Discussion > Mann and his side order Cook visit Bristol Lew: Watt's to be done?
Since Mann is so certain about the future you could try a question that will get a prediction out of him, but like a psychic show he is sure to sidestep questions that will catch him out.
"Mr Mann in ten years time we'll know something more about the climate pattern, and one of us here will be saying "wow I was wrong" , can you conceive that that person could be you ?"
..and if you can, then how can you be so certain about advising today's policy makers should take such extreme action ?
.. Would you agree that all significant spending of taxpayer money should be evaluated by cost benefit analysis ?
stewgreen
Have final got round to writing up my notes on Cook’s presentation last Friday. My summary is as follows.
John Cook started the presentation by trying to establish his expert authority on the global warming hypothesis. Then he let slip that he does not believe all global warming is from rising greenhouse gas levels. The centerpiece was the 97.4% scientific consensus paper where he was lead author. But, as Cook himself admitted, the survey looked for support for the most banal form of global warming, and the surveyed papers were not all written by climate scientists. Yet Barak Obama is enacting policy based on the false impression of a scientific consensus of dangerous warming.
Then in dissing an alternative viewpoint from actual scientists, Cook has implicitly undermined years of hard campaigning and entryism by green activists in getting nearly every scientific body in the world to make propaganda statements in support of the catastrophic global warming hypothesis and the necessity of immediate action to save the planet. Cook then parodied his own “four Hiroshima bombs a second” widget, before finishing off with a flickering gross misrepresentation of the sceptics, a number of whom were in the room listening politely.
About the final question was from someone who asked about why nearly all the questions were coming from sceptics, when the vast majority of the people in the room were in support of the “science”. At the end there was polite applause, and the room quickly emptied. I think the answer to the lack of questions was the embarrassment people felt. If John Cook is now the leading edge of climate alarmism, then the game is up.
My fuller report is at
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/09/23/notes-on-john-cooks-presentation-at-bristol-university/
Kevin Marshall
stewgreen:
Since Mann is so certain about the future you could try a question …
Thanks for the suggestion but we would have been wasting our time to prepare any such thing. No dissenting or even probing questions were allowed at all. One of the worst events of its kind I have ever endured. But I got involved afterwards in an animated discussion with a fervent Mann supporter sitting next to me as the next best thing! He has read this blog and CA quite a lot and said "I recognise the name Richard Drake - I thought you were a nutcase but you turn out to be quite sensible!" The importance of one-to-one meetings was a major emphasis throughout this time.
When I eventually came out of the building, one of the last to leave, I made a point of shaking Stephan Lewandowsky by the hand and telling him that he had diagnosed my parapsychology in Recursive Fury on the basis of what Foxgoose had written! He seemed genuinely concerned and apologetic. I then had quite a long chat with John Cook outside about cartooning, cricket and Christianity - asking him how the latter could possibly be consistent with calling people 'denier' and building such a demonology of them. I did say that I appreciated John's attitude to the dissenters that asked questions on Friday and I meant it. But there seemed to me (and to Josh, with whom I'm discussed this in the car on the way to Bristol earlier) to be a conflict between that and his other language. Cook did seem to listen on this. We'll see.
Richard Drake
Richard, I agree, a most depressing night. The "talk" was obviously the same one he has been giving for a long time (hence his excuse that some of his data was not up to date..what a surprise) It was geared mainly to an American audience, and where I was in the gallery, several people couldn't manage to stay to the end. Having made the effort to go, I did, but was scrabbling in my bag to find something more interesting to read! The only reason I stayed to the bitter end was that we had been promised (By Lewandowsky) a full and vibrant Q & A. A few sycophantic questions were allowed and that was it!
Sorry I couldn't make it to the pub afterwards. I did enjoy my brief meet up with some or all of you over the 2 nights though.
Jo Beaumont
well done for you Richard - too funny about the foxgoose misquote..
Cook and Marriott were to blame for that, the 'researched' all the comments
I
I avoided Cook/Lew because they cannot see what they did was against all ethics/ of their field and was contemptible, pointless for me to talk to them
Barry Woods
The scenario of stagemanaged questions makes sense.
- I expected that would use the Cook lecture to identify "troublemaker questioners" and so screen them out of questioning Mann.
- However don't give up. Often such things like obvious planted questions do plant a seed of true believers in the room .. It's the same with people sucked into other scams/ponzi schemes; on the outside people continue to defend the scam, but you can see inside the truth is dawning and then they cease to promote the scam.
stewgreen
there were only a few questions, mainly because the organiser wanted to get on with the book signings I think.
Cook's had lots more questions, I was going to ask one of Mann, but it was too late.
Barry Woods
"fervent Mann supporter" = Mannekin? ;-)
HaroldW
Richard, Jo, Kevin, Barry (and others, listing only the names from this page) --
Thanks very much for your reports. It's almost like having attended myself.
HaroldW
Kevin, I came to the same conclusion, re: Cook, carrying the alarmist torch (http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/secret-skepticalscience/). How else would someone like Cook qualify for giving a university-supported public talk? In the service of climate alarmism.
shub
When I eventually came out of the building, one of the last to leave, I made a point of shaking Stephan Lewandowsky by the hand and telling him that he had diagnosed my parapsychology in Recursive Fury on the basis of what Foxgoose had written!
Are you sure he didn't swallow his tongue then?
:)
shub
:)
First he seemed surprised that someone had recognised him and wanted to shake him by the hand. And second, he seemed genuinely concerned about the error, as he believed me it was. I'm not claiming this will move the earth more than a few fractions of a degree but I did feel I had done my bit!
Richard Drake
I posted the question elsewhere but maybe here would be more appropriate.
Would anyone who attended both events like to make an estimate of how many BH readers attended Mann's Bristol talk, relative to the number who attended Dr Salby's House of Commons talk?
Martin A
I've got a babysitter for this evening, so I can make it now.
can somebody tell me any plans before hand, coffee, etc. here or tweet @barryjwoods