Quote from flymike91 :

the main american news outlets are already doing this with people who stand against obama and the socialist left agenda

Amazing.

How would you explain the likes of Glen Beck and Bill O'reilly on TV then? Because they are surely infamous for promoting a socialist agenda. :doh:

Quote from 5haz :

How would you explain the likes of Glen Beck and Bill O'reilly on TV then? Because they are surely infamous for promoting a socialist agenda. :doh:

They are famous precisely for the reason that Flymike stated. A general left-leaning media allowing a loud few on the 'right' to gain cult status.

Certainly media outlets in the UK have gone on a bit of a lock down regarding GW, which is quite typical. They'll profit greatly from government advertising/subsidies as well as in-house sales like The Guardian's Eco Store for example.

But what is nice is that the comments on articles in these mainstream outlets are generally far more balanced and eloquent than the articles written themselves.

Overall its a shame that what is essentially a scientific debate has become a largely political one, with skeptics seemingly asociated with the right and believers asociated with the left. It'd be nice if those involved were concerned with investigating the potential link between climate change and human activity rather than clouding the situation with personal or political beliefs.

Quote from flymike91 :

sry to pick apart your post but I disagree here. The mainstream (left) media will shut out, censor, and discredit these skeptics in spite of the newly awakened public's desire for balanced debate. The main American news outlets are already doing this with people who stand against Obama and the socialist left agenda, and environmentalism is a large part of that agenda to those who stand to profit greatly from legislation like cap and trade, not to mention government research grants.

Yeah, I wasn't really referring specifically to who's going to be allowed to be shown on which news station or not, they are all biased to certain degrees in favour of one political ideology or the other. There's nothing you can really do about that apart from turning the TV off if you don't like it I'm noticing that Andy Revikin's latest piece has had people calling for the redefinition of the New York Times as tabloid news. It's pretty funny.

I was really talking more about the nitty gritty science. There was a UN report issued only yesterday making recommendations on IPCC process. Again from the NYT:

Quote :

The United Nations needs to revise the way it manages its assessments of climate change, with the scientists involved more open to alternative views, more transparent about possible conflicts of interest and more careful to avoid making policy prescriptions, an independent review panel said Monday.

The IPCC, even though it's assumed by people that it's conclusions are representative of the full scientific literature, is tremendously weakened by the fact that the lead authors of each chapter basically get to write the 'story' of that chapter as they see fit. Lots of input from other scientists but in the end it comes down to one guy to explain what they think is an appropriate summary of the available science. This process has led to authors picking and choosing studies which are supportive of their own studies and ignoring or glossing over criticisms by other scientists.

Another poster on Bishop Hill sums it up:

Quote :

As Ross McKitrick has remarked, it isn't difficult to predict which perspective will dominate a particular chapter of the IPCC report simply by looking at the names of the authors selected to write it. By virtue of their IPCC author roles, these same people then pretend that their viewpoint is the only/official/consensus viewpoint.

There's not much longer this can go on before a lot of people really start to become cheesed off. The IPCC will either find a way to be more inclusive of the full gamut of scientific views, or it will fold. This is pretty much well understood by now.


Also, from the report:

Quote :

[A]uthors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements. The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.

Again, these are sceptical arguments.

Quote from Intrepid :

a loud few on the 'right' to gain cult status.

as comedians not as political commentators

This will hurt them, please stop lying and show how much money your making from your lies.

Damn - there goes the new Lear Jet !

"Senior officials at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have also been ordered to disclose their outside financial interests to avert any allegations that they may have profited from policies to tackle global warming.

New controls should also be introduced to ensure that the scientific claims made in influential international reports are robust in future."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear ... ning-climate-science.html

Harold Shapiro, a Princeton University professor and chair of the committee that conducted the review, said that a report by an IPCC working group "contains many statements that were assigned high confidence but for which there is little evidence."

Professor Shapiro said the IPCC's response to errors when they were subsequently revealed was "slow and inadequate."

Asked about the Himalayan glaciers error, Professor Shapiro said, "At least in our judgment, it came from just not paying close enough attention to what [peer] reviewers said about that example."

He added that there was concern about the U.N. climate panel's lack of a conflict of interest policy, as is standard in most Government departments and international bodies.

The report called for development of a "rigorous conflict of interest policy" and made detailed suggestions on what should be disclosed. Mr Pachauri has previously acted as an adviser to green energy companies.

“It's hard to see how the United Nations can both follow the advice of this committee and keep Rajendra Pachauri on board as head,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado.

In future, the IPCC should be overseen by a new executive committee which will include people from outside the organisation, the report recommended. The organisation’s head should also be limited to serving one six-year term.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

Again, these are sceptical arguments.

I haven't read the IAC report yet (busy week) but reading the various commentaries, it does seem there is a lot that is pleasing the sceptics in the review, while there is a lot of shut-eyed denial from the CAGW crowd.

On the agendas of MSM, from Fox to the BBC, in the Blogosphere there is broad rejection of the lot. Not of the MSM message directly, but rejection of the presence of an agenda. There is almost no apolitical news reporting in MSM at all, and there is pretty much no trust of it as a result.

Gosselin reports that the German MSM broadly acknowledges that the scientific well has been poisoned, while still claiming that the water is fine to drink. That seems to be pretty common across most of MSM. How do you trust a source that doesn't even blink when it presents such dichotomies?

Well, HELLO ........

Excuse 1: "We're Scientists and only we know the 'truth'"

Excuse 2: "CONSPIRICY THEORY !!!"

Excuse 3: Only to be used when the lies are clearly proven and impossible to deny.

"Pretend it isn't happening and refuse to talk about it"

Note: This relies on your mates who run the media going along with this, make your own minds up if this is happening.

Quote from SamH :

Gosselin reports that the German MSM broadly acknowledges that the scientific well has been poisoned, while still claiming that the water is fine to drink. That seems to be pretty common across most of MSM. How do you trust a source that doesn't even blink when it presents such dichotomies?

The dichotomy isn't limited to the MSM reporting (of the IAC report), it's in the actual report itself - specifically when it concludes that "the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall and has served society well" and then goes on to say that "fundamental changes are needed". This has been a definite pattern from both the MSM and the various reviews of climate science we've seen to date... it allows anyone to take what they want away from the conclusions and then nothing ever gets fixed. It leads to a squabbling over soundbites from the various camps. It's a bit like the NAS report that has been used in defence of the hockeystick... on the one hand it was completely damning of the science behind the HS itself, but since it also concluded that there were other lines of evidence supporting it then people argue that must mean that the hockeystick is also robust. Well no, it doesn't mean that at all but it doesn't stop people from trying. We need to be able to look at these things from a very case specific viewpoint and stop defending the indefensible. This applies in reverse as well. The HS may be shot down, but what about those other lines of evidence? Let's look into those as well. They may very well hold up under closer scrutiny. But just who is doing the scrutinising here?

Yup. The "other lines of evidence" argument is dead. They always say that there are other lines of evidence, but never say which they are. They're quoting the 2006 NAS report.

As far as I can tell, this is because AFTER the 2006 NAS report, the Mann08 HS itself incorporated the "other lines of evidence" - the same data that McShane and Wyner used in their paper, debunking the hockey stick (they used all the latest available lines of data from Mann).

So those who refer to "other lines of evidence" are harking back to the NAS 2006 report, which itself was superseded in Mann08, which was in turn debunked in M&W10.

There doesn't appear to be any way to escape the fact that the paleo reconstruction can't be relied upon, and that all alternative lines of paleo evidence have been "used up". Yup, the "other lines of evidence" argument is definitely dead.

in simple terms no scientists today do anything for the sake of science, but for the sake of funding that science. From a purely political standpoint I tend to agree with skeptics because they have less to gain if they are right and man cannot change the climate of the entire Earth and the world continues the infinite cycle of warming and cooling.

If the left can convince enough people otherwise, they can control through legislation the way society uses resources, spends its money, builds homes, educates children, not to mention changes in global economics, trading...the end game being complete control over the masses by a select few who know how to save the world. of course thats a worst case scenario but why even go in that direction?

Quote from flymike91 :

in simple terms no scientists today do anything for the sake of science, but for the sake of funding that science.

and youre basing this on the countless years youve spent orking in science and the many many scientists you know well within your circle of friends and family?

[snip]

good to see we're back to responding to views and opinions with personal attacks. As I have said before I promise to never stoop that low.

If it makes you happier:

From a purely political standpoint I tend to agree with skeptics because they have less to gain if they are right and man cannot change the climate of the entire Earth and the world continues the infinite cycle of warming and cooling.

If the left can convince enough people otherwise, they can control through legislation the way society uses resources, spends its money, builds homes, educates children, not to mention changes in global economics, trade agreements...the end game being complete control over the masses by a select few who know how to save the world. of course thats a worst case scenario but why even go in that direction?
__________________

flymike, I think your revised statement is reasonable. It's very important to be able to separate out the politics and the science, specifically because this distinction (or lack of) is where things have gone wrong and because it's in the gap between the two that you can really find what's been happening over the last 2 decades.

Roy Spencer's blogged about the thing you're seeing. It's a must-read, I think, because he talks about the point at which science and politics collided (the formation of the IPCC) and gives his observations about how things have played out as a result.

http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=327

Oxburgh report into the 'scandal' looking more and more shambolic....

Quote from mookie427 :

http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=327

Oxburgh report into the 'scandal' looking more and more shambolic....

Yeah thanks Mookie. The Climate Audit links at the bottom of that page are pretty interesting as well.

edit: and here's another one (More Oxburgh Misrepresentations)

Methinks moderators shouldn't moderate threads in which they're emotionally invested, but I'll agree that my post was out of line, however true...

Quote :

my post was out of line, however true...

I think Mike needs to work on some of his assumptions, but that of course goes for everybody. Jumping in with insulting criticisms over others assumptions without showing any sign or willingness to reflect on or engage with one's own assumptions comes across as pretty shallow...

Nobody's perfect. Doesn't mean we're all retarded.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Methinks moderators shouldn't moderate threads in which they're emotionally invested, but I'll agree that my post was out of line, however true...

Okay, then let me explain:

Your post was not appropriate, bottom line, but I would not have taken action if it had not been reported by a third party (i.e. not flymike and not an active thread participant). I [snipped] rather than handing out an infraction, which I anticipated that another moderator might have handed out.. and I did so specifically to beat any other moderator to the infraction button.

Once a post is reported, it's lit up like a beacon.. like a candle to a moderator moth.. and it's up for grabs by any moderator. So I needed to do something to save you the infraction, and that's what I did.

If this is not to your liking, let me know. I can revert your post to its original and re-flag it for another moderator to come and take whatever action he feels is appropriate. You decide.

Quote from SamH :

Okay, then let me explain:

Your post was not appropriate, bottom line, but I would not have taken action if it had not been reported by a third party (i.e. not flymike and not an active thread participant). I [snipped] rather than handing out an infraction, which I anticipated that another moderator might have handed out.. and I did so specifically to beat any other moderator to the infraction button.

Once a post is reported, it's lit up like a beacon.. like a candle to a moderator moth.. and it's up for grabs by any moderator. So I needed to do something to save you the infraction, and that's what I did.

If this is not to your liking, let me know. I can revert your post to its original and re-flag it for another moderator to come and take whatever action he feels is appropriate. You decide.

Thanks for explaining, Sam. That's fine.

Finally, Judith Curry's launching her own blog: http://judithcurry.com

The Guardian is still playing dirty with their agenda. They were forced to publish a response by Andrew Montford after Bob Ward's atrocious and, in places, libellous attack on him. Ward, though, was forewarned by the Guardian and had prior knowledge of Montford's response, resulting in a post from Ward again attacking Montford within 2 minutes of Montford's response being published. Montford, meanwhile, has been prevented from making any comments on the Guardian and can't even reply to Ward's comment. Frankly I find it blatant and disgusting bias.

This was my "proof" of dirty dealings by the Guardian:

Quote :

Let's assume that the Guardian posted Montford's response at precisely 4pm. Let's additionally assume that Bob Ward was immediately aware of Montford's response being posted and was able to get to it in "no time flat".

Let's further assume that Bob Ward is a fast reader and took precisely two minutes to consume and digest Montford's response. (802 standardised words, with full comprehension requiring a rate of 400 words per minute - see Wiki)

Let's assume that Bob Ward's comment on Montford's response was posted at the outside of 4:02pm - i.e. 16:02:59. This then means that, allowing for reading and digesting, Bob's comment was typed in no more than 1 minute.

There are 280 words in Bob Ward's comment. That's 1,408 characters, plus 279 spaces, totalling 1,687 keystrokes.

The industry standard for a "word" is 4 characters plus one space (5 keystrokes), and this is basis of the standard definition of Words Per Minute (WPM). A professional typist averages between 50 and 70 WPM.

1,687 characters and spaces / 5 keystrokes (1 word) / 1 minute = 337.4 Words Per Minute. Thus, Bob Ward has the ability to type at 337 WPM.

Bob's typing blows away the previous recorded fastest typing speed ever, 216 words per minute, achieved by Stella Pajunas-Garnand from Chicago in 1946. (see Wiki)

Gentlemen, raise your hats to Bob "Lightning-Fingers" Ward! THE fastest typist EVER!

Or raise an eyebrow at The Guardian's underhanded partisan behaviour. How embarrassing, Randerson. How shameful.

I read your comment Sam and I thought it was hilarious! But at the same time I agree, truly shameful behaviour by the Guardian. I think if anyone would like to understand this issue in full, they need to head over to Bishop Hill to hear the full story.

Bob 'Lightning-Fingers' Ward... still smiling at that one.