[ExI] Scientists Behaving Badly

[moulton at moulton.com]

Alfio

Thank you for referring to something in the article.  I assume you
read it all and found the lines you quote as most worthy of discussion.
See my comments below.

On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 19:35 +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 6:56 PM, <moulton at moulton.com> wrote:
> So for example how about reading the article that Max referenced
> and criticizing it based on its content not on the website on which it
> is published.
>
> Sure, some samples of the general tone:
>
> "...the air has been going out of the global warming balloon."

In the article that phrase appears to refer to both how well global
warming is doing as a hypothesis and how the state of the general public
perception.  On the first point that is what is being debated currently
and I think it is too soon to tell.  We will likely know more after a lot
of people go back and double check the data sets and research methods.
On the second point about public perception my reading of various
media sources is that the author needs to delve deeper.  This question
of public perception needs a more nuanced discussion than I think the
author gives since it needs to be differentiated into perception of
global warming as an isolated item and perception of global warming
relative to other items.  On this see for example mention of how global
warming has fallen to third place as discussed in Eurobarometet 313
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_313_en.pdf
While certainly this is just one study and no one is claiming that it is
definitive but I think it represents part of the relevant information
and is an interesting example of some trends worth watching over the
coming months.  This is not to say that the respondents to the poll
are correct in their evaluation; perhaps they should have keep global
warming as number 1.

> "As tempting as it is to indulge in Schadenfreude over the richly
> deserved travails of a gang that has heaped endless calumny on
> dissenting scientists...."

How about we look at the entire paragraph so that we get an idea about
the author was getting at:

    "As tempting as it is to indulge in Schadenfreude over
    the richly deserved travails of a gang that has heaped
    endless calumny on dissenting scientists (NASA's James
    Hansen, for instance, compared MIT's Richard Lindzen to
    a tobacco-industry scientist, and Al Gore and countless
    others liken skeptics to "Holocaust deniers"), the meaning
    of the CRU documents should not be misconstrued. The emails
    do not in and of themselves reveal that catastrophic
    climate change scenarios are a hoax or without any
    foundation. What they reveal is something problematic
    for the scientific community as a whole, namely, the
    tendency of scientists to cross the line from being
    disinterested investigators after the truth to advocates
    for a preconceived conclusion about the issues at hand. In
    the understatement of the year, CRU's Phil Jones, one of
    the principal figures in the controversy, admitted the
    emails "do not read well." Jones is the author of the most
    widely cited leaked emissive, telling colleagues in
    1999 that he had used "Mike's Nature [magazine] trick" to
    "hide the decline" that inconveniently shows up after 1960
    in one set of temperature records. But he insists that the
    full context of CRU's work shows this to have been just
    a misleading figure of speech. Reading through the entire
    archive of emails, however, provides no such reassurance;
    to the contrary, dozens of other messages, while less
    blatant than "hide the decline," expose scandalously
    unprofessional behavior. There were ongoing efforts
    to rig and manipulate the peer-review process that is
    critical to vetting manuscripts submitted for publication
    in scientific journals. Data that should have been made
    available for inspection by other scientists and outside
    critics were released only grudgingly, if at all. Perhaps
    more significant, the email archive also reveals that even
    inside this small circle of climate scientists--otherwise
    allied in an effort to whip up a frenzy of international
    political action to combat global warming--there was
    considerable disagreement, confusion, doubt, and at times
    acrimony over the results of their work. In other words,
    there is far less unanimity or consensus among climate
    insiders than we have been led to believe."

Given the above quote I think it reinforces my point that we need to
depoliticize and open up this entire climate debate and strive for
more transparency.  I hope you agree.

Fred