8 replies to this topic

[stocks]

In 1928 Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist, promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden.

Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his ideas became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life and death. To disagree with Lysenko risked the gulag and yet he damaged, perhaps irreparably, the Soviet Union’s capacity to fight and win the Cold War.

http://www.bbc.co.uk..._20080605.shtml


What makes it relevant to the climate debate is the list of parallels that can be made between Lysenko’s “Soviet biology and genetics” and contemporaneous thoughts of Anthropogenic Global Warming:

(1) Results, and success are declared before an experiment has completed . In AGW, just look at the innumerable papers that take AGW as established truth, even as the debate on “attribution” is still very much open among mainstream scientists.

(2) Proponents always declare “victory”, no matter what happens, and are always ready to shift the ground. That’s quite common in AGW circles: nowadays, if the planet warms up or cools down, it’s anyway compatible with AGW theory.

(3) Science is presented as a series of “solutions”, not simply as “knowledge” . AGWers cannot disentangle research from advocacy: for example, the IPCC is politically active, to the point of qualifying for a Nobel Peace Prize.


Ironically, the BBC guests laughed only up to a point to the witty remark made by one of them: that Lysenko’s personality and attitude would have made him a “guaranteed success in British science today”

http://omniclimate.w...nkoism-and-agw/

[stocks]

Minorities, particularly, have a problem where there are strong ideological pressures towards conformity. In these cases, some fortitude is required to maintain what is seen to be a deviant or heretical view. Apart from the obvious example of Galileo the situation of biological scientists in the Soviet Union, subjected to the dominant (and erroneous) dogma of Lysenko about the inheritability of acquired characteristics, might be cited.

In the contemporary world of public financing of intellectual activity, there are also more subtle pressures towards conformity. One of the many baleful consequences of directed or ‘performance’-based research funding is the extent to which it privileges the prejudices and paradigms of those holding power in the system at any time. The result is to favour for research support and publication those who follow the party-line. This characteristic, and the dominating connection between this activity and promotion, ensures the production of vast quantities of mediocre and repetitive material in our universities and like establishments and discourages the long-term and more speculative activity that used to be their academic glory.

http://www.nzcpr.com/midweek28.htm

[stocks]

Recently I stumbled across a Defense Technical Information Center paper via the web on which I was listed as co-author. What amused me was the abstract and the descriptors:

Report Date : MAY 1969

Abstract : Experimental data on heavy particle collisions of relevance to atomic weapons debris motion are critically reviewed with emphasis on electron capture-and-loss cross-section measurements and possible systematic errors attending the experiments.

Descriptors : (*NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS, FISSION PRODUCTS), (*FISSION PRODUCTS, PARTICLE TRAJECTORIES)

Atomic weapons debris motion? Nuclear Explosions? I recall not a mention of these items by anyone at the time. Oh yeah, I forget... in those days any grant proposal had to have the appropriate buzzwords relating to National Defense. Heaven forbid anyone wanting to study electron capture-and-loss cross-section measurements for the sole purpose of advancing our knowledge of those subjects.

Today there is a new Golden Fleece hanging on the tree, and anyone with half a science diploma can become a member of Jason's merry band of Argonauts. Just make sure that your proposal is directed toward finding yet another contributor to anthropogenic global warming. From Cow Farts to Whales Singing Off-Key, the field is wide open as long as you observe a few simple rules:

1. Your results must support AGW, otherwise your grant won't be renewed.
2. If your data doesn't support your predetermined conclusion, change the data.
3. The one with the shortest date to Armageddon gets the biggest bucks.

The short-term profits are enormous, and for a while at least, the incompetent and dishonest "scientists" of the world will be able to enjoy a reasonably regular paycheck. But in the end, it must all eventually collapse like the dot-com bubble, with the sad end result being that anyone wearing the title of scientist will likely be viewed with the same respect as a junk bond trader.

Jim Peden

[stocks]

CLIMATE STATEMENT "AN ORCHESTRATED LITANY OF LIES"

Veteran Wellington climate consultant, Dr Vincent Gray, expert reviewer of all four IPCC Assessment Reports,explains why he has resigned his longtime membership of the Royal Society of New Zealand in protest at the inaccuracies in a report on climate change issued on 12 July by the Society's Climate Committee.

As an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for eighteen years, that is to say, from the very beginning. I have submitted thousands of comments to all of the Reports. My comments on the Fourth IPCC Report, all 1,898 of them, are to be found at IPCC (2007) and my opinions of the IPCC are in Gray (2008b)

I am therefore very familiar with the arguments presented by the IPCC, many of which have now been copied by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the responses to them.


CONCLUSION

This Climate Change Statement is veritably an orchestrated litany of lies, to borrow a phrase. As a longstanding member of the Royal Society of New Zealand I am unable to tolerate such a departure as this from the supposed objectives of fair or responsible comment on scientific matters, so I have resigned in protest.

For all the details:
http://nzclimatescie...i...12&Itemid=1

[stocks]

WARMISTS CAUGHT IN HOCKEYSTICK FRAUD; ALSO NEVER RELEASE DATA, ONLY CONCLUSIONS

It is unfortunate because the issue is not dendroclimatology, and never has been. It is scientific laxity, and scientific malfeasance, and scientific double-dealing. It is deliberate concealment of adverse results. It is refusal to reveal data. It is abuse of power and betrayal of trust. It is made-up math. It is Science and Nature and the NSF not enforcing their own archiving requirements. It is scientific check-kiting.

As I said above, the silence on these matters from the majority of scientists of all disciplines has been deafening. The placid acceptance of this behavior threatens the credibility of science as a whole. Where are the elders thundering about transparency and replicability being the foundation of science, and publicly urging these mountebanks to come clean and archive their data? Where are the scientists with the backbone to call a spade a blasted digging implement? The Hockeystick was deliberate scientific fraud. Mann knew about and concealed adverse results. He knew the whole thing rested on the bristlecones. He knew that if you remove the bristlecones the hockeystick disappears, and he hid that, and published anyway. Now we have Bishop Hill’s lovely summary of Wahl and Amman and the Jesus paper. There is scientific crime going on, the perpetrators are concealing the evidence, and almost everyone is whistling and looking at the sky,

http://sciencepolicy...nce-policy-4511

[stocks]

Among the ever-growing mountain of informed criticism of the IPCC's methods, a detailed study by an Australian analyst John McLean (to find it, Google "Prejudiced authors, prejudiced findings") shows just how incestuously linked are most of the core group of academics whose models underpin everything the IPCC wishes us to believe about global warming.

The significance of the past year is not just that the vaunted "consensus" on the forces driving our climate has been blown apart as never before, but that a new "counter-consensus" has been emerging among thousands of scientists across the world, given expression in last March's Manhattan Declaration by the so-called Non-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

This wholly repudiates the IPCC process, showing how its computer models are hopelessly biased, based on unreliable data and programmed to ignore many of the genuine drivers of climate change, from variations in solar activity to those cyclical shifts in ocean currents.

As it was put by Roger Cohen, a senior US physicist formerly involved with the IPCC process, who long accepted its orthodoxy: "I was appalled at how flimsy the case is. I was also appalled at the behaviour of many of those who helped produce the IPCC reports and by many of those who promote it.

"In particular I am referring to the arrogance, the activities aimed at shutting down debate; the outright fabrications; the mindless defense of bogus science; and the politicisation of the IPCC process and the science process itself."




http://www.telegraph...8/31/do3105.xml

[stocks]

In 1928 Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist, promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden.

Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his ideas became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life and death. To disagree with Lysenko risked the gulag and yet he damaged, perhaps irreparably, the Soviet Union’s capacity to fight and win the Cold War.

In summary, the comparisons between Lysenkoism and ‘Global Warming’ can be rehearsed as follows:

1. Work first through political organisations;

2. Claim that the science is settled. There is nothing to debate;

3. Disregard, or deny, all the accumulating evidence that the predictions might be wrong;

4. Demonise the opposition (Mendelian geneticists; ‘Global Warming’ Deniers);

5. Victimise the opposition (execution and exile; loss of jobs or research funds, public and media humiliation);

6. Relate to a current ideology (Stalinism; Environmentalism);

7. Support a vast propaganda machine; and,

8. Create a huge bureaucracy where many people have careers dependent upon ‘the ruling concept’.


The parallel can be seen perfectly in a work by Helena Sheehan(1), who wrote of Lysenkoism:

“What went wrong was that the proper procedures for coming to terms with such complex issues were short-circuited by grasping for easy slogans and simplistic solutions and imposing them by administrative fiat.”

Lysenkoism was eventually replaced by real science. The same will happen to ‘Global Warming’, because real science will not go away


http://web.mac.com/s...sm_and_GW_.html

[ty250]

Very well written and coherent. As you say, real science will eventually prevail. It is sad though to see people deceived and money wasted. Dishonesty abounds in the U.S. and the world at the highest levels and it looks like we are all going to suffer for a few years to "clean house." Hopefully it will only last a few years. Thank you for your work on this subject. TY

[stocks]

Among the ever-growing mountain of informed criticism of the IPCC's methods, a detailed study by an Australian analyst John McLean (to find it, Google "Prejudiced authors, prejudiced findings") shows just how incestuously linked are most of the core group of academics whose models underpin everything the IPCC wishes us to believe about global warming.

The significance of the past year is not just that the vaunted "consensus" on the forces driving our climate has been blown apart as never before, but that a new "counter-consensus" has been emerging among thousands of scientists across the world, given expression in last March's Manhattan Declaration by the so-called Non-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

This wholly repudiates the IPCC process, showing how its computer models are hopelessly biased, based on unreliable data and programmed to ignore many of the genuine drivers of climate change, from variations in solar activity to those cyclical shifts in ocean currents.

As it was put by Roger Cohen, a senior US physicist formerly involved with the IPCC process, who long accepted its orthodoxy: "I was appalled at how flimsy the case is. I was also appalled at the behaviour of many of those who helped produce the IPCC reports and by many of those who promote it.

"In particular I am referring to the arrogance, the activities aimed at shutting down debate; the outright fabrications; the mindless defense of bogus science; and the politicisation of the IPCC process and the science process itself."




http://www.telegraph...8/31/do3105.xml

Global Temperatures About The Same As 30 Years Ago

The global temperature anomaly of ~0.2C is about the same as it was 30 years ago, before the eruption of El Chichon cooled temperatures 0.5C.


http://stevengoddard...s-30-years-ago/