What Is Science?
To be honest Eli don't often agree with KT but K said something profound down below
No, and I think you'll agree with me here: it's a science and we ought to hold it to exactly the same standards as any other.The auditors just don't get it.
You really don't 'get' science.
There are no standards and there are no rules, except possibly for the journals, and the journal publications do not define science - they just report some of it. In fact, there is no real definition of science, there are just devices that can be fabricated repeatably that do actual work, and the work itself, which reveal insights to you, if it happens to be communicated to you by way of print or any other media, or in the form of product devices, which you can then use to do your own 'science'. It's a cumulative self correcting collective effort with parts that rise and fall according to the whims and funding of the investigators. You should try it sometime, you might like it. You can even incorporate some of its methods into your daily life.
Posts
125 comments:
I should have added that there are rules and standards for some of the people and institutions that fund science. But funding is also subject to the whims and follies of the funders as well, particularly nowadays where billionaires are picking up a lot of the slack.
Crowd sourcing and crowd funding is yet another new phenomenon in the field of science to consider.
this is REAL science:
Well it certainly convinced me that GHG backradiation is a fraud!
http://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/back-radiation/#comment-13825
As concerns your second question, you should read Claes Johnson.
I will tell it to you in simple language.
There are two kind of radiations, the informative one, and the heavy artillery , radiation which carries calories.
The information radiation is used in
infrared camera’s, IR remote thermometers,pyrgeometers and indeed two plates telling each other which one is the warmest.
It is two way traffic.
In case of the two plates the information radiation is a traffic light, and enables nature to obey the second law andto send the second heavy artillery with calories from the warmer plate to the colder one!
Therefore in the paper I insist that SB is always written for a pair, with two temperatures. In fact also emission from temperature T to temperature zero K is a pair, q=sigma*(T^4-zerok^4) which is usually written in abreviated form since zeroK^4=0!.
If this matter interests you, go to the blogs of Johnson, where you can read historical phrases by Planckton and by Einstein that indeed they were not happy with the quanta!
Who are real scientists perhaps those who would put their name to these truths:
WHAT WE BELIEVE
1.We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
2.We believe ...
WHAT WE DENY
1.We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
...
4.We deny that such policies, which amount to a regressive tax, comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression.
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/articles/read/an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/
Who are they:
Dr. Roy W. Spencer (Principal Research Scientist in Climatology, University of Alabama, Huntsville,
Dr. Joseph D’Aleo (Executive Director and Certified Meteorologist, Icecap
Dr. David Legates (Associate Professor of Climatology, University of Delaware
Dr. Ross McKitrick (Associate Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada,
Dr. Cornelis van Kooten (Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Expert Reviewer, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Dr. Kenneth W. Chilton (Founder and Emeritus Director, Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment, Lindenwood College);
Contibuting Writers.
:Rev. Richard S. Courtney,
Sounds more like the "Crackpot Alliance".
You have to wonder, do folks like Spencer believe in "The Rapture"?
~@:>
Disagree. Strongly.
There is the no BS rule. Any process or method for filtering out BS can be used as a scientific method.
BS is what you get when you get when you stare at a toilet roll to long and present the products of your labours to the world as pearls of wisdom.
If you are dogmatically oblivious to the many and various ways yourself or others can be wrong then you are violating the no BS rule and are failing the central ethic of science.
The Climate Ferret.
The auditors just don't get it.
The auditors don't get humility. They always insist that climate scientists don't have a clue, but by some unexplained process skeptics know exactly how climate works. Fat chance!
So ford has anyone ever asked Roy if his low climate sensitivity idea is derived from the Noah flood story?
The Climate Ferret
Hahahaha. thefordprefect, you just made my day. I already knew that Roy Spencer and Ross McKitrick were prominent signatories of the Cornwall Alliance load of fundamentalist BS.
But Richard S. Courtney of WUWT infamy? Well now, that explains *a lot*. ROTFLMAO.
Ahh, the Cornwall Alliance ...
Follow the money...
This is the 480-recipient spreadsheet for DONORS Line 93 (#83 in funding) is the James Partnership.
This notes connection of DONORS, James Partnership, Cornwall Alliance.
Here's
James Partnership:
'TJP is initially focusing on these principal projects: The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, Churches and Villages Together, and 1Voice Films .'
contact.
Well-designed money-laundering:
1) $ from (?( Kochs, Scaife, Searle, Seid ... well who knows) to
2) Donors Trust (now, tax-break, and anonymized real donor, who still controls who gets it.)
3) James Partnership (really Calvin Beissner) to
4) Cornwall Alliance (really Beissner again)
Which acts like it's something real, with a bunch of the usual front people.
I'm pretty sure there is one rule at least for science: honest reporting of results. Without that, there is nothing.
> We deny that Earth and its
> ecosystems are the fragile
They didn't read the promise to Noah.
9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you
10 and with every living creature ..."
"God wanted us to kill them" isn't convincing.
Oh, and what is science? You can tell it by what it does.
It's what drags us kicking and screaming toward the truth, as Peter Watts explained.
what is science? let's see. it's something you get for free if you have the right IP address (but you're still paying indirectly somewhere). Otherwise, it's $20 a pop.
ferrets, bunnies, pigs, stoats. what a collection we're building. so long as nobody eats celery.
Science is the process of not kidding yourself.
So Richard Courtney , who successively tried to morph an Open University mail order materials science course from a Diploma to Dp. Phil. to D.Plhil. Baliol is become a Reverend on the sterngth of his ay preaching to , wait for it, unemployed coal miners .
What is Science?
Science is the feeling and emotional upheaval of the cataclysmic relation
of the inner dynamic of reverberating vibrations!
Science is the sound of the winter storm...
...is a wild wave breaking against the shore!
Science is a mountain
Science is a swingin' desert
Science is a purple bird flying with the amorphosis.
Science is a pencil sharpener
Science is a frying pan
Science is a handball court
Science!!!!!
Science is a beautiful woman, whose older brother is a policeman!
What is Science?
I don't know . . .
Robert Murphy (with apologies to Sid Caesar)
John Mashey,
"Follow the money...
Well-designed money-laundering:
1) $ from (?( Kochs, Scaife, Searle, Seid ... well who knows) to
2) Donors Trust (now, tax-break, and anonymized real donor, who still controls who gets it.)
3) James Partnership (really Calvin Beissner) to
4) Cornwall Alliance (really Beissner again)
Which acts like it's something real, with a bunch of the usual front people."
Your 'conspiracist ideation' (h/t Prof Lewandowsky) is always hugely entertaining, John. If you can just work the Templars into it somehow, Hollywood will beat a path to your door! ;-)
Sorry guys. You can rage against methodological prescriptionism til the cows come home, but there will never be an interpretation of the scientific method elastic enough to forgive a sentence like this:
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
And there's the problem for the Team: average punters may be unable to say precisely what science is, but they know what it's not. No imaginable context could make Phil Jones' email to Warwick Hughes compatible with the profession of science.
but there will never be an interpretation of the scientific method elastic enough
Especially when you limit yourself to the one true scientific method.
kT,
"but there will never be an interpretation of the scientific method elastic enough"
Especially when you limit yourself to the one true scientific method.
No, any version of it. Jones' email is not compatible with any "scientific method." Sorry, kT.
Still droning the old drone, I see Bradley.
And on *two* threads now. Tomorrow, the world, eh?
BBD,
I like chatting with you just fine, but... well, no offence: are you going to follow me everywhere I go? Is it all right if I have a life outside of BBD?
Bradley, if you continue to infest the intertubes as you are doing, you will soon begin to encounter familiar faces.
I'd learn to deal with that in an adult and *honest* manner if I were you ;-)
Brad Keyes,
So it is your contention that biologists should send all their data to The Discovery Institute?
Dilbert:
"So it is your contention that biologists should send all their data to The Discovery Institute?"
Don't be ridiculous. They should only send it to Richard Dawkins, and only if he promises not to try and find something wrong with it.
"Science is like porno"
-- by Horatio Algeranon
Science is like porno
You know it when you see it
Except if you're a journo
And play the "equity" bit
Come to think of it, make that "parity bit"
-- HA
The statement by Jones about data sharing was just dumb.
But though Jones seems to have a particular knack for it, scientists say and do dumb things all the time.
My goodness, just look at some of the idiotic things that Nobel Chemistry Prize winner Karry Mullis has said (eg, about AIDS and HIV, astrology, and climate change)
So what?
Are what Jones and Mullis have said somehow supposed to mean that we should conclude that all of climate science is corrupt and/or wrong (as some like Mullis would have us believe?
Who hasn't said dumb things? (particularly in emails or in comments on blogs)
Horatio's guess is that if we looked a little, we could probably find dumb things that even Brad Keyes has said (and maybe not even have to go further afield than this blog)
Perhaps the defining aspect of science (the thing that makes it unique to all human endeavor) is that it does not depend on any one person, or even group of people.
It survives all the dumb claims and actions that people can throw at it and often emerges stronger as a result.
-- HA
Horatio:
"My goodness, just look at some of the idiotic things that Nobel Chemistry Prize winner Karry Mullis has said (eg, about AIDS and HIV, astrology, and climate change)"
But has Mullis said anything remotely as ignorant and stupid as Phil Jones on the subject of how science is done? This is the real comparison, surely.
Somewhere, contrarians got the idea that science is about trying to poke holes in things.
No.
Science is about trying to explain things. Sometimes, the new explanation requires rejecting the old one, and, because scientists are human, if the old explanation was championed by a competitor, there can be some pleasure in that... but the key is the new explanation, not the hole-poking.
So, yes, you provide data to people who will use it to improve, refine, etc., not to people who are only trying to nitpick you to death. (though even in the case of good scientific trying to figure out how the universe works, scientists like to be the first ones to an explanation, and so aren't always the best at sharing anyway)
This is part of why the contrarian obsession about the details of a 1998 paper is not science is such a good tell that they aren't real scientists.
-MMM
"Somewhere, contrarians got the idea that science is about trying to poke holes in things."
Why, those anti-science monsters! I blame notorious denier Karl Popper for this.
Brad Keyes,
Popper wrote a book called **Conjectures and Refutations**. As the title suggests, science is not only about "poking holes", but about putting hypothesis on the table.
Trying to poke holes ain't enough to do science, even for a falsificationist.
Speaking of which, I'm sure you'll enjoy this collection:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/PopperForBloggers
***
Glad to see how you are coatracking (an auditing idiom, so I guess you know that one) Jones and the Team in the discussion. We'll see how much mileage you'll get with this claptrap. For memory's sake, here would be a more general form:
[Eli]: Well, X.
[Bunnies]: Yeah, this is a bummer. But how do you think that people –
[Brad]: Hey guys, you talking Y?
[Bunnies]: Come on, Brad. Don’t do this again.
[Brad]: I just thought maybe you were having the old Y discussion.
[Eli]: Dude, for the last time: we’ll tell you if we ever have a conversation about Doritos.
[Brad]: You promise?
[Bunnies]: Of course, Steve. We know how you love Doritos.
[Eli]: Yeah, man. Everyone knows.
Cf.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/40263311176
***
Thanks again for your concerns, Brad.
w
has Mullis said anything remotely as ignorant and stupid as Phil Jones on the subject of how science is done?
Sure has.
And much dumber, actually.
"Mullis claims climate change and the HIV/AIDS connection are due to a conspiracy of environmentalists, government agencies and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence." -- from Wikipedia
In other words, he has actually made sweeping claims about how science is done not by one scientist, but by a large sector of the scientific community (in two different disciplines)
And Mullis also believes in astrology, which is tantamount to rejecting the scientific method outright.
Can't get much dumber than that.
-- HA
Of course, the Great Secret that "Brad" doesn't want anyone to know - and I pass this on in strictest-never-to-be-told-to-anyone-lest your lips-be-ripped-from-your-face - is that Jones is/was under no obligation whatsoever, moral or otherwise, to share data with a lazy, incompetent, rent-seeking cretinous 'auditor' who would have to wait until the work was published. Just like everybody else.
But "Brad" here - presumably having found minus zilch in the CG3 release is perfectly content to warm over CG1 because, well, just because... because ... Climategate!!! OK Already??
Eli guarantees we will never have a conversation about Doritos. He HATES the effing things. Carrots tho. . .
MMM: "Science is about trying to explain things."
More profound--it is about predicting things. Occams razor says that we should keep the theory as simple as possible. The work of Akaike says that the explanatory power of a theory must increase exponentially in proportion to its complexity (# parameters) or we sacrifice predictive power.
Brad, about that "I won't give you the data..." Do you know the context? I think not or you wouldn't be trumpeting it everywhere.
Mr. Hughs could have gotten all the publicly available data and made his own calculations. He has chosen not to do this. So frankly that quote is nothing but more BS. It adds nothing to the sum of human knowlege except that now we all know for sure certain people are more interested in stirring crap than they are interested in figuring out what it going on around them.
Enquiring minds want to know - which colour of carrot? Orange, white, purple, yellow?
Brad Keyes said...
but there will never be an interpretation of the scientific method elastic enough to forgive a sentence like this:
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
Not even if an objectionable and contemptible person with a habit of making stuff up wanted your data to make more stuff up, with the likelihood they were dealing in bad faith, and had an agenda with the aim of discrediting you regardless of the quality of your work?
How would you respond Brad if you we're in that situation. Yes sir no sir? Or go stuff yourself?
The Climate Ferret
Guthrie, I may not speak for Eli, but I am especially fond of purple and good ol' orange.
I may be useful to point out that Hughes was (is?) an all purpose denialist. He denied everything from traffic accident data to climate change. Truly a man for all seasons. I can understand why Jones replied to him as he did.
HA,
I didn't know all that about Mullis. Thanks.
BK
Common or brown rat,
"[Hughes] denied everything from traffic accident data to climate change. Truly a man for all seasons."
I wasn't aware of that. I always thought it was his opponents who were insisting the Earth's climate had somehow remained virtually constant over 900 years (from the apogee of Teotihuacan civilization to the invention of cinema) in the face of all evidence that it had changed dramatically. Have I got it backwards, or have you?
"Glad to see how you are coatracking (an auditing idiom, so I guess you know that one) Jones and the Team in the discussion."
I've encountered BK in about half a dozen forums now, and IIRC he's coatracked at least one of his core set of his obsessions - that being one of them - into all them.
willard:
Glad to see how you are coatracking (an auditing idiom, so I guess you know that one) Jones and the Team in[to] the discussion.
On second thoughts I see your point. What on earth have Dr Mann, Prof. Jones and friends got to do with a post about what science is? :-P
Ferret:
Secreting data is not halal.
"Not even if an objectionable and contemptible person with a habit of making stuff up wanted your data to make more stuff up,"
How do I, or Phil Jones, or any other mammal know Warwick Hughes' intention is to "make stuff up"?
Moreover, why on earth would opening up my data make it easier for an unscrupulous opponent to distort and mischaracterise it? Quite the reverse. The more people see it, the stronger my position should any controversy be manufactured about it.
" with the likelihood they were dealing in bad faith, and had an agenda with the aim of discrediting you regardless of the quality of your work?"
Again, what am I in this hypothetical scenario: a climate scientist or a mind-reader? Or someone equally inept at both (Ã la Stephan Lewandowsky)?
"How would you respond Brad if you we're (sic) in that situation. Yes sir no sir? Or go stuff yourself?"
I'd give him the data. Which would achieve several things:
1. most importantly, compliance with the scientific method—no version, interpretation or translation of which includes any exemption for situations in which I don't particularly like the other person
2. ending whatever rumors may be circulating about it
3. silencing and seducing my critics by virtue of the sheer quality, hygiene and cogency of my data
Thanks John Mashey as always for your work to reveal the dirty dishonest overpaid underbelly of phony skepticism.
BK, no doubt you think scientists should just be able to "rise above" this stuff and have no feelings:
http://texasclimatenews.org/wp/?p=4153
(this is only one example; it's pretty widespread)
For those who never look at links, here's a quote:
"There’s a well-organized campaign, primarily in the United States but also in other countries, including Canada and Australia, of bloggers, of people in the media, of basically professional climate deniers whose main goal is to abuse, to harass and to threaten anybody who stands up and says climate change is real – especially anybody who’s trying to take that message to audiences that are more traditionally skeptical of this issue."
Susan,
Some of the emails quoted in the piece about Hayhoe are deplorable.
It's a shame the article goes on to endorse an equally deplorable conspiracy theory about Australian skeptics:
"Australia’s leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats."
Bill Dawson either doesn't know that this myth has been absolutely discredited, or doesn't care. In either case he's clearly not much of a journalist.
Brad dodges and dodges. I like the long lists he makes up listing all the points he wants others to answer while remaining silent on questions asked of him.
So Brad, you really don't believe any science unless you personally go read the original journal articles and evaluate the evidence yourself? Do you know how incredibly dumb that sounds?
As far as Hughes goes, remember this part of the email:
" We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider."
Hughes could have gone out and got all the weather data himself. This is what someone would do if they want to do an independent replication of the CRU product. Note IPR = Intellectual Property Rights. Phil J is saying he won't send the data that CRU has modified with their corrections. If Hughes really wants that data, why, he is free to go to the journal articles and evaluate the evidence himself. The raw data is out there, he has no claim on the processed data.
This is not strange in science. In fact in many other areas (DNA, particle physics) release of the *raw* data is restricted for some period of time. This is so the people who actually worked on generating the raw data have time to benefit from their work. But I'm sure if I look I'll see you on other blogs railing against the Higgs boson people, right?
Here's the basic fact that auditors never understand -- I think because they (like you) are not scientists.
You don't take the other guys work and try to pick holes in his math. You take the raw data, or you build your own experiment, and you try to analyze the data yourself to come to your own conclusion.
(Funny aside though -- isn't it auditor teams who consistently make stupid math/procedure errors -- radians vs. degrees, wrong height of satellites, cherry picking tiny one-sided hockey sticks, on and on. Why don't the auditors ever audit other auditors? Huh Brad?)
Gator,
this stab you've taken at inference is embarrassing:
"So Brad, you really don't believe any science unless you personally go read the original journal articles and evaluate the evidence yourself?"
LOL!
Where are you even getting this offal? Next time you feel the urge to attribute beliefs to someone, you probably ought to quote them—you'd be ill-advised to rely on your own powers of paraphrase!
Gator, your comment on the other thread is better, and I've responded to it there.
Keyes said
"Bill Dawson either doesn't know that this myth has been absolutely discredited"
No it has not.
The facts are here
http://www.readfearn.com/2012/05/hate-campaign-against-climate-scientists-has-not-be-debunked/
MikeH,
Thanks, I guess, for that link to Graham Redfearn's laughable apologetics for the blood libel against Antipodean skeptics.
Just between us, I'm sitting in a secret call centre as we speak. For the rest of my 14-hour shift I'll be emailing and ringing as many climate scientists as I can with abusive and imaginative menaces. (I get a Christmas bonus for every Department of Climate Change at a major university that has to relocate to more secure facilities because of me!)
LOL.
Has anyone else noticed the way climate believalism and conspiracist ideation seem to go hand in hand?
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/03/20/research-reveals-almost-all-climate-science-denial-books-linked-conservative-think-tanks
@David
Good article.
Readfearn's articles are invariably well researched which is why Keyes, unable to rebut has had to resort to mocking.
MikeH:
'Readfearn's articles are invariably well researched which is why Keyes, unable to rebut has had to resort to mocking.’
LOL! I don't have to mock Redfearn, I enjoy it. His own concluding paragraph is more than self-parodying enough to do my rebuttal for me:
’Whether or not any of these incidents constitute a “death threat” is, to me at least, beside the point.’
Beside the point! Bear in mind, dear readers: Redfearn is running interference for the following urban myth, which had been bruited around by libellous liars for almost a year, doing incalculable damage to the prospects of a civilized debate in Australia:
’Australia’s leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.’
When the top 12 instances of this apocryphal hate mail were forcibly divulged (despite everything the pseudo-victims could do to keep the public from seeing them), the only one that even came close to intimating fatal violence, in the opinion of Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, was an email written by Will Steffen, the pseudo-victims' leader, himself!
I shit you not, gentle readers. Bear all that in mind when the absurd Graham Redfearn claims to have undebunked (or rebunked) this bigoted slur on Australia's skeptic community. To repeat, MikeH's favorite hacktivist wrote this in his incredible closing paragraph:
'Whether or not any of these incidents constitute a “death threat” is, to me at least, beside the point.'
(Oh, and don't forget to read the choice comments that follow Redfearn's miserable apologia, including some remarks from victims of the original hate speech.)
If a "researcher" who considers it beside the point whether the entire premise of his own article is bullshit or not impresses you, MikeH, well… that might begin to explain your low, low standards in climate science!
ROFLMAOAYS! :-D
Bradley darlin, you might wanna dial it back.
As Viscount Monckton of Birching put it:
Draw a deep breath and calm down. How could any reasonable person interpret "Your children and family will know because we know where you live. Expect us at your door to say hello" as threatening in any way?
And who could possibly be intimidated by "We have a right to bear arms and these perverted assholes will be wasted. We will have plans for you as well. If you bring your family all the merrier." That's simply a generous invitation to visit the United States.
Here's a person whose boundless love and affection for scientific progress is expressed by typing all capitals: "I AM CLOSE TO EXPLODING AND KILLING ONE OF THE BASTARDS ON SIGHT...AND I HAVE WORKED MIRACLES."
Now do you see? It's all just a misunderstanding; let the this polite request settle your agitation: "You fucken derelict and fraud; may I personally kick the shit out of you?"
Anyhow here is a better place to put that crap
Wow, Bwadwey is in denial even about the threats climate scientists receive! Dude, there are pictures of denialists holding up nooses during climate presentations. Of do you contend the hecklers were merely doing macrame badly?
Dear Eli,
A number of the emails sent to Phil Jones were abhorrent, and presumably criminal. The fact that Jones expressed pleasure in the news that John Daly had died at home of his first heart attack, in front of his wife, at the young age of 61 was no excuse for anyone to threaten Jones. Two wrongs, and all. That way madness lies.
Nevertheless, Phil Jones is not one of 'Australia’s leading climate change scientists.'
He works in Britain.
Americans may be surprised to learn that the UK is not Australia. I swear to God! There really is a difference between the UK and Australia.
'Australia’s leading climate change scientists' have never been subjected to a campaign of threatening emails.
That was a lie.
Climate believalists may be surprised to learn that a lie is not a fact. I swear to God! There really is a difference between lies and facts.
Call me a pedant, but I think these little distinctions matter. Don't you?
It's hard to determine which is the more sickening, "Brad's" superciliousness or his overly-educated ignorance.
but I think these little distinctions matter. Don't you?
They don't matter to the average moron with an email address to send their vile spite to in their efforts to prevent the global takeover by the UN dreamt up by the denial think-tankers, so why do you make such an irrelevant distinction? Apart of course from your usual hair-splitting wriggling act when cornered by facts.
chek,
You may be perfectly fine with scientists lying to you.
I'm not.
I wonder:
Is that why you're a climate believalist and I'm not?
Dilbert:
"Dude, there are pictures of denialists holding up nooses during climate presentations. Of do you contend the hecklers were merely doing macrame badly?"
No. I'm not au fait with the details but it sounds like they were threatening the speakers. Which is not acceptable.
You may be perfectly fine with scientists lying to you.
Oh dear, now you have to provide some clear examples for your casual assertion, wouldn't you say, "Brad"?
chek,
that's easy. I said I cared about the difference between the truth and a lie [promulgated by scientists in my country] and you asked, apparently rhetorically:
"why do you make such an irrelevant distinction?"
If your intention was not to express indifference, unconcern or apathy about scientists' lying, feel free to clarify.
It's quite amazing the way in which your ability to parse multi-clause sentences conveniently escapes you when cornered by facts "Brad".
But it's gotten old very fast.
Brad Keyes asked:
> What on earth have Dr Mann, Prof. Jones and friends got to do with a post about what science is? :-P
This rhetorical question can be answered with one word:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/climateball
***
Incidentally, this rhetorical question should be enough to falsify:
> Brad Keyes is not being tricksy.
And this is enough to confirm:
> Brad Keyes stated an untruth.
***
How Brad Keyes will judge this untruthful behaviour is left as an exercise to the reader.
Keyes thus: "'Australia’s leading climate change scientists' have never been subjected to a campaign of threatening emails.
That was a lie."
http://www.readfearn.com/2012/05/hate-campaign-against-climate-scientists-has-not-be-debunked/
(snip)
Shortly after ANU staff were moved, there was an incident at an ANU public engagement event where a climate sceptic who had been invited to attend had become frustrated. During an exchange, the individual had showed what he claimed was a gun licence to people sitting at the table, before claiming he was a “good shot”. The individual is understood to have left voluntarily.
(end quotes)
So, what do you call /that/, Keyes? Friendly banter? A appropriate scientific discussion?
Zibethicus,
It was a completely innocuous conversation over a dinner (not a scientific symposium, in case that helps).
This is now common knowledge. (I can only assume you're not Australian.)
The embellishment you quote comes courtesy of Redfearn, who wasn't even party to the conversation in question.
Scroll down from Redfearn's "research" and you'll find the first-hand narrative of The Individual himself. As far as I know this account has not been disputed by anyone since.
I quote The Individual, John Coochey:
____________________________
I feel I can now throw some light on the matter. The document viewed as most “threatening” referred to an alleged Deliberation at the ANU about climate change in the Canberra region at which one person “made a death threat” (sic) by showing his gun licence and boasting about his skill as a sniper.. Only two people dropped out of the conference[. O]nly one of those who did so attended the even[ing] meal. Me. I am certainly the one who is alleged to show someone their gun licence. That is not true[;] while at the evening meal (of poor quality) comments moved to eating game meat and I was approached by the Commissioner for the Environment ACT, Dr Maxine Cooper who recognized me as someone involved in the kangaroo culling program in the ACT. She politely asked if she could sit at the vacant seat next to me and asked if I had [passed] the recent licence test – not easy. I replied yes and showed her my current licence. I also impressed on any one interested the high standard of marksmanship necessary to allay any cruelty concerns. I might add that earlier in the day I had challenged two speakers to comment on a letter in the Canberra Times that claimed that temperatures had not increased in the Canberra area for decades. They were unable to do so, having not apparently checked the record despite the the “Deliberation” (conference) supposed to be about rising temperatures in the Canberra region. As all daytime conversations were recorded (we all signed waivers to allow this) this can easily be checked.
_________________________
To reiterate, Zibethicus:
The email that fictionalised this banal exchange into something alarming was written by Will Steffen, an alarmist. :-)
"To reiterate, Zibethicus:
The email that fictionalised this banal exchange into something alarming was written by Will Steffen, an alarmist. :-)"
Whether once accepts this version of events or not, death threats are anything but unheard-of to Australian climate scientists.
Contrary to your claims that "'Australia’s leading climate change scientists' have never been subjected to a campaign of threatening emails", let me just point you to the ABC's own response to this incident on Media Watch:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3507732.htm
(snip)
A warning: there's bad language coming. The Australian could have checked the hard copy of the Canberra Times's original article in June last year.
"You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f*** neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!
Die you lying bastard!
F*** off you lying communist c---!!
Eat S*** and Die!!!
— The Canberra Times, 4th June, 2011"
Or even better, The Oz could have actually gone to climate scientists around the country and asked for examples of threatening and abusive emails.
That's what we did. We got these from just two scientists, one in Melbourne, one in Brisbane, received in that same six month period. They're on our website, and they are not pretty reading and yes they were reported to police.
(end quotes)
And if you look at those quotes, you'll find - inside a deluge of similar filth - the phrase "Die you lying bastard!@"
Now, I suppose you'll tell us that /that's/ not a death threat, eh?
No, no - just another "banal exchange", I suppose...
*
When is a death threat not a death threat?
When it's being made by a climate change denier, of course.
And, yes, as it happens, I /am/ an Australian. Perhaps that's why I find you particularly unconvincing...
"And, yes, as it happens, I /am/ an Australian."
Really? And yet you offered up Redfearn's fatuous dramatization of The Terrifying Affair of the Document-Weilding Pensioner At The Dinner Table as though you'd never heard any different?
Is that because:
1. you didn't know John Coochey had definitively corrected the record?
or
2. you were hoping I wouldn't know John Coochey had definitively corrected the record?
"Perhaps that's why I find you particularly unconvincing..."
I'll live.
"When it's being made by a climate change denier, of course."
So you believe in imaginary beings. Quelle surprise.
D'oh!
I before E except after C
Fancy that, now, Keyes. The actual death threats recorded by Media Watch have completely disappeared from your discourse.
Your self-correction never had a chance of appearing, of course.
And you say that a climate change denier is an "imaginary" being.
Look in any mirror and you will be introduced to the type specimen.
See ya...
Oh, I missed this nugget:
"Whether once accepts this version of events or not..."
There is no other version of events from anyone who was actually there. Nobody has challenged John Coochey's account since he gave it, despite the number of witnesses. Commissioner Steffen was speaking bollocks, and all of Canberra knows it. (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as to your city of residence.)
"There is no other version of events from anyone who was actually there. Nobody has challenged John Coochey's account since he gave it, despite the number of witnesses. Commissioner Steffen was speaking bollocks, and all of Canberra knows it. (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as to your city of residence.)"
And just look at the license it gives /you/ to go on "speaking bollocks" - desperately clinging to the Coochey story to try to go on 'ignoring' all the /other/ evidence of death threats, which presumably you are 'ignoring' because you can't find any way to properly dispute it right now.
As I was saying: extreme intellectual dishonesty plus blatant hypocrisy plus desperately-maintained selective self-blindness - the type specimen of the "imaginary" climate change denier.
Congratulations.
Who owns **the Australian**, again?
's'matter, Brad - suddenly recalled urgent business elsewhere?
...another defining feature of the type...
"And just look at the license it gives /you/ to go on "speaking bollocks" - desperately clinging to the Coochey story"
Ah, pullin' the old coocheroo. The classic Coochey Cling. ¿Voulez-vous Coocher avec moi? Telling The Coochey Story. The Gospel According to John.
A.K.A. what actually f___ing occurred.
May I remind you, idiot, you're the one who brought it up! :-D —I just corrected the distortions!
Zibethicus, you should accept your situation. There would be more dignity in it.
Hoist by your own retard.
"May I remind you, idiot, you're the one who brought it up! :-D —I just corrected the distortions!"
Of course, 'idiot', you have Maxine Cooper's confirmation of these events to hand?
She was the one who was supposed to have had this conversation with Coochey, wasn't she. So of course you have /her/ word for this as well as /his/, don't you?
Please do share it with us...
"Zibethicus, you should accept your situation. There would be more dignity in it."
Says the guy who's emitting all this heat, light and noxious odour in order to avoid confronting some very tangible evidence of death threats which have been made to Australian climate scientists...
Whatever the "situation", I'd sure rather be me than /you/, sport...
"Hoist by your own retard."
Uh, yeah. Riiiiiiiiggggghhhhttt...
Now if we can just distract you from your self-gratification for a minute, allow me to put these emails /back under your nose/:
"You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f*** neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!
Die you lying bastard!
F*** off you lying communist c---!!
Eat S*** and Die!!!
— The Canberra Times, 4th June, 2011"
These are emails from climate change deniers to Australian climate scientists.
Over and over again you've tried to ignore them, but here they are all over again. They're like climate change - they don't just go away because you shut your eyes and scream.
Now tell us, Keyes - what are they, exactly?
Love letters or death threats?
And why can't you bear to look at them?
Can we take that as your admission that Australian climate scientists /have/ received death threats from climate change deniers?
Listening to Aussies arguing is rather boring.
Reading it is even worse.
:-(
Zibethicus,
Whether those offensive and disturbing emails constitute death threats is a definitional matter best left to the AFP, who—as far as I'm aware—never investigated them as such. Technically (though it may be of little consolation to the victims), they're probably merely death exhortations, or death wishes. Which is NOT to say the recipients should be expected to laugh them off as nothing but robust feedback! They're unequivocally horrible.
Nevertheless the question is whether there has ever been a campaign of death-threatening emails against Australian climate scientists, and the evidence—a measly handful of revolting emails per thousand scientist-years—says No, this is a defamatory libel against skeptics.
What you're doing is not materially different from attempting to rationalise the blood libel against the Jewish (you know, the former scientific consensus that matzoh balls were made of the blood of underage Christians) by putting the Son of Sam murders "under my nose" and demanding ad nauseam: is Berkowitz a Jewish name or not, Keyes?
Lame, in other words.
Isolated failures of moral decency, occasional breakdowns in the normal inhibition against graphically ugly conduct and speech, do not constitute an unrelenting, organised campaign, as alleged by certain hysterical and unscrupulous Aussie climate scientists, DO THEY?
"They're like climate change - they don't just go away because you shut your eyes and scream."
Who's ever said it was possible, necessary or desirable to make climate change go away?
At this point I have to ask, and please don't be offended by this: are you intellectually capable of arguing against positions I actually hold, Zibethicus? Or are strawman arguments the limit of your competence?
"Isolated failures of moral decency, occasional breakdowns in the normal inhibition against graphically ugly conduct and speech, do not constitute an unrelenting, organised campaign, as alleged by certain hysterical and unscrupulous Aussie climate scientists, DO THEY?"
Still waiting for your evidence that "certain hysterical and unscrupulous Aussie climate scientists" are wrong, Brad, AREN'T WE?
The same way we're still waiting for your confirmation that Maxine Cooper actually supports Coochey's version of the 'roo culling' conversation, AREN'T WE?
After all, that's the position that you "/actually hold/", ISN'T IT?
You just haven't offered any /proof/ to support it, as I have already pointed out repeatedly. So I /am/ "arguing against positions [you] actually hold", while all /you/ seem "intellectually capable" of doing is hurling stupid, empty abuse over your shoulder as you run off again with the goalposts.
Now, in view of David Benson's aversion to argumentative Australians (although I don't see how they're worse than argumentative Americans) you're not going to post again until you've got some of the actual /proof/ you've been asked for over and over again, AREN'T YOU?
Because you /do/ have that 'proof', DON'T YOU?
*
I agree with Benson, anyway - this is getting very boring and I have work to do. Your vacuous bombast and empty, self-contradictory rhetoric is simply wasting everybody's time, except your own, which you seem to have a lot of to spare. Not me...
Zibethicus:
"Still waiting for your evidence that "certain hysterical and unscrupulous Aussie climate scientists" are wrong, Brad, AREN'T WE?"
Hey, I know the feeling. I'm still waiting for the Jewish community to prove it isn't waging a secret campaign to harvest my kids' haemoglobin. The resounding lack of evidence either way is damning, I say—damning!
I'm kidding, of course. I'm just making fun of your pre-scientific, folk notions of how the burden of evidence works. Being scientifically-illiterate, you really are making it too easy though, Zed. ;-)
LOL
Zed said:
"The same way we're still waiting for your confirmation that Maxine Cooper actually supports Coochey's version of the 'roo culling' conversation ...
You just haven't offered any /proof/ to support it, as I have already pointed out repeatedly....
you're not going to post again until you've got some of the actual /proof/ you've been asked for over and over again...
Because you /do/ have that 'proof', DON'T YOU?"
The astute hopper will notice your embarrassingly repetitious misuse of the technical term proof, which—as everybunny knows—requires four male witnesses.
LOL... Seriously though... Better trolls, please.
"The astute hopper will notice your embarrassingly repetitious misuse of the technical term proof, which—as everybunny knows—requires four male witnesses."
Fancy that. Coochey claims that Maxine Cooper supports her story, Brad Keyes offers absolutely no evidence that Cooper ever did support Coochey. Just what I would call "embarrassingly repetitious" - that is, your own failure to furnish anything in support of your own claim.
You /should/ be embarrassed.
"LOL... Seriously though... Better trolls, please."
I agree. Is this /really/ the best you can do, or are you having an exceptionally bad day even by denier's 'standards'?
I mean, making claims you can't back up is nothing new for a denier, but /failing/ to back it up so loudly and so often is really pretty embarrassing...for you...
And, just to wrap this up, the original document with which you took issue(http://www.readfearn.com/2012/05/hate-campaign-against-climate-scientists-has-not-be-debunked/), describing it as "apologetics for the blood libel against Antipodean skeptics", links to the following, which is a reproduction of the original Canberra Times report:
More than 30 researchers across Australia ranging from ecologists and environmental policy experts to meteorologists and atmospheric physicists told The Canberra Times they are receiving a stream of abusive emails threatening violence, sexual assault, public smear campaigns and attacks on family members.
(end quotes - http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2011/06/06/australian-climate-scientists-targeted-by-death-threats/)
I have already shown you where the ABC Media Watch reproduced just some of this hate mail.
You have not challenged its authenticity, except to rather desperately try to mischaracterise them as "merely death exhortations, or death wishes." (Oh, well - that's /different/, then...)
In other words, at enormous and tedious and redundant length, you have shown us all that the Readfern article is actually quite correct - just as it says, the ANU FOI request was limited in its scope and its duration, and "[a]t the same time, other climate scientists at other institutions had been receiving abusive messages and emails."
Thank you for confirming, at perhaps excessive length, that Graham Readfern is a source that can be trusted in this matter. Since we are all well aware that climate scientists in Australia and elsewhere are being subjected to an exceptionally vicious and unscrupulous campaign of vilification and abuse, you hardly needed to go to all that trouble, even if your intention was to set yourself up as a standard for useful comparison.
@- Brad Keyes
As your favoured hypothesis is that AGW is inconsequential, or will have no significant net negative effects, perhaps you could reveal which evidence and inference chain has caused you to hold that opinion.
I would add that I do not expect a cogent reply to this question as the historical record shows that the citing of actual data, information and evidence is conspicuous by its absence in the vast majority of your posts.
So let me help, perhaps you think that the changes already seen and ongoing in sea level, weather patterns, growing seasons and land ice mass balance will be well within human societies ability to respond with adaptation.
Personally I think this would require a cherry-picked line of evidence on the severity of climate change and a rose-tinted view of how robust modern technological civilisation actually is.
But perhaps you can provide evidence that does support this inferred hypothesis?
izen
Zibethicus,
you're boring everyone.
Eli,
in quoting this approvingly:
"'No, and I think you'll agree with me here: it's a science and we ought to hold it to exactly the same standards as any other.'
You really don't 'get' science.
There are no standards and there are no rules, except possibly for the journals, and the journal publications do not define science - they just report some of it. In fact, there is no real definition of science..."
you are, I take it, denying the existence of the scientific method (the most usual and obvious candidate for "real definition of science").
If, therefore, you assert "science says" such-and-such is going to happen, or such-and-such a scientist "disagrees with" or "denies science," you are, I take it, not asserting anything in particular.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong—I have no interest in, and I stand to gain nothing by, misconstruing your belief system.)
The revelation that such assertions have been meaningless the whole time—for 25 years now, presumably?—will surely be of great reassurance to the millions of citizens naïve enough to have lost sleep every time "science" said they were in danger from global warming.
One final thing that's been puzzling me: if science has no rules or standards or criteria or definition, why didn't this ever dawn on Richard Feynman? How did you discover a truth—the truth of scientific nihilism—which managed to elude some, dare I say all?, of the great scientific minds of the last couple of centuries? In any case, congratulations on this achievement.
Brad Keyes,
This remark of yours sound a bit tricksy to me:
> Whether those offensive and disturbing emails constitute death threats is a definitional matter best left to the AFP [...]
There is the "is a definitional matter" trick, a trick I call parsomatic:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/Parsomatics
There is the "best left to the AFP" trick, which is called handwaving:
> [T]his is essentially a legal matter. Turn it over to lawyers.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/692140904
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
***
Speaking of which, why do you thing the AFP would have any authority on what constitutes a death threat?
Auditors oftentimes starts their parsomatic mode by citing thy Wiki:
> A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or groups of people. These threats are usually designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behavior, thus a death threat is a form of coercion. For example, a death threat could be used to dissuade a public figure from pursuing a criminal investigation or an advocacy campaign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_threat
Don't you think the example cited by Zibethicus applies?
If not, there are other examples we could look in the links provided over there:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3507732.htm
***
Finally, I note that you have not answered my question.
Who owns the Australian, Brad?
Many thanks for your concerns,
w
Brad,
I now notice that you do like Feynman. Here's my own collection:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/FeynmanForBloggers
Don't you think that determining what Feynman thinks of science might be best left to philosophers and historians of science, as you say yourself when comes the time to define death threats?
Many thanks again for these wonderful concerns,
w
"Zibethicus,
you're boring everyone."
Can we take that as your admission that Readfern and I are correct, and that you have /no/ confirmation of Coochey's claim (as cited by you) that Maxine Cooper witnessed his 'harmless' conversation?
I thought so.
This conversation might have been less 'boring' if you'd simply admitted in the first place that you had no idea whatsoever of what you were talking about. But even though it took a long time to take you through it to that point, I don't think it was /wasted/ time exactly.
You are, after all, now about as thoroughly self-exposed as it is possible for a person to be - and I don't just mean as a bore.
Whereas, thanks mainly to you, Readfern is looking better than ever. Thanks for all your efforts on his behalf...
willard,
"Speaking of which, why do you thing the AFP would have any authority on what constitutes a death threat?"
Well, because they're the police. Which gives them more "authority," which is to say knowledge, than me or (AFAIK) you when it comes to whether or not a given alleged act is prima facie criminal and worth investigating.
"Don't you think the example cited by Zibethicus applies?"
Certainly he cited a couple which, if I received them, I would instinctively call death threats. Any reticence about the terminology comes solely from an awareness that there's a fairly bright line separating horrible speech from death threats, but that I don't know where that line is, having no legal or law-enforcement background. Feel free to edify me if you can.
"Who owns the Australian, Brad?"
I couldn't tell you. Anyway, it's a strange question, particularly since (unless I'm mistaken) I haven't cited said newspaper at any point!
I personally get my news from the SMH, which is (or was until this year) Fairfax-owned. That's the extent of my bar trivia, I'm afraid.
willard,
"Don't you think that determining what Feynman thinks of science might be best left to philosophers and historians of science, as you say yourself when comes the time to define death threats?"
1. I am a philosopher. I forget that other people often aren't.
2. No. He told undergraduate science students what he thought of science. This is not exactly secret-society stuff. Nor should it be. Anyone presuming to comment usefully on the "Climate Wars" (ugh), or even spectate intelligently, needs to know the difference between science and non-science, a matter of which Feynman is rightly considered one of the best expositors.
Boring denialist troll is boring. We need better chew toys.
So go find somewhere more interesting to masticate, idiot.
Quick! Hold the front page of /The Australian/!
WORLD-FAMOUS PHILOSOPHER BRAD KEYES ENDORSES READFERN: AGREES AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE SCIENTISTS HAVE RECEIVED 'DEATH EXHORTATIONS'
Denalists world-around were shocked today when Brad Keyes, using Rabett Run as his self-elected platform, first lambasted Graham Readfern for what Keyes called his "apologetics for the blood libel against Antipodean skeptics" and then, in a stunning reversal, admitted that Readfern's facts were substantially correct.
When confronted with evidence of death threats being made against Australian climate scientists, as presented on the ABC website Media Watch, Keyes did not challenge their authenticity, instead at first repeatedly ignoring them, and then trivialising them as "merely death exhortations, or death wishes."
As Readfern was claiming that such threats had been made, Keyes' final position appeared to be in support of Readfern.
When asked why he had spent so much time attempting to divert attention from the death threats to a conversation which John Coochey claims to have had with Maxine Cooper (which Keyes at no time presented any evidence to confirm the existence of), Keyes explained that he was 'preparing the ground for a backflip', and he needed all the hot air to 'cushion the impact'.
Keyes is understood to now be a leading for the Golden Gabble Award to be presented by Christopher Monckton at the next Heartland Institute Meeting. Industry sources claim that he will be entered in the Shameless Backflip and Industrial-strength Time-Wasting categories.
*
Feh. Boring, /boring/ troll. Sorry I ever fed it. No more...
'scuse I - for "leading for" read "leading contender for".
He's boring me to sleep...
Zibethicus,
nice one! I'll pay that. Comedy works where bile fails.
Nevertheless the question is, and has only ever been, whether there was a campaign of death-threatening emails against Australian climate scientists, and the evidence—a measly handful of revolting emails per thousand scientist-years—says "No, that's just a defamatory libel against the skeptical community as a whole."
Remember, Son of Sam doesn't justify the Protocols. Get the difference?
Brad,
Glad to know you're a philosopher. I myself am a ninja.
Also happy to acknowledge your admission:
> Certainly [Zibethicus] cited a couple which, if I received them, I would instinctively call death threats.
This admission might have been sufficient to Zibethicus. I have no reason to believe that he was asking your legal opinion on the concept of "death threat". Handwaving to the AFP and playing definition games are moot at best.
You have to admit that the handwaving and the definition game do seem a bit tricksy, more so now if we believe you when you say that you are philosopher.
Not unlike ninjas, philosophers have authority, nay, knowledge of these tricksy tricks.
***
My question about **The Australian** was inspired by your smiley:
> The email that fictionalised this banal exchange into something alarming was written by Will Steffen, an alarmist. :-)
I'm not sure philosophers should smile at such ad hominem.
But again, I'm just a ninja.
Scratching my own itch, it seems that Rupert Murdoch owns **The Australian**:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
***
Speaking of the Australian, here's a bit about John Coochey:
> Mr Coochey says he realised some fellow participants might have been disquieted by kangaroo shooting, so he "made small talk" about the marksmanship expertise needed to gain the licence.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/im-the-culler-referred-to-in-anu-threats/story-e6frgcjx-1226354304101
Reading the MediaWatch's article should have been enough to realize why I was referring to **The Australian**.
***
I notice that you are still unresponsive on the other thread.
Due diligence and all.
Thank you for your philosophical concerns,
w
w,
All very interesting and civil, cheers.
However:
1. I didn't mean to imply that the alarming fictionalisation of the dinner party was unreliable because its author, Will Steffen, is an alarmist—I had already established that it was unreliable, and then threw in a little dig at Steffen's credibility in light of the bollocks he'd uttered. So there was no ad hominem involved—which, if you remember your propositional Tao, is a kind of fallacy in which the speaker is supposed to discredit the speech, not the other way round!
2. your trivial pursuit about Rupert Murdoch was therefore an uncalled-for ad hominem and genetic fallacy... which was irrelevant to boot, since I hadn't relied on anything printed in The Australian—I only quoted John Coochey's words as he'd typed them on Graham Redfearn's own blog
3. what you and Zibethicus persist in ignoring is that the question is, and has always been, whether or not there was a campaign of death-threatening emails against Australian climate scientists, and the evidence—a measly handful of revolting emails per thousand scientist-years—says, "No, that's just a defamatory libel against the skeptical community as a whole."
I do hope your next comment is responsive to point 3, Willard.
Brad,
Thank you for the kind words.
In no way was I using the fact that Rupert Murdoch owned **The Australian** as an argument. As you said elsewhere, it was just an assertion. Assertions can't be used as arguments, right? If you prefer, I could say that mentioning **The Australian**'s owner was "just a little dig" at the Australian's credibility and all that jazz.
I'm afraid these two lines of defense might sound tricksy, though.
As far as I'm concerned, this fact could deserve due diligence whether or not you use any word taken from the Australian, Brad. Thinking otherwise would commit the genetic fallacy, by the way. And you do seem to think otherwise.
***
Your point 3 does seem to rest on the word "campaign". For I believe you would prima facie believe that we have witnessed :
So I believe this depends upon what we mean by "campaign".
Whom should we consult as an authority on such matter, Brad?
All this for the word "campaign", Brad? I agree it might have been suboptimal. As the Auditor says:
> Maybe it's just a vocabulary thing:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/31268600509
Or perhaps not, since we should soon pay due diligence to the moral apparatus you wish to inject in a discussion about What is science?
***
You have been advised to keep your own authority out of the conversation, Brad. It will be tough now to play dumb, perhaps the only strategy left for you. OTOH, we can be grateful for all these concerns you do need to provide again and again.
Thank you so much for these thoughtful concerns,
w
Let's complete that sentence:
> For I believe you would prima facie believe that we have witnessed death-threatening emails against Australian climate scientists.
willard:
"All this for the word 'campaign,' Brad? I agree it might have been suboptimal."
I agree too, where "optimal" ≡ "true."
Thank you for your tricksy answer, Brad.
This has not been the first one.
Such tricksy answer might not be optimal, if I can borrow your idiomatic equivalent.
Many thanks for these unforgettable concerns,
w
Brad,
How many death threats must a scientist receive before it is considered a "campaign". I would think one should suffice. I know of no similar flow of death threats in the opposite direction. The scientists have been pretty passive.
w:
"You have been advised to keep your own authority out of the conversation, Brad."
When? I must have forgotten who gave such advice; or perhaps it got lost in some ninja's artsy periphrasis?
Nonetheless, I would have had no occasion to mention my "authority" (actually, mere knowledge / competence) had an interlocutor not made the false assumption that I shared his lack of "authority." (Maybe we should leave this to the philosophers, said a warrior-poet; so I was forced to correct him.)
"It will be tough now to play dumb, perhaps the only strategy left for you."
Such dissimulation is difficult for me at the best of times, for try as I might, I always revert to my true nature. Therefore it is not even in my strategic repertoire. In fact, I have long been in the habit of secreting but a single trick up my sleeve: honesty.
"OTOH, we can be grateful for all these concerns you do need to provide again and again."
It would be more... optimal... if I could provide them just once, though, and be assured that they were comprehended and actioned, no?
Finally, I wish to make a complaint!
An incident occurred during an exchange about climate warming. An individual—who had earlier become frustrated with the science being presented by myself—suddenly boasted that he was a professional killer and brandished what he claimed was a ninja licence! The individual is understood to have left voluntarily and silently.
Whether this incident would be technically called a "death-threat" or simply a relentless, organised campaign to sexually harass me, my workmates and extended family is, to me at least, academic!
dilbert:
"I know of no similar flow of death threats in the opposite direction."
Really? How about "your children will be killed by extreme weather if you don't keep warming below 2 degrees"? :-D
Some, not Brad to be sure, might argue that, in a sense, the entire Science™ of dangerous anthropogenic climate change is one big death threat!
An individual—who had earlier become frustrated with the science being presented by myself—
.... and that's where the credibility drained out of your made up anecdote. For "Brad" of course doesn't 'do' science.
Now if the would be assailant had instead become enraged by your ill-informed, incessantly flapping piehole, that would be believable.
Of course, particularly if you presented your own case, finding a jury willing to convict for such an assault would be the hard part.
Y'all have way more patience for BS than I.
All of Brad's maze of twisty little passages can be cut through by asking "so what?" So what if Phil J. didn't give Warwick H. some data... so what if Phil J. expressed private relief that John D. was dead ... so what? Does this change at all our understanding of climate? No. And that's science. Take away any one result or person and there are other results or people telling us substantially the same thing.
Brad, So you don't understand the difference between a warning and a death threat. Really, Brad? Are you really that dim?
Congratulations. That's the stupidest thing I've read so far on the Intertubes this year.
In the end, the problem with trying to reason with Bradley is not that he is so hard to get through--it is that even if you do get through, he has nothing to offer. No wit, no understanding, no insight, no humor. He is a pathetic parasite.
"Brad, So you don't understand the difference between a warning and a death threat. Really, Brad? Are you really that dim?
Congratulations. That's the stupidest thing I've read so far on the Intertubes this year."
Shorter Brad (TM to whomever):
It's not a 'campaign' because I say it's not a 'campaign'.
They're not 'death threats' because I say they're not 'death threats'.
*
For the rest of it, Keyes has discovered - at truly gargantuan length and volume - that Readfern is correct in stating that Australian climate scientists have been receiving death threats - or 'death exhortations', which are different things, you understand.
Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on him. After all, he /is/ a 'philosopher'...
At the rate which he has been noisily discovering phenomena which are common knowledge to everyone else, perhaps with a few more years of diligent effort he'll manage to stumble upon the existence of daylight, or even perhaps the wheel.
Can his felicitous arrival upon the shores of climate science be too many decades behind these revelations?
Oh, yeah - our 'philosopher' thus: "Comedy works where bile fails."
/Please/ don't tell him that he is the living proof of the untenability of his own proposition...
So Eli the ever patient Bunny is gonna make everyone a deal. If no one replies to Brad for 24 hours, Eli will wipe the last load of Brad's comments out and throw them down the Rabett hole. Good for all posts. You can toy with him there.
Remember you have to leave it alone. OTOH if Brad sock-puppets to stop this Eli will wipe ALL of Brad's comments out.
Eli,
You have a deal, but please do tell Brad that his very innovative concerns should welcome at Judy's:
judithcurry.com
Could you be so kind as to remind him of this comment? Brad seems to have missed it.
PS: See you at Judy's, Brad!
only 18 hours to go, people.
Stay the course ...
Eli, how about you spend some time trying to understand the science issues involved instead of making smartass comments to those who have?
:-)
Eli,
Have you noticed that the mentally ill tend to talk to themselves a lot?
hI bRAD
Want a nice story about death threats and the Eli Rabbit?
Years ago, Pielke Jr ran a blog. Prometheus. It was supposed to be a high quality venue, related to his CIRES work, yada yada etc.
Eli Rabbit used to comment there.
One day, as can happen, someone, or Pielke Jr ticked off Eli Rabbet with a nonchalant toss toward the precautionary principle, or by a stubborn refusal to accept damning circumstantial evidence (that CO2 will kill the world). After becoming suitably worked up, Eli Rabbit gave an example of a bloody murder scene to illustrate his case.
Only, the victim's name in his example, coincidentally, happened to be the same as Peilke Jr's real-life offspring.
Taking mortal offense, Pielke Jr shut down the thread. He declared that Eli had issued vieled death threats against his family members. IIANM, Pielke blew Eli Rabett's anonymity cover at this point. Who knows.
The point is, Eli Rabett is well familiar with misinterpretations of material into 'death threats', or some form of 'threats', that take place from instincts of self-protection, cynical exploitation, discrediting and smearing one's opponents, and similar reasons. He ought to know from personal experience.
Ah yes, Roger was doing his usual high maintenance fit, so Eli told him this story.
One day Eli and Dano were walking down the railroad tracks, and they saw a hand. That looks like Diane's (Eli does forget which name he used, but as you shall see, nevermind) hand said Eli, why yes it does said Dano.
Then they went a bit further, and they saw a leg. That looks like Diane's leg said Eli, why yes it does said Dano.
As they went down the tracks they saw a body. For sure, that looks like Diane's body said Eli, why yes it does said Dano.
Until finally they came upon a head. That is Diane's head said Eli, why yes it is said Dano adding, Diane pull yourself together.
At the end of the story Eli pointed out that Roger too would do well to pull himself together.
Of course, at the time he used the opportunity to throw another fit. High maintenance that boy.
Trying to bring humor to the humorless is bound to be an unrewarding mission.
Did not reply the bradthing for a multitude of diurnal periods.
Now, why?
I heeded advise from a number of participants here. Who, to my surprise (somewhat), never took even the tiniest shred of their own advisories. Resulting in two threads that imho should've gone down the ahole during the Bunny Days, of the year 2013 to be clear, already.
I feel kinda raped by this bradthing. And by those telling me to keep quiet while being raped and cheering the thing meantime. The good news is there is now ample space in my rabett hole.
/cRR
Ps, for parabels resembling death threats better use numbers, like six digits, instead of christian names.
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