Not So Skeptical Skeptics

One of the best podcasts that you will find is The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.  I link to their podcast feed over on the right side of my blog page under GREAT PODCASTS and I highly recommend it.  I have learned a lot from their discussions of science-related current events and they are even funny while they do it.  Steve Novella, the main guy, is simply sharp as a tack.  Having said all of that, they really disappointed me with their response to the ongoing scandal that has been dubbed “ClimateGate”.

Additionally, I was absolutely stunned to discover that none of the Big Three networks have covered the scandal and the leaked information and ramifications at all on television.  Seriously – this is a blatant news blackout.  I simply cannot believe that they would be so obvious.  Someone on Twitter humorously suggested that we should accuse Tiger Woods of involvement to get some coverage, but I digress…

I will admit up front that I have always been a skeptic when it comes to anthropogenic climate change (what used to be called Global Warming before cold spells undercut that mantra).  My pre-ClimateGate reasons for this skepticism include things like the pre-industrial Medieval Warm Period, the outright silliness of trying to consider the Little Ice Age to be a baseline for normal temperatures, the discredited Hockey Stick graph, James Hanson’s deceitful attempt to use September temperatures to make October look inordinately hot, it goes on and on.  Additionally, part of my reluctance to get on board is the stink of a social/political agenda on the part of the high priests of the church of man-made climate change.  Additionally, though believers love to dismiss any non-believers who receive research money from energy concerns they do not use that same standard for these scientists who get massive grants for coming up with the “approved” results, nor do they talk much about Al Gore cashing in on it.  They simply [naively] assume altruism in those people.

Having said that, ClimateGate is a huge scandal, and while I can understand people like Michael Mann (the huckster who created the discredited hockey stick graph) and Phil Jones circling the wagons to protect themselves and their [well-funded] alarmist industry, I cannot understand why the SGU rogues and their friend-of-the-SGU Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) seem to be willing to throw aside their alleged skepticism in order to stick to their story.  In doing so they embarrass themselves and have seriously undercut their well earned credibility, particularly with those of us in the sub-group that Steve once dubbed their “libertarian listeners”.

I listened to the SGU podcast #227 to see how they would respond to the damning information that has come to light from the leaked (or hacked) data pulled from the UK’s Climate Research Unit.  Did they mention the scientists conspiring to use tricks to hide the decline in recent global temperatures (“Mike’s trick”)?  Nope.  Did they mention the scientists discussing illegal schemes to hide their data from Freedom of Information (FOIA) Requests?  Nope.  Did they talk about the fact that these scientists claim that all of the raw, unadjusted data has been lost, with only the “corrected” (i.e. “tricked”) data left available?  No, they did not.  They simply circled the wagons and took the typical [shout-down fascism] tactic of calling us anthropogenic climate change skeptics “deniers”, a well-known reference equating us to holocaust deniers.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, who is president of the JREF and seems to be a very decent guy, even took the ridiculous position of dismissing it with this pathetic statement:

Bottom line? Yawn. Get back to me when you have equally overwhelming evidence that global warming is not happening, or if it is it’s not anthropogenic. Then we can talk.

One could argue that his statement is an example of the logical fallacy called the argument from ignorance, “in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false”.

When the data is called into question you cannot dismiss skeptics based upon your unwavering faith in that same questionable data.  Perhaps in such a situation one should check one’s premises.

These so-called scientists have been using tricks to arrive at their pre-determined conclusion, have talked of avoiding FOIA requests, and have “lost” the raw data, but the skeptics at SGU continue to declare that it is settled science… based upon the very people and data that have now been shown fairly convincingly to be lies, half-truths, manipulations, and obfuscations.  I am trying to find a good analogy here to describe what they are doing in defending the ClimateGate offenders.  Maybe the way football fans will let a player get away with egregious crimes because they feel like they are on the same team?  Perhaps a better analogy is the way that people who naively supported vacuous candidate Obama still refuse to admit that they were hoodwinked by his platitudes.  Those analogies are not exactly right but I am getting close.  I will have to put more thought into that.  Maybe they have simply gotten so used to defending against “deniers” that they are just doing the thoughtless knee-jerk reaction.

Perhaps most importantly, the computer models on which a lot of this theory is based did not predict our current cooling trend.  Why is that?  Because as analysis of the source code is now revealing, they coded the software with a conclusion in mind, fudging things to make them work.  Poor Harry, whoever that is, but I will get to that in a minute.

Obama’s asinine rules of engagement

Hat tip to Dan Riehl.

Writing over at Riehl World View, Dan has some thoughts on the president’s feel-good but asinine rules of engagement for Afghanistan:

*No night or surprise searches.

*Villagers have to be warned prior to searches.

*ANA or ANP must accompany U.S. units on searches.

*U.S. soldiers may not fire at the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first.

*U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present.

*Only women can search women.

*Troops can fire at an insurgent if they catch him placing an IED but not if insurgents are walking away from an area where explosives have been laid.

Not only is it obvious that Mr Obama’s understanding of military doctrine and strategy is not even up to playing a good game of Risk, it is also pretty clear that like most liberals the president does not have a loved one serving in the military.  It’s all abstract to him, little toy soldiers on a map.

Do these fine Americans in his photo-op backdrop look a little skeptical to you?

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin had another great picture of a cadet sending a message to the commander in chief:

Several readers note the active service campaign ribbons and medals on the man’s chest and identify one of them as the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, showing he has been an Infantry Soldier under Combat. D. O’Brien writes: “The Cadet pictured in your piece on President Obama’s speech at West Point (December 1, 2009) is not a ‘traditional’ cadet. He is a former enlisted man – and an Infantryman who wears the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. This award is given only to Infantrymen who have participated in direct-fire engagements against the enemy.”

Watch This Heated ClimateGate Debate

Hat tip to Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters.

Mr. Sheppard links to a 10 minute long heated debate between a British climate change skeptic (he would call himself a sceptic) and a Russian UN IPCC contributor.  Watch the video, but I have also included some key quotes from the skeptic that Sheppard listed.

Sheppard’s bullet points:

• The case [for anthropogenic global warming] is blown to smithereens [by this scandal], and this whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and Copenhagen conference should be closed.
• The world is cooling and has been cooling for seven years, and the leading scientists, so-called “scientists,” have been trying to hide that evidence.
• The data, real data, over the last one thousand, ten thousand or million years, shows there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and world temperatures or climate extremes. Now we can see that actually the people in charge of data have been fiddling it, and they have been hiding the real decline in world temperatures in an attempt to keep their so called moral high ground.
• The Copenhagen jamboree is a scandal and it must be stopped.
• There is a gigantic bandwagon run by governments who want to control world energy supplies and hold back development in the third world. This thing they are doing now is just the same as they are doing in the banking crisis, it is creating a whole bubble of false values.
• Their claims are false, I repeat, they are false, and this theory they’ve got is like the Titanic and it will crash. I would suggest that honest green campaigners who want to preserve biodiversity should get off this [man-made global warming] bandwagon before it sinks.
• Carbon dioxide levels are driven by temps, not the other way around. There have been big peaks in CO2 in past…carbon dioxide is actually a good thing for the world…More CO2 makes plants and animals more efficient.

Think you’ll see that kind of debate on non-Fox television any time soon?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

I highly recommend following @NoelSheppard on Twitter.  Additionally, if you are a conservative and you are not on Twitter yet, you are missing out on the best vehicle for information dissemination that exists today.  Please sign up and follow Mr. Sheppard, and you can follow me as well at @RobWaterson and @WarOnSocialism.

Three Key Points About ClimateGate

[Hat tip to the always spot-on Hot Air]

Writing over at Pajamas Media, Iain Murray points out the three most important things to know about what is now being called ClimateGate:

First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results. The most prominently featured scientists are paleoclimatologists, who reconstruct historical temperatures and who were responsible for a series of reconstructions that seemed to show a sharp rise in temperatures well above historical variation in recent decades.

So when people mock you about being a denier, remember that their entire Climate Change belief system was largely constructed by these same dishonest, “proper result”-driven scientists.

Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication. In 2003, Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, complained that paleoclimatologist Hans von Storch was responsible for “the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’” and that they “must get rid of von Storch” (1051190249) as an editor of the journal Climate Research (he indeed subsequently resigned).

So they are big about calling for peer review, but they attack peers who review things in ways that they do not like.  Real science requires letting people attempt to poke holes in your theory, but these High Priests of the Church of Climate Change fight back when people do just that.

Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom.

They discuss hiding data and deleting emails in order to evade FOIA requests.  Unbelievable.

Showing that the True Believers are circling the wagons, Newsbusters is reporting that the only TV news outlet reporting on this historic scandal is Fox News:

The Obama administration has another reason to hate Fox: it appears to be the only national television news outlet in America interested in the growing ClimateGate scandal.Despite last Friday morning’s bombshell that hacked e-mail messages from a British university suggested a conspiracy by some of the world’s leading global warming alarmists — many with direct ties to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — to manipulate temperature data, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC through Monday evening have completely ignored the subject.

LexisNexis searches indicate that NPR appears to also be part of this news boycott.

Having never believed in this junk science hoax, one of my main concerns has always been the long term effects of this political “science”.  When something legitimate comes along that does warrant a warning from [more legitimate] scientists, people will remember this bogus, political Global Warming hoax and will ignore the scientists.

The Climate Change Scam

As you have likely heard, an inside whistleblower at the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) has released an immense amount of data containing emails and documents on to the internet.  Some reports say 60 megabytes and some say 160, but the result is the same.

The believers in the Church of Anthropogenic Climate Change are circling their wagons in an attempt to mitigate the damage, with Michael “discredited hockey stick graph” Mann even trying to go Clintonion with his redefinition of the word “trick”, but they are not convincing anyone.

A Washington Times editorial lays the truth bare:

Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the “trick of adding in the real temps to each series … to hide the decline [in temperature].”

Mr. Mann admitted that he was party to this conversation and lamely explained to the New York Times that “scientists often used the word ‘trick’ to refer to a good way to solve a problem ‘and not something secret.’ ” Though the liberal New York newspaper apparently buys this explanation, we have seen no benign explanation that justifies efforts by researchers to skew data on so-called global-warming “to hide the decline.” Given the controversies over the accuracy of Mr. Mann’s past research, it is surprising his current explanations are accepted so readily.

The Believers are trying to spin this as an innocuous misunderstanding, but as I discussed in a previous post, that spin is viciously undercut by their discussions about hiding data from Freedom of Information Requests:

There is a lot of damning evidence about these researchers concealing information that counters their bias. In another exchange, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann: “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone” and, “We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.” Mr. Jones further urged Mr. Mann to join him in deleting e-mail exchanges about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) controversial assessment report (ARA): “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]?”

In another e-mail, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann, professor Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona and professor Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: “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!”

At one point, Mr. Jones complained to another academic, “I did get an email from the [Freedom of Information] person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails.” He also offered up more dubious tricks of his trade, specifically that “IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on.” Another professor at the Climate Research Unit, Tim Osborn, discussed in e-mails how truncating a data series can hide a cooling trend that otherwise would be seen in the results. Mr. Mann sent Mr. Osborn an e-mail saying that the results he was sending shouldn’t be shown to others because the data support critics of global warming.

Repeatedly throughout the e-mails that have been made public, proponents of global-warming theories refer to data that has been hidden or destroyed. Only e-mails from Mr. Jones’ institution have been made public, and with his obvious approach to deleting sensitive files, it’s difficult to determine exactly how much more information has been lost that could be damaging to the global-warming theocracy and its doomsday forecasts.

An independent observer would have to agree that people with nothing to hide are not likely to be running around conspiring about ways to hide data from FOIA requests.

Like Al Gore, these guys are getting money based upon the “sky is falling” results of their questionable research.  Like Al Gore, it would seem that they are not at all concerned with truth if it stands in the way of their propaganda and their political goals.

One side story here: the initial response by the New York Times involved a typical spin, claiming that they should not print the data since the emails were potentially illegally obtained.  Can you smell the hypocrisy from a “news” outlet that never hesitates to publish classified information if it hurts national security?  Does anyone still doubt that the NYT is simply a newsletter for the social democrats?

ClimateGate

ClimateGate.  That has a nice ring to it.

Writing over at The American, Jay Richards has some thoughts on the continuing story of the leaked documents from the Climate Change crowd.

Several troubling themes have emerged so far (h/t to “Jeff C” in comments at the Air Vent):

1. Data manipulation: Several times the scientists discuss ways to massage and cherry-pick data and spin presentations to give the strongest impression of warming, and to downplay contrary evidence—just as they have been suspected of doing.

2. Evading Freedom of Information inquiries: In many emails the scientists are clearly colluding to avoid releasing correspondence and data that they are legally obligated to release. They discuss deleting emails after being directed by officials not to do so.

3. Manipulating peer review: They discuss how to blackball scientists who don’t tow the orthodox line, get journal editors fired who allow “skeptical” papers to be published, how to destroy the reputation of journals that allow such papers to be published, and how to prevent “contrarian” research from being included in UN reports. Since the catastrophist crowd speaks so loudly and insistently about “peer-reviewed” research, it’s stunning to find out what this really means in the scandal of contemporary climate research.

Though it is not mentioned in this discussion, one aspect of the debate has always bothered me.  Proponents of anthrogenic climate change like to point out that some skeptics receive funding from energy companies, accusing the skeptics of skewing their research in order to please their benefactors.  However, isn’t that a two-way street?  Given that the believers also get funding based upon their results, and that Al Gore stands to make millions from Cap and Trade, should that same logic not apply to the Michael Mann’s and Al Gore’s in this debate?

I submit that they cannot have it both ways.

These leaked emails, which now look to be the result of an insider whistleblower, are the smoking gun that skeptics have been looking for.  The True Believers are not likely to be swayed.

Support for ObamaCare plunges to new low

From Rasmussen Reports:

Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.

Half the survey was conducted before the Senate voted late Saturday to begin debate on its version of the legislation. Support for the plan was slightly lower in the half of the survey conducted after the Senate vote.

Prior to this, support for the plan had never fallen below 41%. Last week, support for the plan was at 47%. Two weeks ago, the effort was supported by 45% of voters.

Intensity remains stronger among those who oppose the push to change the nation’s health care system: 21% Strongly Favor the plan while 43% are Strongly Opposed.

Public support for socialized medicine has steadily eroded and has now hit its lowest point ever, dropping 9 points in just one week!  Any intelligent observer would have to conclude that while the 2008 campaign generalities and platitudes sounded nice to some naive people, now that Americans have gotten a good look at the reality of such a program they have decided that it is not in their best interest.

Given that, and the fact that the congress is allegedly comprised of our “public servants”, one would expect the House and Senate to drop the matter.  But they will not.  Why?  Because this is not about giving the people what they want.  This does not even have anything to do with a concern for the health care needs of Americans.

This is about the power and control that comes with government dependency.  Neal Boortz summed it up well today:

ObamaCare = Entitlement = Dependency = Control = Power

This is the biggest power grab in the history of the republic.  It is time for us to do some heavy lifting.  It is time for us to do our part to earn the right to share the label of American with people like Nathan Hale and Joseph Warren and Samuel Adams.

Let’s not let them down, my brothers and sisters.  Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

These statist bastards have no idea that they have truly awakened the sleeping giant.  Let’s make our forefathers proud.