Readers might be interested in this editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
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21 responses so far ↓
Daniel Bailey // January 28, 2010 at 4:27 am |
“Lead, follow or get out of the way.”
This should serve as a challenge to the denier/skeptic community: to cut the rhetoric, to speak with substance and clarity. No more sophistry. No more diffusion or obfuscations allowed.
Be part of the solution or you are part of the problem.
Tamino, you and Gavin are saints. How you put up with humanity and endure our worst is beyond me. Keep up the good & thankless work!
Ray, dhogaza, BPL, David B Benson, Hank Roberts (apologies to the scores of others with positive contributions; I’m trying to be brief): I have learned so much from you all as well. Thanks for caring enough to share your insights & learnings, both here and on RC.
A longtime lurker, one of many who wishes to take a stand and be counted as faceless and nameless in this issue no more.
[Response: Gavin is a saint. I'm a cranky old S.O.B.]
Gavin's Pussycat // January 28, 2010 at 5:05 am |
Incredible. Who is this journalist? He/she ‘gets’ it.
Precisely. There is no way not to bet. Rejecting modelling etc. is itself a model too: the ‘Ostrich Model’. Not the way to bet.
Ray Ladbury // January 28, 2010 at 12:49 pm |
Daniel,
Welcom to the fray. Climate science is only the latest front in the war against the human tendency against self-delusion and the tendency of predators amongst us to exploit it. Don’t get discouraged. The battle is as old as humanity.
Remember, as Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you’ll eventually be found out.”
Adrian // January 28, 2010 at 4:15 pm |
Daniel said “This should serve as a challenge to the denier/skeptic community: to cut the rhetoric, to speak with substance and clarity. No more sophistry. No more diffusion or obfuscations allowed”
I report with some sadness that the first reaction I witnessed from a long-time friend and member of the denier/skeptic community was that this article is just “a political fluff piece – the battle for the American middle ground is hotting up nicely (unlike the planet….)”.
While he was clearly trying to ‘wind me up’ with the last part (I think he believes that the planet is warming, he just doesn’t believe the details because of ‘too many vested interests and big funding opportunities’), I do find it harder and harder not to be discouraged.
With that in mind, I am waiting with some trepidation to see how this news is spun by the various camps. According to the BBC:
No doubt, in no time flat, this will turn into howls of “I told you so – it’s all a hoax” and so-called journalists will make things up about what Commissioner Graham Smith actually said.
Does anyone here have a feel for how long Sir Muir Russell’s full independent review of CRU will take? Will a positive result (the data is sound) make the slightest difference?
Gavin's Pussycat // January 28, 2010 at 7:05 pm |
What I find amazing is that this statement comes before the Sir Muir investigation is complete. It is clear that the Information Commissioner’s Office knows nothing that the rest of us don’t know.
“… messages hacked in November showed …”
Basing a finding of unlawfulness on ‘evidence’ with the ontological status of maliciously planted rumors? By a government agency? And they even admit it!
Ugh. Any British commenters, tell me I’m wrong.
Gavin's Pussycat // January 28, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Yep, I think I got it pinned. It’s about changing the law! The ICO is unhappy about FOI violations expiring within six months. It has nothing to do with climatology (and nobody likes scientists anyway, right?). It has nothing to do with ‘evidence’. But it’s the perfect storm for lobbying for removing the time limit.
The Times:
Ugh ugh.
Marco // January 29, 2010 at 6:46 am
I’m not a British commenter (as you know), but I did check the ICO’s homepage.
And despite several press releases the last few days, there’s none containing Gavin Smith’s supposed statement. Odd.
Gavin's Pussycat // January 29, 2010 at 8:03 am |
Good questions all. Sir Muir himself says
“My first task is to scope the project, gather the information I need and source the additional expertise that will be required in order to investigate fully the allegations that have been made. Once this has happened I will be in a position to confirm timescales for publishing the review.”
So he doesn’t know… could be long. Whether it will make any difference, I long ago (1981) read an article in Astronomy Magazine called The Unslandering of Sloppy Pierre. And this. If this be any indication, we may look forward to an article called “The Unslandering of Tricky Phil” appearing somewhere around 2209 C.E. :-(
Adrian // January 28, 2010 at 4:17 pm |
I note that the quote from the beeb is missing in my last comment. It should read:
“Officials said messages hacked in November showed that requests under the Freedom of Information Act were “not dealt with as they should have been”.”
MartinM // January 29, 2010 at 8:19 pm |
The reporting of the ICO’s statement is rather irritating. All of the reports I’ve seen so far accuse the CRU of hiding data, but as far as I can tell, the FOIA request in question didn’t actually ask for any data.
Phil. // January 28, 2010 at 8:28 pm |
The quote from the ICO specifically refer to FOI requests concerning Briffa’s dealings with the IPCC report. The only emails that I could find that referred to that requested appeared to show a good faith effort to find them (if they existed).
The original request was sent to the CRU FOI officer, David Palmer also later emails show that he received advice from the ICO itself that the IPCC wasn’t subject to UK FOI requests!
Gavin's Pussycat // January 29, 2010 at 6:58 am |
Phil, link? That’s interesting. Was that before or after the ‘deletion’ mails?
There are some other things that don’t make sense in (the lack of) context. See
http://ijish.livejournal.com/1790.html?thread=4606#t4606
(And why didn’t Jones, who is a smart guy, cover his tracks by deleting the ‘delete’ mails as well? That’s the biggest mystery.)
Jim Galasyn // January 29, 2010 at 2:30 am |
OT, but what’s up with the comment moderation hiatus at RC? I’m starting to have withdrawal symptoms.
dhogaza // January 29, 2010 at 5:31 am |
Another hack attempt?
Or maybe the entire RC admin community is deeply engaged in refuting Watts’ rejoinder to Menne et al?
Oh, wait, “whine whine” isn’t exactly a grey-matter sucking diversion. Hmmm…
Who knows. We’ll learn, soon enough.
My bet’s on some sort of DOS or hack attack.
Didactylos // January 29, 2010 at 11:33 am |
But everything seems to be working apart from that. Maybe they just got tired of reading all the asinine drivel they have to moderate every day?
Or more likely the renewed CRU publicity, and Watt’s braindead comments once again drove hordes of idiots towards the site, and the moderators just can’t draw the strength to separate the wheat from the vast, vast quantities of chaff.
Or maybe Gavin took a vacation. $DEITY knows he deserves one!
Jim Galasyn // January 29, 2010 at 2:52 pm
They’re back. Shakes are abating.
Deech56 // January 29, 2010 at 10:46 am |
Post at WU: “New paper in Nature on CO2 amplification: ‘it’s less than we thought’”
Isn’t touting a paper* based on modeling using millennial temperature reconstructions (“hockey stick” data) and CO2 from ice cores on a site that sows doubt on all of these a bit incoherent? Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
* No, I take that back – an article about the paper.
Scott A. Mandia // January 29, 2010 at 11:18 am |
Cap and trade has already worked in the US with regard to sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions. SO2 emissions lead to acid rain and during the 1980s, acid rain was devastating lakes and forests in the east. In 1988, Congress passed a cap and trade scheme to reduce these emissions by 50%. By 2004, regulated polluters reduced their emissions by 40% more than required! The Dept. of Energy estimates that the cost to limit emissions ended up being a mere 0.6 percent of the polluters operating expenses. (Gore, 2009)
Kevin McKinney // January 29, 2010 at 2:26 pm |
Yes, and there’s some cognitive dissonance here, too–all those brave free-market advocates out there are utterly opposed to a market-based solution.
Go figure. . .
dhogaza // January 29, 2010 at 3:18 pm |
That’s because they’re opposed to doing *anything*.
climate criminal // January 30, 2010 at 9:45 am |
Tamino,
Gavin is clearly a saint and you may be ‘a cranky old S.O.B.’, but the world clearly is in desperate need of more like you and Gavin.
Your analysis is often* enlightening and always welcome.
*I have to admit that sometimes your explanations leave me none the wiser. But that’s my problem, not yours.