I have a poster named Cedric who keeps going on about NASA. As his comments were off topic, I removed them from another subject but as he put in the effort to write them, I will reproduce them here:
NASA, for example.
What will NASA be doing or saying that is so very different from now?
That goes for every other scientific community on the planet.
So victory is yours, let’s say.
Take that as a given. But what will that actually look like?
When exactly will the demise of climate change be apparent to the rest of us…and NASA?
The problem is that you have made it all so very vague and unfalsifiable.
(Prophecies are often like that.)
Once you give a concrete timeline or some sort of objective measure then you risk being proved wrong. So the idea is to keep it all subjective and wispy and hermetically sealed from falsifiability.
Look closely at what you have written and the carefully amorphous phrasing you use.
A blogger from 20 years ago or 10 years ago could have written exactly the same thing. Or indeed a blogger 30 years in the future.
Indeed, a blogger….completely unrelated to the topic of climate change….could write the same thing. A simple switching of the labels is all that’s required.
It’s how a wide variety of science deniers operate.
The imminent demise of the link between tobacco and smoking or the safety of vaccines or the HIV/AIDS link or government claims of 9/11 or evolution is always just around the corner.
If you look, if you really look and squint really hard, you can see it happening.
Any minute now. Just you wait. You’ll see.
It’s an old song.
You are following a familiar pattern. Other bloggers out there, just before they retire from blogging, have made the claim that climate change (or major supporting concepts for it) is increasingly being abandoned by scientists, or is about to fall. These claim has come in many forms and could continue to go on for many years. An enterprising researcher could compile them. We all know blogs come and go. Isolated contrarians get older and greyer without a new and fresher generation taking up the cause. Claims just like yours will probably go on being made for a long, long time with only minor variations on a theme. Entire careers have already passed without seeing any of this movement away from the science of climate change. Bloggers are merely making these statements for the purpose of keeping hope alive that they are making progress towards their goal. In point of fact, no such progress is being made as anyone who has watched this area for decades can testify. The claim is false as history and present-day events show, yet that doesn’t stop anyone wanting to sell books from making that claim.
====
Almost exactly like the warmist promises then?
Even if it’s true, you are making an Argument from Hypocrisy.
Besides, what’s a “warmist”?
Do you mean NASA?
As long as you keep your terms vague etc, etc, etc.
Do you know what creationists call biologists?
“Evolutionists”.
Clever, eh?
Warmists will have to take a new tack if significant warming doesn’t…
If?
Surely not. The results are in, remember? There isn’t going to be any more warming.
It was all a dream or something and now people are waking up something, something, scam exposed.
Besides, you don’t really mean it.
If you did, you’d explain what you mean by “significant warming”.
Without that, it’s all just posturing on a position that you can neatly abandon at the slightest inconvenience to insulate yourself from falsifiability.
(Keep the goal posts on wheels. Makes it easier to shift them.)
Again, what do you really mean when you say “warmist”?
Do you mean NASA? Do you mean every single scientific community on the planet?
Whatever the truth of AGW…
“Whatever the truth”? Goodness me.
Scottish Sceptic has told you what the truth is.
It’s over, right? There’s victory parades and everything. He’s even got a cartoon. What more do you need? Pat yourself on the back. Don’t be shy now.
…the pot has most clearly gone off the boil.
That’s the spirit. Keep it vague. Pots and their boiling and them going off or whatever that’s supposed to mean. Fat lady singing and curtains being drawn and tides going out and chickens coming home to roost and it all being darkest before the dawn or something like that.
Do you mean NASA? Do you mean the work? The scientific work?
Hmm.
Even Al Gore and his band…
Ah, Al Gore.
Well, what would a goodbye on a climate denier blog be without an Al Gore invocation?
It’s like a creationist invoking Darwin.
I understand you. If you are rejecting Al Gore then that sounds perfectly reasonable.
You must have your reasons. Besides, if he’s got some nameless band or other, well, it doesn’t sound very positive. What kind of a person hangs out with a “band”?
Sounds suspicious.
So by all means, stand bravely up to Al Gore. More power to you. Nobody is going to look at you oddly when you do that. It’s just you versus a former American politician from yesteryear.
Of course, if you changed the wording, then it would look worse.
“Even NASA and every scientific community on the planet etc….”
See? That’s probably not the way you want to phrase it.
Who would? It just sounds wrong.
Accurate? Sure but…well, it’s not a good soundbyte once you spell it out unambiguously like that.
Standing up to NASA and every single scientific community on the planet is…either someone accepting a brand new Nobel Prize or someone who is very, very confused.
Only the work counts.
NASA’s Earth Minute: Earth Has a Fever
===
It’s not just NASA. It’s NASA and every single scientific community on the planet.
To not listen to them is….not ok.
To justify that you have to have an amazingly good reason. The kind of reason where they are shoving a Nobel Prize in your hand and making statues in your honour.
Otherwise….it’s cranksville.
Anti-vaxxers do no listen to the medical community.
Creationists do not listen to the biology community.
9/11 Troofers do not listen to the Engineering/Chemical/Physics etc. community.
There’s a whole swag of these types of science denier communities.
And they all operate and perpetuate themselves the same way.
The same playbook.
Science is the study of reality. That requires work. Lots and lots and lots and lots of work. You can’t create a scientific consensus any other way.
There’s no short cut.
By rejecting that work, you embrace an alternate reality and an alternate methodology where you rush into the cloying embrace of vague, ill-defined conspiracy theories, oddball blogs, isolated contrarians and endless hunt for anomalies.
That’s how people die.
Denial has consequences. Reality can be unforgiving that way.
====
And if you want me to list some more of your lazy celeb friends:-…
Two things:
1) These people have nothing to do with me. Really.
2) It’s NASA you should be listing. Getting your science info from celebs (lazy or not) isn’t a very smart move.
All you are doing is just repeating yourself.
Instead of Al Gore, now it’s celebs.
(shrug)
Arguments from Hypocrisy are no substitute.
…if the biggest supporters for the idea…
Not really sure what your lifestyle has to do with anything.
On the other hand, if you want to say that NASA is a big supporter of the science of climate change then….yep, that would be right on the money.
Cedric: …few if any of them are at NASA.
Not according to NASA.
You almost certainly… Get on and live by your beliefs….Only you don’t like that status quo, you want us …., not yours ….You guys are soooo clever you can’t ….. You need to be….all and you’re still in the…
You are not getting this NASA thing.Q
Nothing to do with me or my opinions.
I’m just some guy on the internet.
Ranting at me might make you feel good but you are talking to the wrong person.
It’s NASA you should be trying to convince.
NASA and every single scientific community.
That’s why you frame it the way you do.
It’s not an accident.
It’s Al Gore this and Al Gore that and me this and me that etc.
It’s not really a big deal to position yourself opposite Al Gore. He’s just some politician from yesteryear.
Don’t make you look the least bit odd doing that.
Same diff’ for me.
I’m just some guy.
So framing it as you versus some guy on the internet is fairly humdrum as positions go. Nothing crazy about that at all.
Only, once you bring the scientific communities into it, the façade collapses.
Railing against….all….scientific…communities…on the planet….does not sound normal at all. Not in anybody’s language. The casual observer is going to do a double-take and ask themselves if they go that right….’cause that certainly doesn’t sound right at all.
Science deniers of all stripes sheer away from clearly acknowledging the scientific bodies and the work and the overwhelming scientific consensus that is the end result of decades of painstaking research.
You don’t catch antivaxxers shaking their fist in the air about every medical community on the planet.
Oh no.
That’s not going to play well at all to an unsuspecting public.
They shake their fist in the air over…”Big Pharma”.
Clever eh?
” Incidentally many climate scientists are not…”
Yes, of course.
“Incidentally many biologists are not Darwinists as they reluctantly admit that the consensus is meaningless and that there are some significant uncertainties in the Theory of Evolution. They usually remain naive about species however etc, etc, etc.”
TinyCO2 reply to cedric:
“To justify that you have to have an amazingly good reason.”
No I don’t, I just have to say ‘no. So long as there’s no law to make me do as I’m told, I can ignore anything I want. As you do. As billions do. Governments find it hard to make controversial laws if they themselves aren’t convinced of the need and are reluctant to impose things on a largely resistant public. Even if they make a law, the next government can scrap it.
Government after government are happy to agree AGW is a problem but do very little about it. That tells me that their trust in the science is very poor. They even do things that are counter to the problem (like promise low energy bills) which tells me they are very ignorant of the facts too.
Those who are so unobservant that they miss these simple truths are not likely to persuade me of anything.
Cedric reply to TinyCO2 in reply to Cedric:
“What’s the CDC to me? Just a bunch of employees with a company policy to follow. They can’t make me or the billions like me do as I’m told. The CDC is more than happy that celebs etc advertise their pet concern. They make no attempt to distance themselves from their clay footed buddies. Sorry guys but you will be judged by the company you keep.
I included people from all areas, to demonstrate that few Pharma Shills are living by their own beliefs. That I’ve not listed CDC employees is simply because I can’t be bothered to look them up but I’m sure there are many instances of blatent hypocrisy. The annual vaccine jamboree should be example enough of how needle jabbers waste their time.”
Cedric rejected my link to a list recent CO2 sensitivity papers on Jo Nova as just a blog. Despite it listing peer reviewed papers.
http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/graph/models/climate-sensitivity/climate_sensitivity5.png
Cedric, list the NASA CO2 sensitivty experts or just list the papers that name them. CO2 sensitivity is a specialism, just any old climate scientist or modeller won’t do. Don’t forget the last 10 years. I know warmists like to truncate modern data if it doesn’t fit their storey.
Stop waffling about other issues, they have no relevance to AGW. All sciences have gone through periods where healthy scepticism would have saved lives. Or do you think doctors still use the medical consensus of 500 years ago? Or 100 years or even 10 years ago? Only history will tell us if climate science is at it’s start or it’s prime.
Sorry, Cedric just went off subject. The article was thanking individuals and Cedric’s comments were totally irrelevant and if I hadn’t been doing anything earlier, I’d probably have acted sooner.
Cedric rejected my link to a list recent CO2 sensitivity papers on Jo Nova as just a blog. Despite it listing peer reviewed papers.
Blogs list peer-reviewed papers all the time. It’s what they do.
It makes them look better.
I don’t care who Jo Nova is or her blog. Nor do I care about Ken Ham and the papers he lists on his blog at AIG. Nor do I care about Joseph Mercola and his blog and whatever papers he’s found on the internet today.
I go to NASA.
It’s the smart thing to do. There’s no good reason not to.
Cedric, list the NASA CO2 sensitivty experts…
You are not getting this.
There are only a handful of people involved in trying to work out what effect CO2 has from real data, few if any of them are at NASA.
Not according to NASA. They are pioneers of climate change research. Nobody does it better. They know all about CO2 and they know all about data.
Would it be asking too much for you to change the italics where appropriate for the sake of legibility? Plus having workable links would be nice. The HTML coding is not exactly easy on the eye.
Your call.
If you wish to contact me directly, you have my email.
Cedric obviously makes a speciality of off topic but I hate to let stuff stand. It lets me practice my arguments too.
It’s hard to think up something different when replying to a sceptic who’s just covered everything you want to say.
There, I’ve tidied them up a bit. I’d have preferred to move all the comments over, but I cannot see an easy way to do that.
If you really don’t understand the significance of CO2 sensitivity you’re just a beginner at climate science debate. Either that or you can’t supply a list and are trying to bluster your way out of the question.
Stop waffling about other issues, they have no relevance to AGW.
There is no waffling. I am making a direct comparison between one group and another.
Only the labels change.
The playbook is exactly the same.
Science is not a buffet where you get to pick and choose the scientific conclusions you will accept or reject according to whim.
That’s just being arbitrary. It’s a mug’s game.
You have to adopt a sound and objective methodology.
Otherwise, you are no better than….them.
All sciences have gone through periods where healthy scepticism would have saved lives.
You are not engaging in healthy skepticism. Look at what you are doing and what you are saying. You are only doing what the Creationists and others do when they reject the scientific consensus on their pet issue.
Or do you think doctors still use the medical consensus of 500 years ago? Or 100 years or even 10 years ago?
Modern medicine as we understand it now didn’t even exist 500 years ago.
The medical consensus on….anything…could always be wrong.
Science is tentative.
That includes your cancer diagnosis.
Only before you walk out of your doctor’s office and go shopping for some snake oil salesman with a blog, you have to have a really good, iron-clad methodology that will protect you from your own confirmation biases.
Otherwise, you’re in denial and are going to have a very short lifespan.
That’s not ok.
Once you use a method or and argument or a rationalization to reject the the scientific consensus on…anything, then you endorse that way of doing things and….anybody can do that for their own personal barrow.
That includes cancer, HIV treatments, vaccine schedules, structural safety etc.
Only history will tell us if climate science is at it’s start or it’s prime.
Only time will tell if my doctor was right in warning me to quit smoking.
Spot the problem.
What annoys me most, is that his long comments are either unintelligible or didn’t have anything worth responding to the first time he wrote them.
If you really don’t understand the significance of CO2 sensitivity you’re just a beginner at climate science debate.
I don’t know anything about CO2 nor sensitivity.
I’m not pretending to.
I’m just some guy on the internet. Really.
I’m not setting myself up as some sort of an expert or anything.
Total duffer at science. I freely admit it.
Same thing with the link between smoking and cancer. I know nothing about the science behind it all. Not a blessed thing.
I’m about as far away as one can get from being an oncologist.
Which is why when I want to find out about such a thing, I won’t go to some blog.
My standards are better than that.
I’ll go to the NIH or the CDC or the Surgeon General or some other mainstream medical community of national or international import that does active research on lung cancer etc.
Heck, I’ll go to all of them.
They’re all good.
What I won’t do is…send for that white paper that the nice man in the 70’s trenchcoat is so earnest about.
tobacco_papers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfVbBBmZJ9A
Thanks for the effort.
I’ve told you, I can reject anything I like. I most certainly don’t take all of science as true. If I did I’d drink or give up coffee every other day, and I’m on my second cup right now. I certainly never take my GP’s opinion as the last word on my health. I’d be dead right now if I did. Science is not infallable and climate science is (in my opinion) pretty crap.
The best sciences have a better track record of success. Most of them have earned their credibilty. Some sciences like psychology are still verging on voodoo (Dr Lewandowsky springs to mind). That doesn’t mean it’s all wrong but that it lacks demonstrable proof in wide areas. Climate science made some bold claims that have failed to come true. Worse, it let others make wild claims that bring the whole thing into disrepute. Well that’s their call but it’s not the way I’d gain trust.
You make the mistake of lumping all science objections together. Just because you find similarities doesn’t mean anything. Argue any issue and you use the same ‘play book’. It’s how people debate. Period. In almost every issue asside from AGW I’d be judged as mainstream. Scottish Sceptic used to be a true believer. Engineers are not usually sceptical of science! We only reacted to CAGW because the scientists made a pigs ear of it.
So pay the CO2 reduction bill and look happy. Me, I’ll carry on as I want to. We’ll compare notes 30 years from now.
Yes, let’s listen to NASA. Especially the men and women who put that organization on the map with one mankind’s most crowning achievements.
Yes, let’s listen to those who do it better: http://www.livescience.com/19643-nasa-astronauts-letter-global-warming.html
I’m an engineer as well. I have very high respect for the engineers at NASA, especially for the Apollo program. Hence my reply to Cedric above.
I patriotically note that many of those engineers were from the Canadian Avro Arrow program who emigrated when the program was sacked (one of the few sore points I have with the US but that’s another story).
Many of us are, which is an oddity in itself. We’re mostly based in technical fields.
Dr Lew’s research proves that climate sceptics are not as prone to conspiracy ideation as the general public. Even if you assume that his data collection wasn’t laughably poor and almost certainly punked by naughty warmists.
Yes, let’s listen to NASA. Especially the men…
That’s not what you are doing.
You are listening to 49 retirees….who used to work in admin and a couple of retired astronauts. It’s not really the same thing.
Science is not about people making pronouncements from on high. It’s about the work.
NASA does the work.
So does every single scientific community on the planet.
There’s no getting around that.
It would be much cheaper if we could all stop this science worky stuff thing and just meekly trust people who assure us that they know what they are talking about. Leave that to priests.
Think of the money we’d save without those pesky satellites and supercomputers and expeditions to the Antarctic and data monitoring and sediment sampling and chemical analysis covering all the Earth Sciences and going back many decades.
No.
Only the work counts
NASA does the work.
“So quit smoking and look happy. Me, I’ll carry on as I want to and smoke like a chimney around my kids. We’ll compare notes 30 years from now.”
Yeah, if that’s what YOU want to do. Me, I don’t smoke and thankfully the majority of Brits agree with me so now it’s illegal to smoke in the public areas I frequent. People power wins where science failed.
I certainly never take my GP’s opinion as the last word on my health. I’d be dead right now if I did. Science is not infallable and climate science is (in my opinion) pretty crap.
You go to your doctor.
The test results come back.
It’s bad.
You have cancer.
What are you going to do?
You make the mistake of lumping all science objections together. Just because you find similarities doesn’t mean anything.
They’re not similar.
They are the same.
They are the same because all the groups have all the same huge problem.
Argue any issue and you use the same ‘play book’.
Nope. The way you argue is not the way the CDC or the Surgeon General argues, for example. The methodology of what the scientific communities do is totally different from what the blogosphere is doing.
In almost every issue asside from AGW I’d be judged as mainstream. Scottish Sceptic used to be a true believer. Engineers are not usually sceptical of science!
That’s hardly an endorsement.
You are saying what they say.
“In almost every issue aside from creationism/HIV/ the moonlandings/ 9/11 I’d be judged as mainstream.”
Yep, it works. It’s the kind of thing they say.
“Scottish Sceptic used to be a true believer in the moonlandings/evolution/ HIV/vaccines.”
Again, it works. Only the labels are different.
Engineers are not usually skeptical of science.
Actually, it’s usually engineers.
And sometimes dentists.
Two words for you:
Salem Hypothesis.
Being an engineer does not make you magically immune from being seduced into science denial.
People power wins where science failed.
Nonsense. Smoking causes cancer. We know that because of science. The cigarette companies did everything they could to keep “people power” on their side. And worked amazingly well for a very long time.
Your Health vs the Tobacco Industry: A History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rctyhcjdkZM
But the science didn’t stop smoking, people stopped smoking. Despite the science, many countries have no restrictions and in all countries many people still smoke. Science no matter how good, is not all that’s needed to trigger action. People have to want to change. When over 50% agree, you can start to force the rest. Emitting CO2 is considerably more universal, more pleasurable and more essential than smoking. Climate science is light years behind the science of smoking diseases. And people still smoke.
If you think that climate science is good enough to effect massive change, you’re deluded. But then I expect a scientist told you that it was good enough because you clearly don’t have any ideas of your own.
But the science didn’t stop smoking, people stopped smoking.
That’s true but that’s got nothing to do with my point.
Science no matter how good, is not all that’s needed to trigger action. People have to want to change.
Yes but it’s really easy to create doubt in people via a disinformation campaign so as to dilute the message from the scientific community.
Cigarette companies didn’t have to prove the science wrong for all those many decades.
Nothing so hard.
They just had to sow doubt amongst ordinary people.
The Surgeon General tried to warn people for decades to no avail. It’s not like the medical community just suddenly realized that smoking was insanely bad for you only in the 90’s.
Same problem, same tactics.
Even the same think tanks and, in some cases, the same pet scientists.
DOUBT – The climate Reality Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVjr-qOpNk
“But the science didn’t stop smoking, people stopped smoking”
But it does matter to MY point. In my opinion climate science is poor. Sceptics shouldn’t be able to pick holes in it. YOU should be able to defend it without bringing in countless other issues. YOU should know about CO2 sensitivity. That you don’t is evidence of how poor the science is and how badly it is explained to the public.
People started accepting the smoking, cancer connection when they could see the truth in the science, not because they trusted the scientistsor their doctor. Even many of those who smoke accept it’s bad for them but they take the gamble that they won’t regret their habit. They make their choice and the outcomes vary.
People will do the same with AGW but at the moment most people are rejecting CO2 science. They are taking the gamble that they will have a better life filled with fossil fuels. The science is barely denting their decision. Look at all your warmist buddies. Are they acting like they believe in the science? Or are they like chain smokers muttering at the passive smoke from their neighbour rather than stubbing out their own?
I trust engineers every single day. I trust some scientist. The reason is regulation and policing. Where is the regulation of climate science? Where are the climate science inspectors? What punishments do they face if they get their science wrong or do something bad? Even bankers go to jail if they break certain rules but the single most important issue of all time has zero rules, zero inspectors and zero responsibility.
“Salem Hypothesis.”
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of that before. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Creationist and I’ve met a LOT of engineers. Of course, that could just mean there are very few Creationists or they’re not necessarily vocal about it.
Cedric, the closest job in the medical world to a climate academic is a biochemical researcher and not a GP (who are far more like sceptics with practical knowledge).
So, what you are suggesting is that you go to a university bio-medical unit and ask them fro advice on your cold.
Of course you don’t go and ask academic for advice on your health and nor should anyone ask academics to “diagnose” any other real problem because they don’t have any of the necessary skills, training, experience culture, quality control system,
… NOR INSURANCE.
And before answering, tell me if you think any academic is prepared to accept the insurance risk if their advice costing the world around $2trillion and rising should be wrong.
You’d expect to sue if a doctor was so inept that dispite the evidence they gave the wrong diagnosis and it cost you a lot of time and money.
And so it is only right that I expect to get compensation from the academics who claimed to be able to predict the climate with so much confidence and who cost us all so much, now they are being proved wrong.
@TinyCO2
I wonder the same thing about accountability for scientists (for the UN as well but that’s another story).
I belong to an engineering society and we have a code of ethics and conduct. The range of penalties are reprimand, dismissal, loss of license to practice and even jail in extreme cases.
Our duty to clients (i.e. the public) is very clearly laid out. I have nothing against scientists in general but there are some climate scientists that turn my stomach.
Cedric loves dictionary definitions. He’s particularly keen on using “scientific community/communities” in the same sentence as NASA. There are numerous dictionary definitions of “community” in its different forms, but this one best seems to suit his constant use of it:
“[MASS NOUN] The condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common:
the sense of community that organized religion can provide.”
On the plus side, Cedric has responded to my criticism on a different thread, that his annoying Americanisms don’t help his cause on a UK web-site. I give him credit for now using plain and intelligible English instead of repeating his previous irritating terms like “troofers” and “anti-vaxxers”. Thank you Cedric.
On the minus side, his re-writing on an earlier thread of my final comment aimed at him, so that it reads as though I wrote what he said, thus making me look like an idiot, is nothing short of disgraceful, and requires an apology. If I look like an idiot through what I write, that’s fine and I have nobody to blame but myself. No doubt Cedric thinks what I write does make me look like an idiot – and he’s entitled to his view. But to re-write my words so disgracefully is shameful. He should be ashamed of himself, but I doubt if he is.
So, what you are suggesting is that you go to a university bio-medical unit and ask them fro advice on your cold.
Not at all. Let me restate what I’m actually talking about as opposed to your odd version of events.
It’s very simple.
You go to your doctor.
The test results come back.
It’s bad.
You have cancer.
What are you going to do?
I’m very sorry to have offended you.
The idea was to make a direct comparison to other viewpoints that I’m assuming you would strongly disagree with.
Sauce. Goose. Gander. That sort of thing.
What bits strike you as being unfair?
Quotes?
Reverse it, you feel ill, you go to the doctor and he says you’re fine. What are you going to do?
Medicine and climate science are light years apart. No medical advance makes it directly from the scientist to public policy. Each drug or technique is tested, documented, discussed, trialed, observed, judged and finally manufactured. Even once a drug is in use, it is still monitored for side effects. Climate science is only tested on the computer and is instantly used in public policy. Duplication is even frowned upon as plagiarism is a great no, no. The closest climate science gets to testing is peer review where a few buddies give it a read through for spelling mistakes and glaring errors. No testing possible because the data and the software used are not routinely included. In other words, you can’t even check if they got their sums right.
It is a curious phenomena that even after all these years nobody is suggesting regulation. It’s the ‘trust me I’m a scientst’ thing. People like Cedric just abdicate their thinking to a higher power… much like the Creationists really.
Cedric
Thank you for responding so quickly, and I am grateful that you are sorry for having offended me. You and I don’t see eye to eye on this whole debate, and we’ve had quite a bit of rough & tumble in our comments towards each other, which I think is fair enough, so long as it stays within certain bounds. We can all get a bit emotional when we feel strongly about something, but I think it’s important to keep it fair and civil, even if we (and I include myself in that – I’m not perfect) sometimes fail in that objective.
What I objected to, however fair the point you thought you were trying to make, was your re-writing (cut and posted below) of one comment I posted, so that it reads as below (sorry, I don’t seem to be able to italicise it or otherwise make it stand out):
“So long as the world contains people like Cedric, blogs like this one perform a valuable service.
[That’s skating on thin ice – as I don’t allow attacks on other commentators]
Having observed on another thread the 12 rules of the Cedric Katesby School of Debate, I decline to engage with him any more. I see he’s still using his rules of debate, anyway. Suffice to say that so long as organisations like the BBC and his beloved NCSE only give us some of the news and part of the story on evolution, sceptic blogsites remain important, so that those people who are not lazy and gullible enough to believe that they are being told the whole story, can discover interesting things about Darwinism, and make up their own minds. Things like transitional fossils, which have yet to make an appearance; the ignoring of textbooks using fake diagrams of Hackel’s Embryos and the inconvenient truth that Darwinism contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics; stuff like that.
And yes, even enabling debate to take place with the likes of Cedric is a valuable service. The fact that he won’t go away and feels the need to return to Intelligent Design sites like this demonstrates what a good job the sceptics are doing. If the case he supports was so clear-cut, and if Darwin sceptics were such a bunch of losers, Cedric and his ilk wouldn’t waste their time engaging with us, otherwise that would just make him a bigger loser, surely?
I know Cedric will respond with a tedious and repetitive diatribe straight out of his playbook, so just to be clear, I won’t reply when he does.
In the meantime keep up the good work – you’re obviously annoying him, so that has to be something. God bless you.”
The whole re-writing was completely unfair, because I don’t believe any of the things you wrote. You believe you have found an appropriate parallel between my views, and the views of anti-science people who believe the things you re-wrote me as saying. I disagree, but if you had made your point in a different way, instead of re-writing my words (a very irritating habit on your part, I have to say), I could have objected less. It would then have been a reasonable way to debate the point. The way you went about it was not reasonable, in my opinion, and I found it distasteful. As a confirmed atheist, the “God bless you” ending was completely below the belt. I found that part to be particularly offensive.
“In my opinion, the cancer science is poor. Sceptics shouldn’t be able to pick holes in it. YOU should be able to defend it without bringing in countless other issues. YOU should know about oncology. That you don’t is evidence of how poor the science is and how badly it is explained to the public.”
…cancer connection when they could see the truth in the science, not because they trusted the scientistsor their doctor.
The truth was always there to see.
For decades.
The medical communities had it right all along and the cigarette companies knew it.
People can’t see very well when disinformation campaigns…blow smoke in their eyes.
That’s the whole idea.
It’s easy to create doubt in the public.
They don’t understand peer review.
They have no idea how hard it is to create a scientific consensus.
That makes things really easy for the think tanks and op-eds and the bloggers out there.
They can play the doubt game forever and delay and delay and delay.
Look at all your warmist buddies.
I don’t rely on “buddies” to tell me if I have cancer or not.
I’ll go to a doctor for that.
You go to your doctor.
The test results come back.
It’s bad.
You have cancer.
What are you going to do?
“It’s the ‘trust me I’m an oncologist’ thing. People like Cedric just abdicate their thinking to a higher power… much like the Creationists really.”
Hmm.
The equivalent of someone like the UEA giving advice on climate is the same as a medical researcher giving advice on individual health issues or e.g. a professor telling the government how to build bridges.
But worse, still the climate academics have explicitly said that they and only they should be listened to, that no one with more relevant practical experience should be funded.
Or to use your own analogy it is as if a researcher investigating smoking tells the public that they shouldn’t listen to GPs, that GPs are “deniers” of the truth, and that the public should only get their advice on coughs and colds from these academics.
Cedric see my answer below to your bit of misdirection. You’re awarding climate science credibility it hasn’t earned. Not all sciences are equal. Few have as little mechanism for removing human error or deliberate mischief as climate science. None of those that matter are anywhere near as slap dash.
The big difference is this: a doctor expects to get sued if they give poor advice, whereas an academic usually behaves in a manner where they do not expect to get sued for poor advice.
What Cedric is exposing is the fallacy that you can behave “like a doctor” and give prescriptive advice and that somehow, if you give specific advice that has huge cost implications, somehow you will not get sued.
In many areas, you actually have two groups of people with almost the same knowledge – but one acts in a way that is general and not actionable in law, and the other uses the same knowledge to provide specific advice and so is liable if (when) that advice is wrong.
Cedric wants climate academics to be free to engage in pseudo politicing, to fabricate data, then to insist that world governments follow their advice at a cost that exceeds almost anything else ever conceived.
… and then he somehow believes, that they won’t be sued by commercial companies who relied on their advice.
This is why academics shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near governments – because they are totally clueless about the real liabilities that they personally and their institutions face for even mildly poor advice. Then when you put the eye-watering cost of it – which I doubt any insurance company would ever cover –
THEY ARE CLEARLY MAD.
The whole re-writing was completely unfair, because I don’t believe any of the things you wrote.
I’m not suggesting that you do. It would be a remarkable coincidence if you did. That’s not the point of the exercise.
As a confirmed atheist, the “God bless you” ending was completely below the belt. I found that part to be particularly offensive.
Please understand that I’m not saying that you believe in any god or other. That’s really not it at all.
Have you ever visited creationist/ID blogs and read some of the tripe they dish out?
They godbother all the time. They like to pepper their missives with “Bless you” this and a “Yours in Christ” there and a couple of “Praise Cheeses” for good measure.
So to keep things in their proper flavor, I added that extra phrase at the bottom to keep the whole thing “in character”, nothing more.
It’s just switching the labels around.
If you ever want to do it to me, feel free.
If, for example, I was to claim that X is true because my dad says so….then you could take my exact words and go…..Y is true because MY dad says so.
That would be completely fair…and a very clean example of how not to argue.
Job done.
Try this for example. Guess the topic:
“There is classical science, the way it’s supposed to work, and then there’s religion. I regained my sanity when I realized that …….. science was a religious discourse. The one thing I will go to my grave not understanding is why everyone was so quick to accept everything the government said as truth.”
Or how about this one?
… are confusing a religious claim with a scientific claim. Their conclusion of…… has gone far beyond the boundaries of science and into the realm of philosophy and religion.
It seems to me that the more effective defense………… is to label these practitioners of the…….. religion for what they are–religious zealots for their own brand of an……….. faith. We don’t have to question their ………… theories–they may be wrong, but they may be right–in order to do this.
And how about this one?
“I chose the…title largely in reaction to the sanctimonious tone employed by so many of those……..to what they see as irrefutable evidence that………To them the cause has become a substitute religion… may be dressed up as science, but at its core those who are most zealous behave like they have “got religion”.
Notice any similarities?
You could even do a mash up with them all together in one statement and nobody could tell the difference.
Without the labels, it’s hard to know which is which. You could probably do a google search but that would be cheating, of course.
I don’t use this language.
Ever.
Neither does NASA.
But there are many groups who do this routinely.
It’s their thing.
And they do it for the same reason.
TinyCO2 says: “It is a curious phenomena that even after all these years nobody is suggesting regulation.”
Let us suppose the worst scenario. It turns out that the UEA did completely fabricate not only the data they used but by passing it on, they caused all other temperature datasets to be false.
I think the first course of action for all governments and companies that had lost out by following their advice would be to take an action against the UEA. Given an estimated cost of $1tillion, I doubt the UEA has even a small fraction of the assets needed, so basically goodbye UEA (and pensions, etc.).
But I then bet the lawyers would start gunning for HMO itself. After all, the HMO was under a duty of care to foreign governments to ensure that the data provided by its agents was fit for use. It was warned of potential problems at Climategate, so it can’t claim not to have known about the problem.
Potentially, we are talking around $20,000 liability for each and every person in the UK. That’s some $50,000 cost per household.
Potentially, the UEA climate academics might not only bring down the whole UEA, but even cause the total collapse of the UK. We would be much worse off than Greece. We’d have to sell London to cover our costs … or perhaps 200 institutions the size of the BBC, British Rail, BT would have to be sold and then the money just given away.
Reverse it, you feel ill, you go to the doctor and he says you’re fine. What are you going to do?
Go to another doctor for a second opinion.
Why on Earth wouldn’t you?
Simple enough.
So….
You go to your doctor.
The test results come back.
It’s bad.
You have cancer.
What are you going to do?
Any chance of a straight answer this time?
… and all on the say so of some academic, who couldn’t even use excel and “lost” the data.
We’d all be working to 90 – because of this prat – and people like Cedric somehow talk about doctors and colds – HE DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE!
I understood very well the (non-)point you were making. You make very simple points, and, whatever you may think, I’m not stupid – I usually get them in less than 10 seconds. That’s not the point.
No real apology then? I didn’t really expect one. When religious zealots believe they’re right, they feel they can say and do what they like with impunity, however much offence they cause along the way.
I tried to offer a conciliatory line with you, despite the offence your comments caused, but the olive branch has been ignored. Pity.
I know you don’t regard the analysis on sceptic blogsites as worthy of any regard compared to your precious NASA, but I wonder how you deal with all of the points on this post?:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/spectacularly-poor-climate-science-at-nasa/
I suppose one or more of the 12 rules will come into play…
NASA is not mad. Really.
Nor is any other scientific community on the planet.
It’s not possible.
If you find yourself in opposition to NASA and every single scientific community on the planet …then it’s not because everybody else is all mad or something.
It’s like the anti-vaxxers.
They can call every single medical community on the planet mad all they like as a rationalization for not vaccinating they children but..when you think about it…it’s a bit silly.
Cedric doctors are practitioners like the majority of sceptics who have real life experience of diagnosing faults in real life.
You are trying to suggest, that we go to academics with no real life experience, who have failed in all their forecast and
WHO DON’T HAVE A PENNY OF INSURANCE TO COVER THEMSELVES WHEN THEY GET SUED.
A doctor is someone who backs their advice with insurance. An academic is someone who doesn’t give advice because they don’t have the appropriate insurance.
HOW MANY CLIMATE ACADEMICS HAVE PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE – INDEED HOW MANY HAVE ANY CLUE THAT THEY NEED PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE WHEN ASKING PEOPLE TO RELY ON THEIR ADVICE.
No real apology then? I didn’t really expect one.
For what exactly?
You grumbled about you not believing in X.
Well, ok.
I thought it was a misunderstanding on your part.
Turns out…it wasn’t.
So….
If you knew that I didn’t really thing you did in the first place, then what are you honestly complaining about?
I don’t get it.
You are trying to suggest, that we go to academics with no real life experience, who have failed in all their forecast and….
NASA, remember?
Not these mystery “academics” or whoever.
You are rationalizing.
You can’t reject a scientific consensus this way.
Well, you can…but you invite comparison.
That’s the last thing you need.
The idea is to NOT argue like they do.
“Cedric see my answer below to your bit of misdirection. You’re awarding evolution credibility it hasn’t earned. Not all sciences are equal. Few have as little mechanism for removing human error or deliberate mischief as evolution. None of those that matter are anywhere near as slap dash.”
You evaded.
I, however, didn’t have to.
Shame on you.
Cedric, you didn’t read the second section, where I pointed out that climate science isn’t medical science. Any more than an oncologist is like a GP.
Comparing the two issues is a waste of our time.
“I don’t get it”. No, you don’t get much, really. I notice you completely ignored the link. Same old Cedric playbook – ignore the inconvenient stuff that it’s difficult to argue with.
By they way, however much you protest to the contrary, you really are a religious zealot. Never in my life have I ever encountered anyone with such absolute and unshakable faith in anything as the absolute and unshakable faith you have in NASA and its global warming alarmism. It’s like watching a fake prophet keep saying he can perform miracles, the miracles never happen, but his acolytes still believe in him. It’s remarkable, truly remarkable.
You really can’t debate climate science can you. You have to keep popping over to other issues. Deal with what I wrote or I’ll assume that you’re a spotty teenager who’s best argument is “I know you are but what am I” to every criticism levelled.
… and all on the say so of some academic, who couldn’t even use excel and “lost” the data.
That’s not the way it works in the real world.
You can’t build a scientific consensus on anything…just because of any lost data or some mystery “academic”.
Getting NASA on board and every single scientific community on board.
Takes time and effort.
The topic itself doesn’t matter.
There are no short cuts.
If you want to create a scientific consensus then….there’s only the old-fashioned way of doing things.
The work that science demands.
You are just throwing things at random at the wall…just like they do.
Dear me Cedric, you take a tremendous number of words to repeatedly demonstrate that you haven’t the first clue what you’re wittering about.
You just don’t understand this science stuff at all, do you?
Oh, and by the way, are you aware that the NASA engineers – you know, those real experts on thermodynamics, the behaviour of gases and all the very complex science involved in rocketry and spaceflight who put the men on the moon, and the astronauts who flew in their creations – don’t believe in anthropogenic global warming, and have publicly stated that they don’t?
You really can’t debate climate science can you.
What part of …..”I’mjustsomeguyontheinternet.Really.I’mnotsettingmyselfupassomesortofanexpertoranything.Totaldufferatscience.Ifreelyadmitit.”..did you not get?
Same thing with the link between smoking and cancer. I know nothing about the science behind it all. Not a blessed thing.
I’m about as far away as one can get from being an oncologist.
But………
You have to keep popping over to other issues.
You are the one that keeps making rationalizations and inviting direct comparison.
It’s a target-rich environment.
You are doing what they are doing.
Only the labels are different.
You go to your doctor.
The test results come back.
It’s bad.
You have cancer.
What are you going to do?
What if this happened to a loved one?
What would you recommend them to do?
“You are just throwing things at random at the wall…just like they do.”
Do you read your own posts?
Seriously how old are you? I’d never have the guts to debate something I knew so little about. Please, feel free to come back when you know more than ‘NASA’ as an argument.
Please don’t pin your hopes on saving us all from CO2 because frankly you’re likely to have the opposite effect. Go do your best to convert those who have not yet made up their mind. You are an excellent sceptic recruiter.
….where I pointed out that climate science isn’t medical science.
According…to you.
It’s self-reinforcing. You are not stepping outside the bubble. Just like they do.
There’s a scientific consensus on a whole lot of things.
The way you come up with some reason or other to deny one scientific issue is the same old dance.
No, you don’t get much, really. I notice you completely ignored the link.
It’s a blog.
Why would you go to a blog when you could just go straight to NASA?
Well you’ve already admitted you know nothing about either science so my opinion trumps yours. You lose.
“Do you read your own posts?
Seriously how old are you? I’d never have the guts to debate something I knew so little about. Please, feel free to come back when you know more than ‘CDC’ as an argument.
Please don’t pin your hopes on saving us all from vaccine denial because frankly you’re likely to have the opposite effect. Go do your best to convert those who have not yet made up their mind. You are an excellent anti-vaxxer recruiter.”
“It’s a blog.
Why would you go to a blog when you could just go straight to NASA?”
There’s just no reasoning with that, is there? It amounts to saying “why would I look at any evidence or information which challenges my preconceptions?” (Note Cedric, I didn’t offensively re-write what you said, I just pointed out the implications of what you said – a far more civilsed way to debate matters).
I rest my case. If nothing – absolutely nothing, nothing on earth – could ever shake Cedric’s faith in NASA (and it seems from all he’s written – and boy has he written a lot to say very little) then that’s the end of the debate.
Cedric can believe in his god NASA, and the rest of us will watch with amused incredulity.
Goodbye Cedric.
Oh, and by the way, are you aware that the NASA engineers….
You might want to fact check that.
Well yes, if you’re as useless at discussing vaccination as climate, I expect you have converted a few undecided people into being anti vaccination. Please stick to climate, you could do real harm in other areas.
You are offering a blog.
Think about it.
If you can offer a blog then….they can offer a blog, right?
AIG ring a bell? Natural News?
It’s a horrible, bad, terrible and very, very silly way to get your science information.
Remember the whole comparison thingy?
Well, there you go.
Perfect example.
Again.
Do you catch me relying on blogs?
Not on your life.
Not for any science topic.
There’s no getting around the work.
There are no shortcuts.
“There’s just no reasoning with that, is there? It amounts to saying “why would I look at any evidence or information which challenges my preconceptions?”
Gosh, now there’s a phrase that a creationist couldn’t use when trying to get someone to look at AIG.
(Oh wait.)
It’s your arguments. You are the one enabling the antivaxxers and the other types out there.
They’re your kind of people.
If you do it …then you can’t complain when they follow your methodology.
I’m just switching the labels around.
Well you’ve already admitted you know nothing about either science so my opinion trumps yours. You lose.
Nothing to do with “my” opinion.
I’m unqualified to give one.
(shrug)
However, there are those that are.
NASA, remember?
NASA and every single scientific community on the planet.
You have nothing in comparison.
That’s never going to change.
[snip – over the top]
Cedric, go and read up on the history of Climategate and then come back when you actually know what you are talking about.
As for NASA – they employed eco-activist Hansen who was willing to break the law.
Any organisation that knowingly employs someone willing to break the law to push their view, is doing so intentionally. They clearly wanted someone like Hansen because they knew he would bias the result in favour of more government spending.
Cedric, go and read up on the history of Climategate and then come back when you actually know what you are talking about.
What makes you think I don’t know everything there is to know about Climategate?
It’s been years now.
Nothing happened despite all the gushing expectation.
All the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and….nothing. It went to the same Elephant’s Graveyard where Coleman and his lawsuit ended up.
Besides, that still doesn’t help anybody here with this whole rationalization thing that you are all doing.
You are all coming up with excuses, one after another, of why you are comfortable in your own skin rejecting NASA and the work they do.
You are not testing your own reasons.
You are not being self-critical.
As for NASA – they employed eco-activist Hansen who was willing to break the law.
They could employ Hitler for all the difference it makes.
(shrug)
It’s not about one single individual.
Forget the obsession with personalities.
That’s not science.
It’s not about Darwin.
It’s not about Offit.
You can’t build a scientific consensus on one person or a graph or some statement or whatever. It’s much, much bigger than that.
And that goes in reverse.
The door you walk in is the same door that you are supposed to walk out.
Cedric:
This is the Jones email, where he admits he can’t even use the basic Excel spreadsheet they used to produce the global figure:
I keep on seeing people saying this same stupid thing. I’m not adept enough (totally inept) with excel to do this now as no-one who knows how to is here.
What you have to do is to take the numbers in column C (the years) and then those in D (the anomalies for each year), plot them and then work out the linear trend. The slope is upwards. I had someone do this in early 2006, and the trend was upwards then. It will be now. Trend won’t be statistically significant, but the trend is up.
Now tell me that you personally would stake £50,000 of your money on his reputation and “expertise” in handling data. He was so totally incompetent that he couldn’t even work out the trend himself – so there’s not a hope in hell he was capable of doing even basic quality control checks on the data.
I wonder where Cedric was brainwashed? Perhaps at http://climatekids.nasa.gov/
Why would a scientific, non-political, organisation, have such a website?
Perhaps Cedric is one of NASA’s climate kids – NASA’s eyes on the earth.
I can understand someone like Cedric having great belief in science. By and large, so do I, when it’s done properly (I just know that bit’s inviting a rant from Cedric). I admire his candour in admitting he knows nothing about science. The bit I don’t get is why he settled on NASA as his God, why he thinks they can’t possibly be wrong about anything, why they couldn’t have an agenda. At the end of the day, scientists, including NASA scientists, are just people. Just as we all can, they can make mistakes. They can have an unconscious bias. They can have an agenda. They can work out what’s likely to get them funding, and say what their funders want to hear.
Why can’t NASA be wrong? Because it’s an organisation comprised of people, it CAN be wrong, just like anyone else. And as cedric freely admits he knows nothing about science, he’s not qualified to judge whether they’re right or wrong. Only a religious zealot who sets it up on a pedestal and bows down to it, a complete obsessive who mentions it remorselessly during any discussion on any topic, whether related or not, could have such a blind belief in it.
We on this blogsite are being more than a little daft in allowing Cedric to dominate our discourse, given his refusal to respond to reason, and his insistence on turning every discussion to his own pet subject. Put like that, his behaviour is just plain rude, but then obsessives usually do lack self-awareness and are regularly downright rude.
Our host has been uber-generous in allowing Cedric this thread. The irony will be lost on Cedric, who accused him of Orwellian censorship at one point. Enough is enough. Given Cedric’s stated contempt for blogsites, I wonder why he is wasting his time and ours on this one.
I politely invite Cedric to leave and go and play somewhere else. If he chooses not to, I for one will be ignoring him from now on in. It’s a resolution I’ve made several times already, but I’ve foolishly allowed some provocative post or other to keep dragging me back. No more. He can say what he likes, I for one will not be biting again.
This is why academics shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near governments – because they are totally clueless about the real liabilities that they personally and their institutions face for even mildly poor advice. Then when you put the eye-watering cost of it – which I doubt any insurance company would ever cover –
Well, since you did bring up insurance companies, if that’s the yardstick you personally approve of then…
See for yourself.
They seem very sure of their numbers.
Insurance Industry Warns of Climate Change and Extreme Weather
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAvusFYSYsU
Cedric, when this scam is over, I will be look at options for recovering my own personal costs from those most responsible.
And I’m sure a lot of far less altruistic businesspeople who were very happy to have their snouts in the trough during the good times, will be just as happy to make money through the law courts when it falls apart.
And so, I think there is a high chance that after the biggest financial scam in history, we will see the most costly series of court actions in history.
And any organisation that has allowed any of its staff to say “we are experts” or worse “we are experts you must rely on our advice” … will be in the firing line for compensation from the
$1 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0
Cost.
At $100/hour, that will employ 200,000 lawyers for 10 years … so, even if only 1% of the cost goes to court, we can expect several thousand lawyers to have a full time job for a good decade taking people like the UEA and Penn state to the cleaners.
Cedric, when this scam is over,…
What will that actually look like in the real world?
……we can expect several thousand lawyers to have a full time job for a good decade taking people like the UEA and Penn state to the cleaners.
Well, no time like the present, right?
When can we expect someone (anyone) calling a lawyer and actually doing something?
Or is these just more Coleman stuff?
You are so clueless about the real world. The snouts in the trough companies making money from the public will keep their snouts in the trough until they are forcibly removed, and then they will sue anyone and everyone they can to keep making money from the scam.
This is why sceptics are sceptics – because we’ve been part of that real world, where people do turn around and bite.
That is why sceptics know that anyone putting themselves in the position of offering advice needs to be very cautious how they do it, to limit their own and organisational liability.
Academics don’t have a clue. They are babes in the wood who don’t realise that the wolves they are feeding will just as readily feed on them as anyone else.
“I wonder where Cedric was brainwashed? Perhaps at [link removed because it’s rude to just link]
Why would a scientific, non-political, organisation, have such a website?
Perhaps Cedric is one of the Surgeon General’s kids – the Department of Health and Human services are everywhere.
I can understand someone like Cedric having great belief in science. By and large, so do I, when it’s done properly (I just know that bit’s inviting a rant from Cedric). I admire his candour in admitting he knows nothing about science. The bit I don’t get is why he settled on the Surgeon General as his God, why he thinks they can’t possibly be wrong about anything, why they couldn’t have an agenda. At the end of the day, scientists, including those that work at the CDC etc. scientists, are just people. Just as we all can, they can make mistakes. They can have an unconscious bias. They can have an agenda. They can work out what’s likely to get them funding, and say what their funders want to hear.
Why can’t the Surgeon General’s Department be wrong? Because it’s an organisation comprised of people, it CAN be wrong, just like anyone else. And as cedric freely admits he knows nothing about science, he’s not qualified to judge whether they’re right or wrong. Only a religious zealot who sets it up on a pedestal and bows down to it, a complete obsessive who mentions it remorselessly during any discussion on any topic, whether related or not, could have such a blind belief in it.
We on this blogsite are being more than a little daft in allowing Cedric to dominate our discourse, given his refusal to respond to reason, and his insistence on turning every discussion to his own pet subject. Put like that, his behaviour is just plain rude, but then obsessives usually do lack self-awareness and are regularly downright rude.
Our host has been uber-generous in allowing Cedric this thread. The irony will be lost on Cedric, who accused him of Orwellian censorship at one point. Enough is enough. Given Cedric’s stated contempt for blogsites, I wonder why he is wasting his time and ours on this one.
I politely invite Cedric to leave and go and play somewhere else. If he chooses not to, I for one will be ignoring him from now on in. It’s a resolution I’ve made several times already, but I’ve foolishly allowed some provocative post or other to keep dragging me back. No more. He can say what he likes, I for one will not be biting again.”
You are not really getting this whole label switching thing.
If it’s this easy to make a direct comparison, then you are doing something very badly wrong.
The idea is to not sound exactly like them.
If you hadn’t noticed by now, you probably never will, but no sceptic cares about NASA or out of date Vax computers, or smoke rings, or alien abductions or whatever other perverse theories you have.
What we do know, is how organisations in the real world behave. That’s not all good, nor to be honest is it all bad. So, e.g. I’m sure NASA is filled we nice people. That however doesn’t mean the organisation is a shit bag snout-in-the-trough of public money spreading lies about the climate in order to line its pockets.
But, then what is TV advertising except trying to convince people they need something they don’t. The public sector are no less money grabbing than the private sector, but somehow you have rose tinted glasses and just do not understand the public sector is as bad as the private sector at deceiving and misleading people.
You are so clueless about the real world.
It’s not about me. I’m just some guy on the internet.
The thing is…you are doing what they do.
The snouts in the trough companies making money from the public….
I get it.
Big Pharma. Monsanto. The Bush Administration. Darwinists.
Whatever. Take your pick.
‘It’s all corruption. Big money. Oh don’t you understand. Think for yourself. World government. Big companies. Dark dealings. Wheels within wheels. I know what I’m talking about. They can’t fool me. Just take my word for it. History will prove me right.
Just you wait. etc, etc,etc.’
It’s the same old thing. You are rationalizing. Again, I can take everything you say and pop it in the mouth of some other group that you probably want no part of…and it would work perfectly.
I shouldn’t be able to do that….but I can.
I’m not dealing with some out-of-context quote or anything.
I’m being perfectly fair.
I can take ALL OF IT and just switch the labels around and (Ta-Da) you’ve got a comment on a blog from a moon landing denier site or an HIV denier site or the 9/11 troofers and so on.
You have the same problem so, naturally, you reach for the same solution.
It’s elementary.
It’s classic conspiracy thinking.
You need to step outside your bubble and test your own conclusions. Otherwise, you will be forever trapped in your own echo chamber. You’d never accept this mentality for any other topic.
Cedric, as part of my MBA I was taught the basics of organisational behaviour. And that I think gives me far more qualifications than you on the subject.
And as such, I can say with all sincerity that you are talking utter bollocks and really should stop reading your stupid conspiracy web sites.
A conspiracy is just a legal term for a group of people acting in concert to commit a crime. Therefore when Jones emailed others and asked them to delete emails contrary to the FOI act he was legally conspiring.
If an academic agrees to “buddy review” a paper and that paper results in financial reward, then that is under law a fraud and the two of them are conspiring to commit fraud.
If NASA knowingly employs someone intending them to distort the global temperature record, and as a result they get government grants, then again, that is a fraud and those involved would be part of a legal conspiracy to defraud.
And for your information, the final arbiter of conspiracy isnot your daft conspiracy websites or your daft colleagues, but a court of law.
This is the Jones email, where he admits he can’t even use the basic Excel spreadsheet….
So? What are you trying to build here?
Who cares about some guy and his spreadsheet?
Go ahead and shoot him.
Burn all his work.
Torch his entire department and anyone he ever got in contact with.
Happy now?
How much difference did it make?
That’s right. Nothing.
There’s no Dr Evil. There’s no “that guy” or “that paper” or “that graph” that’s the magic weakest link.
It’s not how science works.
Now tell me that you personally would stake £50,000 of your money on his reputation.
That’s not what is happening. You are building a strawman.
NASA, remember? How many times do I have to patiently remind you before it dawns on you that I’m talking about….NASA.
Do you realize how big NASA is?
The work?
Do you understand that there is no “One Ring” to rule them all and in the darkness bind them?
If you are going to criticize my position, then do it honestly.
You are just doing a reversal variation on a theme.
It’s called the single paper fallacy.
Cedric, as part of my MBA I was taught the basics of organisational behaviour. And that I think gives me far more qualifications than you on the subject.
I know you do. That’s the problem. That’s why I’m asking you to stop and…step outside your bubble.
If you are going to continue to be all self-referral then…that’s not really doing the whole testing thing now is it?
See the problem?
A conspiracy is just a legal term for a group of people acting in concert to commit a crime. Therefore when Jones emailed others and asked them to delete emails contrary to the FOI act he was legally conspiring.
Wonderful. You’ve cracked the case. So…when do you call a lawyer? How many years is this supposed to take?
Do it already.
Enter a court of law.
And for your information, the final arbiter of conspiracy isnot your daft conspiracy websites or your daft colleagues…
It’s your lot, not mine.
It’s a record of the thinking within your own tribe of what you people promote. That’s where it leads to. A mishmash of vague conspiracy theories, each one more goofy than the next.
If you hadn’t noticed by now, you probably never will, but no sceptic cares about NASA or out of date Vax computers, or smoke rings, or alien abductions or whatever other perverse theories you have.
What we do know, is how organisations in the real world behave. That’s not all good, nor to be honest is it all bad. So, e.g. I’m sure NASA is filled we nice people. That however doesn’t mean the organisation is a shit bag snout-in-the-trough of public money spreading lies about the climate in order to line its pockets.
But, then what is TV advertising except trying to convince people they need something they don’t. The public sector are no less money grabbing than the private sector, but somehow you have rose tinted glasses and just do not understand the public sector is as bad as the private sector at deceiving and misleading people.
In this particular case, I don’t even need to change the label.
Hmm.
The 30 Billion Dollar Scam
https: //www.youtube.com
[Cedric, you are welcome to contribute your own comments, but please only post links where other people might be genuinely interested in them.
In particular, posting a link as “an argument” in itself or to “point score” is rude and discourteous and I will remove them]
Cedric Katesby says:
25th August 2015 at 8:23 am
This is the Jones email, where he admits he can’t even use the basic Excel spreadsheet….
So? What are you trying to build here?
Who cares about some guy and his spreadsheet?
CEDRIC!!!!
This “spreadsheet” is the UK figure for global temperature.
What you have just said is:
“So? What are you trying to build here?
Who cares about some guy and his global temperature figure”
By your own stupidity, arrogance and ignorance – in short the way you are clueless as to how this global temperature figure was compiled, you have condemned the very figure you claim to be so important as “Who cares about some guy and his global warming“.
It really is quite insulting that you come here, without even the basic knowledge and so ignorant of anything on the climate and then like some screaming kid, demand we adults come down to your level of ignorance and engage in pathetic discussions about non existent conspiracies.
This “spreadsheet” is the UK figure for global temperature.
No, it’s not.
There is no “spreadsheet” for anything. There are spreadsheets. Lots of them.
There are teams working on this kind of stuff.
There is no “guy” that’s the Mr Big working on “a” computer with “a” spreadsheet.
You are thinking of blogs-not scientific communities.
…in short the way you are clueless as to how this global temperature figure was compiled….
[link removed as there’s no explanation of why it is there]
The general public idolizes or demonizes personalities in science. It’s not how it works.
It’s just a romanticized version of reality.
If you were to talk about Sauron’s Ring then you’d have a point.
Chuck that thing into Mt Doom and that takes care of that.
Only science on whatever topic you fancy doesn’t have the same structure.
Whoever it is you are fixating on could vanish in a puff of smoke…and it would change nothing. It’s not all dependent on him or her, whoever they ware supposed to be.
Nor his spreadsheets or lack of ability with them.
Same diff with creationists and Darwin. The Theory of Evolution did indeed get started with Darwin…but he’s been dead for a long time. Evolution Theory has moved on and been transformed and added to and modified.
It’s no longer really Darwin’s, strictly speaking.
So…fixating on Darwin this or Darwin that or Darwin something else is rather missing the point. It’s not going to matter to the science that underpins the Theory of Evolution at all.
[link removed as there’s no explanation of why it is there]
The explanation was in the link…..but you deleted it.
Hmm.
The explanation should be in your comment. This not only tells anyone looking at the link what they are supposed to look for at the other end but it also means that most people will be able to decide whether they want to follow the link.
Also, if you can’t summarise the argument that you are linking to in a few short sentences, then it is very likely you don’t understand what is being said. And if you don’t understand what is being said, you have no idea whether or not it actually supports your argument.
And just posting a link is what a spam bots does .
The explanation should be in your comment.
It was.
It was the link and the comment and the explanation.
A package deal.
A three-in-one.
I used the html code thingy the way you normally do.
This not only tells anyone looking at the link what they are supposed to look for at the other end but it also means that most people will be able to decide whether they want to follow the link.
Yes, exactly. Only they can’t very well decide now. You took away that option.
“I wonder where Cedric was brainwashed? Perhaps at http://climatekids.nasa.gov/”
“I wonder where Cedric was brainwashed? Perhaps at [link removed because it’s rude to just link]”
Hmm.
Oh dear.
What a fool you are.
Oh dear.
What a fool you are.
So…how did that fact checking go?
Cedric Katesby: “So…how did that fact checking go?”
Cedric old chap, I’m afraid you wouldn’t know a fact if it scuttled under your noisome, slimy bridge, leapt up, and fastened its teeth in your snout.
You have nothing but exceptionally long-winded argumentum ad verecundiam, and you raise pomposity, pretentiousness and patronising twaddle almost to an art form.
You are just another boring little scientifically illiterate troll who who has latched onto a target for your unpleasant stalking propensities.
So, SHOO!
Dear me, you really haven’t a clue, have you?
Just a whole heap of Alinskyite rhetorical codswallop that any VIth form debating society adolescent would be ashamed of.
Waffle…waffle…waffle…waffle…and – er – that’s it.
Unless you fact check, you are going to be led by the nose.
Oh, and by the way, are you aware that the NASA engineers – you know, those real…
Not so much.
Seriously, fact check. Treat it the same way as if someone was talking to you about volcanoes and comparing them to human emissions from industry.
You’d certainly fact check that, right?
Of course you would.
Right?
You are just…
Nothing to do with me.
NASA, remember?
NASA has a clue.
Really.
NASA and every single scientific community on the planet.
It doesn’t happen by magic, you know.
Only the work counts.
Take a bow Mr Cedric Katesby, transcriptions of your debates on the methodology of information gathering and how to make informed decisions on scientific matters ought to be collected and made part of school science and civics curriculums.