Who are you going to believe? Scientists, or your lying eyes?
The revelations in recent days that prominent members of the scientific community have been deliberately falsifying data to support the political conclusion that man is primarily responsible for "Global Warming" (now commonly referred to as "Global Climate Change," since the planet is actually not getting warmer), has raised a troubling question.
Unlike the social sciences, where agendas and opinions often substitute for "facts," the hard sciences are supposedly pure, objective and rational. Here numbers don't lie, statistically demonstrable trends aren't self-serving conjecture, and the only agenda behind these scientific inquiries is a pure, unfettered, search for the truth. If tree rings and dying polar bears tell us the planet is getting warmer, and an increase in C02 levels tell us man and man alone is responsible for the warming, then by God (or by Gore for those who can't quite fathom the notion that there is a Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe), the science is "settled." Anyone who thinks differently is just a religious fanatic trying to impose his version of God on the rest of humanity, or equally despicable, an anti-intellectual moron who's missing several of his teeth as well as major neural synapses.
And yet, there's this nagging, troubling problem that surfaced a few days ago where these same Keepers of the Truth on Anthropogenic Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change have been shown to be, well, a bunch of hypocrites and liars. Contravening data is ignored, suppressed or destroyed; supporting data is cherry-picked or manufactured out of whole cloth, and overlapping all of this is a political agenda tied to utopian social change and economic redistribution. Other than that, the evidence is pretty clear and convincing that man is the primary agent of global climate change going back hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Now, to those of us imbued with a modicum of common sense, this "Joe vs. the Volcano" scenario where Joe supposedly affects the climate more than nature does seemed a little, well, stupid to borrow a favorite phrase of mine. No one denies that man can affect portions of the planet by setting off a nuclear bomb here, building a dam there, or paving over a field and building a city or highway system. But to claim that all this is more of a reason for presumed global climate change than erupting volcanoes or the presence or absence of sunspots is, well, there's that word again: stupid.
I first posed this question back in 2006, for which I was roundly criticized as a "wingnut" and anti-science flat-earther.
Al Gore tells us that the world is getting hotter, and that man is responsible for making it that way. Unless we take drastic steps now to correct this problem the ice caps will melt, our cities will flood, farmland will dry up and the rainforests will die. Before we get caught up in the same hysteria that thirty years earlier predicted the arrival of a new Ice Age, we might pause for a moment and ask: is any of this true? And if it is, what role did man really play in altering the climate, and if it is getting hotter, what (if anything) can he actually do about it?
. . .
In other words, if there's a big ball of vibrating, pulsating, fiery gas up in the sky that routinely heats the Earth, shouldn't we eliminate it first as the cause of this warming before making me trade in my Escalade for a Mini-Cooper?
When I wrote that piece, I was making an observation that we need to apply some common sense to our understanding of the world in which we live, rather than automatically accept the agenda-driven conclusions of others who use science to further their own venal interests.
If the scientist interpreting the data gets his funding from a government agency, and that agency won't fund the solving of a problem that is nature-made, then what other conclusion can the scientist draw than the problem — and solution — is man-made? Why spend $10 million to fund a research project on sunspot or volcano-driven global warming when we don't have the ability to stop a volcano from erupting, or do anything to affect the sun making its spots? But if man is the culprit, then there's plenty of reason to keep seeking, and receiving, taxpayer support. And if man — not nature — is the ultimate villain in this modern day morality play, then think of all the social engineering, global reparation payments, or just plain nanny-state fun you can have changing society around to promote a "solution" that can't be proven or disproven for decades to come.
All of which leads to the contemporary notions of "consensus science" and "settled science," which is shorthand for "would you shut up and stop asking these kinds of embarrassing questions because we already have the conclusions we want." It's the day real science was replaced with the notion that the consensus of non-scientists and scientists, who gather together in quasi-political organizations, was all that was needed to shut down debate. It is, in effect, the day science died.
I no longer trust "science" to be objective. As practiced today, it's just a different form of the base, venal, agenda-driven bilge we see in the mainstream media, whose purpose is not to educate and inform, but to protect and advance a private agenda. I wrote the following passage several months ago, and these words remain as true today as they were then.
Thirty years ago, if a major study said that the Earth was warming, or that red meat caused cancer, or that Candidate X was 30 points ahead in the polls, I may not automatically believe everything it says, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss it out of hand. Depending upon the degree of institutional credibility the study had (that is, The American Cancer Society vs. some organization I never heard of), I may start with the assumption that it's more right than wrong and proceed from there. If I had any questions, I'd look to see how and why the report arrived at its conclusions, and on this basis form a preliminary judgment about those issues.
Now the problem here is that unless you happen to have a degree in statistics, understand survey and polling methodology, or have an expertise in the scientific area of investigation under study, most people (myself included) can't really do this. So, we look instead for certain obvious clues. Is the study of 100 people, or 100,000? Does it say "will happen," or "might happen," or contain other qualifiers? Is the study peer reviewed, or put out by some organization with a vested interest in the matter?
These were the types of clues an intelligent observer would look to in forming an initial judgment. That opinion would be supplemented or diminished over the coming weeks and months as opposing experts in the field – who actually understood the technical stuff I didn't – would debate the matter. I'd learn about this debate from the press, which would summarize and report their findings in sufficient detail for me to see both sides of the issue.
But today there is no "press." There are newspapers and TV companies that have chosen a side and become advocates, not reporters. We've always had opinion-guided journalism in this country, so this in itself is nothing new. But again we're dealing with a sufficiently different degree of bias that has caused even Hillary (the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy") Clinton to condemn the press for its favoritism and prejudice.
This bias doesn't limit itself to swaying elections. Do you remember the last time you saw a debate on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, or read about it in The New York Times, etc. that explored the reality of man-made global warming? Don't bother to look it up. There hasn't been.
Despite the fact that sea levels aren't rising, that winters are getting colder, that virtually none of Al Gore's predictions have come true and an increasing number of mainstream scientists are challenging the methodology that produced these conclusions, the matter is "settled" in the eyes of the press. This is because there's a lot more riding on this belief than whether we all need an extra pair of summer shorts to add to our wardrobe. An entire economic and political agenda of the Left is built around the premise that man is producing "global climate change" (the new term of choice since the Earth clearly isn't warming like it was supposed to). Challenge the premise, or at the very least allow for reasonable people to disagree, and suddenly the momentum is gone for acting now! Or, acting at all.
If the only consequence was that we could no longer believe our lying eyes (and ears) about what's being said about Republican politicians and global CO2 emissions, it would be bad enough. But the problem today extends much further than this. Because so much of what's being portrayed as "totally, completely, unmitigatedly true" in fact isn't, and adding insult to injury, the so-called truth of the matter may be the exact opposite of what is stated, the only reasonable course of action is to doubt everything.
And yet, not everything deserves to be automatically doubted. Some studies which show that X causes cancer, Y prolongs life, or Z is harmful or hurtful to man or the environment are undoubtedly legitimate. But damned if I can tell which ones are honestly conducted. Given how politics (with a small "p") has been injected into everything from eating beef to exhaling Co2, and that most studies rely on government funds (which means government biases) or private finds (which means private agendas), only a fool would automatically believe everything he's told. And momma Jackson didn't raise her little boy Phillip to be no fool, much like other people in this country who actually think.
Now, instead of accepting what "objective" sources tell me is true, my first reaction is to make them prove it. I don't care if their conclusions or remedy seem outwardly reasonable or not, or the scientific panel seemed wholly legitimate. I don't accept anything on face value anymore, regardless of its source. I rely entirely on my common sense, which is okay for those things I happen to have some direct experience in or knowledge about. But there's a lot more I don't know than I do know, and therein lies the problem. In the absence of legitimate, objective, trustworthy outside sources, I still need to rely on my own common sense to figure things out. Better to trust my gut on an issue I know nothing about, than put my trust in some political hack whose only purpose is to advance an agenda. I may not make the right choice, but at least I'm not a mindless lemming begging to be deceived.
Therefore, if 100 "independent" experts tell me that eating red meat causes cancer, I'll think about it between bites as I put some more Worchester sauce on my steak. If they tell me that more people are likely to die in car accidents if they're driving 75 instead of 55 mph while talking on their cell phones, I'll set the cruise control on 80 while I dial up my brother and ask him what he thinks. I may end up following the experts' advice, or I may not. They're no longer an intrinsic source of information, but rather simply a source of information – to be sifted through with as accepting and questioning an eye as I have for any other report or assessment, from any other source.
When there's no one you can really trust to give you the truth, you trust no one. Or, you make that source earn your trust with every new report they issue, rather than accepting what they say at face value.
Verify, then trust. And in the absence of either, ignore what they say and make your own judgment, as ignorant or informed as it may be.
This is the legacy that modern day "science" has bestowed upon the world. We intuitively understood that politicians were liars. We came to understand that the press covered up and distorted the facts as well to serve their own interests. But we always thought we could rely on science for an unbiased, objective, view of reality.
And now we find out that "scientists" may, in fact, be the worst offenders of all.
No wonder some scientists are atheists. Many of them don't believe in any Truth at all.
What's even more troubling to me is the response to the "unveiling." On any other "scandal" the media would be doing ambush interviews of algore and NASA's Hansen, investigations would be on the nightly news, and a swarm of reporters would be descending on the institute from which the emails originated. But instead, a near-total blackout has ensued.
I would expect the defenders of SCIENCE to explain to us why we should ever trust a single thing they say ever again. I would expect that demands would proceed from the highest levels that the scientific purge itself of political agendas. I would expect that there would be hearings in congress.
None of this will happen, of course.
MM: The media rationale has been that the suspect language was "taken out of context". When I heard this, I was immediately reminded of a Doonesbury cartoon from 1973.
Nixon had just released the tapes, and was lamenting that the press would cherry pick passages and take his words out of context. As an example, he then played a passage from an exchange he has with John Dean: “So John, how’s the cover-up going?”
The press has chosen its sides, and like any loyal soldier in an ideological war, will ignore, ridicule or dismiss evidence that contradicts its positions. (We’ve always known that politicians are complete whores, so there’s no surprise here.) We’ve long suspected that the so-called “scientific community” was as agenda-driven as the press. The only thing remarkable about this new information is the blatant manner they use “science” to hide the truth instead of advance it.
PEJ
Your last line tells it all. Atheists all believe that the question of a God is settled.
Note that Harry Reid told a good fib the other day when he said "There were 750,000 bankruptcies last year. Half were caused by medical problems. Half of those were people with insurance." That's 187,000 people with medical insurance that got sick, could not work and went bankrupt. My reaction was "SO, what does that have to do with your 2,000 pages of so-called reform! Does your bill give full pay to anyone who gets sick?"
Dr. Jackson – the hard sciences are supposedly pure, objective and rational? Really? Scientists strive to be objective and rational, certainly (it's not clear what 'pure' would mean in this context), but nobody claims that they meet that standard all the time. The main advantage the "hard sciences" have is that testing hypotheses tends to be simpler and less ambiguous than in the "social sciences".
Much of your essay here seems to be composed of similar strawmen. The only concrete accusations I see, that a not-well-defined group of – researchers? political activists? who, exactly? – are "a bunch of hypocrites and liars. Contravening data is ignored, suppressed or destroyed; supporting data is cherry-picked or manufactured out of whole cloth, and overlapping all of this is a political agenda tied to utopian social change and economic redistribution."
Odd that you don't actually link to any substantiation for those accusations; you barely give any context as to who you're actually accusing. Apparently that's not actually necessary for you. I have no problem finding contrary accountsthough.
But the biggest strawman is right here:
That sounds so much like the language young-Earth creationists use that it triggers automatic suspicion with me. The spheroid Earth is "settled science" too, but that doesn't make the Flat Earther's questions "embarrassing", merely annoying. Thankfully, the political clout of the flat-Earthers has ebbed. I can only hope the young-Earth types don't take centuries to fade to that level.
There will always be at least some people who disagree on every single issue. The minority's even been right on occasion. But the way to figure that out is to check and see. You give up on that, on even the possibility of figuring it out – "damned if I can tell which ones are honestly conducted" – and decide to just go with your gut.
Me, I try to actually learn about things. That's what I've done with evolution, nuclear power, vaccines, and plenty of other subjects. And golly gee, so far it seems that scientists are human and make mistakes but generally have pretty good reasons for what they say and do – and if you do even a modicum of digging past the first breathless 'pop science' reporting, you can find out what they actually say, and why.
I'm still looking into global warming… but I haven't seen the distortions and unethical behavior the scientists are accused of, certainly not on a widespread level. That things are getting warmer over at least the past century and a half is pretty clear. Things like how much humans have contributed this is less clear in my mind – but again, I'm not finding debased motives among those proposing it and mustering their evidence. They may be wrong, but I don't seem them as any more evil and deceptive than any other humans. And I certainly do see troubling signs – like the rhetoric I noted above – in their debate opponents.
I expected Mr. Ingles to show up here. Any criticism of the god of science raises his hackles.
His basic presentation is that SCIENCE (insert British accent, as in "she blinded me with SCIENCE") is itself perfect and virtuous, while scientists are human and make mistakes.
Unfortunately, 100% of science is practiced by scientists, so by extension, 100% of science is suspect and can never be known for sure as trustworthy. Step down, ye priests of SCIENCE!
Now that global warming has been shown to be based on cooked statisitics and political ideology (with the attendant financial connections to that ideology), what does Mr. Ingles say about it? "That things are getting warmer over at least the past century and a half is pretty clear."
Incredible! Here we have faith on par with the most rabid of religionists. "Yeah, the data were falsified. Yeah, this was agenda-driven. Yeah, the whole subject has been shown to be a fraud. But I STILL BELIEVE!! Oh God of SCIENCE, don't strike me down!!
Raymond: No one takes you seriously any more. When you aren’t “responding” to things I’ve written by attributing arguments to me that I never made (or reading just a few paragraphs of what I’ve written and making up the rest), or changing the terms of what you’ve said because you’ve been embarrassed by the original statements you’ve made, you’re just simply being dishonest and disingenuous in the comments you make.
You’ve proven yourself over and over to be a dishonest debating partner. In fact, the word “dishonest” or “[lacking] honesty” constantly arises from others (Mountain Man, Patrick Mulligan to name two recently), in addition to my own assessment of you, whenever you enter a discussion. The subject matter doesn’t even matter — science, politics, religion; the characterization of you is always the same.
“And you STILL wonder why people call you dishonest?”
Mountain Man http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/08/22/why-obama-is-failing/#comment-79769
“You seem to have a much deeper mistrust of particular administrations overseeing particular issues that are important to you – the very same selective outrage you are accusing conservatives of … I just find it ironic that you are so perturbed by ostensibly the same behavior coming from conservatives. More than anything, I hope, more in the interest of your own sanity than anything else, that you don't honestly consider yourself a libertarian in any sense other than party affiliation. The Libertarian party as a political body comes probably closer than any other to the consistency of principle you desire, but small "l" libertarian principles don't mesh well with the positions and policy you've advocated here in the past.”
Patrick Mulligan http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/08/31/do-obamas-czars-need-congressional-approval/
Since one can’t have an honest debate with a dishonest partner, there’s really no point in having a conversation with you.
MM: It’s worse than that. I describe modern day “consensus science” as “shorthand for "would you shut up and stop asking these kinds of embarrassing questions because we already have the conclusions we want."
Raymond immediately launches into a criticism of Creationism and the Flat Earth Society, while excusing the recent expose on one of the principal sources of climate fraud data by saying “I haven't seen the distortions and unethical behavior the scientists are accused of …”
You can’t have an honest debate with a dishonest partner.
Phil,
You know, this isn't really about global warming and the veracity of the science surrounding it. It's really about science itself. Those who value the integrity of the actual science and its processes had better realize that they are in danger of losing the whole thing.
Science itself hangs in the balance. Science needs to clean up its act. Real scientists would demand investigations. Real scientists would be calling into questions the flaws of peer review, the dangers of government funding, and the problem of ideology which permeates their disciplines.
Real scientists wouldn't accept idiotic statements like "our conclusions were right even though the methods were faulty or corrupt," which seems to be Mr. Ingles' position.
>"this isn't really about global warming and the veracity of the science surrounding it. It's really about science itself. Those who value the integrity of the actual science and its processes had better realize that they are in danger of losing the whole thing."
Well said. And this is the problem I pointed to back in 2006. When science gets in bed with a political agenda (see the Natural Resource Defense Council section of that essay), and co-mingles the process of science with politically-directed findings, it calls a lot of things into question.
Republicans and Christians are routinely condemned for “immoral” acts that Democrats and Liberals get a pass on. Why? Because Republicans/Christians profess to have standards that the Dems/Libs don’t necessarily ascribe to. Therefore, the press feels justified in holding them to a “higher standard”.
The Hard Sciences have a similar professed standard of objective, unbiased, non-political truth seeking. When its practitioners fail to live up to these standards, they deserve no less vehement condemnation — not a bunch of excuses about why things aren’t really that bad, or pervasive, and we ought to just believe their findings anyway.
I am really disappointed in those scientists. Based on their global warming predictions I passed up on buying a home on the beach and instead bought 2 miles inland where I wait for the ocean to reach me and provide my tropical paradise.
It also means that the citrus I have been keeping in post have to stay there instead of being planted in the carefully picked locations around my property.
Oh the pain!
Guess this shows that the religion of liberalism will stop at nothing in their drive to gain converts or captives. They are beginning to make radical Muslims look tame by comparison.
If I were a real estate agent, I would call that "potential beachfront property."
It is not a "Science" or an "Atheist" problem,
dishonest people doctoring data for some "dark purpose" are everywhere, take a look at this excerpt,
"… Second, the Air Force claimed that both planes met the stated military requirements. But the Air Force played with the computer models to create a bogus outcome. The GAO found that the Airbus tanker was simply unable to refuel all of the aircraft required by the military…."
read the whole article at
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34559
No time for the whole article?
Here is more,
"…The Boeing tanker is more capable; more survivable for the crew in the event of attack; and cheaper to buy, operate and maintain. But inexplicably, the Air Force ignored these facts and tried to award the contract to Airbus promising that another 40,000 high tech jobs would be moving to Toulouse, France. …"
Why would Americans in the American Air Force favor a non-American company and send 40,000 jobs to France???
Corrupted people are everywhere, but if I had to bet on it I would say in this day and age there are more corrupted people among liberals than in any other group.
ACORN, United Nations, MSM, et cetera…
All liberals and all dishonest.
Climategate exposes two groups of very dishonest people;
the global warming scientists AND the Main Stream Media
( their silence on Climategate makes them accomplices )
Friend of USA —
Great to hear from you again. Drop me a note off line at Jackson-ic and let me know how you're doing.
Phil
That's Jackson-ic
Well, it's not showing up as I type it. It's a hotmail.com account.
I have sent you an email but in my time zone it is almost bed time for me
I'll reply tomorrow
Good morning
I have just realized something,
These cheating global warming scientists were refusing public access to their data because they knew they were liars/cheaters/fraudsters.
And who else can you think of is refusing to make their record public?
who else is refusing to let us see his Harvard papers, his average score in school, his IQ/SATs (or his birth certificate? )
Obama.
Could he be a fraud kind of like the global warming scientists are?
I would not be surprised…
He did not even write his own book!
A friend of mine sent me this. It's right on the mark. The only thing missing is a more detailed reference to the members of the "scientific community" who willingly jumped on this same bandwagon both to get their own studies funded, and to promote a political agenda that coincided with this position —
The AGW/Climate Change question became a rigorous boondoggle that got out of control not because the scientist who first suggested a connection between human carbon emission and a change in climate were bad people (sic), or that the question was not worth asking, but because bad people then took the uncertain hypothesis, put it on media-fueled steroids, demonized anyone who disagreed with them, made it political -so much so that even the scientists got caught up in the good/bad, smart/stupid, Gore/Bush, Left/Right identifiers- and found real power there; they allowed the AGW movement to become the dubious centering pole upholding the giant circus tent of their worldviews.
As such, it is not permitted to be shaken. Shake the centering pole, and everything could come tumbling down: Oh. My. Gawd! If the Gore-doubters were right about this, what else might they be right about? And if they’re all stupid, and I’m smart, but they’re right and I’m wrong . . .
Implosion.
If the true-believers of AGW got this wrong, and they’d attached it to all of their politics, all of their hate, all of their superiority, then everything is in a free-fall.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/
P
Coming late here, & some of this is a repeat of what others have said, but let me send a copy of two e-mails I'd sent to my friends before I read your article.
Inwood
(1)
Has anyone noticed any gemütlichkeit among activist global warming advocates about the e-mails regarding the need to fudge AGW, OOPS Climate Change most probably might means that it was all just another example of irrational exuberance over some trivial thing? Being able to say now that “Hey, we don't need to radically change our lifestyles and energy use” should make any reasonable person feel good.
But the advocates seem genuinely disturbed at the prospect of people being able to go on with life as it is now. Could it be that they’re really just 21st Century killjoy puritans who have replaced God with the State and Gia? Nah.
[Inwood]
PS I’m not sure why I should inflict the back-to-the-stone-age remedies recommended by these AGW advocates on my grandkids when Indian & Chinese grandpas won’t pledge the same & when I know that the Europeans will just fail to live up to any such pledge as they’ve been doing with their promises under Kyoto.
**************
(2) Why did this, er irrational exuberance, happen?
Duh, when climatologists
• who depended on government money did not get government money if they found no GW,
• claimed that those who did not accept their conclusions had the burden of disproving such conclusions,
• would not share data & claimed that the dog ate their research notes when they were asked to allow their computer models be independently reviewed,
• made vicious ad hominem attacks against fellow climatologists who were “skeptical” (e.g., labeling them “deniers”, a loaded word”) or, worse, tried to marginalize them,
• were glad to let anecdotal evidence of warming in the weather be used to prove their theory & then denied that the recent leveling off of temperatures meant anything & dictated that AGW had to be re-named “Climate Change”,
• claimed that science = consensus & then allowed & encouraged anyone to pose as a “scientist” for purposes of consensus while denying that scientist-skeptics were scientists, &
• when they did not live their own lives as if it GW was a real problem,
it was clear to all but the perpetually credulous that something not scientific was going on. These revelations, then, simply confirm what many of us inferred but, ‘til now, could not prove.
[Don't accept my explanation? See, for a good example anchoress]
Inwood
P
This just in: a reply to a friend who takes the "Big Deal, the overwhelming consensus is still there, you denier" approach to my e-mails:
XXX
{After repeating what I said in my previous submission here that science ≠ consensus & that the advocate/scientists allowed & encouraged anyone to pose as a “scientist” for purposes of consensus while denying that scientist-skeptics were scientists, I said:
There are also the issues of the percentage of any such "consensus", &, more important, what exactly is the issue on which a “consensus” has been declared.
Obviously, if 99 44/100% of all scientists agree on an issue, it’s silly to argue against a consensus; but if it’s 50.0000000000001%, then it’s not a consensus as rational people define “consensus”.
And as one moves from, say
• “Doesn't it concern you somewhat that the Earth has, kinda, sorta, maybe warmed a bit in the 20th Century?” to
• “Don’t you feel that we will have to reduce our carbon footprint beginning immediately even if this might mean some costs to you & some inconvenience regarding our wasteful standard of living & our enjoyment of luxuries?”, to
• “Don’t you see that the world will end in the next 10 years unless mankind reverses its man-made CO2 emissions?”,
the percentage of scientists in agreement gets lower, ‘til,no one other than a brainwashed True Believer, would even suggest that there is a consensus.
So, again, when you blandly assert that “there is a consensus of scientists on global warming,” or “climate change”, please be more precise in defining the exact issues you're claiming a consensus for.
[Inwood]
Inwood: Great point all. But in the end it's just more troubling signs that don't actually want to learn about things because you're using the language of young-Earth creationists that triggers automatic suspicion in people who know that scientists are human too and make occasional mistakes, but never deliberately lie about anything to protect their funding or advance a political agenda.
P
Your presumably sarcastic point "that scientists are human too and make occasional mistakes, but never deliberately lie [“fake but accurate”, you know] about anything to protect their funding or advance a political agenda" actually represents an, er, consensus among Those Who Know, among the Best & The Brightest, which goes along with their consensus that scientists can't be faulted for using the modern tools of Public Relations, such as "sensational exaggeration", irrational exuberance, or even for using the tools of lawyers, such as marshalling the facts. Oh, & putting a hockey stick up our a**es.
And, regarding the role of the MSM in matters of gravitas such as AGW, as always, re objective reporting? Er, depends on one's definition of "objective". You see, for the MSM, when someone says “AGW is a hoax”, its job is not to determine whether AGW is, indeed, a hoax or even if it’s been proven to be true, but to put on one of the calamitologists who "discovered" AGW, who will state, with a sincere face, that “AGW is real, & it's coming soon to a place near you & that the guy who denies it is a, well, denier & not a ‘peer’ scientist”. And, alas, it’s not the job of the MSM to determine if its expert is just makin’ it up (for the greater good, of course). Now that the MSM has given us lumpenproletariat "both sides", it's fair & balanced &, anyway, you're also probably a creationalist as you've noted & a Birther, & look, the consensus of the MSM is that it has to do it’s part to save the planet even for dunderheads like you.
>Your presumably sarcastic point …
It's also a pasted-together quote from a previous comment by our resident dishonest atheist scientist apologist who never met a Creationist he couldn't label as a way to deflect any legitimate criticism of politics-based, agenda-driven science.
P
Ah, how dare you sneer at a pasted-together quote when it's a consensus?
How about this from the WSJ @ 8:02 PM tonite:
"The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start."
That WSJ, arguing against a consensus. It can't be rigged if there's a consensus, because the consensus means never having to rig the game, gurgle, gurgle.
And, anyway, there's still a consensus. Just ask Those Who Make Up The Consensus.
A consensus means never having to say you're sorry.
I always thought of it as an alleged consensus.
I always thought of AGW as alleged science.
I always thought of Algore as an alleged POTUS. Now he's an alleged statesman.
OOPS
WSJ Site:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Raymond Ingles said,
"…I'm still looking into global warming… but I haven't seen the distortions and unethical behavior the scientists are accused of, certainly not on a widespread level…"
Then you have not looked at the right place.
The emails clearly say multiple times " hide the decline"
(in temperature) and clearly say to not mention to anyone that it is a federal law in Britain to give access to this information to anyone who asks for it.
Anb the emails clearly say that they would rather delete the information they have "tricked" than let anyone see it.
At one point one of the top scientist says he can make up numbers, jsut because well he can! and he puts a smile at the end of this sentence!!!
here is a link a few of the thousand emails in questions, oh and don't forget the hacker has said that twice as many emails will be released soon!
If you have no time to read all just read what has been put in bold character…
It is DAMNING evidence.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/#more-13197
Raymond Ingles,
It is true Phil did not provide any links, that does not mean there are none,
If the New York Times said the emails exist and are damning would you then be a believer ?
here go to the New York Times, they will provide you with links to the emails in question,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?_r=3&hp
Friend of USA —
Raymond was just being his usual disingenuous self in pointing out that there were "no links" in my essay. The first paragraph began with "The revelations in recent days …", which apparently even Raymond understood what I was referring to.
Hollow criticisms and phony outrage over non-existent defects in an essay are the hallmark of dishonest debate, particularly when they’re immediately followed by gratuitous slurs against Creationists as way of diverting the conversation. I've written articles before about US foreign and domestic policy that speak to issues currently in the news, commenting on the general trends and observations these events provoke, without linking to a specific news article. We expect people who have a passing familiarity with current events to know what I’m referring to, and not feign confusion over why the article was written at this time.
Like I’ve said many times before, you can’t have an honest debate with a dishonest partner.
Scientists of every rank,
For shame, all in the tank.
Their claim of manmade CO2, then
Was really manmade C9H9N.
Friend of USA:
Interesting that Dr. Jackson is challenged for not providing links to every statement he makes in his thoughtful & thought-provoking article.
This is similar to what the scientific consensus was doing on AGW: dismissing the opposition as unimportant louts who couldn’t back up what they said.
And here, even if Dr. Jackson & the rest of us were to give a cite for every sentence, it won’t be from the NYT, much less the MSM, because these folks, for our own good, of course, are studiously ignoring the story, whereas the AP has (in this time of layoffs) 11 fact checkers reading Sarah P’s book trying to find errors. (Palintology?)
Some of my friends who are not Internet savvy & who get their “news" from only the Evening News & the NYT (who are thus “out of it”, though they feel themselves “with it”) have thereby completely missed this story. As they did with all of 2008, but I digress. So they & dishonest advocates of AGW will challenge us to come up with “a legitimate source, other than ‘a rightwing nut blogger’, who thinks that this ‘stuff’ disproves the settled science”. Depends on your definition of “legitimate source”, & “settled science”, I guess. Depends on your definition of “Orwellian” also.
See, in this regard,
What Story? [Mark Steyn]
“If anyone needs newspapers, it ought to be for stories like this [Warmergate]. If there were no impending ecopalypse (sic), then ‘climate science’ would be a relatively obscure field, as it was up to a generation ago. Now it produces celebrity scientists living high off the hog of billions in grants. They thus have a vested interest in maintaining the planet's-gonna-fry line. So what do the media do? Instead of exposing the thesis to rigorous journalistic examination, they stage fluffy green stunts, run soft-focus ‘living green’ features with Hollywood ‘activists’, and at a time of massive staff cutbacks in every other department create the positions of specialist ‘climate correspondent’ and ‘environmental reporter’ and fill them with sycophantic promoters of the Big Scare to the point that, as Dr Mann coos approvingly to The New York Times, ‘you've taken the words out of my mouth’.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWI1MDg3ODM4OWU2MDE4MGI2NGU3MWYzNDcxN2RmMjE
read the whole thing, as they say.
Spent an absolutely blissful Thanksgiving. No computers, no cell phones, I even turned off the land-line; so I'm a little late to this party. However; there's no comparison to that four day turkey eating, football watching indulgence.
Having reviewed the article and the postings we find comments from the author about our favorite standard, 'media-bias'. Commentators call into question the scientists themselves, references to deliberately altered data and the defense of same. The 'follow-the-money' argument of grant funding and the social engineering possibilities if such conclusions regarding climate change are widely accepted.
All this follows to further buttress my own personal favorite topic: Liberal/Progressivism as Religion.
An overwhelming percentage of liberal/progressives share an agnostic or atheistic point of view. The primary reason for their firm belief in the secular primacy of the state is the vacuum formed from excluding a higher power. Gaiaism is a natural outgrowth of the secular liberal/progressive state. Named after the Greek Supreme goddess of Earth; this belief combines the following;
• The earth itself is a 'living' organism
• Man is no more important than any other species
• Man, due to his destructive nature, is more dangerous than any other species
• In order for 'Gaia' to flourish; man's activities must be severely controlled and curtailed.
• Such control can only be accomplished through a 'unified' global government under the tutelage of the most 'connected' persons (i.e. th4e NGO's)
There have been several people, Vaclav Klaus immediately comes to mind, that have pointed out that environmentalism is the new Communism. Indeed such connections can be drawn as far back as the rise of the Third Reich.
Klaus says; "In the past 150 years (at least since Marx), the socialists have been very effectively destroying human freedom under humane and compassionate slogans, such as caring for man, ensuring social equality, and fostering social welfare. The environmentalists are doing the same under equally noble-minded slogans, expressing concern about nature more than about people (recall their radical motto 'Earth first'). In both cases, the slogans have been (and still are) just a smokescreen. In both cases, the movements were (and are) completely about power, about the hegemony of the 'chosen ones' (as they see themselves) over the rest of us, about the imposition of the only correct worldview (their own), about the remodeling of the world."
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/ss_politics0228_06_10.asp
One only has to look to the present debate on both Houses of Congress regarding health care and cap and trade to hear many of the slogans touted not only by the Marxists, but the Environmentalists as well.
Just spend some time pondering the situation. Look at the way in which all liberal/progressive policy is formulated, presented, defended, and practiced. The only possible conclusion that may be drawn that will not only satisfy the entire range of liberal/progressive belief, plus account for the ardent defense of those policies and the lengths the adherents go to defend the belief and persecute the 'unbelievers' can only be ascribed to some sort of 'quasi' religious cult.
As in any other religion; you have the hard-core 30%, followed by a less fervent majority who still count themselves as believers. The 'Global Climate Change' debate is, in their view, the best chance to demonstrate a catastrophic series of events that impacts absolutely EVERYONE. This is the best opportunity they have discovered in the last 150 years to cajole the overwhelming majority of the planet's population into handing irrevocable control over every aspect of human existence to them.
Dr. Jackson – It will probably come as no surprise to you that I'm quite untroubled about the opinions that various contributors to IC have about me. To paraphrase Tolkien, "Some who have read my posts, or at any rate have responded to them, have found them confusing, misleading, or dishonest; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer." (For an example of Dr. Jackson refusing to comprehend straightforward English, see here. I don't know if he actually rises to dishonesty, though; as Medawar said about Chardin, he "can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.")
Nice to see that others are providing links to actually make a case for dishonesty on the part of the climate researchers, rather than essentially assume the case has already been made. (BTW, I wasn't displaying "outrage" – "phony" or otherwise – when I pointed out the lack of a link or cite to even a summary of the issue.)
The "Harry_Read_Me" file is interesting, and does show that the CRU has had some serious data quality issues. I actually sympathize with the guy who wrote that, to a degree – dealing with legacy code, and harmonizing separate databases is almost always a headache. That being said, the data quality issues do seem to be larger than typical, and the bit about the negative square shows that he's not a highly experienced programmer; overflow is almost certain in such a case, though he at least lists that as a hypothesis.
But that being said, they do seem to be trying to solve those issues, and their results line up generally with the results from other groups. The bit about removing recent tree ring data (in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere only) is an issue, but not for the reason most seem to think. It's known that, for about a century before the 1960s, the tree ring data agreed with measured temperatures pretty well; but after that, it doesn't match so well. (See here – it's not been a secret.) The problem there is the reason for the "divergence problem" isn't known, so it does raise questions about how accurate the records going back before the late 1800s are, (though they do seem to match in a general way with what we know of the Maunder Minimum, and with other 'proxies'). I'd like an explanation for the divergence, but lacking that we just have slightly more uncertainty in the warming.
As I said before, I'm not so convinced about the "anthropogenic" part of "anthropogenic global warming". I don't fully understand the models many climatologists are using to study the issue. They may well be wrong – probably are in some ways. But again, I'm not seeing willful, malicious conspiracy.
And even if they were motivated purely by evil – so what? First you have to show that someone's wrong before you start explaining why they're wrong. What if they're evil… and just happen to be right anyway?
I've debated a lot of people in my life. Occasionally you get the clowns who just want to make a lot of noise. They’re easily identified and dismissed.
More prevalent are people who confuse feeling strongly about an issue with actually understanding and analyzing it. These are the typical libs and ultra right kooks who come by to sloganeer and emote, but not actually debate.
Then there’s a small percentage of people who see the world differently, or are just trying to formulate a world view in their own right which cause them to ask a lot of questions and challenge certain ideas. It’s a great way to clarify the issues in a debate. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with people like this both here and elsewhere, on both the Left and Right.
But Raymond is in a clear category by himself. A while back I asked the IC editors to publish a "response" he wrote to one of my essays. He contacted me telling me he had problems with my essay, and I offered to facilitate airing those problems in a public forum. If what I said made sense, it should hold up to public scrutiny. [Contrast this, as an aside, with the way the AGW community treats dissenting points of view].
I was initially confused when Raymond began to attribute things to me that I never said. I found out later that he never actually read my entire essay, and never actually intended to challenge the entire article — which was a series of foundational steps leading to a conclusion. Ignore or omit any of the steps, and you don't have the support I intended to back my position. Instead, by his own admission which I was able to pull out of him at a later date, Raymond only read parts of the essay, and just filled in the rest with a general exploration of the issue. In doing this he rejected many of the things that I had also rejected, but made it appear as if it was my thesis he was objecting to. That’s when I began to understand who and what he was.
This is absolutely dishonest stuff, and unfortunately has become typical of the way he operates.
To save Raymond the manufactured angst of saying “did not”, go to the comment section in Raymond’s essay on “Universal Morality And The Morality Of The Universe” was billed as “A Response to Phillip Ellis Jackson”. [Not a partial response, or a response to one part of what I wrote, but “an interesting, if lengthy, read.” [Note: it was 60,000 words].
Now, maybe it’s just me, but when someone says they are “responding” to my essay, I assume that they are responding to my essay; not just a couple of paragraphs of it. But then again, with Raymond words never quite mean what they seem.
Raymond: I never claimed to critique your entire original article. I only addressed one part of it – the argument that the 'moral sense' had to be "installed" by God.
Phil: The whole article was a discussion of how I arrived at my conclusions. You can't take a couple of paragraphs, like you did, and 'analyze' my position. In responding to you I showed you the courtesy you never showed me. I read every word, and reacted to everything you said — not just a few cherry picked passages. http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/13/the-true-nature-of-human-morality-a-response-to-the-critique-%e2%80%9cuniversal-morality-and-the-morality-of-the-universe%e2%80%9d/
This is what distinguishes Raymond’s ‘scholarship’, if I can use the term loosely, from mine.
It's also why Raymond is “quite untroubled about the opinions that various contributors to IC have about me.” When confronted with his own words, he simply changes the subject or re-write his original comments, whatever suits his needs at the moment.
It's why no one takes him seriously anymore. And it’s why you can’t have an honest debate with a dishonest partner — particularly one who is untroubled by the fact that people may have lied about their research if the ends justify the means. ["What if they're evil and just happen to be right anyway?]" How are you "right" about something that is data-driven when you are accused of falsifying the data that leads to this conclusion, and this isn't seen as a troubling fact?
Moral relativism at it's best (or worst).
What if they're evil… and just happen to be right anyway?
So just because they lied doesn't mean that the conclusions reached upon the basis of those lies are incorrect, even if they're only correct accidentally? Sounds like solid science to me. Thank you for reconciling these confusing facts for us laypeople. But surely you can see why we became suspicious – after all, there are just so many charlatans with corrupting influences who would abuse the institution of science for the sake of their own ridiculous ideology and self-interested agendas. Like those crazy, disingenuous, downright shameful liars of the Young Earth Creationist Intelligent Design zealot movement. You just can't tell the good guys from the bad anymore.
Pat M
So it looks like if rightwing AGW deniers like you, Dr J, & I now have our way it'll, well, default to "Scientists lied & now we're fried". Is that what we want? I mean we have to put this stuff in context. These guys were just adopting the tricks of the capitalist system, Mad Ave, because the booboisie here, like us’n, warn’t up to the prolix prose of the scientists. It was all for our betterment. Trust us.
And these "please, you yahoos, secular science ain't religion" laugh at the "sayings" of Iggy (St Ignatius of Loyola to you):
"Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls."
See, also, in this regard: "It's not far from Downing Street to East Anglia"
"I recall when a clique of people were accused of having
'had facts fixed around' a specific course of action and alleged to have supported their agenda with thin evidence.
“Folks, please explain why the Downing Street memo [which alleged that the facts were being marshaled to fit the pre-determined policy that Saddam, by definition a Bad Guy, had to be removed by military action] was definitive proof of a rush to judgment and Climategate isn't. And please don't say it's because limey scientists are wonderful and Texans are evil. The Bushies argued that they had the same general view of Iraq's intentions and abilities as that of foreign intel services. Perhaps a similar [rush-to judgment] argument is called for now before we throw tens of trillions of dollars at a problem [AGW] which is undefined in scope and to my mind, difficult to achieve "victory" over."
(BF in original; Bracketed material mine. Typo corrected.)
http://thenextright.com/ironman/its-not-far-from-downing-street-to-east-anglia
H/T Instapundit 12/01/09
OOPS, the words "Downing Street", "Climegate", & "before" were in bf in the original of the quoted material from the blog in my previous submission.
And there it is. I'd call it "absolutely dishonest stuff", except I think Dr. Jackson, sadly, genuinely believes what he writes.
Nope. You'll note that the quote of my "admission" says no such thing. I said that I only addressed part of his essay in my response, not that I hadn't read the rest of it. And why did I only address part of it? Dr. Jackson actually acknowledges why:
If a step in a proof is wrong, then the proof is wrong. (N.b. – that doesn't mean the conclusion reached by the proof is wrong, though – there are incorrect proofs for true mathematical facts, for example Fermat's Last Theorem.) I didn't need to address the rest of the article if I could point out that a "foundational step" was wrong. I countered one key step, and was quite open about doing so at the time: But I believe a key mistake was made at this point – by using the phrase "i.e." (id est, "that is," "in other words") instead of "e.g." (exempli gratia, "for example"). If there existed other possibilities besides genetics as sources for 'universal morality,' they remained unexamined. I argue that there exists at least one other possibility at least as plausible as the metaphysical explanation Dr. Jackson proposed. I then went on to present that alternate possibility and make a case for it – one I still think is more convincing than Dr. Jackson's.
Apparently Dr. Jackson has never 'understood who and what I am' – but if you don't actually try to comprehend what I explicitly state, I guess that's inevitable. I'm forced to the conclusion that he never wanted to.
Patrick Mulligan – So just because they lied doesn't mean that the conclusions reached upon the basis of those lies are incorrect, even if they're only correct accidentally?
First off, it's not been established that "they lied". If "they lied", or even if they just messed up their math, that's all anyone would need to show.
I was asking what relevance their motives had. Why even worry about motives before you've established that they were wrong?
Sorry to bother you with a lot of inside-baseball stuff, but it’s important to know whether the person you’re debating is fundamentally honest but misguided, or just plain dishonest. It puts everything he says in perspective.
For those of you unfamiliar with Raymond Ingles, he has an off-cited tendency to deny, re-write, or just plain dissemble about the things he says. I have a history of going after people on both the Right and Left who do things like this (see my battles with the paleoconservatives on “race matters”), so this isn’t a case of me simply disagreeing with Raymond. I find this deliberately dishonest behavior despicable, and have a low threshold of tolerance for it. I also think that exposing these types of people serves a wider purpose, so when an issue is debated the opposing point of view can be fairly represented.
My particular problem with Raymond stems from the way he conducted himself when I facilitated getting a paper of his published that challenged a previous article of mine.
I suppose there are some people who will believe that you can read a 60,000 word essay, and find a sentence where someone uses “i.e.” instead of “e.g.” to illustrate a point. And because of this they stop citing what you actually said and write a 10,000 word response to what they think you might have meant because you used i.e. instead of e.g. as a shorthand for the phrase “for example”. And because of this they now have carte blanche to attribute things to you that you never said to ‘disprove’ your thesis.
This is the frustration I and others have with Raymond. I’m more than willing to defend what I’ve written, but I will not debate someone so dishonest they want you to believe their entire essay was based on the use of “i.e.” instead of “e.g.”. Rather, Raymond did what he intended to do from the very start: use my essay as a passing foil to offer his own theory independent of what I said.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with Raymond offering his own thoughts on the subject. Had he said to me ‘I have a different point of view and want to write my own essay’, I would still have gladly helped him get it published. But that isn’t want he said. He billed his essay as a “response” to my theory, when in fact it had almost nothing to do with what I actually said (unless you believe that using “i.e.” in a 60,000 word essay deserves a dedicated response in its own right, in which case I have some seafront property for you to buy).
The sad thing is that Raymond could have published his essay without any reference to what I wrote. My point-by-point analysis of his essay (a courtesy he never extended to me) involved a lot of my time pointing out that I’ve never actually said the things Raymond attributed to me: “I haven’t made that claim, and I’m not really sure who has? … So knock down another straw man, because no one is arguing that God is giving you an impulse to be good by giving you a shared moral code with the rest of humanity.” Etc.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/13/the-true-nature-of-human-morality-a-response-to-the-critique-%e2%80%9cuniversal-morality-and-the-morality-of-the-universe%e2%80%9d/
If Raymond wants to illustrate that religion is not science, that speaking about religion is not the same thing as speaking about God, etc., he doesn’t need my essay to do that. I don’t support these positions either. But I do resent him asserting that these are somehow my positions by challenging them in a “Response to Phillip Ellis Jackson” which begins by commenting on the “lengthy read” he undertook to determine the “overall tone” of my essay — when in fact he now says he was basing his response only on my use of “i.e.” instead of “e.g.”!
Raymond seized on a pedantic point about e.g. being the better way to say “for example” than “i.e.”, used it to promote his theory, and said he was challenging the details of my specific theory by doing so, when in fact I never said many of the things he attributed to me. By his own admission he stopped reacting to the specifics of my position once he got to “i.e.”, so it’s hard to claim that he addressing my actual points because he’s already said that “I didn't need to address the rest of the article if I could point out that a "foundational step" was wrong.” http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/11/25/the-day-science-died/#comment-80430
This is why Raymond has been tagged with the reputation he has. He changes his original position instead of conceding a point, and wants us now to honestly believe his 10,000 word response to a 60,000 word essay was built almost-entirely on the use of i.e. instead of e.g.
This is simply not believable, to me or the others who have these shifting, dissembling “debates” with Raymond. Because of this, like dealing with Bill Clinton, you can never be sure what Raymond’s definition of “is” is, which makes reacting to the substance of anything he says a self-defeating proposition.
First off, it's not been established that "they lied". If "they lied", or even if they just messed up their math, that's all anyone would need to show.
I was asking what relevance their motives had. Why even worry about motives before you've established that they were wrong?
Publishing one conclusion when privately you are discussing with your colleagues why the data do not support that conclusion is just a teeny tiny bit similar to lying, don't you think? Withholding data to disguise a trend is teetering right on the verge of lying too, at least as I understand the term. And while maybe not rising to the level of "lying", deleting sensitive emails that are subject to ongoing Freedom of Information Act requests and "throwing away" the original data upon which computer models that you are using and publishing as evidence for anthropogenic global warming caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide seems a bit, hmm, what's a good word, maybe, "disingenuous"? Since you entered this discussion purportedly unaware of the subject matter, I don't know whether or not you've gotten a chance to familiarize yourself with the emails and other documents that were leaked. Perhaps I've simply misinterpreted:
Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate! Cheers Phil
PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
…
Haven’t got a reply from the FOI person here at UEA. So I’m not entirely confident the numbers are correct. One way of checking would be to look on CA, but I’m not doing that. I did get an email from the FOI person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails – unless this was ‘normal’ deleting to keep emails manageable!
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
Motivations are important in judging what biases may be present in the conclusions reached by the people who hold them. For instance, I might check the statistics in a report on the economic outcomes in mixed capitalist economies released by the World Workers Party more carefully than a similar report released by a non-ideological entity or government because of the motivation and purpose of the World Workers party. But personally, I'm more concerned about the actual fact that researchers have lied and withheld data than what their motivations for doing so might be. After all, I can't very well establish that someone's projections are wrong if I don't have access to the data upon which the projections are based, or worse, if the data is falsified without my knowledge. But what do I know. I'm certainly no scientist. In my field of specialization – business – withholding access to data, using falsified data, or destroying data used for forecasting and published for public consumption is called "fraud", and the government puts you in jail for it. It's a pretty antiquated ethical standard – they don't even make exceptions for "context".
>In my field of specialization – business – withholding access to data, using falsified data, or destroying data used for forecasting and published for public consumption is called "fraud", and the government puts you in jail for it. It's a pretty antiquated ethical standard – they don't even make exceptions for "context".
Patrick. You’re not seeing the big picture here. Just look at Raymond’s own logic on this issue.
Raymond “responded” to a 60,000 word essay with 10,000 words of his own by focusing on my use of the phrase “i.e.” instead of “e.g” as an incorrect short hand way of saying “for example” (I used i.e. to indicate – “that is to say”). This “key mistake” of mine meant that Raymond “didn't need to address the rest of the article if I [Raymond] could point out that a ‘foundational step’ was wrong.”
Thus, Raymond could go on to discuss problems with a theory about multiple gods, a literal interpretation of scripture, or any other element I specifically rejected as a way of specifically “responding” to something I wrote, because I used i.e. instead of e.g. at some point in my essay.
And when I objected that Raymond is deliberately misrepresenting what I said in his “response to Phillip Ellis Jackson” (you know, the “lengthy read” he undertook) by attributing theories to me I never offered, all Raymond had to do was point to a mistake in my “foundational step” of using i.e. in stead of e.g., and thus he could ignore (“not address”) the rest of what I said and substitute his own straw man positions to knock down instead.
If Raymond can intellectually nullify everything I’ve said because I used i.e. instead of e.g., the whole notion of “context” or “fraud” becomes equally irrelevant. You used the word “data” instead of “datum”. What is fraudulent is some of the datum in the overall data. Since you misused a foundational term, everything else you’ve said can be ignored, thus rendering your context meaningless, and allowing Raymond to arbitrarily assign views to you that you didn’t actually express.
Just why are you so hell-bent on killing innocent children and torturing animals anyway?
Hmmm, I can't really figure out all this ie/eg stuff. Maybe Mr. Ingles said that was a big issue, I'm not sure. I took him to be saying that your essay suffered from a fairly glaring error early on: attributing to the supernatural (God) something that could much more parsimoniously be explained by natural, material processes (say, evolution).
I had the same reaction to your essay, as I said in previous threads. I didn't feel like I needed to wade through the whole thing once that error became clear. But I did anyway – all 60,000 words, yup, every single word – and at the conclusion, nothing really changed, as I predicted. That foundational error (in my opinion) really kicked the legs out from under it from the start.
I think the ie/eg stuff is a little beside the real point, isn't it?
Mr. Ingles, if I misstated or oversimplified your views, my apologies.
Oz
Pat M
You note correctly (without explicitly referencing so) that the anti-fraud provisions of the Federal Securities laws (or GAAP, for that matter) don't make exceptions for context & so the “greater good” arguments of these Class A phonies which I was laughing at would, as they should, be laughed at in commerce.
But, wait, there’s more: As I'm sure you're aware, they do specifically require that a statement must be true in context.
Prime example: Rule 10b-5 of The General Rules and Regulations promulgated under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 — Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Devices, states:
“It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails or of any facility of any national securities exchange, …
(2) To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading …
in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.”
(my bf)
In other words, it’s materially misleading when AGW advocates attempt to tug at our emotions by publishing a picture of a polar bear sitting on a chunk of ice looking as if it were “alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea!” without adding the fact that the bear is actually only a few yards offshore.
This is also why the trial courts’ mantra, “the truth, the whole truth, & nothing but the truth” is not just another lawyers pleonasm. Each part of that mantra means something.
But then, most (all) of the MSM & all of those with a vested interest in this hoax keep saying that the science is settled & all this e-mail stuff is just petty in-fighting, you know, much a do, & let’s move on for our greater good. So who are we to make trouble? That’s what Bernie Madoff told his investors. And the Emperor’s tailor….
Ozzie, we’ve been through this before. Given your previous admission that you just make things up to be provocative — "In answer to your suspicion that I haven't 'thought this through', you are probably correct. In fact, there is a lot of truth to it. I am making it up as I go along," — http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/02/10/the-hopelessness-of-debate-part-ii/
you need to preface your remarks with a #1 for “I’m really trying to be serious this time, and #2 “This comment is not meant to be taken seriously”. Otherwise, we can’t tell the difference between the two, and I don’t waste my time responding to silliness.
I’ll assume that this is an attempt to signal #2, so I’ll treat your comment as if it’s meant to be a real one.
The reason you can’t make sense of Raymond’s i.e/e.g. comment is because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just Raymond’s latest excuse/explanation for, well, doing the thing that Raymond routinely does, which I and others have pointed out ad nausium.
As for wanting to debate the content of my previous essay, you again miss the point. Anyone who wants to evaluate it is free to follow the links back to it and the attendant discussion. They can determine for themselves if I dealt with the “evolutionary” issue you raised and objected to because you didn’t feel it was a correct explanation. Your, ahem, detailed objections to what I said to support your feeling are found in those comment sections.
My purpose in raising the matter in this thread was not to again discuss and defend whether or not there is a God-given universal moral code, but to point out that someone who dissembles about what they’ve done (or in this case, haven’t done) is not an honest debate partner. If the person cannot be honest about how their position came about, then it makes little sense to debate the substance of it.
If you want to tell everyone about your feelings about an evolutionary-based moral code, I’ll be happy to facilitate getting your article published with IC — as long as you just let everyone know that it’s your ideas you’re discussing, and not mine. :) Other than that, if you have anything to actually contribute to the subject of the recent disclosures about falsifying and destroying data on AGW, this is the forum to raise those points. This again assumes that you can focus on this issue, rather than telling us once more how you feel about the subject of “supernatural (God)” which — although employing some of the same words I used — has little to actually do with the content of what I wrote.
All I ask is that you actually try to be serious this time when you offer a comment on AGW. The code system will be a real help to all of us.
Sorry, It should have read "signal #1". It would be so much more helpful if you could just code each sentence yourself.
This has been quite a conversation so far.
First Raymond enters a discussion claiming that he doesn’t know what it’s about because there’s no link to a news article about it. This begs the twin questions of how, exactly, do you link to a TV or radio broadcast — and further, if a news item appears on TV but not in print, is it somehow not real until someone writes about it? (And further, if someone writes about new — i.e. heretofore not made public — story, what link do they use to show it’s a real story of their story is the first, since according to Raymond you supposedly need a link to another story to let everyone know what you’re talking about?)
And they say only religious people, not “scientists”, ponder how many angels (or links) can dance on the head of a pin.
Nevertheless, despite the lack of any link to a news story that everyone else seemed to have no trouble understanding, Raymond then went on to offer his latest explanation for a demonstrated history of manufacturing a response to a 60,000 word essay that doesn’t address what those 60,000 words actually said because — and this supposedly is not a joke — I used “i.e.” instead of “e.g” to illustrate an example I cited. When even Ozzie, who operates almost exclusively in the realm of feelings, can’t understand this logic, you know you’re in trouble. Can version 5.0 of Raymond’s explanation be far behind?
And speaking of Ozzie, is anyone shocked that he enters a debate about AGW to tell us his feelings about God and evolution? Can a discussion of torture be far behind?
All that’s missing from this discussion is Dan Philips telling us that “race matters”, or ASCial telling us that a bunch of “homos” in the US government created the Taliban, and the circle is complete.
GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE
It's December 2, and there's an inch of snow in Dallas Texas (with up to 3 inches projected). Snow again is predicted for Friday.
I've lived here almost 30 years. It's snowed maybe 5 times total, all in the January-February timeframe. [I'd show you my data, but I destroyed it to make room for a new closet I was building].
Yep. It's definitely getting warmer, and man is responsible for it.
P
There you go, giving anecdotal evidence.
You’ve gotta be more au courant in this debate.
Anecdotal evidence was good science when it involved reports on the (allegedly) warmest day in Yankee Stadium on the field. Pictures showing Derek Jeter sweating were OK to use as “proof”.
But when the weather turned cold & stories like your snow in Dallas appeared, anecdotal evidence once again rightly became unscientific.
And the phrase “Anthropogenic Global Warming” (AGW) has been dropped in favor of “Climate Change”.
You know this.
Get with the program, please.