Discussion > Climate Websites - Fracturing of the Fake Consensus?
One of my (lost) edits was that WE did not use the words "I am a passionate guy" in this particular thread. Although he used (and has often used) variants of it to justify his behaviour.
Other edits were mainly grammar and typos, but I did add that Dr Judith Curry's website is (and this one) are admirable examples of even-handedness.
johanna
Tallbloke has been through the same thing with Willis E. It comes with Willis' abrasive style and skeptics should disagree strongly with each other occasionally. That's how science is done.
michael hart
I totally agree that there should be no leeway given to a theory because it is from one side of an argument or another but any disagreement should at least be done in a civil manner as would be expected of a man of learning.
Some of the comments that I have seen in relation to a specific theory are unbecoming of a scientific body. If we as the populace are to afford some respect towards the body of science, the institutions and even the individuals concerned then as far as I'm concerned the bar has to be raised a lot higher than it currently rests.
By their very silence on the matter the institutions condone the actions of the individuals concerned and have no reply to a charge of ungainly conduct by association. Not a great advertisement for the future intake of students to particular area's of education.
There well may be differences in cultural understanding of civil discourse but I shudder at the manner in which some so called educated individuals present themselves in what should be a scientific debate.
Lord Beaverbrook
See my comment Jul 5, 2014 of 6:58 PM reproduced here for convenience.
"I have been following Dr David Evans proposition over at Jonova’s blog and the resulting exchanges in the comments. Whatever you may think of Dr. Evans theory, I think that his approach by releasing his ideas for examination by his peers (and anyone one else) is a revolutionary step forward in the development and communication of new theories in science which would otherwise not see the light of day. I believe to bypass the “learned journals” in this way, accept criticism and correction, may eventually produce some very good science which may then achieve wider dissemination and acceptance. Those who’s agenda is to suppress good science and new theories would be thwarted. I think that Dr Evans approach will be a real game changer.
I did not comment at length on the exchange in the comments and the output from WUWT but Johanna's comments above exactly mirror mine. Some people seem to think the battle is won. It is far from being won and unity and restraint is still required. This spat has given a free hit to the opposition. This exchange had considerably lowered my respect for WUWT, WE and LS. Any serious work produced such as that by Dr Evans and Principia Scientific's well qualified contributors deserves respect full and objective consideration by suitably qualified peers. There seem to be too many ego's exposed in this exchange. P.S. All credit to Jo and David for their remarkable restraint.
Ross Lea
I can see why Steve Goddard caught flack but I don't really understand the stuff aimed at David Evens. I suspect that everyone's tired and tetchy. Might not have happened if the two hadn't come so close together and just before Las Vegas. However there never has been a sceptic consensus and I prefer it that way. Consensus is something that shouldn't need saying once the evidence is strong enough to deserve it.
WUWT is less friendly mainly as a result of its success. The more people, the more views have to be covered and everyone ends up disappointed. Whinging and carping ensues and the mods get grumpy dealing with it. The alternative is the group sycophancy and aggressive exclusion of any dissenting opinion you see on warmist sites. It gets boring very quickly and people drift away.
It’s worth mentioning that sometimes a naïve question is just that and not troll bait. Both sides are too quick to shut down genuine debate with cries of troll and it is unconstructive. If someone is a pain then ignore them or reply with a sensible reply. One big reason to not exclude the trolls is because they give us someone to chew on and that way we might not chew on each other.
TinyCO2
Thoughts?
Jul 7, 2014 at 5:40 AM | Registered Commenterjohanna
After a very difficult business meeting, where the angry customer listed all our broken promises, missed delivery dates and so on, my boss said "Martin - that was a really terrible meeting. What did you think of it?".
I replied "I though it was an excellent meeting. Now we know exactly why they are unhappy and exactly what we have to do to correct things". My boss replied: "Martin. You can find rubies in a dunghill".
I read that on D-day, after the American paratroops had landed all over the place, anywhere but planned, the commanders regarded it as a catastrophe.
Historians later took a different view. The Germans could not make any sense of the reports coming in from everywhere about troops being sighted and attacks taking place. The confusion of the German defenders hampered their efforts far more than the Allies, who had their plan and continued to work to it.
Martin A
The point I was wanting to make in the posting above, in case it is not clear, is that it is not necessarily a bad thing that sceptic websites and sceptic commenters are not always in complete accord.
The fact that 'climate science' almost never criticises itself is one of the give-aways as to its nature.
Martin A
Martin A
I was on the other end of a meeting like that, The company I was working for used a 16x4 TTL RAM as a fast scratch pad for performance we had a custom specification to buy parts from an American manufacturer at the time very well known for TT who regarded themselves (the UK operation anyway) as infallible.. Anyway we'd had huge problems with these parts corrupting data but we couldn't identify why. We developed several tets which reduced the problems and put these parts into quarantine. A chance remark by a system test engineer solved the puzzle. Under certain conditions of enables, I think there were 3, the device would write when disabled. We happened to have testers which could vary timings in small incréments. I think we used 1ns. All the components in quarantine were retested with 97% failures (over 90 anyway) and all the board rejects were returned to the suppliers.
There was a meeting with the supplier few days later with guys flown over from the States and their non-technical guys. By this time they had retested all the parts with no problem their testers did not have the resolution ours did. The non technical people were really agressive and almost banging shoes on tables. In the afternoon us engineers went through the test we'd developed, lots of what we knew as schmoo plots and work with oscilloscopes and the case was clear cut.
The end result was that there were much better relations with that supplier who bought several new testers from Fairchild.
Anyway this ramble is supposed to highlight a couple of points.
1. No matter how good your track record is you can get things horribly wrong (Watts v Goddard)
2. Just because you've got a loud voice (a lot of fans on the blog) you are not necessarily right
3. Quietly working together and accepting that, despite what you think, you might be wrong is usually the best way to get the answer.
Several contibutors at WUWT think that they are infallible and deserve the same special treatment they get from Anthony Watts by all other blogs.
I've only read the initial post at Jo Nova's because after reading it I expected a tornado of virtual shoes banging on virtual tables.
SandyS
Thanks for responses. One of the things that drove me to putting this up for discussion is that some sceptics do exactly what we accuse the opposition of - i.e. punishing the diverger from the path more harshly than the opponent.
I laid out the kerfuffle about David Evans' work, not because I hold any brief for it (I have no idea how good it is, just know that Evans is very bright, and honest) - but because I wonder if we are moving to a new phase, where the loose coalition of sceptic bloggers is starting to unravel. For years, conflict between sceptic bloggers and their adherents has been muted, for the greater good. I must say, I always thought that it was a miracle of self-restraint - with a few notable exceptions, but let's not go there now.
My thesis is that the greater confidence of sceptics, and the turning of the political tide, has had the well known political effect of permitting people to openly say what they have been thinking all along.
And yes, the level of civility has been a casuality.
johanna
I forgot to mention the mother of sceptic sites, Steve Milloy's Junkscience, which got me interested in the climate science scam long before there were any sites devoted to the topic.
Milloy is by all acounts a prickly character, a loner whom his preschool teacher would describe as "does not play well with others." But, he is also an exceptionally bright polymath whose work on DDT and chemophobia paved the way for many others. He's been putting it out there for decades at his own expense. Recently, he revealed that the US EPA were getting people to inhale particulates as part of an experiment to show that they were potentially fatal.
I posted a comment at WUWT years ago, following some slurs on him, to the effect that Milloy is far from being a nutcase, and is exceptionally bright and thorough in his work. Some softening followed. But, they're never going to be attuned, and I suspect that Milloy would rather stick pins in his eyeballs than go to Burning Man.
johanna
I don't think it's confidence, though sometimes I think they see their efforts climbing up the political/credibility hill sabotaged by rabble like behaviour below. I'm sure the Bish doesn't like us griping at Dr Betts for instance. I think they're hoping that eventually sensible debate will win respect. I'm not so sure, being loud and outragious seems to get more notice.
I think much of the friction is exhaustion and I suspect it will only get worse. Let's say Evans is right, it could be a decade or more before it can be confirmed by data. Even if there's no warming in the next five years, there will never be a 'goodness, the sceptics were right' moment. Political behaviour has little to do with the science pro or anti CAGW and the only saving grace is the people in charge of the budget will eventually slide climate change off the agenda as a waste of money.
Warmists are in the same boat, only they've been at a near standstill for longer.
TinyCO2
Johanna: ‘My thesis is that the greater confidence of sceptics, and the turning of the political tide, has had the well known political effect of permitting people to openly say what they have been thinking all along.’
Another interpretation could be that the lack of political traction for the sceptical cause has prompted a faction to turn more ‘fundamentalist’ and use the sun angle to boost its influence, similar to the Tea Party repudiation of mainstream Republicanism.
One aspect of the global warming debate that I don’t think has had a lot of attention is the asymmetry around the way warmists and sceptics deal with the science versus mitigation.
In general, warmists seem to be more united on the science than on the details of mitigation, while sceptics seem to be less united on the science and more united in their opposition to mitigation.
This suggests that the ‘fracturing’ that occurred over Evans’ scientific speculations has less to do with climate scepticism per se, and is more about the defence of established interests, exacerbated by the narcissism of small differences and egos clashing in a competitive arena.
And climate blogs of all stripes are hardly strangers to vitriol, so no surprises there.
Brendan H
Over the last few weeks we have seen some ugly and public spats between people on sceptical websites.
First, there was Steve Goddard (Tony Heller) against almost everyone else, especially the 800 pound gorilla, WUWT. In due course, Anthony Watts apologised for getting it wrong, but meanwhile there was a lot of vitriol thrown around.
Then, there was the saga of Dr David Evans' new work on solar influences on climate, presented at Jo Nova's. For those who are not aware of the background, Evans is Nova's husband, a polymath of outstanding ability, and used to get paid by the climate change bureaucracy in Australia to build models. He decided that it was all wrong, quit, and after years of work is unveiling a new model about solar influences. I'm not going any further on that aspect - it's way beyond my pay scale. But I can say that there has never been any credible slur on Evans' integrity or extreme braininess.
He decided to release his work in stages, on Jo's website. The stated intention was to lay out the background, explain the reasoning process, etc, in bite-sized chunks for readers. At the end, he would release the data and code in a format (Excel) that would be accessible and testable to anyone who understood what he was talking about.
After a couple of preliminary posts, war erupted. "Gentleman" Willis Eschenbach (WE) demanded all the code and data RIGHT NOW. Elder statesman of the Sun Leif Svalgaard ((LS) erupted, claming that the whole exercise was wrong because it was not based on his preferred data.
Jo Nova tartly told WE that he was not "entitled" to anything RIGHT NOW because the research was not taxpayer funded. Further, it would be released as promised, but was still being tidied up and updated. Or, as we Australians sometimes say, p*** off. Willis flounced out, saying that he would not darken their doors again until all the data and code was released. But such an insult to his importance was not forgotten - see more below.
Meanwhile, LS posted over and over again that it was GIGO. And I don't mean a dozen times. I mean dozens of times.
Over at WUWT, on 28 June David Archibald posted an article about the topic, and a volcano erupted. WE claimed that Evans was no better than Michael Mann ("I'm a passionate guy" being his defence to this slur). LS continued to post that it was GIGO, and then claimed that what Evans was doing was close to fraud. Chris Monckton chimed in with his usual claims of libel, along with some facts. WE alleged that Monckton was trying to take away his meagre retirement savings and the roof over his head.
A rebuttal was published at Jo Nova's on 6 July.
The reason for the title of this post is that there may have been a false illusion of consensus among sceptics until now. Perhaps it is the fact that we are gaining ground that has finally exposed the cracks. Of course, Rog Tallbloke knows all about this, and I hope that he comments. More generally, while I am sure that the Bish does not want this to turn into a forum for haters of any particular site, it seems to me that WUWT is suffering the price of getting big - you just can't even monitor, let alone control, what happens any more.
Thoughts?