Conservatives Are Less Trusting Of Science Because They Are More Rational

Among the authoritarian minded (i.e. American liberals to a man and woman) there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the recalcitrant American conservative who simply refuses to knuckle under and do what their betters tell them to do. This, we are told, is because conservatives are "anti-science." The real reason is conservatives are more likely to adhere to the skepticism inherent in rational scientific discourse, while liberals generally do not challenge the sources of authority because they have PhD's and attend all the right liberal cocktail parties (evidently.)

The problem, for liberals, arises when reality is examined, like in this story: In cancer science, many 'discoveries' don't hold up

A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs -- are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.



During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications -- papers in top journals, from reputable labs -- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.


Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature....

Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies.



"We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure," said Begley. "I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they'd done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It's very disillusioning."


Such selective publication is just one reason the scientific literature is peppered with incorrect results.


For one thing, basic science studies are rarely "blinded" the way clinical trials are. That is, researchers know which cell line or mouse got a treatment or had cancer. That can be a problem when data are subject to interpretation, as a researcher who is intellectually invested in a theory is more likely to interpret ambiguous evidence in its favor.


The problem goes beyond cancer.


On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.


Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, speaking to the panel, said he blamed a hypercompetitive academic environment that fosters poor science and even fraud, as too many researchers compete for diminishing funding.


"The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high-profile journal," said Fang. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior."

Of course, such a situation could never take place if the basic tenets of science were being followed. Notice the problem is not with a bad paper here, or a rogue researcher there. The problem is systemic. In the face of such poor system-wide practices the only rational response is to doubt the validity of the research produced via faulty methods. Public opinion polling on the subject is clear; only conservatives express such doubt. Therefor, only conservatives are thinking and acting rationally on this matter.

The Skeptics Case

If you are interested at all in why everyone ought to be skeptical of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis, this is must reading.

Alarmists Have Lost The War, But Do They Know That?

You can be sure the upshot of this poll will be the demand for more complete indoctrination of the population. Too many Americans are making up their own minds! 69% Say It’s Likely Scientists Have Falsified Global Warming Research

The debate over global warming has intensified in recent weeks after a new NASA study was interpreted by skeptics to reveal that global warming is not man-made. While a majority of Americans nationwide continue to acknowledge significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community, most go even further to say some scientists falsify data to support their own beliefs.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely. Twenty-two percent (22%) don’t think it’s likely some scientists have falsified global warming data, including just six percent (6%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are undecided....

Republicans and adults not affiliated with either major political party feel stronger than Democrats that some scientists have falsified data to support their global warming theories, but 51% of Democrats also agree.

This is just another example of how you cannot fool all the people all the time. The very idea that Anthropogenic Global Warming alarmism was an example of disinterested science was always ludicrous. Disinterested science never demands an end to debate, and it never attempts to hide the uncertainties of what we know and what we don't now. Both of those impulses were the bread and butter of AGW alarmism, and people know it. It turns out most of the people know it.

Of course nothing will stop the true believer. After all they have too much ego, power and money wrapped up in the project to give it up now.

Tornadoes In Massachusetts = Not Unusual

The recent tornado that hit Springfield, Mass has spawned a number of stories pushing the meme that there was something "unusual" about there being a twister in the Bay State:

Tornadoes in Springfield, Mass. A tornado warning in northern Rhode Island. The highest death toll from tornadoes since the National Weather Service began tracking twisters more than 60 years ago.

It’s easy for the casual observer to connect this spring’s catastrophic weather to climate change, but local scientists caution against making that leap.

Weather is a local phenomenon, says Bradley Moran, an oceanography professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. Climate refers to changes in the weather over decades, centuries, even millenniums.

Springfield’s tornadoes were unusual, yes. When you look at the unfurling history of climate, however, Moran says that these storms are little more than “a tiny spike.”

While, in one sense, I'm heartened that AGW wasn't automatically trotted out as the answer to why bad things happen to good people, I'll still note that the above is simply wrong. It's wrong because tornadoes are not unusual for Massachusetts.

Here is the NOAA data which looks at tornado incidence per 10,000 square miles:



So, there are more tornadoes in Massachusetts per 10,000 square miles then there are in North Dakota or Minnesota or Kentucky or Michigan. It has the same per 10,000 square mile incidence rate as Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin. In none of those states are tornadoes considered "unusual." In fact, if you look at the rate of large tornadoes per 10,000 square miles you'll discover that Massachusetts has the same per 10,000 square mile incidence rate as Texas. (Surprising but true.)

People are being thrown by the fact Massachusetts is such a small state and therefore the total numbers of tornadoes are relatively small. However, an apples to apples comparison shows that calling them "unusual" is simply untrue.

Returning To Shamanism

So, I'm watching Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News (I know, I know...that was my first mistake), and he's talking about the terrible tornado outbreak down South. For part of the report he brings in a meteorologist from the Weather Channel (I think it was Greg Forbes) to discuss the matter from, I presumed, a scientific point of view. Williams begins by asking the good doctor "What have we done to cause all of this?"

To the scientist's credit he attempted to remind Mr. Williams about what happens whenever cool dry air slams into warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico (you know, what we generally call here in the United States spring.) But really the question didn't seem to be seeking a scientific explanation of this rare but certainly not unprecedented outbreak. Williams' question seemed to be in search of an intermediary that could inform us of the best ways to appease the proud and angry god who had decided to smote us for our folly.

Simply put, it wasn't the sort of question an intelligent person asks of a scientist. It is the sort of beseeching with which one would expect a befuddled villager to confront a shaman.

Maybe we are entering a new dark age after all.

What Science Is. What It Isn't.

It is a simple rule of thumb anyone can use to figure out if you are dealing with a person or organization interested in doing real science OR if they are only interested in running some sort of public relations scam: Do they own up to their mistakes? Those interested in science do, all the others do not.

So, let's say you see that some organization has made a claim that by a certain date there would be 50 million "climate refugees" around the world. Let us further say that date was 2010 and that census figures indicate the actual number of climate refugees to be, oh, right around zero. If one were interested in science would one:

A) Openly acknowledge the weakness of your prediction and seek to identify the factors which led your hypothesis to be so wildly inaccurate; OR

B) Attempt to remove any evidence of your ever having made the, now, ridiculous prediction in the first place.

See if you can guess which route the United Nations Environment Programme decided to take.

I Told You So

Four years ago... FOUR years ago I wrote the following about the snows of Kilimanjaro:

Please remember that last year was (so we were told) the "warmest year ever" and the glacier at Kilimanjaro grew larger. Also notice that this research confirms the hypothesis that glacier retreat has nothing to do with "warming" but with moisture patterns AND that these patterns starting changing in the 19th century. (Must have been caused by those "Sport Utility Horse and Buggies.")

Today one can read:

Standing as the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro is slowly regaining its snow after several years of drought in East Africa and the effects of climate change in African continent.

The snow is slowly mounting on the top point of the mountain, giving new hopes to Mount Kilimanjaro environmental watchdogs and tourists that the mountain may not lose its beautiful ice cap as scientists predicted.

Covered in mist most of the day, Mount Kilimanjaro is the most tourist attractive site in Tanzania, pulling in tens of thousands of tourists each year. The snow, which once disappeared in some parts of the mountain is mounting slowly, giving a beautiful view of the Kibo peak.

A visit by our Tanzania eTurboNews reporter to Mount Kilimanjaro's slopes proved that there were changes on the mountain snow, which has been covering some parts of the mountain where once the ice had melted.

Lo! and behold, some "scientists" have egg on their faces:

“Unfortunately, we made the prediction. I wish we hadn’t,” says Douglas R. Hardy, a UMass geoscientist who was among 11 co-authors of the paper in the journal Science that sparked the pessimistic Kilimanjaro forecast. “None of us had much history working on that mountain, and we didn’t understand a lot of the complicated processes on the peak like we do now.”

Look, I am not a geoscientist, but I got this right and the so-called "experts" got it wrong. Am I lucky? No. I simply do not believe reality is beholden to some ideological preconception I may hold. And, let's get real here geoscientists, the problem was not that the complicated mountain tricked you, the problem was you wanted reality to conform to your will. Until you stop doing that you will continue to get things wrong, and look stupid doing it.

When In Doubt, Make It Up

Another day, another crisis: Droughts, Floods and Food

We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.

Maybe this wouldn't be the best time to mention another contributing factor, such as green policies which increase the cost of electricity which especially hurt the poor. Evidently, when pain is inflicted upon the poor by the decisions and actions of folks like Paul Krugman that is not a crisis. It's tough love. Otherwise, its a crisis.

The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.

Really? For some reason this "important trigger" seems to have escaped the people actually protesting in places like Tunisia. Indeed, the inflation rate in Tunisia for was only 3.5-4.5% which ranks only 120th in the world in terms of inflation. So, where exactly is this supposed source for "food rioting"? When one looks at the photographs of the protests in Tunisia one does not see people complaining about a lack of food. They are complaining about politics.





In fact, it was the Tunisian regime which attempted to make this all about food prices, and that was an approach rejected by the Tunisian people:

Protesters chanted slogans against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a day after he went on TV to promise lower food prices and new freedoms for Tunisians. Demonstrators shouted "Ben Ali, out!" and "Ben Ali, assassin!" One poster read "We won't forget," a reference to the rioters killed, many by police bullets.

Pent-up anger at unemployment and at a leadership many see as controlling and corrupt has exploded into protests and clashes with police over the past few weeks. The official death toll in the riots is 23, but that figure has not been updated in days. Opposition leaders put the figure at three times that. [ed. emphasis added]

It was, in actuality, the political success of the protests in Tunisia which were the triggers of the protest movements in other repressive regimes in the area.

So, where does this myth of food riots come from? From the global warming cabal, where else?

Krugman links to this piece from "Climate Progress" (gee, with a name like that you simply HAVE to trust their objectivity, right?):

Expert consensus grows on contribution of record high food prices to Middle East unrest

Uh oh. It's time for another "consensus," eh? OK, so who are your "experts" Climate Progress?

"Experts" linked in the story include:

Ben Grossman-Cohen, press officer for Oxfam. (enough said.)

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic who writes on economics, and actually had this to say about Egypt:

Blame President Hosni Mubarak, who has shut his country off from the global economy. As Zachary Karabell reports in the Wall Street journal, the country ranks 137 in the world in per-capita income (behind Tonga, ahead of Kirbati). The government has failed to capitalize on $2 billion in annual U.S. aid, $5 billion in Suez Canal dues and $10 billion in tourism, which flourishes despite, not because of, the country's infrastructure.

Egypt's brand of socialism strangles the private sector in at least two significant ways. First, most investment projects must be reviewed by the government and with public ownerships dominating finance, that makes it especially difficult for entrepreneurs to get access to funding. Second, corruption is rank. Egypt ranks 111th out of 180 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009, according to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedoms, and "bribery of low-level civil servants seems to be a part of daily life."

So, this expert, doesn't blame the "acute shock" of the rise in foodstuffs. He blames Mubarak's brand of crony socialism. Thomson doesn't blame floods; he blames corrupt political policies.

Another expert cited by Climate Progess is economist Nouriel Roubini who said...

Rising prices are "leading to riots, demonstrations and political instability," New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini said during a panel discussion. "It's really something that can topple regimes, as we have seen in the Middle East."

However, a look at Prof. Roubini's vita shows no published work on the question of food/commodity prices and political instability. Now, Roubini may have a gut feeling on the matter, and his experience generally on issues of political economy may give his gut feelings a little more weight than some others, that is hardly the basis to declare "consensus" on the matter.

The last "expert" Climate Progress invokes to create "consensus" is...wait for it... themselves!

So, creating consensus seems to be a little like Napoleon crowning himself emperor. (It's probably good work if you can get it.)

But here is the crux of Krugman's lying:

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

This is simply wrong scientifically. There is no evidence conecting these weather events to climate change. None. Oh, there is plenty of speculation on the part of economists, journalists, press officers, and partisan hacks of all stripes, but there is no proof. There is no evidence that we are witnessing extreme weather events that are more servere or which occur more often than in the past.

Sadly, a complete lack of evidence is never enough to deter the truly fevered.

Krugman continued:

As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.

Typical Krugman. "You can't do X, but I'm gonna do it anyway."

Until the warmists tell us what weather wouldn't "be expected" by their theory (i.e. what would count as falsifying their hypothesis), there is no reason to pay attention to them. For them, every possible occurrence is compatible with their theory, which is the same thing as saying their theory is meaningless.



ADDING:



Noel Sheppard points to the following graph charting wheat prices:


Commenting on this graph Roger Pielke Jr. states:

Good luck disentangling a long-term climate signal in the long-term data, which shows a significant decline in grain prices, much less attributing such a signal to a particular cause. Efforts to link short-term wiggles to the effects of greenhouse gas emissions go well beyond the canons of empirical science, to use a polite euphemism from The Climate Fix.

Whatever Krugman is on about, it isn't science.

Gleaned from Memeorandum.

Think Progress: Super Geniuses

Let us all bow down to the wisdom that is Think Progress:

With record-breaking climate disasters crippling the United States...

The link "proving" there have been "climate" disasters is a post recapping the latest snow storm to hit Chicago. For starters, a snow storm in the middle of winter, even one that produced the third highest snowfall totals in the area, is not "climate." It's weather. If you don't know what the difference is between the two you really ought to keep your ignorant mouth shut.

In the cast of Think Progress we won't get off that lucky. They continue:

...defenders of global warming pollution are growing increasingly desperate. Gordon Peterson, host of PBS’s weekly Inside Washington show, noted the scientific fact that “there’s about a four percent more water vapor in the air now in the atmosphere than there was in the ’70s because of warmer oceans and warmer air, and it returns to earth as heavy rain and heavy snow.”

And what scientific proof do these people rely on here? The first link goes to a statement by Al Gore, who is not a scientist. The second link goes to a New York Times op-ed writer Gail Collins, also not a scientist, who was quoting as her authority on the matter one Al Gore. You can't make up this junk.

How could anyone argue against this collection of uncredentialed intellectual firepower?

Oh, I know...maybe they could actually hold a doctorate in the field? Like Dr. Roy Spencer:

No serious climate researcher — including the ones I disagree with — believes global warming can cause colder weather. Unless they have become delusional as a result of some sort of mental illness. One of the hallmarks of global warming theory is LESS extratropical cyclone activity — not more...

...global satellite measurements of precipitation which shows that the annual amount of precipitation that falls on the Earth stays remarkably constant from year to year.

Got that super geniuses? We know, for a fact, there has not been an increase in global precipitation. Al Gore is either lying or willfully ignorant. (You can see graphical representation of the satellite data here courtesy of NASA.)

Here is how Think Progress quotes Charles Krauthammer who had pointed out the unscientific nature of the Global Warming hysteria:

Look, if Godzilla appeared on the Mall this afternoon, Al Gore would say it’s global warming, because the spores in the South Atlantic Ocean, you know, were. Look, everything is, it’s a religion. In a religion, everything is explicable. In science, you can actually deny or falsify a proposition with evidence. You find me a single piece of evidence that Al Gore would ever admit would contradict global warming and I’ll be surprised. [ed. moronic highlighting by Think Progress]

That's right, Think Progress. The key to this point is the bit about Godzilla, and not the discussion concerning the scientific requirement of falsifiability and the Left's refusal to be bound by scientific evidence.

Think Progress goes on to prove my point by claiming the oceans are warming, when the evidence shows this simply is not true. [Warning! That link leads to another actual scientist and not an op-ed writer or a washed up politician looking to make a buck.]

What is most scary about this crap is the degree to which people like those at Think Progress operate in a realm beyond rational discourse. It is that aspect which reminds people of arguing with someone on a religious matter, though it needn't be viewed in that light. Ideological "true believers" are just as irrational, though more dangerous as they wish to hold political power which can be used against the recalcitrant. To this end the recalcitrant is demonized by equating them with neo-Nazis via the constant and mindless use of the term "denier" to describe their "enemy." It is sad, vicious, stupid, and has absolutely nothing to do with science.

Hysteria: The Snowpocalypse Edition

You gotta love Dr. Roy Spencer for his ability to cut to the chase: OMG! ANOTHER GLOBAL WARMING SNOWSTORM!!

Let me give you a few factoids:

1) No serious climate researcher — including the ones I disagree with — believes global warming can cause colder weather. Unless they have become delusional as a result of some sort of mental illness. One of the hallmarks of global warming theory is LESS extratropical cyclone activity — not more.

2) If some small region of the Earth is experiencing unusually persistent storminess, you can bet some other region is experiencing unusually quiet weather. You see, in the winter we get these things called ’storm tracks’….

3) Evidence for point #2 is that we now have many years of global satellite measurements of precipitation which shows that the annual amount of precipitation that falls on the Earth stays remarkably constant from year to year. The AREAS where it occurs just happen to move around a whole lot. Again, we used to call that “weather”.

4) Global average temperature anomalies (departures from seasonal norms) have been falling precipitously for about 12 months now. Gee, maybe these snowstorms are from global cooling! Someone should look into that! (I know…cold and snow from global cooling sounds crazy….I’m just sayin’….)

I could go on and on.

Now, I know I’m not going to change the minds of any of the True Believers…those who read all of Reverend Al’s sermons, and say things like, “You know, global warming can mean warmer OR colder, wetter OR drier, cloudier OR sunnier, windier OR calmer, …”. Can I get an ‘amen’??

But I hope I can still save a few of those out there who are still capable of independent reasoning and thought.

That about sums it up.

The Science Challenged Crowd

As time goes on it becomes clearer that a major factor in why the global warming crowd's science is so piss poor so often is they don't really understand statistics all that well.

Neither do I, of course, but then again I'm not telling people they should give me a billion dollars to save the world.

But, I do know enough to understand roughly what actual statisticians are talking about. At this post you can read all about how the leading lights in anthropogenic global warming research screwed up something as statistically simple as the error term.

Yikes.

America, "Captive Of A Scientific Technological Elite"

As I get older it certainly seems to turn out that much of the history I learned in my youth was only partially true. Part of this can be chalked up to new discoveries and ideas that simply were not around when I was first introduced to something. But, there are also things in history which writers of history and, by extension, my teachers choose to ignore.

A good example of this can be found in Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, the famous "Military-Industrial Complex Speech."

In this speech, Eisenhower first lays out the scope of his concern:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

The first threat he goes on to talk about is the Military-Industrial Complex. This is the part of the speech I was taught, both formally and via the media who often brought up this idea in a variety of contexts.

But, what exactly was the second threat? I have to admit, I never knew there was a second threat Eisenhower had discussed, until recently.

Here is how Ike laid it out:

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

It is impossible to read this and not think of how the Global Warming crowd embodies the precise worries Eisenhower laid out. Instead of the goals of a free democratic society being paramount, we now live in an age where a scientific elite is demanding the suspension of democratic rule because the stakes are supposedly too high to be left to the vagaries of the ballot box. In the name of "saving the planet" and with billions of Federal research dollar behind them, we have witnessed a wholesale assault upon the standards of free inquiry. Peer reviews has been subverted; editors have been intimidated from freely publishing work/ideas the elite wishes to see squashed; Federal funding, directed by, and largely allocated to, members of the elite, ensure only pre-approved ideas are encouraged. etc. etc. etc.

In every way the warnings of Eisenhower are being played out before our eyes.

It's too bad so few of us know about this particular warning, isn't it? Especially as Eisenhower's warning seems to tell us this is the graver threat, as it is largely responsible for the military-industrial threat in the first place.

Urban Heat Islands For Beginners

There are a couple interesting posts floating around out there looking at the Urban Heat Island effect, and its potential impact upon the climate debate.

I realize there are time when science produces results that seem counter-intuitive. However, there are other times when claims are not simple counter-intuitive but are instead foolish. The blinkered response by the "global warming" crowd regarding UHI certainly seems to fall into the latter category.

This Is What A Principled Man Sounds Like

This is a letter from Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, Hal Lewis to the American Physical Society:

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

WUWT calls this "on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door."

We should be so lucky.

Confirming What We Already Knew

Mann's Hockey Stick is still bunk.

Granted, you are still free to believe in it. You merely have to reject the discipline of statistics. That's easy peasy for many.

Fat Cat Scientists To Rest Of World: "See Ya! Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!"

They just don't get it:

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards.

The bitter cold, with more intense winter weather forecast for March in parts of the United States, have led some to question if global warming has stalled.

Understanding the overall trend is crucial for estimating consumption of energy supplies, such as demand for winter heating oil in the U.S. northeast, and impacts on agricultural production.

"It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years," veteran Australian climate scientist Neville Nicholls told an online climate science media briefing.

Mr. Nicholls then called for the "boy" to bring him another cocktail and retired to the pool.

It's is amazing that a so-called scientists can attempt to make pronouncements on "climate" based upon 30 years worth of satellite data. Any climate moron knows you cannot make assessments on climate with only 30 years worth of data. That is not debatable. To do so means you are not doing science.

But, hey, it does pay for trip to the tropics.

Nice work if you can get it.

BTW, this is the way the deception is being run these days. Using satellite data that encompasses areas over land and oceans do show this has been one of the warmer winters, though it clearly shows that the warmth has been confined almost entirely to ocean areas. Over land in the northern hemisphere we have been freezing to death. But, that doesn't matter to them because they will then compare global (land and ocean) temps with pre-satellite number, which of course do not take into account what temps were like over oceans. They then have the unmitigated gall to claim that represents an apples-to-apples comparison.

It's fraud pure and simple. It's a fraud that is buying them a lot of Singapore Slings as well.

Scientists: "We Have No Idea What The Hell Is Going On"

Oh, they won't admit to the headline, but you only have to look at what they actually say. Fog over San Francisco thins by a third due to climate change:

The coastal fog along the Californian coast has declined by a third over the past 100years – the equivalent of three hours cover a day, new research shows....

"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 per cent to 42 per cent, which is a loss of about three hours per day," said the study leader Dr James Johnstone at the University of California.

He said that it was unclear whether this is part of a natural cycle of the result of human activity, but the fog is receding because of a reduction in the difference between the temperature of the sea and the land.

"A cool coast and warm interior is one of the defining characteristics of California's coastal climate, but the temperature difference between the coast and interior has declined substantially in the last century, in step with the decline in summer fog," he added.

Got that?

OK, let's move on. Science has spoken... WTH is this? Get ready for even foggier summers:

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier.

That's the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won't be soaring everywhere.

"There'll be winners and losers," says Robert Bornstein, a meteorology professor at San Jose State University. "Global warming is warming the interior part of California, but it leads to a reverse reaction of more fog along the coast."

The study, which will appear in the journal Climate, is the latest to argue that colder summers are indeed in store for parts of the Bay Area.

Scientists began sounding the alarm 20 years ago when looking at greenhouse gases and their possible reverse effects along the foggy Northern California coast. The theory, then and now, is that the hotter the Central Valley gets, the greater the temperature and pressure gradients between the inland and coast will be - therefore forming more fog.

In the new fog study, Bornstein broke the Bay Area down into smaller regions and looked at daily temperatures for the last half century, focusing on the rapid post-1970 warming period. He found that although temperatures were trending upward as a whole, it was asymmetric - the hills and inland areas were warming, while low-elevation coastal areas were actually cooling.

Got that?

Scientist #1: "temperature difference between the coast and interior has declined substantially in the last century..."

Scientist #2: "temperatures were trending upward as a whole, it was asymmetric - the hills and inland areas were warming, while low-elevation coastal areas were actually cooling..."

Isn't "consensus" a beautiful thing? Quick, let's allow these guys to destroy the economy based upon the state of our present knowledge!

Please?!?!

(Gleaned from Gateway Pundit)

State Funded Research Is Not "Independent" Research

There is a very interesting article up on Sp!ked about public health research that everyone interested in the connection between scientific research and public policy should go and read: A bleary-eyed attitude to alcohol research

[T]here is the claim, explicit in the [British Medical Journal] Lobby Watch article, that researchers funded by the UK government are objective in the debate over alcohol advertising policy because they are ‘independent’, whereas researchers funded by the alcohol industry are not. Second, there is the claim that it is ‘established’ that alcohol advertising ‘encourages young people to drink alcohol sooner and in greater quantities’.

The effect of these two claims is to suggest to the public and policymakers that, first, the debate over the effects of alcohol advertising is over and, second, only those people funded by the alcohol industry question this reality.

Is this true? The idea that people whose research is funded by the taxpayer are independent, and therefore objective in their findings and policy prescriptions, is naive at best, disingenuous at worst. Public Choice theory explains that the interests of those who claim to represent the public are themselves conflicted and self-serving, and certainly neither independent nor objective.

This is most assuredly correct, and has far reaching implications for a variety of important research areas including climate science. Thus the IPCC has no problem citing as authorities groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, but would never be caught dead citing work by Cato or AEI. This is an intellectually untenable position, as the Sp!iked piece makes clear:

To simply reduce research to a question of funding avoids the hard question of the quality of the research itself. Rather than evaluating each piece of research on its individual merits, evidence which doesn’t fit what the public health community wants to hear is simply dismissed or ignored on the grounds that it is done and funded by the wrong people.

Public policy should not be decided based largely upon the perceived moral qualities of this or that researcher. It should be based upon the quality of the work itself.

End of story.

The Rise Of CYA "Scientists"

Gee, what are the chances? Professional Discourtesy By The National Climate Data Center

The professional courtesy when researchers collect data is to permit them first opportunity to publish. The National Institute of Health (NIH) has written up this policy. The NIH writes in their section on timeliness of data sharing

“Recognizing that the value of data often depends on their timeliness, data sharing should occur in a timely fashion. NIH expects the timely release and sharing of data to be no later than the acceptance for publication of the main findings from the final dataset.”

The NIH writes with respect to their grantees

“In general, grantees own the rights in data resulting from a grant-supported project.”

NIH has just written down what is the professional courtesy with respect to data.

In the case of the site data that Anthony Watts has collected at considerable effort on his part and that of his outstanding volunteers, the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) is not recognizing this professional courtesy. They already earlier have posted a (flawed) analysis of a subset of Anthony’s data. Simply recognizing Anthony’s pivotal role in identifying the current site characteristics of the USHCN sites, as listed in the Acknowledgements of the Menne et al (2009) paper (and the new JGR paper), is hardly adequate.

What this boils down to is Anthony Watts and his volunteers are in the process of creating a dataset to examine the poor siting of ground temperature stations in the United States. In an effort to preempt the feared findings, the NCDC have basically ridden the coattails of the work of another researcher (i.e Watts) before that researcher has had a chance to publish his findings. That the NCDC research is flawed can hardly come as a surprise since their obvious intent had nothing to do with actual science. It was an exercise in "damage control" pure and simple.

I guess all is fair in love, war and climate "science."

AGW As Antipathy To Democracy

Roger Pielke Jr makes a good point about the way the scientific process has been managed of late:

John Christy and David Douglass provide a detailed accounting of how a comment on one of their papers was handled in the peer review process (even more detail here). Their experience, with the gory details revealed by the CRU emails, show in all of its unpleasantness how activist scientists sought to stage-manage climate science from the inside.

Their story hits very close to home with me, as I went through a very,very similar process with respect to a comment and reply on the "shameful article" on hurricanes and global warming that I co-authored in 2005. (If my emails ever get hacked you'll see that ugly episode from the inside.;-) That situation had a positive outcome only because at the time I protested efforts to deny us a right to respond in accordance with journal policies and threatened to go public with the improper efforts at stage-management. I am sure that these sort of shenanigans go on in academia more than we'd like to admit, however that does not justify them.

What these episodes reveal is an effort by activist climate scientists to stage-manage the peer review process much like how one might manage a partisan blog for public consumption. [Go to Pielke's site for useful links.]

I resonded thusly over at Roger's place:

As a political theorist by profession it is hard for me to read these sorts of things and not see them as expressing a deep antipathy towards democratic values.

The following quote comes from Karl Popper "The Open Society and its Enemies: Vol II Hegel and Marx" (pp.217-218):

"Two aspects of the method of the natural sciences are of importance... Together they constitute what I may term the 'public character of scientific method'. First, there is something approaching free criticism. A scientist may offer his theory with the full conviction that it is unassailable. But this does not necessarily impress his fellow-scientists; rather it challenges them. For they know that the scientific attitude means criticizing everything, and they are little deterred even by authorities. Secondly, scientists try to avoid talking at cross-purposes. (I may remind the reader that I am speaking of the natural sciences, but a part of modern economics may be included.) They try very seriously to speak one and the same language, even if they use different mother tongues. In the natural sciences this is achieved by recognizing experience as the impartial arbiter of their controversies. When speaking of 'experience' I have in mind experience of a 'public' character, like observations, and experiments, as opposed to experience in the sense of more 'private' aesthetic or religious experience; and an experience is 'public' if everybody who takes the trouble can repeat it. In order to avoid speaking at cross-purposes, scientists try to express their theories in such a form that they can be tested, i.e. refuted (or otherwise confirmed) by such experience.

"This is what constitutes scientific objectivity. Everyone who has learned the technique of understanding and testing scientific theories can repeat the experiment and judge for himself. In spite of this, there will always be some who come to judgements which are partial, or even cranky. This cannot be helped, and it does not seriously disturb the working of the various social institutions which have been designed to further scientific objectivity and impartiality; for instance the laboratories, the scientific periodicals, the congresses. This aspect of scientific method shows what can be achieved by institutions designed to make public control possible, and by the open expression of public opinion, even if this is limited to a circle of specialists. Only political power when it is used to suppress free criticism, or when it fails to protect it, can impair the functioning of these institutions, on which all progress, scientific, technological, and political, ultimately depends."

I really believe it is the introduction of the expressly political into this process which is undermining it. But it isn't merely because it is political, but because it is a variety of the political hostile to the ideals of free inquiry in the first place. It is hard to believe in democratic ideals of free inquiry and speech and also support the turning of the "laboratories, the scientific periodicals, the congresses" into instruments of intellectual repression.