't-we-smart.

Going after Chopra in this manner is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. There's plenty of material, and as Gray Falcon noted, this could have been done a whole lot better.

Funny, I said the same thing, although I still think the study is worthwhile even with its flaws:

Overall, the authors have made a significant contribution by coming up with their Bullshit Receptivity scale and Bullshit Sensitivity scale, but it is not without its limitations. For one thing, the authors focused on very brief statements, generally less than Twitter-length, which limits the statements to 140 characters. It isn’t clear whether these results can be generalized to what the authors refer to as more “conversational” BS, which can be quite different than that of pseudo-profound BS. More importantly, this is preliminary work. The scales used contained relatively few items, and there was arguably way too much focus on one person’s work or pseudo-profound BS inspired by one person: Deepak Chopra. While it’s true that he is fantastically skilled at coming up with such seemingly profound but vacuous statements and is probably the most famous person doing it, Chopra is just one person. Surely there are so many more examples that could have been mined.

:-)

Sure. Like this useless imbecile. https://twitter.com/marwilliamson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eser…

Marianne Williamson @marwilliamson Nov 29
The cultivation of enlightenment is the only antidote to the neurotic obsessions of the ego mind.

https://imgflip.com/readImage?iid=8809780

Marianne Williamson @marwilliamson Nov 24
If in a troubled relationship with someone, pray for their happiness 5 minutes a day for 30 days. By then they'll change - or you won't care

So basically what you're saying, Marianne, is that you're an asshole.

Julian Frost: "Out of curiosity, I once started reading the English translation of his autobiography (not mentioned so as not to trip the filters). I couldn’t even get 30 pages in. He was a terrible, disorganised thinker."

One of my high schools had an English translation of Mein Kampf in its library. As a lark I checked it out. During lunch I read out many passages to my friends, and we all laughed at its idiocy and paranoia.

Like you, I could not read much of it at a time. I just flipped through the pages and read a random passage. That was over forty years ago, and I cannot even remember what they said... just the reactions.

Chopra's sort of nonsense will only become more popular as marijuana is gradually legalized.

One of the things I found interesting about the study was that one of their randomly generated sentences actually was profound, sort of:

The future explains irrational facts.

This could easily be interpreted in the same vein as some well-known aphorisms like "Age begets wisdom".

I wonder if the authors vetted their random statements for accidental meaning. Somewhere, an infinite number of monkeys are typing away.

The future explains irrational facts.

That is not a given. Irrational facts (although are they really a fact if their irrational?) can proliferate in a future where no one is vetting them. And for whom is it explaining them? Only those who look for the answers is my take.

This statement makes for great navel-gazing discussion at the coffee shop but it's not profound.

Similar to Dan Welch, I thought that the authors fail to account for the ability of people to import meaning into pseudo-profound statements (a sort of verbal Rorschach test, perhaps?) For example, I found one of the genuine Chopra twitters, "Intention and attention are the mechanics of manifestation," to be both true and meaningful, though the meaning I derive from it is probably the exact opposite of what Chopra intended. It sounds like a variation of the popular New Age belief (a la "The Secret") that your thoughts (intention and attention) can cause things to happen in the real world (manifestation.) Usually my response to this sort of thing is something along the lines of "of course your emotions, desires, fears, etc., have an impact on the real world - because they have such a powerful effect on your actions. The problem, of course, is that Chopra et al tend to leave that part out, partly because its difficult, of course, but more importantly, I suspect, because it's boring: there's nothing esoteric or magical about making things happen with plain old hard work.

Actually, I found the most interesting part of this post to be the distinction between "reflexive" vs "reflective" open-mindedness. That seems like a more thoughful and informative response to people who accuse skeptics of being "close-minded" than the old saying about being so open minded your brains fall out.

"Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation"

To be fair to Chopra, that's obfuscated, but it's not bullshit in the sense of meaninglessness.

"Attention and intention" - noticing stuff and wanting to do stuff.

"Mechanics of manifestation" - the way you make something happen.

That one's in the "legitimately meaningful inspirational quotation" bin, though it's so anodyne in its actual meaning as to not be very inspiring.

"...although are they really a fact if they are irrational?"

Typing too fast and not paying attention.

Sarah A,

I think the ability of people to impart meaning is one of the ploys the profoundly fuzzy speakers use to sound intellectually profound. If you don't know what they mean by what they say and you create it to match what you believe then aren't you more likely to impart importance to what they say about other things? Rhetorical question only and merely speculative on my part but I have seen great speakers who have a lot of charisma by always being elusive about what they really mean. Politicians mostly but there was a game going around in business circles called "Bullshit Bingo" that we used to play during conference calls and CEO meetings.

re Deepak's, Marianne's and others' proclivity to utilise 'profoundness' as an aid to obfuscation:

we know that kids' development ( usually) includes a leap from the purely concrete to more abstract concepts/ language as they become adolescents ( i.e. formal operations) so it makes sense that woo-slingers would imitate development by tossing about more abstract terms.

Why be down to earth when you can float around in the atmosphere? Also, material of this nature is more vague and difficult to pin down, subject to multiple interpretations- indeed as mentioned above- it can be a Rorschach.

Unfortunately, I am often witness to such drivel courtesy of prn.fm. Energy, spirit, love and myriad other buzzwords abound whereas Mikey just attributes the *ne plus ultra* to the Creator.

Surely you and the authors of the paper have missed the point. The Chopra generators, although seemingly created as japes, are in reality, and like Chopra himself, the cosmos showing us the deep, meaningful knowledge available to all of human kind. If only we would open ourselves to it, we would find the understanding that the universe itself has for us and would become aware of the transcendent, spiritual gestalt of which we are already a part. Obviously, the subjects who saw the profundity of the statements were not poor at BS detection, but in better touch with the unconscious spirit permeating the universal being. Furthermore, Chopra is . . . uh. My train of thought seems to have gone off the rails.

This stuff. The words. The muddled meanings. Good times, good times. *sigh*

This kind of woo made up way to much of my day, because nothing brings woo to the table like a birth plan. Gods sakes but some really imaginative stuff suddenly comes to the table when a baby is due. I'd like a dollar for each out-there birth plan I've had to wrestle into submission. In full disclosure my background is as an ICU nurse who eventually went into high risk obstetrics. Pregnant women need chest tubes sometimes, too, and all that. The woo didn't really enter the picture there. It was when I covered the "normal" births that it reared its pseudoscientific head. I felt like a large bit of my time was drawing boundaries for well meaning but less than critical thinkers.

No. I can't promise that your baby will be born into a completely silent room so that the universe and cosmic forces can move more freely. Alas.

No, I am not going to catch your baby in a dark room. The attending physicians won't, either. It's better for all involved if I can see things. Like your body. And my own hands. Same for the doctor.

No. No we can't promise that the staff won't use the words 'pain', 'blood', or 'surgery' in the birth room.

....Why? Because if there is bleeding that requires surgical intervention I am going to alert my coworkers to that fact and I'd really rather not do it by means of pantomime and pictionary..

I'm fine with your doula playing the chimes/crystals/bowl from Tibet but not in my ear and not over my sterile field. Never over the sterile field. Ever. Or on your abdomen. Or your nether regions. All of that is spoken for in the birthing process and the uterus makes no allowances for singing bowls when it's expelling a human being or two. Crazy, I know.

And so on and so forth.

I'm not perhaps the very best at seeing the other side of the equation really. My training was based on facts and science and a constant reevaluation of the patient, and the factors influencing outcome and well being. I'm kinda busy when I'm at work and trying to juggle woo is not my favorite pastime even when things are going swimmingly. The advent of woo based pseudoscience has been a pain, and a dangerous one because it transfers focus from real threats and complications and places weight where no discernible threat exists. It puts me at odds with a portion of the patient population and their ideas concerning good patient care. Having a father tell you later that they wished you hadn't rung the alarm and disrupted the sacred birthing space is blink worthy. Hey, sorry sacred space, but baby was not happy and thus, NICU was called, just as it's always going to be called if baby isn't happy. That's my "universal experience of holistic and awareness based reality and manifestation of educated intent" and I'm stickin' to it.

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic? "If you want to push something down, you have to pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right." It's...

The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage...

Mr. Furious: ...your rage will become your master? That's what you were going to say. Right? Right?

The Sphinx: Uhhh....not necessarily.

@JGC - Ooh, that reminds me of a story from Terry Pratchet's Thief of Time:

In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:

“Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?”

Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: “A fish!”

And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

It is very common in biomedical science where fashionable technics and words become the criteria of judgement.

Not just the biomedical sciences, but in just about every human endeavor. I'm sure you've heard of buzzword bingo. There is a reason that game exists. When I write proposals, they have to be suitably buzzword-compliant, and that's only a necessary condition, not sufficient. If a NASA panel calls your proposal "interesting", that's a kiss of death (there's another code word you would rather that they use in your case).

It's been with us for a long time, too. George Orwell wrote a famous essay on the subject, and it's only gotten worse since then.

Off current blog topic, but found this little gem on Not-so-TMR. Thought you might find it fresh blogging fodder.....as if you need any! Check out the first post, 'Preparing to Vaccinate'. Because, you know, it's like arming for battle.
http://journeyboost.com/

Hey, sorry sacred space, but baby was not happy and thus, NICU was called, just as it’s always going to be called if baby isn’t happy.

Silly Lauren - it's not about the baby, it's about the mother having an uplifting, spiritual experience that she can brag about on Mothering.com to prove how enlightened she is. The health and well-being of the baby is a purely secondary consideration.

"I think the ability of people to impart meaning is one of the ploys the profoundly fuzzy speakers use to sound intellectually profound."

Horoscopes.

am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic?

[Mr. Furious tries to balance a hammer on his head]
Mr. Furious: Why am I doing this, again?

The Sphinx: When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.

Mr. Furious: And why am I wearing the watermelon on my feet?

The Sphinx: [looks at the watermelon on Mr. Furious' feet] I don't remember telling you to do that.

The values pi and e are irrational facts. I cannot say whether the future will explain them.

The values pi and e are irrational facts.
They are also transcendent facts, so the future will embrace them.

Lauren - do you have the machine that goes ping?

They are also transcendent facts
I shall attempt to transcend dental medication.

Indeed, for the machines that ping are ever so useful, why, do'ya need to lease one?

If not, would you like to get a good deal on some Tibetan singing bowls that will realign your vibrational colors to their most ultra state of wellness?

And Sarah A,

I've sadly felt a bit like that at times. I try and attribute it to cheery ignorance and not willful ignorance on the part of patients. I'm aware that being from a critical care background I'm 'different'. DIC and compartment syndrome are out of the range of the normal and the probable for just about every person on the planet (and that's good). For me they are not weird or something unheard of, let's face it with the icu no one is there for anything fun. I do know with that background I am way way over in left field when discussing risk awareness. Totally willing to admit my ideas are not most people's ideas when it comes to the debating of what ifs and medical worries. I'm trained to be watchful, but it made me a good sentry. I'm not lax, but calmly assessing, always, I swear the monitors are an extension of me, ping and all, in a good way, I think.

However...

As you put it so succinctly, woo seems to alter the vision of what medical care should not only look and feel like, but gear itself around. Of course I want people to have a good experience but my idea of what's good is 'hey nobody is worse for this or trending downward, checking vitals again, in fact we seem to be on a great trajectory, but let's look over the labs and another vitals check, so lemme stay vigilant here, what's the baby looking like, double checking mom again, and steady as she goes'. Someone's ability to blog about it never factored into my training... :/ I dare say I'm boring to write about. "And then she massaged my uterus and saw I wasn't hemorrhaging so we then discussed proper latch on and she took my baby's temp."

Not really a page turner, hm?

Mephistopheles -- PDQ Bach, inspired by the experience of anesthesia while undergoing a tooth extraction, wrote the "Trance and Dental Etudes". He also wrote a piano piece called "Traumarei", and an opera called "The Civilian Barber".

His chronicler Dr. Peter Schickele, of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, explored PDQ Bach's legend and legacy in a University Seminar, entitled "Originality Through Incompetence".

[PDQ is, of course, a creation of Schickele's. Schickele himself has written a lot of fine music, and his compositions attributed to PDQ Bach are, aside from their comic value, actually very good as well.]

palindrom - P.D.Q. Bach? You mean the las and least of J. S. Bach's twenty-odd children (as well as the oddest)? The composer of Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice? The man who Franz Schubert had just heard of when he wrote in his magazine, "hats back on, gentlemen, an idiot"? Never heard of him.

☺

This is for Helianthus. A favorite Asimov quote:

"There seems to be a rule that the more foolish the assertion, the more ardently people will believe it."

I appreciate irreverance and entertainment value in a scholarly paper, but as usual 'social science' isn't science, and this study is particularly awful. It would take me more words to detail the failings of this study than the authors used in the journal article, so I'll just note the first thing that struck me:

The author refer to the test statements in the first study as "meaningless" yet offer no theory of "meaning" and make no references to scholarly work on how "meaning" works. The ten test sentences are simply assumed to be "meaningless" because they "have syntactic structure but consist of a series of randomly selected vague buzzwords." However, with the Chopra generator, for example, the relatively small size of the vocabulary base, and the algorithm for valid syntax, will sometimes combine to assemble vague buzzwords into statements that aren't meaningless at all, but rather 'polysemic' or 'open texts' – that is, depending on what readers bring to the table, they can mean several different things. A statement that lacks one precise meaning is hardly empty of meaning.

Take their exemplar sentence: "Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty". My first thought in reading it is that it's bad prose. The use of "unparalleled" sticks out as over-narrowing what is otherwise a broad proposition. So, were I to be told this was written by a human being, I'd assume the author lacked verbal skill, assume meaning was intended, guess that "unparalleled" was just bad usage, assume that "great" was more like what the writer was going for, and attempt to make sense of the sentence with that correction in mind. At that point, the claim is vague, as it doesn't explain what a 'hidden' meaning is, or how beauty is transformed: e.g. is it diminished or enriched?

Since I know some things about abstract art, I immediately think of examples of both such 'tranformations' – abstract works that tend have different aesthetic effects when encountered in 'innocence' than they do if you know the story behind them. Here is an abstract expressionist animated film (silent, 110 seconds long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-rACt6IX5c

Please take a look, and form an impression based simply on what you see. In a subsequent post I'll suggest a 'hidden meaning' (which may be 'authentic' or one I've made up). The test will be if/how 'transforms' the degree of beauty you find in the work in any direction.

In the study, none of the statements are given any context whatsoever. Several of them strike me as the kind of claims that would actually make sense in some context that has defined the terms being used, and given examples for which the claims are some sort of summary conclusion, though not to be taken literally, but allowing for 'poetic license'.

There are no controls whatsoever applied in the research design. For example, it's one thing if the subjects did actually find the statements meaningful, and another if they rated them as 'profound' without having formed any understanding of what they might be expressing. Look at the 'priming' in the instructions given to the subjects:

We are interested in how people experience the
profound. Below are a series of statements taken from relevant websites. Please read each statement and take a moment to think about what it might mean. Then please rate how “profound” you think it is. Profound means “of deep meaning; of great and broadly inclusive significance.

Thus, the subjects are led to believe that the statements were authored by human beings, and appeared on sites relevant to 'experiencing the profound'. They are directed to think about meaning – encouraged to 'read in' if you will. They are asked to rate the level of profundity on a Likert scale – all of which would lead them to assume the researchers have selected the statements for being to some measure profound, and are interested in ranking them. Given the institutional framework, the effect of assumed researcher authority, observation effects, etc., we don't know whether the score any individual subject assigned to a statement reflected whether they personally found the statement profound, or whether it reflected a judgement of 'this is the kind of statement to which profundity is generally attributed by people who are smarter than I am'.

I could go on to many other errors, but the priming alone completely bolluxes the validity of the research design.

If there's a valid experiment in BS detection here, the journal article is the test material, it's readers are the test subjects, and the measure would be what percentage of them recognize the study as a joke dressed up in the lingo of science, vs. the percentage that take the 'findings' as useful and significant because they conform to their conformation biases.

P.D.Q. was not only the last and least of the Bach kiddies, but got worse as he went along, his later efforts failing to match the twisted genius of "Concerto for Horn and Hardart."

I just really liked seeing the word bullsh*t so many times in a scientific paper.

It reminds me of a cultural anthropology paper that was on my reading list at university, that I have probably mentioned here before: "F*cking Tourists: Sexual Relations and Tourism in Jerusalem". I like the double entendre, having seen first hand the ambivalent relationship between tourists and locals in Egypt.

It seems that profanity in a URL triggers the moderation censor. Good to know.

MOB & HDB,

Live and learn?

JGC @34 and hdb @40, I also enjoyed "Mystery Men". Ben Stiller does comic rage surprisingly well.

I perfectly agree with Sadmar. We should question ourselves about the fact that a flawed experimental study published in a journal looks more "scientific" to some people than the simple and obvious statement "People with limited intellectual capacity tend to confuse form with substance". There would be some new information if the results had shown the opposite, but actually it does not, and only indicates that the readers convinced that this paper is good science have limited intellectual capacity.

Chris Hickle @ 17: Ha! I like that information-theoretic approach. Calculate the entropy of the statements. Though, we should be careful when dealing with idiomatic usage because it's actually much more compact and information-dense than the literal connotations of the words would imply.

---

Re. Acebojangles @ 25: Yes, I agree, as pot is legalized, Chopra will become more popular. As a source of humor and jokes.

"Man am I high! Hey check out what's on this website: 'The is-ness of the was-ness is the source of the true energy of being....'"

"Haahaaaheeeheee, oh stop you're killing me!, heeheehaahaa...."

If you want to jump-start the trend, go reserve DeepAck.com, and as a logo, use the classic comic strip picture of Bill the Cat going "Aaack!" Install a "random quote finder" function that pulls sentences from Chopra, Mikey the Health stRanger, Age of Autism, and various homeopaths and suchlike. Have it also pull quotes from popular song lyrics, political speeches, and advertising.

Include a "MadLibs" function that asks people for words and then plugs the into actual quotes: "The is-ness of the _cows_ is the source of all _polka-dotted_ energy of _drinking milkshakes_..."

And then take ads from pot-related businesses in states where it's legal.

You will make a pile of money, and the site will do more to demolish quacks than a new set of FDA regulations or smug papers by social scientists with smug attitudes. "Funny wins over smug every time," and that statement is truly profound;-)

---

Not A Troll @ 30: Please say more about "BS Bingo," I think it would make a fantastic exercise to use against woomeisters and quacks. And of course against self-absorbed manager types, per the original intent. The more we get people into the habit of laughing at BS, the better, especially in election season.

---

Lauren @ 33, try this with difficult patients: "We consulted a Feng Shui master and (s/he) said that the optimum location for your Doula is over _here_ [away from the patient and sterile area] where we have set up a very comfortable chair and a table for her to perform rituals...." (I'm inclined to say that Feng Shui is acceptable as a system of aesthetics for architectural design when the architect is seeking Asian influences, but this isn't that.)

---

Sadmar @ 49: Excellent points, all of them.

Excellent Sadmar. I was on the verge of calling bullshit on the study/paper - too many combinations of big, science-like words - my BS meter was heading towards eleven.

Gray Squirrel,

Nice way to revive the thread! It is too bad the research paper although funny, has its own issues. This is a subject I would love to see investigated. It runs rampant in the business world hence the meme of Bullshit Bingo aka Buzzword Bingo.

I really like the Bill the Cat idea. If not for copyrights, I think I would take that and run with it.

I was reminded of Daniel Dennett's Deepities while reading this; although Chopra's BS are often not even deepities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjsC53RGO4Q

Skip to 3:40.

For some reason I found the little twit from Chopra to be clever if not profound, "Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation" ....A manifestation is something made and mechanics are the tools while attention /intention is another way to say the 99% inspiration/perspiration meme. Perhaps I am reading too much into gibberish but I could believe the intent really was to reword the old metaphor.
I am surprised at myself because I am one of those who has habitually ridiculed Chopra for a very long time and for good reason being most of that he writes is just profound sounding hooey.

The word manifestation does have a religious tone as in something virtual and not something real. I gave Chopra the benefit of the doubt that he was using the word to cite something real. I could be mistaken because citing something real is not Chopra's usual MO.

Not A Troll @ 59: Thanks!, and Yes you can, here's how:

1) Start the site as something purely non-commercial. This enables you to legitimately claim "fair use" for one picture of Bill the Cat going "Aaaack!"

2) If the URL is already taken, try variations such as .net and .org and .us, and Deep-Ack with the hyphen, etc.

3) Under the cartoon put a note saying "see copyright info below," and in the note, a) credit to original artist, and b) ask original artist to contact you via email so you can ask about licensing that image for commercial use "if" you do anything commercial with the website such as taking advertising. That's a legit "if," because if you can't contact the artist, you still have the option of keeping it ad-free and not making money while demolishing quacks.

4) Don't rely on Google or its offspring for ad placement. Basically they suck, they don't pay nearly as much as individually-placed advertising, and they often run ads that are competitive with or otherwise detrimental to the sites on which they are placed. They also relentlessly spy on everyone who comes to your site, which is something that even legal pot smokers are highly wary of and may drive them away from your site.

5) Put up satire ads for MJ-related products and services, notably including pizza and Chinese food delivery services. That'll help get the ball rolling if you eventually take real ads.

6) Don't just chase Chopra: spread out and chase all of 'em, such as Mikey and the anti-vaxers and Food Babe. Anyone who's become a target of Orac and his scheming minions (ha) is fair game. If you're going to pursue the "pseudo-profound BS" angle, be sure to go after vacuous lyrics in popular music, vacuous lines in film, television, and political speeches.

If you manage to get a site up & running, by all means post the URL in an appropriate place in one of Orac's columns, I'm sure we'll all (and he too most likely) will want to come take a look.

NaT:

Gray Squirrel is right that it's Fair Use, but that's never stopped rights holders from harassing people. But that costs $$, so whether your safe on Fair use or not, they leave you alone unless A) You're really hurting their pocketbook, B) You have deep pockets they can dip into, C) The original creator or heirs still have the rights and take your use as an ad hominem affront (see Michael Jackson / John Oswald).

I think GS is dead wrong about #6, though. The ore generic the frame, and the more multiple the points, the less the more the message sinks into the drone of media noise. The more specific the approach and more singular the message, the better it cuts through. You still could go after other sources of “pseudo-profound BS”, but the way to do that would be to connect them to Chopra: e.g. create parody conversations between Deep-aack and other BSers, or a 'Deep-aack's Diary' where 'he' comments on other public people or things he admires. As for Mike Adams and Food Babe, I don't see that their BS even pretends to profundity... so perhaps Deep-ack could write them 'open letters' of advice on how to dress up their woo in the garb of pseudo-philosophical brilliance.

Also, I'd advise not go Sokal and rip on actual philosophers – just because they're obtuse and discuss things in figurative terms doesn't make them BSers. If there's a community of smart, sensible folks who 'get' the work, if it sounds like BS to you, it's likely a comprehension/paradigm-difference issue. It's the folks whose faux-profundity fools 'the masses' that are truly talking out of their rear ends.

Hi Sadmar;-)

Re. #6: The problems with exclusively going after Chopra are:

1) Doing that gives him ample ground to claim that he's being singled-out, targeted, harassed, etc. That will backfire by making him the sympathetic character and making you the badguy or cyber-bully.

2) The goal isn't to drive Chopra screeching nuts, it's to reach undecideds and give them a skepticism vaccine. If you get painted as the badguy, you lose some of those undecideds.

3) As with the published paper on pseudo-profound BS, the appearance of being on some kind of partisan mission against one target will hurt your credibility.

4) A wider range of targets will reach a wider audience and draw them in. Particularly if the targets include some more well-known examples such as items that are currently in the news (e.g. politicians, advertising campaigns for well-known products, etc.).

5) One more thing that I should have mentioned earlier: never ever post anything on a site like that, that could in any way be interpreted as a call for violence against a target. Yah it's legal, "freedumb of screech" & all that, but it's immoral and it will also definitively paint you as the badguy and your target as the goodguy. Also, avoid "smug" like bubonic plague, because a large majority of people think that smugness is highly obnoxious.

On the other hand, 6) YES I agree, "open letters" advising Mikey and Babe how to dress up their BS so it's pseudo-profound, would be funny as hell. Great idea!, someone needs to do this.

As for other philosophers, most of them are too unknown to most people to be worthwhile as targets. Though frankly I find some of them have their heads quite a bit further up their derrieres than DeepAck himself. I could take about five minutes of reading DeepAck's website before it got like the intellectual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard, but there are others (can't remember names at the moment) who I could take for about two minutes before I had to get the heck out of there.

And speaking of pseudo-profound BS, don't even get me started on the Singularitarians. One of these days I am going to do a detailed and definitive takedown of their nonsense, in a different forum. IMHO their stuff is particularly dangerous because they are professional technologists who use tech to look scientific, and they also manage to circumvent the critical thinking skills of people who really ought to know better. My point with this is, New Age language isn't the only form of pseudo-profound BS: one can do it in plenty of other types of language, and using computer jargon is a very common version.

Ah, what one misses if they don't backtrack on a thread (I don't receive notifications of comments via email.)

Gray Squirrel, you have quite the business plan there. Yet, I 'm not entirely convinced about the copyright thing. I know that some business are advised to sue on copyright merely because if they don't they are considered not to be serious about it.

The URL won't be a problem nor will a server. The automated pull and mad-lib function will take some investigation but I may start out in a different direction. Also, I had exposure to Google Ad-words a couple of jobs ago and you are correct - not the best company to deal with.

You're also correct that the world is filled with plenty of material. Motivational posters, positive psychology, movies (one saying that's always bugged me is "Love means never having to say you're sorry" and the woo-meisters. Of course I'll have to read some more of D. Chopra's work. "Aaack!"

After I am out of my current situation, I'm going to invest some time into this idea. If it ever does get off the ground, all attributions go to you.

Anyone getting their point across to a large and appreciate audience must be doing something right. Even if we don't like the message perhaps there is something we can learn from the delivery of the message. That way we can gain from the experience.

I met Deepak Choprah a few years ago. It was cringeworthy. This guy is so smarmy and glib that I couldn't believe people buy his schtick. I just wanted to get away from him after about a minute and could not believe anyone buys his nonsense. It is so practiced and automated that I don't understand how anyone with a brain can talk to him for even a minute and not see through him.

i have little experience with, and knowledge of the things yall made comment on. yet, i do have enough common sense to realize that you were sincere, patting each others back, and funny. i think there should be this much camaraderie, as opposed to trolling, in more areas of life. now that was uplifting. thanks for a fun read!

CCW - "This is Not Cool" is cool

illconsidered — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:18:23 +0000

CCW - "This is Not Cool" is cool

A really good overview of all the extreme weather we have been seeing this last year from Greenman.

I'd say it is about time to say welcome to the new normal.

I heartily second Al Gore's call of "bullshit", that is what folks like Bastardi deal in, pure and simple.

illconsidered Thu, 08/11/2011 - 09:18

Tags

When we have 15 years of no "significant" warming the alarmist "scientists" explain this is "weather not climate".

A few weeks of rain (or of dry) and they announce that is climate not weather.

Or they just revert to hurling obscenities or censorship.

When we actually get 15 years of significant cooling, then we have a cooling.

When some dumb fuck blathers on about 15 years of no significant warming, the dumb fuck doesn't know what he's on about.

0.12C warming is significant over 15 years.

Then again, neither facts nor shame have ever affected your asshattery, has it, Neil.

Did anyone else have a problem with the right border of the view video window? Right at the point where they were showing the follow up satellite data after Bastardi's dumbass prediction it was out of my view--truncated like Beil's frontal lobe.

Thanks for linking these, Coby. It almost makes up for not censoring Dumbshit.

Denialist troll is denialist.

Looks like Phil Jones needs to explain things again, for those who still can't seem to grasp the basics :

"The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn't significant at the standard 95% level that people use," Professor Jones told BBC News.

"Basically what's changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years - and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.

"It just shows the difficulty of achieving significance with a short time series, and that's why longer series - 20 or 30 years - would be a much better way of estimating trends and getting significance on a consistent basis."

Once again Wow demonstrates the total contempt for both courtesy and honesty to which alarmist "peer reviewed scientists" published "in the finest journals", who I am told inhabit "scienceblogs" so obviously aspire.

LOL. What a dumbass.

Having spelled his own name correctly a stupendous three successive times--but exhausting his mental faculties in the process--Beil forgets who said what.

Hi all, I'd like your opinions on this video (from Jo Nova's site)

This is Dr Art Raiche, retired former Chief Research Scientist of Australia's CSIRO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxCzW6RWoLg

"We were given very strict, VERY strict guidelines on not publishing anything or publicly discussing any research that could be seen as critical to Government policy.If we did not do it, we would be subject to dismissal."

Whadayareckon?

I dunno MoB. I idly googled this bloke. The first page came up with links to Bolt, Marohasy, 'nocarbontax', and someone fervently advocating more industry/ mining links between CSIRO and business interests. Nothing on this page refers to any neutral or professional publications.

Didn't bother with the video, I think I know where he's coming from.

Watched Raiche video. A guy who isn't a climate scientist citing other 'very smart' folks who also aren't, other than Lindtzen, climate scientists. He doesn't address how to account for any of the material issues that he uses to imply conclusions.
Until someone can explain the observed data with a simpler more comprehensive explanation that AGW via CO2, and its observable properties, we don't have a better tool.
Dyson doesn't offer an alternative- I've interviewed him personally. He just doesn't like modeling, except when he does it. And he doesn't do it outside of his field, and hasn't really even done that for some time. He, like the physicists chronicled in "Merchants of Doubt" has a strong 'free market' prejudice. Much of his dismissal of climate concern is based upon his belief - not the term he uses to describe it- that humans can invent themselves out of anything. He has no explanation for how 35% more C02 has no impact- he just doesn't think it does.
Lindtzen is more opposed to fear mongering and large societal policy based upon anything with so many variables, and admits that climate is changing. He doesn't have any alternative explanation for the observed date either, although he is eager to challenge others conclusions and interpretations. He has become a denialist darling, and it works for him professionally to do so. It isn't risking his job anymore than anyone at Princeton will fire Dyson for talking outside his discipline.
So Raiche misrepresents the 'risk' of these esteemed in their field people here. They are in less danger than Hansen is, of losing their positions.
Furthermore, the arguments against carbon tax- the occasion he is speaking at, are totally missing. In sum, this is a generalist presentation of a lightweight former non climate science manager speaking to a choir at a political rally. Yawn.
Is this what you are looking for Michael?

Groan.

Michael. Do you think this contributes anything of interest that any semi-serious student of this debate hasn't already heard?

The first indicator of likely quality is the cheeseball presentation at a denialist tent-meeting, with the shrieking Amens and pentecostal cries of "where's the media?!) from the mob. Contrast this with the mentality and professionalism exhibited by, for example, the link by Greenman at the top of this thread.

Lacking as much in imagination as credibility, Raiche zombie cites all the trite denialist talking points: The climategate non-scandal, the vagary of whether scientists are predicting "catastrophic global warming", as well as name dropping the usual suspects of "deniers" (Dyson, Akasofu, Lindzen, none of whom doubt the fundamental premise and are on the fringes of the science as much in their qualifications as in their claims of lowered levels of climate sensitivity), the dipshit list of 700 "dissenters" from the Inhofe report (I summarized the problems with this garbage here

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2009/10/hockeystick_open_thread.p…)

. . . and so on.

He provided no proof but his own certitude that the CSIRO had devolved into "a government enterprise". He admits he is not a climate scientist even as he provides no evidence of anti-AGW research ever being suppressed by CSIRO personnel. He mentions an economist being supposedly retaliated against for publishing a paper regarding indigenous species.

The question thus becomes: who the fuck is he and why the fuck should I care?

And how the hell important is CSIRO to the question of AGW in any event? An economist was allegedly sacked for publishing a paper regarding an indigenous species. . . what does this have to do with climate?

The only mildly interesting thing was he was obviously a Yank at an Aussie political rally but then he explained his change of citizenship.

There's a clue right there, Michael. He's a weak, weird dweeb and this is his chance to be somebody's hero. Its the apostate's gambit morphed with existential Munchausen's disease.

And finally, its not "evidence" per se, but how about the fact that he's just a frantic, goofy, twitchy, bizarre looking guy, Michael? Let me put it this way: Would you let this freak babysit your children?

I wouldn't.

Groan Skip?
Jeez, you're pretty defensive about it, and the ad homs are comin' thick 'n' fast. (where did the babysitting remark come from??)
I DO think it contributes to the debate because it's someone "in the know" making what I think is a pretty big statement.
I notice that your response, just like Patrick and Adelady has been to dismiss and ignore and ad hom, instead of perhaps acknowledging that a statement like that from a "former insider" like him carries a lot of weight with the general public.
The CSIRO is Australia's government scientific agency, and has always been greatly respected and trusted in providing scientific information to the Australian Government.
The Department of Climate Change gets it's info directly from the CSIRO. (well, that's how it's supposed to work)
If someone has to be a climate scientist to have any credibility with you, then you might be interested to know that The Commissioner of The Dept. Of Climate Change is Prof. Tim Flannery. He is a Biologist/Paleontologist. (he also is a firm believer in Gaia)
The current Labor Party government also forms it's policies on "tackling climate change" from Prof. Ross Garnaut. He is an Economist, and his Report recommended the Carbon Tax.
The stated aim of the carbon tax is to reduce Australia's carbon "output" by 5% of 1990 levels by the year 2020. Make sure you read that bit carefully... To reduce the carbon produced in 1990 by 5%!
Here's more info in case you're interested.
http://www.greeneatz.com/1/post/2011/7/the-australian-carbon-tax-explai…
Patrick, I don't know your location, but in case you are not aware, Australia has a population of around 22million. Reducing our carbon footprint by 5percent over a time span of 30 years is really quite pointless don't you think?
We are constantly being told that this is an emergency.
How can reducing Australia's output of CO2 by such a teensy tiny amount "tackle climate change". (to quote our prime minister's regular script)
The Labor Party holds government by a hairs breadth.
I'd say the opinion of the general public about this issue is fairly important to them so they can stay in government, introduce a carbon tax, and halt climate change. (the phrase "halt climate change" is becoming more and more common in the media too)

"How can reducing Australia's output of CO2 by such a teensy tiny amount "tackle climate change". "
This is the same argument as 'I am only one voter out of 10 million. Why should I vote?' Do you subscribe to this, too?

Skip is both a "peer reviewed" climate "scientist" published in "the finest journals" and an obscene, lying fascist parasite lacking the slightest trace of personal honestyand incapable of making a scientific case rather than ad hioms.

So tell us Skip - how do you spell your name?

And is there anybody, among the thieving fascists making their living out of scaremongering who is to close to honest to have you as his "peer".

Neil, the idiot, thinks I claimed to be a climate scientist. I never did.

Michael: I only made *one* ad hom--his freakish appearance and persona, and that is in reference to explaining what would motivate him to do this other than being an "insider", which is just a claim. Everything else in my post is substantive. (His sources, "climategate", his "evidence" of "government takeover" at CSIRO. If you challenge me on any of them let me know. Otherwise your claim that its all *ad hom* is empty.)

And since you feel the need to defend Raiche, who is the one being "defensive"?

And since you feel the need to point out Flannery's alleged belief in Gaia, who is attacking *ad hom*?

One thing I have learned in this climate debate is that you can always find someone who will claim anything. The question simply revolves around the credibility of the claim.

Raiche at this point is nothing more than a guy claiming to have inside knowledge of a conspiracy for which he offers no proof. At this point he's just one more guy claiming to know who was on the Grassy Knoll from an uncle who did time with a guy in prison.

Richard the answer to your question is no. I have been an eager voter in every election since I turned 18. (in 1986) I have always considered myself a swinging voter and have voted for both the liberal (Labor Party) and conservative (Liberal Party) sides of Australian politics. I cannot stand it when people boast that they can't be bothered voting or deliberately donkey vote.
Perhaps you can cherry pick/copy/paste another of my sentences and try me out on that?

Skip, I never said your post was "all" ad hom. Where did I say that?
I was only pointing out the positions and qualifications of Mr Garnaut and Mr Flannery, because, I think, you implied that someone who is not a climate scientist has no credibility with you.
You said the question "revolves around the credibility of the claim", yet you haven't addressed the claim at all, only the man. (isn't that the definition of ad hom?)
Would you humor me for a moment and take away all the "personalities" and address Raiche's claim?
(I don't think you will, but I'm hoping you'll surprise me)

MoB "I was only pointing out the positions and qualifications of Mr Garnaut and Mr Flannery, because, I think, you implied that someone who is not a climate scientist has no credibility with you."

Not exactly. There's a big difference between these non climate scientists and the Raiches of the world. Namely that Garnaut, Stern and others explicitly state that they are not climate experts and

***therefore***

they _accept_ the conclusions of scientists and their professional organisations.

Raiche would be horrified if Flannery or Garnaut or any other inexperienced, unqualified person tried to critique Raiche et al's conclusions, methods and models in http://geophysics.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/50/10/1618. But he thinks it's OK for radio announcers, journalists, biologists or any and every other Joe Bloggs to contradict physicists, oceanographers, rocket/ satellite scientists, glaciologists and other experts in climate fields.

and the ad homs are comin' thick 'n' fast. -- Michael

Ok, granted, you didn't say *all*.

Ad stole my thunder on the rest.

But this is a recurring theme, Michael: You shoot from the hip with some link and in essence ask us our view to see if anything sticks.

I'll rephrase my response to Raiche thus:

What, Michael, do you think was his most compelling argument in his speech?

Ok Skip, I'll clarify again, and further.
IF Dr Raiche is whom he says he is,
IF he held the position of Chief Research Scientist for the CSIRO,
IF he hadn't been unlucky enough to have been born "frantic", "bizarre looking", "goofy" and "twitchy", (mind boggling statement, that!)

then, isn't a pretty big call to make??
To suggest that the Australian Government's Scientific agency was "dictated to"??
To clarify even further, the quote that I gave in post 8, IS the most compelling "argument" in his speech in my opinion.
I realise, and I hope you do too, that in this speech he is not "creating an argument" in the sense that I suspect you mean it. I think he is making a statement.
Based on his position and standing, I think the statement is a pretty big one.
I hope I have been clear.
Adelady, isn't is plausible, and even possible that if he's making such a statement about the "culture" within the CSIRO, that that same culture and dictation could apply to ALL fields of science within the CSIRO? (including climate science, to be clear)
By the way, he does indeed state at the beginning of the speech that he isn't a climate scientist. (it's in the first 20 seconds)

"One thing I have learned in this climate debate is that you can always find someone who will claim anything. The question simply revolves around the credibility of the claim."

Certainly you follow your own example & those of the ecofascists Skip. While it is certainly true that they have produced hundreds of scaremongering "environmental" stories, some like Hansen playing both sides of the warming and cooling frauds. All of which have proven untrue. However I would challennge you to prove any real sceptical scientist who has asserted something untrue relating to these scares and benfited.

Actually I challenge you to show any sceptical scientist who has personally benefited from being found to have told the truth about any eco fraud.

Let me point out a few facts to MoB and anyone else who cares about the processes within the Australian Government about climate change and other scientific issues, because â unlike MoB â I actually do know what goes on, since that is exactly what I do for a living.

First of all, there is absolutely no doubt that the Australian Public Service and many other government and semi-government organisations have become politicised over the past decade or so â and for probably much longer than that. Bu that has nothing to do with the issue here and Raiche's claims to that effect are just statements of the bleeding obvious. Organisations are NOT permitted to publish material which is critical of government policy, but then, that does NOT mean that organisations are not permitted to publish scientific findings which run counter to the status quo. On the contrary, it is encouraged. Organisations are just not permitted to publish anything which is specifically critical of policy decisions. But why should that surprise anyone?

In the case of the CSIRO, it is one of the most respected scientific organisations in the world, and it is the view of the organisation and every single RELEVANT scientist working for it that climate change is real, that it is caused by humans, and that is a significant threat to the ecosystem and human society. Let me make that clear. EVERY SINGLE RELEVANT SCIENTIST WORKING FOR THE CSIRO HAS NO DOUBT ABOUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AGW.

The CSIRO is semi-government scientific organisation. It does not make policy decisions. But it provides advice on scientific matters to the relevant government bodies. In this case, it is the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (plus others). That Department provides advice to Government on policy matters. In doing so, they seek the advice of other departments and other experts (such as the CSIRO) on matters that require expert input.

Ross Garnaut is a Professor of Economics and the Australian National University. He was commissioned by the government to provide advice on the economic impacts of climate change, and to recommend economic mechanisms to deal with climate change. In doing so, he sought the opinions of experts in the subject, since he is not a climate scientist. That, of course, is the only proper course for someone who is not an expert â to ask someone who actually knows what they are talking about (and that is obviously not the course of action adopted by idiotic deniers with no science education and who think they know more than the experts). Garnaut did not âmake upâ an opinion on climate change; he simply accepted the advice of experts like the CSIRO. And he used that information in order to provide advice to government based on his economic expertise â expertise which is universally acknowledged by all sides of politics I might add.

Finally, I am fascinated by these claims that governments are directing that the CSIRO (or others) only publish material or that they only give funding to scientists who agree with climate change. Why the fuck would they do that, because it is AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF GOVERNMENTS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE TO BE REAL. Policies to mitigate climate change are unpopular, and they have cost every single Australian politician who has attempted to do something about it â just ask Rudd, Turnbull or Gillard. It would be in the Governmentâs interest to suppress or discredit scientific research that supports climate change, not vice versa.

Thatâs why this argument that alternative viewpoints are suppressed or unfunded is so fucking idiotic. But I guess thatâs just par for the course for your average denier and why I will never call them âscepticâ; they simply are not sceptical of their own claims.

Hey Mandas, thank you sincerely for writing all that. I do appreciate the time you've put into your reply.

Was I wrong in what I wrote about the roles of the CSIRO and the Dept.?
Is the CSIRO a Semi-Government organisation like, for example, a hospital? (especially the way hospitals are here in Queensland)
I'd like to know, because it seems I've had the wrong impression all these years about the roles the various agencies play.
In your first paragraph, you say "this is exactly what I do for a living", but I'm sorry, I'm not quite clear.

Without being too specific of course, what is your role?
Are you with the CSIRO or the government or another semi-government agency?
I still don't understand why someone like Dr Raiche would say such things if they weren't true? Is there some way he can benefit from that now that he's retired?
Perhaps as a possible "insider" yourself, you could write to him and ask him why he would make such ridiculous, outlandish and harmful claims?
Surely someone of your standing could at least try?
I'd really like to know what he says, because I think this issue is something of great importance to all readers here.

(I think instead you will reply with a "why should I bother", or a "there's no point"... or words to that effect.... Although I'm happy to be proven wrong.)

MoB

First of all, I work for a Commonwealth Government Department associated with the environment. My role is mainly is mainly supervisory and policy development, which means I provide advice to the Minister on the areas under my specific field of responsibility â which is in degraded area rehabilitation and in the relationship between the Commonwealth and State Parks and Wildlife organisations. I also have a secondary task to do related research to support the development of policy papers on issues related to my role. I work a lot with organisations like the CSIRO, universities, and the various state government agencies. I do limited part time work for the University of Adelaide and some of the conservation and resource agencies in South Australia such as the Conservation Council and the Natural Resource Management Boards.

Still awake?

Now, on to the specifics of your question and the supposed âclaimsâ of Dr Raiche.

Firstly, you need to understand who Dr Raiche is. A âChief Research Scientistâ is just a position in the hierarchy , and it is not the head of the organisation â far from it. It just means he was the head of a group of researchers. His main expertise is geophysics, not climate science - as he stated in the video - and consequently he knows no more than me about climate science and his views carry no more weight. You need to understand that â HE KNOWS NO MORE THAN ME AND HIS VIEWS ON CLIMATE SCIENCE CARRY NO MORE WEIGHT THAN MINE.

Regarding the CSIRO. It is a semi-government organisation in that, while it is not a government department, it receives a large part of its funding from the government and a lot of its output is to support government activities. Of course, it does a lot for industry as well, as well as receiving direct research funding from industry for the tasks it undertakes on its behalf.

If you listen to the video (I assume you have), I have to ask you what he says that in anyway throws doubt on the science of climate change? All he really did was to have a rant about the management approach of the CSIRO, and how it was supposedly taken over by management consultants. Thatâs the sort of thing you hear every day in every organisation from old fogies over the coffee machine when they complain about how good it used to be in the old days and how things are so much worse today. Itâs just old bastards complaining and most of the time you just let them winge and take no notice.

His only take on climate change can be summed up in a couple of points:

â....The science is settled.....â No scientist claims it is. But then, every credible scientist thinks that the science of CO2 radiation âabsorptionâ is settled well enough to understand that it WILL affect climate.

â....Hacked emails.....â Really? That again?

âCO2 plays only a small part in climate.....â There isnât a scientist in the world who would agree with that idiotic claim.

â.....Sea level rise has been âdeceleratingâ in the latter part of the 20th century.....â Apart from the statistical errors on that paper, every single oceanographer states that it is the expected rise in the 21st century that is the problem, and that you donât work that out by doing a simple extrapolation of the rises over the past 50 years.

â....Tim Flannery bought a house on the Hawkesbury River...â It would be hard pressed to find a more cretinous argument than that.

â.....Scientists sit in their ivory towers and donât get their hands dirty by going into the field....â Fucking bullshit. The sort of statement I would expect from an old fool complaining about how things were different âin his dayâ.

â.....Lindzen, Spencer etc say different...â Actually no they donât. All these so-called sceptical scientists like Lindzen and Spencer agree that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming â they just disagree about the extent. And their views have been debunked over and over and over again. Only someone who doesnât know anything about the science â or who wants to put an ideological spin on the subject - would put any credibility in their claims.

â.....All of the CSIROâs claims about climate science are based on models, and models donât work....â Complete bullshit on both counts. The first is simply a lie and he knows it.

â....Why do they put disclaimers on all their reports....â Itâs standard practice for any government or semi-government organisation to do the same, and he knows it. He is being disingenuous.

So to sum up..... Dr Raiche has no more credibility on the subject of climate change than I do. He adds nothing to the debate, just regurgitating memes that have been discredited many times in the past. He has a winge about the culture of the CSIRO, but provides zero evidence for how this culture has supposedly caused the position of the organisation to be incorrect on the subject of climate change.

So there you go Mike â seems you have been proven wrong! Anything else?

Models don't work???
"One-dimensional earth models consisting of uniform horizontal layers are useful both as actual representations of earth structures and as host models for more complex structures... The final model is less dependent upon starting guesses, error bounds are much improved, and nonuniqueness is much less of a problem. These advantages are illustrated by interpretation of real field data as well as by a theoretical study of four different types of earth models."

For someone who doesn't believe in 'models', it's a bit weird to find four uses of the word models in the beginning and end of the abstract of a paper where the non-believer is the lead author. http://geophysics.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/50/10/1618

Why are videos more important to some people than scientific facts ? Would they also prefer scientific discourse to be conducted by video rather than by peer-reviewed papers ?

So nobody canm name a significant lie on the scientific sceptic side only barrowloads on the alarmist one.

So nobody canm name a significant lie on the scientific sceptic side . . . --Beil

*Scientific* skeptic side? No.

*Your* side yes: How about your lie about King's nonexistent Antarctica statement, Beil?

You are neither scientific nor skeptical, Beil.

This is the part of the forum I love: The cornered troll. Beil has no answer to this point because he bungled it so badly before. Now he will

1. bluster about eco-Nazis
2. repeat his mindless mantra about his 7 questions
3. ignore the point
4. fail to string together more than 6 words without a misspelling

Watch and learn, Michael. This is the mind of a dogmatic anti-science denier at work.

And Michael:

[Raiche] is not "creating an argument" in the sense that I suspect you mean it. I think he is making a statement.

[To wit:]

Based on his position and standing, I think the statement is a pretty big one.--Michael

No, Michael. It is a puny one:

1. He provides no evidence of manipulation of data/findings regarding climate change. None.

2. He provides no evidence of suppression of *any* ideas other than a secondhand allegation about a dismissal that followed a CSIRO scientist's publication regarding an indigenous species.

3. He does not even *claim* to have evidence for any suppression of data/findings regarding climate change.

He left that inference for his zealous audience. He mentioned climate change, then his former position, was careful to utter only vagaries, then let a credulous audience (sound like anyone you know, Michael?) fill in the desired dots on their own.

If there is moral to the story, Michael, it is that you always set yourself up for a beat down if you use a youtube clip of a partisan tent meeting as "evidence".

I equally hope I have been clear.

Michael,

I'm just wondering, given some of the obviously mis-guided 'grenades' you toss in here from time to time, (in the apparent forlorn hope that somehow, something might make the science support your politics) did you ever get around to reading the first (admittedly long!) chapter of Pierrehumbert's thorough new text 'Principles of Planetary Climate' after I emailed you the draft?

You always struck me as so unlike the other 'skeptics' around here, willing to listen, admitting error and keen to learn. I know your background wasn't heavily scientific but did you not get a sense, over those 70-80 pages of how complex our planet's thermodynamic history is and how uniformly those principles could be applied across any sample planet, not just Earth? That the problem has little to do with weather? politics? These are principles of physics and have been elucidated for nigh on 150-200 years....

If not, I urge you to go back and READ this summary of REAL scientists' work to get a feel for just how complex the problem is, just how much we actually do know and where the uncertainties lie. Mandas, as always, has summed up beautifully the problems with Raiche's 'arguments' but then again, if you read samples from his weekly diatribe on The Australian's 'letters' pages you'd get a feel for his mis-guided angle on these matters.

So I appeal again to your honest inquisitivity. I know it's hard work but it will help answer a lot of stuff that arises here and give you a better light in which to re-read older posts.

Cheers, Matt (of Brisbane previously but who feels that with all this global warming Hobart's where the future lies :-)

"So nobody canm name a significant lie on the scientific sceptic side "

Pat Michaels funding from fossil fuels. Wegman and his plagiarism. Monckton and his HoL membership. McIntyre and his "The hockey stick is wrong". Ian Plimer and his iron sun. Anthony Watts and his surfacestations.org paper "any moment now". TTGWS in its entirety damn near.

"only barrowloads on the alarmist one."

Those people ARE the alarmist ones.

If you mean on the side of science rather than non-science, then we have. Um. A typo.

"Actually I challenge you to show any sceptical scientist who has personally benefited from being found to have told the truth about any eco fraud"

Well, that denialist would have to work in a different universe. There isn't for example, any eco fraud in the climate science of AGW. This would crimp the ability for anyone to make money talking of any "truth of eco fraud".

However, they don't get paid to tell the truth, so they tell lies instead.

Pat Michaels for example 40 million dollars. Monckton gets paid A LOT for his lectures on how climate change isn't a problem. The heartland institute spends a lot on behalf of their clients in the fossil fuel industry and they are making money (and pots of it) lying about AGW.

"Once again Wow demonstrates the total contempt for both courtesy and honesty"

Indeed. I've courteously and honestly called you a dumb fuck.

So nobody can name a significant lie on the scientific sceptic side only barrowloads on the alarmist one. At least not with any attempt at evidence.

Wow is, of course, lying - the hockey Stick was proven false; Monckton is a Lord, for whatever that is worth; Wegman's alleged plaigerism was doubtful, certainly not sufficiently clear or serious to have been mentioned had the ecofascists not been out to get him ; and irrelevent to his dissection of the alarmist lies to Congress. If the others are more than 10,000 times closer to truth than the very highest standard of honesty to which anybody in the ecofascist maovement aspires Wow would have been able to produce indisputable evidence. QED.

And once again he demonstrates the highest level of discussion of whuch any ecofascist is capable.

"So nobody can name a significant lie on the scientific sceptic side"

"the hockey Stick was proven false;"

McI's was proven false. Wegman proved his false. Nobody's managed to prove Mann's false.

http://www.nsf.gov/oig/search/A09120086.pdf

"Wegman's alleged plaigerism was doubtful"

It's CERTAIN. He's even admitted it himself (it was a student wot did it, he insists).

"Monckton is a Lord,"

He's not a member of the House of Lords. If you think this is not worth anything anyway, then HE thinks it very important. He's a denier like you and he lies seriously.

I notice that you haven't managed to do anything other than CLAIM that lies were made.

Apparently, any lies you and your pals make are irrelevant and anything they call false is correct.

This is, really, because you're a boring little moron in a guilt trip because you're a worthless speck of flyshit on the planet with a demand that you be important.

Tough shit, idiot. You couldn't get voted in to power because you're a fucking lunatic.

Hi Matt, Thank you for being nice to me. I appreciate it very much. On the subject of AGW I remain firmly Agnostic, and a keen student.
I did indeed read Principles of Planetary Climate. I found it utterly fascinating and it certainly opened my mind to just how complex this planet is. But if anything, it pretty much hardened my long-held resolve that the climate of our planet and the interaction between all the known and unknown parameters is too complex for anyone to know for sure. I must ask though, do you really think those principles can practically be applied to ANY planet? Earth is the only one with its conditions and parameters that we know of isn't it? I mean, I agree those principles can be applied to any "Earth" but not to any and all Jupiters, Venus', and Mercuries, surely. I guess it would be pretty handy if there was another planet sharing the same orbital path as ours.
Whenever I read or hear "the science is settled", it rings alarm bells for me. (I hope it does for you too)
The "certainty" held by AGW proponents is still a political issue for me. (especially with the increasing use of the phrase "Halt Climate Change" !!??)

I believe strongly that there are other more important and pressing issues that we as "the western world" should be addressing rather than spending untold billions on looking for evidence of AGW.
What about feeding the poor in every country? (especially aboriginal australia!!)
What about reducing and controlling and limiting POLLUTION. (pesticide run-off, aerosol, visual and noise as just a few examples)
There is SO much I want to say, but this post would be just as long as principles of Planetary Climate! So I'll stop now.

Mandas and Skip, all I can say about Dr Raiche, is that
1. I'm glad to be proven wrong. Thank you mandas for your response.
2. Thank you for your response too Skip.
But as someone who is continually fascinated by human behaviour, I still ask why Dr Raiche would say such things.
I guess the only way to find out, and also get the evidence you ask for Skip, is to ask the man himself.
In your position Mandas, could you write to him?
3. Skip, this particular video link is indeed a speech at a "partisan tent meeting" but in response to a previous video I posted here of Prof. Vincent Courtillot, he was dismissed as a "nut-job".
It seems to be very handy indeed that anyone who speaks against AGW, even those with apparently emminent qualifications, is almost universally dismissed in a similar way. (eg. Skeptical Science's Lindzen Illusions, Christy Crocks, etc)
JMurphy, I think youtube videos are a part of our lives these days, and are a good way of communicating a lot of information in an accessible and convenient way. I do not for a minute believe they will ever replace peer-reviewed papers.

Lastly, I would politely request, in response to this post of mine that the practice of cherry-picked copy 'n' paste with accompanying snipe, not be used. Thank you. (I would like to begin a campaign to rid the internet of that practice. Who's with me?)

MoB

You ask:

"....But as someone who is continually fascinated by human behaviour, I still ask why Dr Raiche would say such things....'

You only need to look around at this website to see some of the idiotic things, and straight out lies, that people spruke. People say the strangest things when they are supporting an ideological viewpoint which completely lacks any evidentiary support.

I have no idea who Dr Raiche is personally, so I will not be writing to him. But I have met LOTS of people who are similar to him. Disgruntled public servants who think they were somehow disadvantaged etc. As he only rose to the rank of Chief Research Scientist (which is not all that high a rank by the way) maybe he is pissed off that he was passed over for promotion. Maybe he is just a grumpy old man who thinks that things were better 'in his day' - he certainly made that claim on a number of occasions in his tirade.

What I am certain of is that his views on the issue of climate change are irrelevant. They are no more credible that the views of any other non-expert who thinks his ideology trumps the science. And coming from a supposed scientist, that's about the worst sort of opinion there is.

MoB whined:

Lastly, I would politely request, in response to this post of mine that the practice of cherry-picked copy 'n' paste with accompanying snipe, not be used.

What a ridiculous comment. We don't have to cherry pick to show up your ignorance and political bias in every syllable you write on these blogs. You continually show that you are a very unbalanced person with your continual attacks against science and scientists. Who pays you to do this or do you get some sort of sick satisfaction in smearing climate scientists?

Here is another of your nonsensical mutterings:

Whenever I read or hear "the science is settled", it rings alarm bells for me. (I hope it does for you too)
The "certainty" held by AGW proponents is still a political issue for me.

The certainty shown by the reports and results from honest scientists (97% in the case of climate scientists) has got nothing to do with politics. Your interpretation and refusal to accept it has everything to do with politics. You are so ignorant of science that you really know nothing but have the audacity to suggest that their conclusions are political. You are so stupid and prejudiced.

Here is a great example of "95% certainty" (the certainty associated with AGW):

You have a revolver with 20 chambers, one chamber is empty. Will you spin the chambers and fire at your head? You have a 5% chance of not shooting yourself. That is the chances of us not causing irreversible damage to our eco-system.

MoB

I am going to provide another response to your post, because unlike your standard denier, you do at least demonstrate a degree of rationality and willingness to admit that you may have got it wrong. Perhaps you can be the one we save from the pit of stupidity inhabited by the likes of crakar, snowman, Dick Wakefield and Biel Roaig.

In particular, I am going to address these to âjoined upâ quotes from your post:

â....I found it utterly fascinating and it certainly opened my mind to just how complex this planet is. But if anything, it pretty much hardened my long-held resolve that the climate of our planet and the interaction between all the known and unknown parameters is too complex for anyone to know for sure......... Whenever I read or hear "the science is settled", it rings alarm bells for me. (I hope it does for you too) The "certainty" held by AGW proponents is still a political issue for me.....â

Firstly, you are correct. The planet and itâs ecosystem is extremely complex, and no-one person or even one science discipline cannot know everything. So given that, I have to ask why you would not adopt the same approach with deniers who think that they know for sure that humans are not influencing climate? Why is it only the proponents of AGW who are supposedly incapable of explaining the world adequately, while those opposed to the view ARE supposedly able to explain it?

Whatâs more perplexing about your view in this regard is that it is the proponents of AGW who are actual scientists; people who spend their whole lives examining the issue, whilst the opponents are largely politicians, media commentators and people who have absolutely no science education at all. The very few scientists who have studied the issue but who remain opposed to AGW are not actually opposed to the concept of AGW, they just dispute the extent of the problem. So that begs the obvious question. If climate is so complex that it is difficult if not impossible to fully understand, why would you side with the one group of people who have never studied it and have no idea about it, while disagreeing with the one group of people who do know something about it? Thatâs a pretty fundamental question, and your honest answer to it will pretty much reveal a lot about your views on the issue.

Secondly, no scientist in the world has ever claimed that the science in his particular field of study is âsettledâ. That is a political claim, not a scientific one. And itâs pretty obvious why â if the science WERE settled, then there would be nothing left to study and all we scientists would need to find new jobs.

BUT.... there are some things in every field of science which ARE pretty well settled. There isnât a biologist in the world who thinks that the science of evolution is settled, but there isnât a credible biologist in the world who would disagree with the concept and basic idea of evolution. Similarly with physicists and quantum theory, or geologists and plate tectonics, or chemists and the atomic theory of matter, etc, etc, etc. There are some aspects of EVERY science discipline which are well enough understood for them to be taken as given, because to overturn them would mean that whole fields of study in unrelated disciplines would also have to be wrong, and that just isnât credible. Such is the case for the âatmospheric greenhouse principleâ. The science of climataology may well not âbe settledâ, but the concept of the atmospheric greenhouse principle is so well understood and so fundamental to so many science disciplines that the idea that it could be wrong is simply inconceivable. If you are disputing it, then you are disputing basic physics and chemistry, and only a fool would do that.

That is what this whole discussion is about. Itâs about science and evidence on one hand, and uneducated ideology on the other. Itâs about using well understood and unequivocal principles vs denying basic science based on and ideology or vested interest.

So how about you ask yourself why you believe the way you do. No one is an expert in every subject, so we trust experts to tell us about their particular field of study. You trust the word of physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, astronomers, engineers etc , etc, etc to tell you about things that you have no expertise in, on things that you rely on every day of your life. Why is it that you have decided to doubt the word of one group of scientists, when you have no evidence or knowledge to doubt their expertise?

I agree with Ian and Mandas, but would like to add this:

"I believe strongly that there are other more important and pressing issues that we as "the western world" should be addressing rather than spending untold billions on looking for evidence of AGW.
What about feeding the poor in every country? (especially aboriginal australia!!)"

First, how about justifying your claim about untold billions being spent to look for evidence. It seems to me that the evidence is being forced upon us - there is no need to search for it. If you really meant to say that it is being spent to make better predictions, that is what you should have written (I suspect even that is wrong).

Secondly, feeding the world's poor and studying the impact of climate change are not independent. One of the consequences of global climate change is that it will not be possible to feed the poor in every country. In fact, the outlook for maintaining medium-term (next 50 years, say) food production at the current level is pretty bleak.

Mandas "Why is it that you have decided to doubt the word of one group of scientists, when you have no evidence or knowledge to doubt their expertise?"

I think part of the problem is that the average denialist has not the slightest clue about the gap in expertise between themselves (or their heroes) and the scientists who are actually doing the research. Most people realize that a top soccer player has been acquiring skills more or less full time for 10-15 years and accept that, without similar training, they could never go head-to-head with a professional.

However, they fail to draw the parallel with a top scientist who has been learning the profession for twice that time, and seem to think that a weedend of reading a blog by someone slightly less ignorant than themselves is adequate training to hold their own in a scientific discussion. (Anyone can do a t-test, right? All you have to do is to click on the right buttons in Excel.)

It seems to be very handy indeed that anyone who speaks against AGW, even those with apparently emminent qualifications, is almost universally dismissed in a similar way.

And of course, Michael, the question begged by this is, Why?

It's either because there is a vast conspiracy--as implied by Raiche--to hide the "skeptical" truth.

*Or*, maybe it's because these guys have nothing of merit to say.

I watched your link, Michael. In doing that I already showed more open-mindedness and good faith than the vast, vast majority of AGW deniers I encounter.

I gave you specific reasons as to why this guy's "statement" is so limp and irrelevant.

You can't just turn around bemoan that he was attacked. If you detect a weakness in mine, or Matt's, or Mandas's criticisms, then elucidate that. You can't just throw your hands up and bemoan the fact of critique itself.

Further to some of the points raised above by myself and others, there is this statement by MoB:

â....I believe strongly that there are other more important and pressing issues that we as "the western world" should be addressing rather than spending untold billions on looking for evidence of AGW....â

The question is, how do you know these issues are more important and more pressing, until you study and understand them? There is no doubt that poverty, pollution, the over-exploitation of resources, wholesale extinction of species, etc ARE important, but who said they are more important that dealing with AGW?

Iâm going to agree with Richard that dealing with these issues need not be mutually exclusive. But I am going to go further. Unless and until we deal with AGW, these problems will never be solved, because AGW will exacerbate them. And you can take that as âsettledâ.

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your answer, many things to address! Most of them, as usual, have been ably addressed by Mandas, Ian, the good Richard, Skip et al. I hate to say this but it is patently obvious that your objections are political and don't come from a deep understanding of the principles behind what we know (and don't) so far. I would love for you to have the honesty to accept this fact but I'm not holding my breath just yet.

Scientists are exceedingly aware of the limitations in their knowledge base, far more than you will prob ever understand, and it is their life's work to go about remedying that. The metaphor of the football player is highly appropriate but, for a myriad of reasons, most people will never fully grasp the gulf between their meagre 'general' knowledge about a few things and a typical working scientist's deeply honed expertise in a particular area. That is why people here keep banging on about who to trust and why - it really IS an important distinction.

The general principles (I was hoping you had grasped from your reading), CAN indeed be applied across any given planet in the universe. That's exactly what I was getting at and what I was hoping you'd recognize. The points deniers talk about are often about small local effects, short term trends or confusing weather with climate. THE take home point I was taking a stab at having you realize was that this is largely a thermodynamic problem and if you have the right tools and some simple mathematics you are very well-armed to give a very useful approximation of the average climate of any given point on any given planet (that is in a meta-stable equilibrium state). Not to drag the point too far or too off topic but you should be able to do the necessary calculations if you have all of the following:
- the parent star(s)' Class/temperature and orbital parameters/cycles
- the planet's diameter, density distribution and it's orbital parameters/cycles
- the composition of any gases in the planet's atmosphere and their absorption spectrum info
- the planet's albedo distribution and surface composition
- a measure of the planet's residual heat/radioactivity (often negligible)
- and of course, the coordinate's of the point in question on the planet's surface (the orbital tilt, with respect to the normal to the plane of the ecliptic is already accounted for under the planet's parameters in bullet point two)

Given this info, (and anything else I've left out in a hurry!) you can make a surprisingly accurate attempt at calculating average surface conditions for your chosen point or indeed, the whole planet. It's basic physics. That's why weather and politics have little to do with it. If you hold all those parameters steady while varying only the composition of one gas in the atmosphere (an over-simplification for Earth's current situation) you can calculate the new equilibrium position. Does this make sense?

It is a GUARANTEE that if you increase the ability of the planet's atmosphere to trap heat, it WILL heat up to a new temperature at which incoming energy equals outgoing. FACT.

The rest is just quibbling over the distribution of the new heat, it's speed of penetration, it's effects on life or the lag(s) in any feedback(s). That is where all the uncertainty you speak of is located - not in 'whether or not the temperature will rise', that's been unquestioned by scientists for over a hundred years, as indeed it should be by you good self. Does that explain it? You can't just read the chapter, be in awe of how complex it is and then throw up your hands in despair and say "it's all so complex that if we can't know everything, we know nothing".... That's intellectual bankruptcy, but I'm certainly not accusing you of that, you've been terrific so far.

Cheers,

Matt.

> On the subject of AGW I remain firmly Agnostic, and a keen student.

Nope, you appear firmly denialist, and a keen student of the lies that your fellow deniers are spouting because they're convenient for your ego.

Ahh there he is!
(yelling) IAN PATRICK FORRESTER!!!!
YOU WILL SPEAK NICELY OR YOU WILL GO AND STAND IN THE CORNER!!!
(count to ten... Calm, rainforest, fitter, happier....)

Now. In response to everyone except Ian Patrick:

I seem to have kicked a hornets nest.
Whilst I appreciate that you are being relatively polite, I truly don't understand, and didn't expect the vitriol in your responses.
Have any of you besides Matt read Principles of Planetary Climate?
It is indeed fascinating.
I admit, I skimmed over the mathematical formulas, but I did read it.
I stand by what I said in my last post.
The whole climate system of planet earth as outlined in PoPC is immeasurably complex, and the paper points out quite a number of uncertainties.
I have tried to illustrate my political feelings here previously. I am, if anything decidedly "left-leaning".
I was a paid-up member of Greenpeace until the late nineties. I recycle vehemently. I was most definitely anti-nuclear and then changed my mind. (just like George Monbiot, to his credit)
I drive.... Oh for gods sake what is the point??

You people don't know me. I have tried to learn from this blog.
But each time this happens I end up only learning a lot more about human behavior than I do about the AGW debate. (so it's not a total loss)
It seems The Twain shall really never meet.

By the way, at the top of this page is a video which seems to me to be about mostly Weather.
Isn't it heatwaves

(whoops, pressed send by mistake)

...... being used as proof of AGW as opposed to the loony deniers in the video crying Cooling Phase?
Coby, when you say "welcome to the new normal" do you mean the weather or the denialism?
The Brisbane floods of january this year were used on numerous occasions in the media as proof of AGW. yet it's very well known in Brisbane that the floods of 1893 were double the height of this year's.
I'm saying this so I can mention that last Monday (the 15th) I was supposed to leave for New Zealand for a long awaited skiing trip. We arrived at the airport check-in counter only to be told that our flight had been cancelled due to the once-in-a-50-year snow storm that had hit NZ.
Now, is that AGW or AGC? Is it just weather?
I say we should halt climate change now!

MoB I will never be polite to a nasty person like you who continually sneers at science and scientists and smears the ones who are doing the best work in the area. You are a despicable person. Do you have children or grandchildren? Why are you condemning them to a very different and nasty future by your attempts at distorting the scientific facts about climate change?

You don't even have enough smarts to get my name right. You are pathetic.

"I seem to have kicked a hornets nest."

This is because you are looking to kick hornets nests.

"The whole climate system of planet earth as outlined in PoPC is immeasurably complex, and the paper points out quite a number of uncertainties."

And those uncertainties make us A-OK HOW, exactly? Wishful thinking?

And the distance between two points is inherently immeasurable, as shown by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, so does this mean we can't calculate the height of a person or the size of an atom?

NO.

Why?

Because the uncertainties don't preclude any useful result.

However, YOU want it to be impossible to model the climate because YOU don't like taking responsibility, or just hate anything ecological.

Why? Because you're a vomitous speck of filth, completely unworthy of the name "human".

"By the way, at the top of this page is a video which seems to me to be about mostly Weather.
Isn't it heatwaves"

But you don't get heatwaves at the poles, whereas you get a lot of them at the tropics, especially interiors of landmasses.

Why is that?

BECAUSE OF THE CLIMATE, YOU MORON.

I must ask though, do you really think those principles can practically be applied to ANY planet? Earth is the only one with its conditions and parameters that we know of isn't it? I mean, I agree those principles can be applied to any "Earth" but not to any and all Jupiters, Venus', and Mercuries [sic], surely.

Not to Mercury, because it has no atmosphere to speak of, but why not to Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Titan? The whole point of working out general principles is that they can be applied to any relevent situation. The conditions on other planets will be different, but the same principles will hold. In fact, my understanding is that in some cases the climate elsewhere has been used to test models developed for Earth's climate systems.

Isn't it heatwaves [stitched] being used as proof of AGW as opposed to the loony deniers in the video crying Cooling Phase?"

No! Are you deliberately being obtuse? These are examples of what will become the new norm as climate change progresses (you should have understood this if you'd read the second sentence).

. . . it's very well known in Brisbane that the floods of 1893 were double the height of this year's

But in the meantime, weren't dams built that were supposed to prevent this kind of flooding?

Ian and Wow..... words fail me.

Richard, I am not being obtuse on purpose. Sorry, Thanks for clarifying.

My point about the Brisbane floods is that the the flood that happened in 1883 was roughly double the one of 2011, as well as the major flood of 1974.
Wivenhoe Dam was built after the 1974 flood to mitigate against such flood events, and although there was a certain amount of mis-management of the dam and flood waters, in the end it simply comes down to the sheer volume of rain.
Here is a history of flooding in the Brisbane River in case you're interested:
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml

At the time (January 2011) various media outlets blamed the flooding on climate change. One example is here:
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1464847/qld-floods-linked-to-climate…

Now, I sincerely ask you Richard, with such strong, well documented and indisputable evidence of previous major flood events in just this one location, is it really fair to blame this one on AGW? (note: even though the article only uses the words "climate change", I do believe the inference is towards the effects of mankind on climate. Please read right to the end)

I'm not trying to knock what Richard wrote above but EVEN Mercury can have these principles applied to it with success. The only difference will be that the atmospheres of bodies like Mercury and the Moon are so ephemeral as to be virtually non-existent and therefore there will be some zero variables in their equations where gaseous absorptions are concerned. In the same way, a body that has become geologically inert will have zero variables for it's transport of core heat to the surface etc etc. That's the beauty of the general principles Michael, you can't argue with them - they're just true. These principles have been proven right time and again. Please have the honesty to admit this much. It's just physics and you can't, if you're a true skeptic, pick and choose your physical principles.

MoB whined:

Ian and Wow..... words fail me.

More lies, words do not fail you as any one can see from the multitude of your arrogant rants. However, honesty fails you, as it does for every other denier.

"Now, I sincerely ask you Richard, with such strong, well documented and indisputable evidence of previous major flood events in just this one location, is it really fair to blame this one on AGW?"

In isolation? No. In the context of flooding in Sri Lanka, Brazil & South Africa in the same month, the floods in Pakistan & firestorms in Russia the previous year the ongoing record high temperatures & drought in Texas and your NZ snowstorm? Possibly.

The question you have to ask yourself Michael, is how many extreme weather events in a short period of time (less than 24 months) can there be for you continue to maintain that normal service is continuing?

To quote the IPCC: "It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent." ... "Where extreme weather events become more intense and/or more frequent, the economic and social costs of those events will increase, and these increases will be substantial in the areas most directly affected. Climate change impacts spread from directly impacted areas and sectors to other areas and sectors through extensive and complex linkages [high confidence]."

By the way, well done on not using the standard tactic of focussing on the comments of the likes of Ian & Wow in order to avoid more substansive comments from others. I do feel though that you've failed to fully respond to mandas' post #38.

> Now, I sincerely ask you Richard, with such strong, well documented and indisputable evidence of previous major flood events in just this one location, is it really fair to blame this one on AGW?

Nobody is. Except you.

What IS being blamed on Global Warming, is the magnitude of the flooding.

To refute that claim you have to show that the temperature of the ocean and atmosphere doesn't affect flooding by the mechanism that caused this one.

Clearly from Wow's remarks he is an obscene liar.

Equally clearly the fact that nobody on "scienceblogs", obviously apart from myself, feels either lies or obscenity are in any way incompatible with their redefinition of scientific "principles" is indisputable.

I take that as representing the very highest standard of honesty or integrity to which any of the lying, thieving, fascist parasites involved in the climate fraud ever aspire.

If anybody wishes to say I am wrong and that their demonstrated standard of integrity is measurably lower I look forward to it.

I had spent a lot of time writing a response, about flooding history in Sri Lanka, and Mandas and Argo.....
Upon refreshing the page, I lost it all. (there was some swearing!)
So, I'll just rewrite the last bit.

Look, I realise I'm floggin' a dead horse here. I wish I could spend time researching all the science of AGW, and responding to these posts.
Alas, I cannot. I am a self employed, single dad, whose teenage kids continually accuse of spending WAY too much time lookin' at climate change stuff.
You have all made me think and re-think. That can only be a good thing.
I will continue to read, investigate and learn.

Yup, whiner here still hates life and takes it out on everything he sees. And his self-deception have been at Moncktonian levels for some time now.

What a buffoon.

Nobody will take you up on your claim because you're a freaking lunatic.

Care to point out ANYONE other than a denier making a strawman who blames the flooding recently in Brisbane on AGW, not the strength of it, the actual event in toto.

Or, if you can't (and don't want to), prove that heating oceans and air DOESN'T affect hurricanes?

"Alas, I cannot."

We know.

"I am a self employed, single dad..."

Which may be true, but ISN'T the reason why you cannot. You're an imbecile. You're both unable and unwilling to answer the AGW science and refute even small sections of it.

"I will continue to read, investigate and learn."

But only the things you WANT to learn. This is your problem.

Lighten up, Wow.

Michael might be intellectually unpolished, but we need variation on the denier dumb scale. If Michael is an "imbecile", then what do we call Beil?

"If Michael is an "imbecile", then what do we call Beil?"

Moncktonian?

Just because the earth is very much more massive than a whale doesn't mean we can't call a whale "heavy".

They're both imbeciles.

Very well then.

Beil is an imbecile of planetary proportions, upon which Michael is merely, even if *technically* still exhibiting minutely detectable imbecilic properties, a negligible spec of mass.

Bandying semantics with me can be a chore . . .

I believe that a whale has more mass than "minutely detectable".

MoB perhaps if you spent your time a little better you'd learn more? Be more selective & less credulous is my advice (I still chuckle when I think of the guy you linked to who thought the earth was made by aliens & his evidence was that you could see faces in the continents, he was even more nutty than Beil!)

MoB

By all means, keep learning. One tip though - don't rely on blog posts or book for your information. Some of them can be good, but some of them are appalling. They appear credible, but unfortunately there is no real objective test to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Go to Google Scholar. Search there for the things you want to know. Read real science papers by real scientists that have been reviewed by other real scientists. Books and blogs are not checked for accuracy and should never be relied upon.

Wow

'Moncktonian'. That's pure gold! I'm going to use it!

Mandas,

True to some extent, but I'm sure you would agree that a book like PoPC by Pierrehumbert of Real Climate fame, which summarizes the current information from those peer-reviewed papers you allude to, is a damn sight closer to truth than something like Heaven & Earth?

It can sometimes be much better to direct laymen to a summary text like that than to the dense jargon of papers, just as you introduce physics to new students through a great physics textbook that condenses the current consensus rather than straight to the literature. You can't just write off all 'books' as if they're one and the same, though I understand perfectly the technical correctness of what you're saying. I've got dozens of books on science topics, including texts, but PoPC is by far the most sober, uncontroversial and honest up-to-date look at our current understanding of climatology in general. It avoids all hyperbole, doesn't skimp on getting down and dirty with the maths and has, as I've directed Michael to, a fantastic long opening chapter that entails a close examination of all of earth's climatological history. Have a look if you haven't already.

Cheers, M.

Matt

I have never read the book you suggest, and I have never read Heaven and Earth either. I agree that some books are better than others. The problem is to know which ones. People will give advice about a book saying 'Here, read this. It tells you all you need to know about the subject.' Except that people will recommend books based on their own biases and beliefs. You recommend that particular book, but a smooth talking denier might recommend Heaven and Earth, and if you don't have the ability to discriminate, or don't have any science training, then it would appear to be credible.

At least with peer reviewed science papers you know what you are getting. There are the occasional bad ones from bad journals, but if you stick to the quality journals you will never go astray.

Well I guess that's us told.

Nobody feels capable of actually answering points so they devolve to insults and obscenities.

Way to go for the deliberations of the "scientific" minds of America.

What "us"?

Are you indicating that, as opposed to your continuous assertion, that you are merely part of a crowd that believes the crap you spout? That you are not, after all, a free thinking individual?

You have been ANSWERED your points. You just don't LIKE the answers.

You admit you've been answered and in the same post insist you haven't even once had an answer.

Here, yet again, are the answers:

1 - No
2 - No
3 - No
4 - Yes
5 - No
6 - No

Those obviously don't answer anything and so aren't answers. They are, obviously, the best any alarmist can do.

Uh, Neil.

Please produce proof that King said Antarctica would be the only habitable region by 2100.

Oh! I forgot! You can't!

LOL.

Dumbass is as dumbass does, Beil.

They are answers.

You just can't use them.

Here the answers to your questions are again:

1 - No
2 - No
3 - No
4 - Yes
5 - No
6 - No

E.g. "do you agree..." CAN be legally and completely answered with "No".

At #71 Biel said:

".....Those obviously don't answer anything and so aren't answers. They are, obviously, the best any alarmist can do...."

Yes, you are absolutely correct Biel. They are the best we can do. We are obviously all eco-fascists and socialists, liars and child rapers.

So your point has been proven. You win.

Now fuck off back under your rock and stop posting here. You are obviously wasting your time trying to convince us.

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/

Yes it is cruel.

But in case anyone else wants to watch the personal implosion of Neil Craig play itself out on cyberspace.

Thanks skip. I suppose I should have some sympathy for people with mental illness. In this case I think the kindest thing would be euthanasia.

Cool picture lierlatly. The weather has been very unusual lately. In fact this past weekend it snowed here in San Luis Obispo CA. Not enough to actually stick to the ground, but still a very rare occurrence for living so close to the Pacific Ocean.

Back then Oil Had Only Entangled Us In Two Simultaneous Wars...

sastyk — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:22:44 +0000

Back then Oil Had Only Entangled Us In Two Simultaneous Wars...

Jon Stewart somehow seems to grasp the real importance of Obama's speech:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

An Energy-Independent Future

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

If only we'd thought about getting off oil before! But at least the dinos didn't die in vain!

The good news is that GWB is probably right - we won't be using as much foreign oil in 2025.

Sharon

sastyk Mon, 06/21/2010 - 09:22

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If there ever was a keeper of a video, this is it.

Laugh or cry? Laugh or cry?!

I have to say, though, with GWB and earlier, I don't think they were thinking about the running out of oil aspect, I think they were almost entirely thinking about the "foreign" aspect. And I don't think George HW was thinking at all.

My recollection is that the ground-breaking tax cuts of the Nixon years, coupled with restrained spending, was responsible for eventually recovering from the economic debacle of the spend-it-all Carter years. President Bush Sr. continued that economic policy - as did President Clinton for the first 7 1/2 years, until he started paying off political debts and destabilized things for his successor, President Bush, Jr. I have long considered the continuation of Reagan's economic policies the single most significant accomplishment of the Clinton administration (up until the last six months). Except his ratcheting-up of the Community Reinvestment Act - i.e., subprime loans - was the direct cause of the 2008 mortgage reselling market collapse.

The only thing Jon Stewart missed on his Presidential comparisons, was the uncanny way B. Hussein Obama continues to posit the same policies that drove inflation to 25% under Jimmy Carter. Why would anyone be surprised that what wrecked the economy for Carter will wreck it again for B. Hussein Obama?

"The only thing Jon Stewart missed on his Presidential comparisons, was the uncanny way B. Hussein Obama continues to posit the same policies that drove inflation to 25% under Jimmy Carter."

Not really. Current economic situation is different from that during Carter's administration. There's zero (yes, zero) risk of significant inflation during the next two years.

Brad K. @ # 3: My recollection is that the ground-breaking tax cuts of the Nixon years, coupled with restrained spending, was responsible for eventually recovering from the economic debacle of the spend-it-all Carter years.

They have all sorts of drugs for memory problems now, or so I hear. Maybe you could get a prescription to help you remember a "peace dividend" (though the term wasn't in much use then) which happened about that time.

Don't know if there are any medications good for such as severe case of wrong-about-everything-osis as yours, alas.

What I recall about Nixon's years was his wage and price controls.

His controls on the price of crude oil is pretty much what gave us huge gas lines in 1974 and then again in 79 as the Embargo and then Iran impacted wholesale crude markets.

Contrast that with 2008 and other more contemporary times when crude oil got dear - the prices of gasoline and diesel went way up, but outright shortages were fairly nill, excepting when a pipeline servicing the Southeast failed.

(Carter actually phased out Nixon's price controls on crude oil and gas. Google "windfall profits tax Carter" for more on that. Reagan, once he got in office, signed into law an acceleration of the timetable for Carter's price decontrols. But it all started under Nixon.)

What actually got us out of the stagflation recessions of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years was new, cheap, world (especially North Sea) and Alaskan oil temporarily rescuing the US from its own national peak oil calamity, though many credit Reagan and his tax cuts (Google "Kemp Roth" for more on that.) Reagan was actually a huge beneficiary of Alaska and North Sea oil coming on line, along with the delayed effects of some real energy conservation efforts (such as people buying high MPG cars in the few years leading up to the 1980 election.) He will always get the credit, though I think he just lucked out at being at the right place and the right time when it came to world oil markets.

Reagan also hugely benefited from having tens of millions of American Baby Boomers enter their prime productive and earning years right as he came into office.

This isn't to take away from all the tough stances he took on human rights with the USSR - something I loved, but he was just plain lucky on economic and energy issues in my opinion.

Of course the thing is, there is no where else to turn now that the WORLD has suffered its own peak oil. Unlike in the 1980s, there will be no Alaska, no North Sea, no ramped up Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. to produce oil enough to get the world economy rolling again.

People think that we just have to cut taxes and everything will be fine, ala Reagan.

Well, I do agree that we have a huge class of unproductive people that aren't done any favors by entitlements, and as a person that works with lots of people and families, crippled in my opinion by such handouts, I DO think taxes and entitlements could be scaled back (sorry Sharon, et al), but such cuts alone will not begin to bring us back to the 1980s and 90s. The problem underlying all of our current economic problems is the end of easy, cheap oil.

What actually got us out of the stagflation recessions of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years was new, cheap, world (especially North Sea) and Alaskan oil temporarily rescuing the US from its own national peak oil calamity

Hehe... Yup, over here in the UK too, there's this tendency to talk about the '80s "recovery" as if it was a result of politics, rather than finding a massive hoard of buried treasure.

LOL Dunc. "...finding a massive hoard of buried treasure."

I like how you put that as that's basically what happened.

Dunc @ # 9 - What Stephen B. said, with bonus points for the right spelling of "hoard" in this context!

What's with the B. Hussein Obama business, Brad K.?

Heinberg's Oil Industry Exec Quote Generator

sastyk — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:04:37 +0000

Heinberg's Oil Industry Exec Quote Generator

Gotta love Richard Heinberg's latest - suggestions for Oil Exec quotes on peak oil:

"We believe fears about Peak Oil to be . . .
a. unsupported by evidence.
b. utter rubbish emanating from cretinous doomsday cultists.
c. compellingly credible.
d. strangely arousing.

"People have been forecasting the end of oil . . .
a. for decades.
b. since the age of the dinosaurs--no, since the Big Bang.
c. with ever-greater urgency--especially since 2005, the year of maximum world crude oil production so far.
d. just to tick me off.

"Such predictions have always failed before because . . .
a. we've continued to find more oil, and we've found ways to get increasing amounts out of existing oilfields.
b. planet Earth is like a Hostess Twinkie, except the sweet creamy center is actually nothing but pure West Texas crude.
c. the early ones were premature and relied upon incomplete data.
d. we humans just plain deserve to have inexhaustible resources to satisfy our ever-burgeoning appetites.

"We now have technology capable of . . .
a. exploiting resources that are buried deeper, and that are trapped in less porous rocks, and that are of poorer quality, than ever before.
b. drilling from Houston all the way to Baghdad and back.
c. almost making up for rapidly declining production of affordable, high-quality oil from the old, giant, on-shore oilfields we've been relying on for decades.
d. confusing, entertaining, and distracting consumers so effectively that they completely ignore the obvious fact that their lives are entirely dependent on an utterly unsustainable system of non-renewable resource extraction.

Goes brilliantly with this Onion Story:

Though no one knows exactly how much of the dangerous bullshit is currently gushing from BP headquarters, estimates put the number at somewhere between 25,000 and 70,000 words a day.

"We're looking at a truly staggering load of shit here," said Rebecca Palmer, an environmental scientist at the University of Georgia, who claimed that only BP has the ability to stem the flow of bullshit and plug it at its source. "And this is just the beginning--we're only seeing the surface-level bullshit. It could be years before we sift through it all and figure out just how deep this bullshit goes."

Congressional hearings aimed at stopping the bullshit have thus far failed to do so, with officials from BP and its contractors Halliburton and Transocean only adding to the powerful torrents of bullshit by blaming one another for the accident.

Along with the region's wildlife and fragile ecosystem, countless livelihoods have been jeopardized by BP's unchecked flow of corporate shit. Those who depend on fishing or tourism for their income are already feeling the noxious effects of the bullshit firsthand, as out-of-control platitudes begin to reach land and seep ashore.

sastyk Wed, 06/09/2010 - 02:04

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