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As someone who deeply respects David Brin (the author), I am deeply disappointed in this post. The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspi

by cletus 17y ago

As someone who deeply respects David Brin (the author), I am deeply disappointed in this post. The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspiracy. If they say something that's wrong, it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of who said it. The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically. It's far easier to kill the messenger. As Homer Simpson said "let's go burn down the observatory so this never happens again" (after the meteor strike). Not that I'm saying Fox isn't or can't be biased but to dismiss everything they ever broadcast just because it's Fox is a far more untenable and ludicrous position. The bias here is even more obvious when a comparison is made between those skeptical of HGCC to the tobacco proponents of years gone past. Apart from the obvious emotional connotations this attempts to conjure let me put it this way: the Roman Catholic Church was wrong and Galileo was right. But that doesn't automatically make Catholics wrong in any subsequent dispute. The biggest fallout from the CRU email hack was how it shone a light on what is basically a subversion of the scientific process: prestigious journals failing to enforce their standards (Nature requires publication of raw data but published AGW articles without it and ignored requests by third parties for Nature to procure it from the authors), blacklisting of journals that publish climate-skeptic works (mcCarthyism basically), failure of the peer review process, selective sampling, obstructionism and deliberate efforts to defeat FOI requests. This alone should be serious cause for concern from anbody regardless of their position as global policy and billions of dollars are being committed to what is at best a questionable scientific process. The onus isn't on skeptics to prove AGWists wrong. AGWists have postulated an hypothesis and the burden on them is to prove it. Creationists fall victim to similar fallacies.

Adam503 17y ago
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are paid to repeat and defend the days Republican Party propaganda points of the day.
Locke1689 17y ago
The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspiracy. If they say something that's wrong, it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of who said it. The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically. In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too.
- InclinedPlane 17y ago
  "In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too." Yes, quite so, this is a key reason why the human brain works the way it does (relying heavily on archetypes and models, for example). This is called prejudice, it's a method of cognitive efficiency which we have discovered through harsh trials to be a human predilection worthy of significant scrutiny. In modern times we have recognized the risks and costs of unexamined prejudice and have come to the conclusion that in a great many cases it's best to re-evaluate prejudices with extreme criticality and rationality as often and as deeply as human cognitive limits allow. Precisely because, like any shortcut, they have many modes of failure, some of which have dramatically greater downsides than others (up to and including centuries of unimaginably widespread human tragedy). Given the risks in this realm (climate science, the theory of immediate catastrophic climate change due to human activities that generally form the very foundations of modern industrial economies, and nothing less than the very future of human civilization on Earth) a straining up to the limits of everyone's cognitive abilities rather than a casual reliance on prejudicial and tribal tendencies of the R-complex lizard brain is, was, and continues to be warranted. Or, to sum up: when the future of humanity is on the line you better get your goddamn science right, no matter how much work it takes.
  - fleitz 17y ago
    The future of humanity is only on the line if the hypothesis of the pro-GW/CC/whatever it is called this week are right. To me Global Warming sounds a lot like Pascal's Wager, which isn't really a reason to do anything.
lionhearted 17y ago
> The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically. It's amazing that a person can make the claim that it's ridiculous that there could be any widespread foul play amongst mainstream climate scientists - what are you, some kind of conspiracy nut? Then in the same piece, the person will turn around and point out that it's incredibly obvious that there must be widespread foul play and collusion between oil producers, Saudi Princes, the Republican Party, and Fox News. How do they do that with a straight face? Climate science is a much smaller, much more unified community with only a few major journals and a generally accepted and favorable political position. Industry, politics, media, and foreign governments have widely different and diverging goals. So they claim it's impossible that the small, similarly backgrounded group with similar goals colludes and you'd be a conspiracy nut for even suggesting that it might be possible. And at the same time, they claim it's incredibly obvious that the large, not unified, competing goals groups are colluding. How the heck do they do that with a straight face?
- cletus 17y ago
  > It's amazing that a person can make the claim that it's ridiculous that there could be any widespread foul play amongst mainstream climate scientists Actually I referred to the CRU in particular. You know, the source of the emails. Pointing to share ownership (7%?) by Saudi princes as proof of anything is the scientific equivalent of the boogeyman. > Climate science is a much smaller, much more unified community Some might argue that it's easier to collude the smaller the group gets. My main point is that the so-called Climategate emails demonstrate a failure of the scientific process. Lack of transparency is a huge problem that everyone should be concerned about regardless of their position.
  - vannevar 17y ago
    You guys get that you're both on the same side, right? Climatologists are conspiring to take over the world and all that? Just thought I'd save you some time.

by cletus 17y ago

Adam503 17y ago

Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are paid to repeat and defend the days Republican Party propaganda points of the day.

Locke1689 17y ago

The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspiracy. If they say something that's wrong, it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of who said it. The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically. In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too.

InclinedPlane 17y ago
"In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too." Yes, quite so, this is a key reason why the human brain works the way it does (relying heavily on archetypes and models, for example). This is called prejudice, it's a method of cognitive efficiency which we have discovered through harsh trials to be a human predilection worthy of significant scrutiny. In modern times we have recognized the risks and costs of unexamined prejudice and have come to the conclusion that in a great many cases it's best to re-evaluate prejudices with extreme criticality and rationality as often and as deeply as human cognitive limits allow. Precisely because, like any shortcut, they have many modes of failure, some of which have dramatically greater downsides than others (up to and including centuries of unimaginably widespread human tragedy). Given the risks in this realm (climate science, the theory of immediate catastrophic climate change due to human activities that generally form the very foundations of modern industrial economies, and nothing less than the very future of human civilization on Earth) a straining up to the limits of everyone's cognitive abilities rather than a casual reliance on prejudicial and tribal tendencies of the R-complex lizard brain is, was, and continues to be warranted. Or, to sum up: when the future of humanity is on the line you better get your goddamn science right, no matter how much work it takes.
- fleitz 17y ago
  The future of humanity is only on the line if the hypothesis of the pro-GW/CC/whatever it is called this week are right. To me Global Warming sounds a lot like Pascal's Wager, which isn't really a reason to do anything.

lionhearted 17y ago

> The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically. It's amazing that a person can make the claim that it's ridiculous that there could be any widespread foul play amongst mainstream climate scientists - what are you, some kind of conspiracy nut? Then in the same piece, the person will turn around and point out that it's incredibly obvious that there must be widespread foul play and collusion between oil producers, Saudi Princes, the Republican Party, and Fox News. How do they do that with a straight face? Climate science is a much smaller, much more unified community with only a few major journals and a generally accepted and favorable political position. Industry, politics, media, and foreign governments have widely different and diverging goals. So they claim it's impossible that the small, similarly backgrounded group with similar goals colludes and you'd be a conspiracy nut for even suggesting that it might be possible. And at the same time, they claim it's incredibly obvious that the large, not unified, competing goals groups are colluding. How the heck do they do that with a straight face?

cletus 17y ago
> It's amazing that a person can make the claim that it's ridiculous that there could be any widespread foul play amongst mainstream climate scientists Actually I referred to the CRU in particular. You know, the source of the emails. Pointing to share ownership (7%?) by Saudi princes as proof of anything is the scientific equivalent of the boogeyman. > Climate science is a much smaller, much more unified community Some might argue that it's easier to collude the smaller the group gets. My main point is that the so-called Climategate emails demonstrate a failure of the scientific process. Lack of transparency is a huge problem that everyone should be concerned about regardless of their position.
- vannevar 17y ago
  You guys get that you're both on the same side, right? Climatologists are conspiring to take over the world and all that? Just thought I'd save you some time.