Comments on: Blogs on Barton Letters

By: miniga

miniga — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:48:48 +0000

nice thinking... data recovery

By: TCO

TCO — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:36:23 +0000

You shouldn’t spend time on that. Get an Exxon-paid assistant to do it.

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:56:58 +0000

Most of my posts were properly paragraphed.

I went back and added new categories to old posts about 4 weeks ago. For some reason, and it may have been a Word Press upgrade, it screwed up all my prior paragraphing. I’m re-editing old posts from time to time, but it’s really irritating.

By: TCO

TCO — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:29:14 +0000

If Steve is getting money from Exxon, he should have them shell out for a secretary who can read the posts and make sure that they follow normal rules for paragraphing.

By: Murray Love

Murray Love — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 19:12:49 +0000

Re: 98

Notice how for people like Klaus, and perhaps Michael Seward, John Hunter, Peter Hearnden et al., climate science is valuable primarily as a political enterprise? According to adherents of this outlook, the scientific or technical truth of any particular AGW-related claim is strictly subordinmate to the ideological hygiene of the claimant. If the claimant holds unapproved political opinions (or is merely suspected of doing so), their claims can be derided and dismissed out of hand, with no consideration due to the substantive merits of the claims. On the other hand, those who pass the hygiene test are given wide latitude to avoid responsibility to their funding bodies, obscure their methodologies, hide their data, and whine piteously about the personal motives of those who disagree with them.

In a scientific or technical field that hadn’t been captured by ideologues, Steve’s requests wouldn’t be regarded as anything particularly unusual or outrageous. Fortunately, I think we’re beginning to see a much wider recognition of the deplorable state of the IPCC process, and people discount their opinions accordingly.

By: Klaus Flemloese

Klaus Flemloese — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 17:07:45 +0000

There are a lot of similarities between the way American Petroleum Institute/ ExxonMobile/The Mashall Institute are trying to create uncertainty in respect of the climate science and the way the tobacco industry tried to create uncertainty about the epidemiologic methods used to assess the risk of passive smoking. From http://www.tobaccoscam.ucsf.edu/pdf/9.6-JunkScience-Yach.pdf written by Derek Yach and Stella Aguinaga Bialous I have copied: “The tobacco companies have carefully planned to undermine accepted epidemiologic practices and hoped that by partnering with a broad range of academic and private commercial interests, they could create confusion about the role of epidemiology and risk assessment in public policy development. The ultimate goal of the industry was to promote the trivialization of the risk of tobacco use, stating that nearly everything from eating Twinkies to crossing the street was harmful, and that tobacco was just one more “risky pleasure.” “Among the notable academics enlisted by the industry are professors such as A. R. Feinstein of Yale University, editor of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, who on many occasions has presented the argument that the epidemiologic methods used to assess the risk of passive smoking are inadequate. In a 1992 article, Feinstein supported the tobacco industry’s right to defend itself against the label of “bad guy” and criticized the “current atmosphere [in which a tobacco industry] consultant’s stature, credibility, and integrity become instantly impugned and tarnished by the depravity of associating with the tobacco “bad guy’”. He did not mention, however, that he was a tobacco industry consultant and the recipient of highly secret “special project” awards”. American Petroleum Institute network is promoting the message “The climate science is uncertain”, “the CO2 increase is good for the planet”, “the current temperature increase is natural and not harmful” and “it will be to costly to implement Kyoto” from a shareholder value perspective. To my understanding it is the same master plan American Petroleum Industry have adopted and Ross Mckitrick, Steve Mcintyre, Fred Singer, Soon and Baliunas, etc. have a similar role like Professor A.R. Feinstein. In respect of smoking, it is a matter of freedom to smoke and it is a criminal act to mislead the public and to distort the science in respect of health effects. In respect of climate change, it is a matte of freedom to disagree with IPCC or with API etc, but it is a criminal act to distort the climate science in respect of the potential effect of the climate change.

Steve: I receive no funding from ExxonMobil or anyone else. I’m just doing this for my own interest. Likewise with McKitrick. I think that the topic of potential antrhopogenic climate impact is an important one and worth studying – or else I wouldn’t bother. That’s also why it’s ridiculous that climate studies have such poor traditions of replicability. On your side, you should be critcizing clmate scientists for not being diligent in their archiving practices and permitting themselves to risk disrepute for their cause.
I think that people should examine the studies with great care, just as I think that Iraqi emigre stories about WMD should have been examined with great care.

By: Klaus Flemloese

Klaus Flemloese — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 20:34:39 +0000

Joe Bartons inquiry/Chemical industries inquiry/Fishing expeditions

I will be pleased to draw your attention to a similar action taken by the chemical industry against scientists in US. It is the chemical industry’s lawsuit against Prof. David Rosner and Prof. Gerald Markowitz. The two professors have written a book about how the chemical industries and their trade organisations have tried to hide the connection between cancer and PVC/VCM and between lead pollution and health. The chemical industry is so upset over this books disclosure that they have filed a lawsuit. The layer of chemical industry went during the disposition on a fishing expedition to the files of the authors, peer reviewers, University of California Press and the Milbank Fund. This is similar to Joe Barton’s fishing expedition.

In addition to this the chemical Industry has hired their own “scientist” to discredit the two professors. M&M have a similar role in their attempt to discredit MBH.

It looks like that the same master plan is behind the way the tobacco industry, the chemical Industry, the petrochemical industry and other industries are trying to discredit scientists.

The effect of these inquiries could be that no scientists want to be involved in areas where there could be a conflict with major financial interests. This could be what Joe Barton/American Petroleum Institute/ ExxonMobile/ the chemical Industry/The Marshall Institute/the tobacco Industry etc. aim at.

I find both cases interesting, fascinating and frightening.

http://www.deceitanddenial.org/intro.html

By: Klaus Flemloese

Klaus Flemloese — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 20:27:57 +0000

Status of the scientific discussion.
In respect of the scientific discussions about the MBH paper, I will be pleased if some could put together a short status of the discussion. How far away are M&M, MBH and Ammann in their reconstructions?

Joe Barton/M&M inquisitions:

I do not think it is a good strategy to solve a scientific problem by political means. Please let the scientists solve scientific problems and politicians solve political problems.

Please be aware of that Bush/White House/Congress/Joe Barton/American Petroleum Institute/ExxonMobile/GMI are a very powerful cocktail. For this reason it is a tremendous pressure Joe Barton/M&M have put one three very highly qualified scientists.

By: Doug L

Doug L — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:16:37 +0000

Might I suggest that a permanent link to the UKweatherworld discussion forum be added?

Their thread on the investigation continues even today (7/18/05)! “US Government Questions MBH”

Link to climatology menu:

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=11

They also have a thread, “RealClimate fantasy or self-love island” and RealClimate shadow postings”

This thread might be of interest to people who really know their geological climate history “Aliens Cause Climate Change!!”:

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=21983&start=1

By: Michael Mayson

Michael Mayson — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 22:50:00 +0000

Re #89 and #90

Aha Peter, I think I now understand your problem. And I would imagine we all share it to a greater or lesser extent. Because you do not understand the science, and by that I mean the physics, formulae, algorithms etc and are therefore unable to follow the argument or replicate the work you can say either ” I don’t understand and thus I don’t know whether this is right or wrong” or, as you appear to want to do, “I trust(distrust) this person ( or the peer review process!) and thus ‘believe’ that his/her results are right(wrong)”. This would explain your fascination with words like “trust” and “taking word” and the “personalities” of contributors to this blog. Relying on trust is a rather insecure position to take. The only cure is to learn more about the science.
And it is because “trust” is such an inadequate measure of the correctness of scientific results that Steve M is asking for sufficent data and code to complete a replication.
So the issue then becomes not whether anyone “trusts” Mann (or Hans) but whether the science can be replicated so that we can simply argue about the science.

It is a matter of record that Mann’s work cannot be replicated.