Iowahawk Geographic: The Secret Life of Climate Researchers
by IowahawkNarrator
Our very planet depends on them. Yet they remain nature’s most elusive scientific species, inhabiting some of the world’s most delicate and daunting academic environments. But thanks to new breakthroughs in high speed cameras and email files, metascientists are finally beginning to understand their mysterious behaviors and complex social interactions. Tonight on Iowahawk Geographic: step inside the Secret Life of the Climate Researchers.
French Horn Fanfare Theme
Fast-cut montage of walrus mating with polar bear, astronomer peering through telescope into neighbor’s window, cheetahs chasing penguins on the Serengeti, scientists filling out NSF grant proposals
Dah dat dat DAAAH dat, dah daht duh dah dee-dah dee dah-dah!
Narrator
This is the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, home of one of the largest nesting populations of climate scientists in Europe.
Gentle ant’s-eye scene of idyllic campus lawn, strewn about with drunken mating undergraduates
Each year it attracts magnificent migratory flocks of graduate students, adjuncts and visiting faculty from across the northern hemisphere.
Shots of jumbo jets landing at Heathrow; herds of climate researchers busily milling at Duty Free shops, retrieving baggage, phoning for prearranged limo service
Within minutes of arriving on campus, the migratory researchers approach the entrance of the Climate Research Unit and perform the secret credential dance, fiercely displaying their prominent curriculum vitae. This signals to the security drone that they can be trusted with the sacred electronic lanyard badge that will grant them entrance to the hive’s inner sanctum.
During the upcoming research season, this hive alone will produce over 6 million metric tons of grant-sustaining climate data guano, but until recently little was known about the elusive genus of homo scientifica living inside. Where do they come from? What strange force draws them here year after year? In order to unravel the mystery, Iowahawk Geographic documentary filmmaker David Burge undertook a painstaking one-week project to finally capture the climate researchers in their native habitat.
In this exclusive footage, Burge warily approaches the hive’s security drone, disguising himself as smelly graduate student. Burge has theorized that as a member of the lowest stratum in the hive’s social system, the drone likely enjoys partying. He reaches into his backpack and offers the drone a pint of Guinness and a small bag of weed in exchange for the hive’s internal security tapes and email files. Success.
The never-before seen security tapes obtained by Burge provide a rare glimpse into the inner working of the climate research hive and its amazing guano production. In this sequence, we see one group of researchers entering the hive each carrying a datum they have retrieved from a distant climate measuring station. This is the cause of much excitement among their colleagues, who buzz around in a grant-writing frenzy.
Infrared heat map film of highly agitated researchers
But there’s a problem: as the worker researchers attempt to store each raw datum into the neat honeycomb hockey stick structure provided by the hive’s Alpha Grantwriter, they discover that few will fit. The infrared shows them growing cool with fear. This signals the climate researcher’s instinctive behavior to begin viciously beating, rolling and normalizing the data into submission. According to Dr. Nigel V.H. Oldham, professor emeritus at Oxford University’s Centre for Metascience, this violent data dance is what makes climate researchers unique among breeds of scientists.
Professor Nigel V.H. Oldham
Like other species in the order homo scientifica, the climate researcher gathers and organizes data to lure grant money to the hive. In contrast to those other species, however, the climate researcher has evolved a set of complex violent behaviors to insure any data leaving the hive is perfectly adapted to nature’s most lucrative and sweetest grants. It really is a marvel of natural selection, and explains why the climate researcher continues to thrive in any kind of weather condition.
Narrator
Many of those behaviors are on display in the security film, as we see a sexless group of drone graduate students processing a raw datum with saliva, sawdust and Fortran code. After each iteration the time series is presented to the Alpha Grantwriter to see if fits inside his graph. Several graduate drones die of exhaustion, but the data eventually fit the template.
Next the Alpha Grantwriter flies to an international climate research conference with the completed PowerPoint template, where he will share his guano with other Alpha Grantwriters over cocktails in the hotel lounge. This is a process metascientists refer to as “peer review.”
Professor Nigel V.H. Oldham
Among climate researchers, peer review seems to serve three purposes. First, it rewards the hives that have the most successful data torturers. Second it singles out mutant hives for elimination. Third, it allows the Alpha Grantwriters to expense drinks.
Narrator
The Alpha Grantwriter in our hive has been very successful indeed. He has earned three publications, a keynote address, and attracts the attention of a suitor from the symbiotic grant-giving predator genus Lucra Ecologica Hysterica. The suitor’s grant bags are bulging with carbon credits and tax revenues harvested using the hive’s last graphs, and the pair once again engage in their annual cross-pollination ritual. They relax with a cigarette, and return to their respective hives: the Grantwriter with fresh money, the Grantgiver to Washington or Brussels with new carbon tax proposals. The circle of life is completed.
But life is not always so easy inside the hive of the climate researcher. Occasionally the sanctity of the hive is breached by a predator from the species Methodica Skeptica Scientifica, who threatens the hive with demands to see their raw data.
security film of ominous skeptic infiltrating the hive
In this rare footage, the invading skeptic is repelled by a swarm of drones before he can reach the entombed data. He makes another attempt, but the Alpha Grantwriter has called in reinforcements from the grantgiver hive and the New York Times.
Climate Researchers
Hissssss hisssssss hisssssssss
Narrator
The ear-piercing screech of the swarm warns the intruder that they will cut off his peer review unless he retreats. But the the hungry skeptic is not so easily dissuaded, and returns to the hive with a Freedom of Information Act form demanding a copy of the hive’s raw data.
This sends the climate researcher drones into a wild frenzy as they scramble to find and conceal the scent of the preprocessed data. To bide time the Alpha Grantwriter offers the skeptic a copy of the hockey stick graph. The skeptic threatens a lawsuit with his stinger. Thinking quickly, the Alpha Grantwriter performs an elaborate dance, communicating that the original data has been eaten, possibly by graduate drone. He presents the skeptic with the dead bodies of 10 drones as a peace offering.
Finally stymied in his efforts to reach the data, the skeptic flies away. The hive lives on.
Professor Nigel V.H. Oldham
The climate researcher is in some sense a milestone in evolutionary biology. Ever since Darwin, we have understood that a particular species adapts to its environmental reality. Now for the first time, we are seeing evidence that environmental reality is adapting to a particular species. It’s not really rocket science. Well okay, I suppose it’s really not science at all.
Narrator
Join us next time on Iowahawk Geographic, when we go in search of the outer limits of the economic galaxy with “Stimulus-X: The Black Hole of the Beltway.”
38 Comments
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Big Hollywood, Michael Chavez and DNC DUDES, Mr. Pink. Mr. Pink said: Iowahawk Geographic: The Secret Life of Climate Researchers http://tinyurl.com/y94dr33 [...]
IowaHawk is great!
Love 'em!
http://cafepress.com/rightwingstuff
As a lowly graduate student drone myself, this picture of the scientific ecosystem is precise and reproducible; I am awed by the Iowahawk's keen perceptions. Rather than becoming an Alpha Grantwriter myself, I think I'll look for another ecosystem: Wall Street investment banker, perhaps?
This article was manufactured entirely from WIN!
Don't you think it's a little too early to be talking about all of this? Jeez, they all just got busted yesterday, have a heart.
Great work and you did this at considerable personal risk.
This is dangerous and unstable big game, known to attack without provacation.
I eagerly await publication from Scientific American.
I always look forward to reading Iowahawk's hilariously accurate articles. Thanks and keep 'em coming!
ah, for the simple days of the drunken mating undergraduate!
Is there a use for this species when we cull the hive, or just fertilizer?
The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam By John Coleman
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/385747...
Note: John Coleman (w/Frank Batten) co-founded The Weather Channel in 1981. Coleman called 'global warming' a scam years ago!
That was perfect Iowahawk! Always look forward to your post!
Next stop..Evolution. That other "settled science".
Very good
You might get an Oscar nod for this reality show
Meh, even Meteorology and other Geosciencist of the real world (ie, NOT the Euro-educated elite or the IPCC) know that yes, global warming is happening…. just not exactly to the drastic point that the UN and IPCC like to claim it is…. and no, we are not going to drown because the ice caps are melting… it goes against physics (even my Atmos. Dynamics professor that has their Doctorates from MIT in physics told us all that).
David Attenborough's voice inside my head!
Pay no attention to the truth behind the Iron Curtain for I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL AL!!!
Once again, just have to bow to the IowaHawk. He's right on target.
Jonah Goldberg observed on the same topic several years ago that the Vatican gets a bum wrap on the Galileo charge: the Papal court "threw the booklet" at him, sentencing him to house arrest in a comfortable villa, where he continued to write books and correspond to others, and receive and entertain visitors.
Goldberg's main point was that Galileo's real accusers were not Churchmen, but the "consensus" natural scientists of his day. Galileo's theories about a heliocentric system threatened to invalidate their own work built upon the established Aristotelian natural science. Their savage attacks on Galileo and later Kepler seem rather restrained in light of the chicanery and spite revealed in the East Anglian CRU e-mails.
Yup, that's what innoculated me against the virus these pests spread
[...] "The Secret Life of Climate Researchers." [...]
I know someone who does consulting work for a famous U.S. research uni that does a lot of medical research. he said it is all about grant writing and govt money. The system is loaded with waste, fraud, shoddy research and incompetence. Real research is about #10 on the list.
These GW bullies should be prosecuted for what they did to the public and to skecptics aka real scientists. Al Gore should be sued for fraud.
It's true! It really happens this way!
The same people who told us the moon was made of cheese. That was a disapointment.
When "Question Skepcism" is the rallying cry,
like it is for Global warming fascists,
it's a clue that the whole structure is rotten.
Another great write-up, IowaHawk — Thanks every so much.
I see a series two climate scientists one a beleiver one a doubter chasing some wild apperition each week. Alas are two hapless investigators are thwarted each time by EX data. The mysterious disapearence of anything substantative. Oops sorry its been done
Since we are finding out that pretty much everything from the lying liberal left is a lie then what's to say that these "scientists" are even who they say they are, maybe they're just janitors.
Not if he's a conservative he wont.
lol..Yea really! Can't we be just a little more sympathetic here, I mean you all know how sensitive those lefties are. Especially whenever they get busted.
Those scientists seem actually more like gang members: Police Round Up Notorious Gang "The Hockey Stick CRU" in International Sting Operation http://optoons.blogspot.com/2009/11/police-round-...
This reminds me of "second hand smoke science" from the EPA. I'm not saying that second hand smoke is good, but the EPA of the USA conducted a study but the negative effects were not negative enough. What did the EPA do? They change the results to match the hypothesis. No one, including the leftest WHO could reproduce the results of the EPA study. Today the WHO warms of Malaria moving to the Northern Latitudes, ignoring the fact that malaria has been in the Northern Latitudes (Alaska, Russia, Siberia, China, and so on) in the past but has decreased in recent decades. Funny, the EPA study is the consensus sighted by the world today.
What a sad ending……….ENJOYED THE READ….Except for the part about the colony lives on!!!!!!! You could've omitted/edited that part!!!!!!!!!!!! Now they'll dig new tunnels and their plague will multiply like the pestilence it is!!!!!!!!!!
While you are all busy chasing the Global Warming Scandal…
San Diego ACORN Document Dump Scandal
http://usataxpayer.org/view.asp?Get=obamaacorn
Hackers Expose Global Warming Scam!
http://usataxpayer.org/viewx.asp?Get=globalwarmin...
While you are all busy chasing the Global Warming Scandal…
San Diego ACORN Document Dump Scandal
http://usataxpayer.org/view.asp?Get=obamaacorn
Hackers Expose Global Warming Scam!
http://usataxpayer.org/viewx.asp?Get=globalwarmin...
it was about the money and getting the girl in the 60's
it was about the money for the amazon in the 70's
its about hybrid and electric cars and money now
its always been about the money
And it is not like they were asking the entire human population to lower their standard of living…oh wait.
[...] MORE [...]
WTF is wrong w/ Evolution? Are you a Creationist?
Yes I am and watch your mouth.
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