Eisenhower referred to the military-industrial complex. The scientific elites in that context were the ones working for the military industrial complex.
What is clear is that you are now debating yourself. All what you said in the last posts is describing a conspiracy. According to you it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but we will call it a chicken, sure
Denial is not only against AGW but there is also a denial about the current inability of top skeptics to even convince the groups that allowed them to publish, the AGU that published a paper by McIntyre on Geophysical Research Letters essentially dismissed him when the geophysicists came supporting the science behind AGW.
I saw a program where one of Ike’s speech writers said he wanted to call it the Milotary/industrial/media complex. They talked him into dropping the media part. He was quite prescient. While he was president I had no use for him. But his understanding of the forces that were trying to shape America into something they could profit from was terrific. We keep getting dragged into wars by people who didn’t fight them. Industry reaps huge profits as they destroy resources. The news is a huge cheerleader for conflict. He had it right the first time.
Kimstu, thanks for your post. I looked first (naturally) at the top name on the list. This is Sir Robert May. He is listed as having the most citations for his articles on climate change. I hadn’t read any of his work, which I found strange, as I keep up with the field.
So I looked him up on Wikipedia … I found this:
Now that’s all quite impressive, he’s got a PhD in theoretical physics and has written on population biology and the like … but I don’t see anything about climate. So I went to Google Scholar to look for peer reviewed articles by Sir Robert May, and I couldn’t find anything there either.
Undeterred, I went on to the second largest star, the one your list claims is the second “most cited author on climate change”. This is Sir John Sulston. Wikipedia says:
Again, a very impressive scientific resume. But I hadn’t heard of him writing anything about climate science either … and neither has Google Scholar, not one peer reviewed paper on climate can I find.
Sooo … if these are the top two climate science stars on your list, perhaps you’d be kind enough to give us a list of their peer reviewed articles on climate. Because I can’t find a single one … doesn’t mean that they’re not there, but I can’t locate them. Some help would be appreciated.
There’s a weakness in the whole notion of judging scientific value by number of citations. Several, actually.
First off, the guys who pioneer the field are bound to be the most cited, since the guys who follow them can only cite them, they will be getting all of the goodies. The “next generation” will get their own set of cites, but the original group is likely to get those as well. As in “Hogwash and Balderdash, in their seminal paper of reproduction fluids, building on the work of Tommyrot and Moonshine, established that…”
Add to that the weakness of breakthrough research, that it is likely to be flawed, at least to some degree, because of the lack of context, the lack of a body of research to compare and contrast. Freud, for instance, was a breakthrough genius who was wrong about nearly everything.
Thus, this kind of ranking makes it look like the oldest guys are the best. True enough in life generally, but not so much in science. To take the extreme example, the guy who just published the most important research evah! hasn’t had time to be cited, his work has not yet impacted the published arena.
As well, pioneers in a given field are breaking ground, there is little enough in the way of “peers”. (As witness Jeremiah Fosdick, Ph.D., often called “Peerless Fosdick”.)
And lastly, it may not be all that relevant that the scientist mentioned did not specifically work in the climate field. A biologist may publish his opinion on tree rings and their interpretation, that work may be considered vitally important to someone in a wholly unrelated field, climatology. Or, it may the source of huge contention, with both sides of the academic argument citing the work.
And lastly, there is the fact that some of our most brilliant minds in climate science have not had any such papers published, due to the crushing oppression of the Gore/Soros Machine…
There’s a difference between scientific consensus (the sort of thing the AGW side trumpets) and judging the number of citations any individual scientist has as a measure of their scientific worth. Plus there’s a difference between using lack of citation to dismiss someone, and not using an abundance of citations to elevate someone. I think I’ve mostly seen the pro side here doing the former, not the latter.
Jeez, all I’m asking for is a cite where elucidator has held up the number of citations an author has as a measure of their scientific value. Given post 310, I would imagine this would be trivial to pull up. It’s not like I’m asking you for a google search or something, just a Board reference. Something in this thread, perhaps? Or another? You must have had *something *in mind…
Hey, I know we’re outnumbered. Is that supposed to be some mystery? I’ve said it many times.
Selective quoting. What I said was:
You’re attacking a straw man, your claim that I think funding should go equally to every nutcase with a good idea. I am aware of why the funding goes where it goes. I’d prefer if say 10% of all government funds were given to opposition views, just like I think that 10% of all scientific R&D funding should go to things that seem off the wall. But that wasn’t what we were discussing. I was just saying that it’s not easy swimming upstream against that scientific-government alliance, along with $300 megabucks from Al Gore spreading alarmism.
I see that I have been misunderstood. The list contains statements by scientists (or putative scientists in your view). I was asking for any lies that they may have said. I have repeatedly stated that the issue is not what Inhofe may have said about science and scientists. That’s why I said “Pull up a lie out of the 700 list” and not “Pull up a lie from what Inhofe said about the 700 list”, because I was looking for some scientist telling a lie, not Inhofe. He’s a politician … and a liar … but I repeat myself. However, let me deal with your “lies” anyway.
First, by “list of international scientists” he clearly means scientist from all around the world. If he meant “internationally renowned and celebrated scientists”, he would have said that. The report opens by saying “Over 700 dissenting scientists (updates previous 650 report) from around the globe …”, so his meaning is clear. Nor does he claim that they are “climate scientists”. So your claim that someone is not an “international scientist” or a “climate scientist” is based on a simple misconception.
Next, while Bobby Bubblehead the crazy weatherguy is not “necessarily better informed than a layperson about climate science”, a person like Peter Leavitt (a meteorologist) is. Insofar as I trust anyone (which isn’t far), I would trust his view more than a layman, although YMMV.
However, all of these details overlook a fundamental problem with the question. Climate science covers more scientific disciplines than any other scientific subject I know of. It includes meteorology, atmospheric physics, chemistry, physics, oceanography, economics, statistics, cryology, biology, soil chemistry, geology, solar dynamics, paleohistory, computer programming, proxy analysis, and a host of other disciplines. Gavin Schmidt, the main force behind realclimate, is a computer modeller. Yet you think he is qualified to talk as a climate scientist. So do I. I disagree with him on many things, but I think he is qualified.
William Briggs is a statistician. Is he a “climate scientist”? Well, climate science is unique among the sciences, as far as I know, because it does not study things. It studies averages, because climate is defined as the average of weather over some suitable time span (usually 30 years). So everyone studying climate science is depending on statistical analyses. William Briggs is on the American Meteorological
Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee. Briggs says that other scientists he knows related “absolute horror stories of what happened to them when they tried getting papers published that explored non-‘consensus’ views.” He said the behaviour “really outrageous and unethical … on the parts of some editors. I was shocked.” Should we dismiss his experience because he is a statistician? I don’t, because I’ve had a similar experience with one of my papers.
So I don’t see how it is possible to say someone is or is not qualified because of their job or their degree. You rail against economists, yet there are a number of them among the people who wrote the IPCC reports. The Stern Report, widely relied upon by AGW supporters, was written by a team of economists. How are economists automatically disqualified as you claim above, if the IPCC uses them extensively? The IPCC claims that their people are climate scientists, all 2500 of them. One of the best established objections to the IPCC Report is that it uses MER rather than PPP in their scenarios. Want to know what that means? Ask an economist. Here’s a want ad looking for an economist for a job … with the IPCC.
So no, I’d say your attempt to disqualify people because of their jobs is a failure. If you removed everyone from the IPCC except those people with a degree in climate science, you would be left with a few dozen people.
I agree that people who are misquoted should have their names immediately removed from the list. I wouldn’t call that a lie, I’d call it dishonest as hell, but if you want to call it a lie, I won’t object. (And no, “dishonest” doesn’t mean “a lie”. Short-changing someone is dishonest, but not a lie) But as I said, I was looking for lying scientists, not lying politicians. Those are easy to find.
I brought up the list, but not as an appeal to authority, that’s your fantasy. I brought it up to show that there are a number of scientists from a variety of climate related disciplines who don’t buy into the “consensus”. Is the list an “honest and reliable source”? Hardly any lists are, as your list showed. The first two rock-star level scientists that you listed had never published on climate science in their lives. Should that “disqualify” them? No, but it makes your list as suspect as mine.
Yes, Phil Jones claims that their is a “consensus” … while he is fiddling the peer-review process and concealing evidence and rigging peer-review to maintain the “consensus”. He’s got a PhD in climate science, and a heap of peer reviewed papers, and all the climate credentials a man could want, and he’s still a crook who lies and hides data and tries to keep opposition views from being published. And that upsets me more than a politician lying, by a long ways. That’s why I wanted scientists’ lies, not politicians’ lies, because lies from a group of scientists can forge a false “consensus” where none exists. When that happens, when scientists like David Legates and George Taylor and Patrick Michaels can get fired from their jobs because they hold different beliefs from the “consensus”, we’ve moved from science to politics. And given the way that politicians lie, that’s a very scary thing.
Me, I don’t trust anyone, climate scientist or not. What I do is read what they say, and see if it makes sense. I make every effort to find out if they are honest, if they acknowledge difficulties and unsolved problems, if they are making unsupportable claims, if they are open and transparent about their data and methods, if their claims pass the smell test, if they use ex ante proxy selection rules, if their mathematics are sound, if they have considered alternate hypotheses. I don’t judge them by their job, or their degrees, or how many people agree with them, or how many papers they have published. Those are traps for fools, you end up trusting Phil Jones …
Finally, elucidator, it is now 2:23 AM, and I’ve answered (I believe) all of Kimstu’s points. I hope that you are satisfied that I have acted honorably as you whined about in this thread, but I suppose you’ll find something to object to, that I haven’t done it like you would have done it, or that I left an “i” undotted, or that I didn’t say “mother may I”, you’ll probably find something to complain about. Like the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog, it’s in your nature.
I offered Eisenhower’s exact words, and I trust that people are intelligent to make up their own minds. It sucks, but your opinion is not the last word, no matter how much you would like it to be. Theirs is.
Not quite. Scientific citation is like a chain-letter in some ways, and the guys who get there first are going to be the most cited. In a relatively new field, like climate change study, the first guys to get there are not going to be climate-change specialists, since until they get there, there aren’t any.
And scientists are postively queer for citations, its an academic fixation, since citation is frequently a measure of one’s qualification for the golden ring of tenure. If you cite someone’s work in your paper, it increases the likelihood that he will cite you in his. You groom me, I groom you.
And, of course, sheer bulk of citation “looks good”. Years past, I worked a lot as a “word processor” when such software was still kinda tricky, and did a lot of my work at Local University, got to see this creature in its native habitat. Hey! That means I wrote the papers, doesn’t it? Peer review, published papers! Why, I am a recognized expert (published, peer reviewed) in a number of scientific areas, my paper on *Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality *is still a standard in the field! With the assistance of Professor Whats-her-face…
Anyway, I would often be tasked with ferreting out who the author of a cited paper cited in his paper. There was no Google. There was only print. Pity me. Too late to shoot me…
Anyway, to boil down: I wouldn’t expect the oldest lights in the field to have been “climate change scientists”, as there were no such until they became such. They would have had to come from other fields. And over the course of time, given the “chain letter” effect, they would be the most cited, even if there original work was found to be flawed and incomplete, as it almost certainly would be. Athena only springs forth full grown in mythology.
ETA: in fact, I’d expect quite a few of those early citers to be geologists or similar, given the big overlap between the fields in eg. ice cores & speleotherms.
Which doesn’t excuse or grandfather in all the petroleum geologists on the infamous list, of course.
Just like a pre-emptive well-poisoning is yours. Do you do that in your published, Perrier reviewed work? What is it, what’s the latest count? Two? Ten? One of one, one of the other?
Ten? I thought it was two? Or maybe one, since one is sorta kinda “peer reviewed”, and the other is only “available” at your website. Maybe the “10” is binary? No, that would be one. Whatever, its enough to get you on the Inhofe List of esteemed personages. Except he’s a liar, being a politician.
Bewildering.
But what I mostly see is furious tap-dancing, as if you were trying to render War and Peace into Morse code within thirty minutes. Not to mention semantic parsing finer than a butterfly’s eyelash. “Dishonest” is not “lying”, and you specifically said “lying”, so you win? Please. Spare us. Have pity.
And then you invite poor, overworked Kimstu to take on another Google snipe-hunt! Now the poor soul is supposed to seek out individual lies by scientists in The List, since of course Inhofe is lying, he’s a politician. (Shame on you, Kimstu, for bringing Inhofe’s list into the conversation! What? You didn’t? Well, shame on whoever did, then! Must have been GIGO…)
You not only move the goal posts in the middle of the game, you move the goal posts when the field goal kick is in the air! Why, no, the goal posts were always in the arena parking lot, its only our misunderstanding of the complexity of your thinking that confused us…
PS: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality is a stolen joke, a book title from the mid-90’s, purporting to be the proceedings of the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity.
It is utterly and completely hilarious, and I urge you to seek it out. Joe Bob 'luc says: Check it out!
elucidator, you are quite right. This is why there is so much emphasis on peer-reviewed papers.
Unfortunately, as the CRU emails show, the peer review process was corrupted by Jones and his friends. They manipulated to get editors fired, they conspired to get their friends to peer review papers written by their friends, they attempted to prevent papers that disagreed with their views from being published, they changed the “Received Date” on a paper so it could be included in the IPCC report … ugly.
The Wegman Report (loads slowly, climate related servers are overloaded) used social network analysis to identify a close-knit group of scientists who are all scratching each others’ backs and ignoring each others’ errors. Emphasis mine.
(The Wegman Report was chaired by the eminent statisticial, Dr. Edward Wegman. Per Wikipedia:
So he is not just some mathematician off the street. He and several other equally eminent mathematicians looked at the Hockeystick, and at Steve McIntyre’s deconstruction of the Hockeystick. They found absolutely nothing wrong with Steve’s work. Their conclusion on the Hockeystick is at the end of the quote above. So those of you still cling to the outdated belief that the math behind Mann’s Hockeystick is scientifically sound, I invite you to take it up with Dr. Wegman.)
So as it turns out, the emails from CRU prove that Dr. Wegman was entirely correct.
Now, does this mean that there is no AGW? Absolutely not. That is an entirely different question. It does mean, however, that the “consensus” that AGW is “highly probable” is in large measure an illusion fomented by people like Mann and Jones, who have used their positions to pervert the scientific process.
