In a previous “debate” on this blog he literally fabricated a quote from scratch to support his claim that climate change “deniers” also deny the link between smoking and cancer.

I asked him to provide a link to the quote and all I got was a barrage of insults.

When I demonstrated through a google search that he definitely fabricated the quote he went silent and moved onto this page.

You can read all about it here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/12/09/how-the-global-warming-story-changed-disastrously-due-to-climategate/

Luke: OK, but I do say that the entire crackergate chapter should not have been included. I make some of the same exact criticisms that my “new atheist” colleagues make. I just relegate them to one sentence each.

… and I see that this is discussed further in comments 24 onwards.

You simply did not respond to the rest of my post which I thought hit the important theme here.

You didn’t seem actually interested in my opinion, so I didn’t bother. My impression is that your most important theme is insulting me and dismissing my opinions as crazy, so why should I?

You forgot the part about the angry oil billionaires looking for something, anything to throw money at…

You simply did not respond to the rest of my post which I thought hit the important theme here.

~”I can live with that.”~

Glad to hear I was correct.

~”Until then, I reserve the right to explain things as long-windedly as necessary.”~

Not much I can say to this, you repeat ad nauseum and charge similar to not arguing in “good faith” (define “faith” there if you will as a “new atheist”, j/k).

And yes, you do strike me as a “new atheist apologist”. Not a hell of lot more outside of a long winded gadfly.

I can live with that.

I’d be a hell of a lot less long-winded if the accommodationists around here were less repetitive with same two big straw men, a little quicker on the uptake, less astonishly prone to miss clear distinctions, and more willing to argue in good faith.

Until then, I reserve the right to explain things as long-windedly as necessary.

I’m not going to keep having the same conversation with you, it’s useless. I apologize for the late reply but I had family issues to see too.

How I’m reading what you wrote in that post, then we share a basic complaint. However, I have also praised the book on many fronts. Even in personal emails I have highlighted what I thought would account for being “lightweight” in the book, this was done in full light that I’m no stranger to these debates. It’s actually not a book directed at me given that I’m fully aware of many of the issues raised and the examples used. However, it was the same when Sagan’s, Demon Haunted World came out or The God Delusion (most of which I read the exact arguments by Richard in Free Inquiry magazine). This however doesn’t take away from it’s usefulness.

And yes, you do strike me as a “new atheist apologist”. Not a hell of lot more outside of a long winded gadfly.

And yet if it is allowed to pass, people will still cite graphs showing the temperature anomaly rising to ‘disprove’ the denial. I’ve seen it happen.

“Also, I didn’t simply argue from authority, I linked to a list of experiments that the authorities rely on to make their judgement.”

Yes, that was very good! A great improvement over the normal level of debate. Although it would help even more if those experiments in turn linked to the data and working that supported their conclusions. There is a great deal of “here are my results, trust me” about them. I noted in particular that your list had the infamous Mann-Bradley-Hughes ‘Hockeystick’ paper in the middle of them. Do the authorities really still rely on that? Because if so, then unpacking its story is more likely to help the sceptics.

Citing the papers is only the first step of presenting the argument. We next have to examine the papers, the arguments and evidence they contain, and see if they’re justified. We have a number of the papers comparing observations to computer models. Except that the computer models have been derived at least partially from observing the weather. We need to beware of circularity there. That means you also have to explain the computer models – how they can solve the Navier-Stokes equation reliably using grid boxes several hundred kilometres across, how they implement clouds and other sub-grid phenomena, the precautions they have to take and the fudges they have to insert to avoid numerical instability, all without reference to the real weather. By involving them, you have introduced a large list of new things to go wrong, a new list of things you have to explain before it can be accepted as evidence. Personally, having looked at them, I would place very little reliance on their accuracy, and hence on any paper that relied upon them as a comparatum. But I’m open to being persuaded.

“You accept the temperature measurements of a weather station in Biloxi Mississippi, because it would be unreasonable not to. Were you there? No. But you accept it.”

That’s the point. Sceptics didn’t accept it. They went and had a look. And while I don’t know about Biloxi specifically, they did find a whole lot of weather stations sited next to air conditioner vents and sun-baked car parks and on roofs and in the shade under trees and so on. And then they *showed us photographs*. That’s how the Surfacestations project was born.

Up until then everybody accepted it because it would be unreasonable not to, and they were wrong! That’s why the scientific method says *you check it*, even though it’s unreasonable.

“A somewhat similar point is that even a specialist in one scientific field may not understand the conclusions arrived at by a specialist in another, but accept them nonetheless, because they see the other specialists in that community have accepted it”

Marvellous! Exactly! That’s how scientific consensus works.

And that’s why it is so dangerous for the public to look at those lists of names and surveys of scientists and professional scientific bodies saying they accept the truth of AGW, because the vast majority of them are doing exactly that – looking at what other scientists say and taking it on trust that somebody else has checked.

I’ll give you Tom Wigley’s famous quote, when he was asked if he’d like to sign one of these statements:
“Your approach of trying to gain scientific credibility for your personal views by asking people to endorse your letter is reprehensible. No scientist who wishes to maintain respect in the community should ever endorse any statement unless they have examined the issue fully themselves.”

But like you say, a lot of them do.

“it would make science as a set of institutions completely unworkable to doubt every single thing it was remotely possible to doubt”

True. And for practical reasons one does sometimes have to compromise strict scientific method, while acknowledging that it is unsafe and unscientific. But one thing you don’t *ever* compromise on is that everything is *open to challenge*, and if it has been plausibly challenged, you don’t rely on it until its status has been resolved. If there’s a controversy, you investigate personally before saying anything, or you say “I don’t know, it’s not my area”. Because otherwise, one of these days you’ll turn out to be wrong, and then people are going to stop trusting not just scientists, but science itself.

When it comes to anthropogenic climate change, my personal view is “I don’t know, it’s not my area”. I haven’t made up my mind yet. But what I’ve seen of the way these climatologists operate makes me very uneasy. And I’m worried about the idea of staking the whole world on this. This is (potentially?) the biggest threat facing the world – its study should be conducted at an even higher level than the safety critical systems in aerospace or the nuclear industry, surely? CMMI level 5, SIL 3, etc., that sort of stuff. Multiple levels of checking, multi-disciplinary teams, independent replication, audits and V&V reviews and regulators. And yet having recently read the ‘Harry read me’ file myself, it appears to be being operated as a farce. It’s still being operated as a minor little academic area of study, like soap powder research. It makes me wonder if even *they* truly believe it’s a global crisis.

But I don’t know. It’s not my area.