Climate fear mongers

We Have NO Right To Saddle Future Generations, Because of Our Government-Induced Climaphobia!

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The Future Isn’t Ours to Dictate

It is not the business of today’s politicians to decide which energy sources will be used 85 years from now.

candlestick_phone

In 1930, horse-drawn wagons were still common. That year, the first traffic lights were installed in New York City, and the first East-West crossing of the Atlantic took place via airplane. Vaccines for illness such as diphtheria, tetanus, cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis were yet to be discovered. This was a world without television, without computers, and in which telephones were definitely not portable.

How ridiculous would it have been for political leaders back in 1930 to decide how we, here in 2015, should live? In an era before large hydro electric dams and nuclear reactors, how sensible would it have been for US President Herbert Hoover, British PM Ramsay MacDonald, and German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning to decide what energy sources societies should rely on 85 years hence?

And yet, as Steven Goddard points out on his RealScience blog, the leaders of today’s G7 countries think it’s their job to make choices on behalf of future generations. They have now solemnly agreed to “phase out fossil fuel use by end of century.” What rot. What hubris.

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Let us be serious. When Barack Obama, David Cameron, and Angela Merkel manage to balance their national budgets that’s a major accomplishment. The idea that younger generations, equipped with as-yet-undreamed-of technological marvels, will feel constrained by what was said at a press conference this week is plain bonkers.

A short Video On “Ontario’s Wind Travesty”, and it’s “Key Players”….

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TIME TO MAKE A “CHANGE”….

A beautifully made video, giving a brief, but very intense overview of the torture that rural families are being subjected to, in the name of “Greed Energy”.  There is certainly nothing “green”, about it.  We need to fight back against the Liberal corruption that is being perpetrated, and we need to end the suffering!

“Unbiased Scientists” Fight Back Against Gov’t Induced Climaphobia….

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

To Whom It May Concern What follows is a letter that we sent to the current President of the American Physical Society (APS) with a copy to members of the Society’s Presidential-Line Officers. Because of the serious issues pertaining to the integrity of APS — one of the world’s premier scientific societies (with upwards of 50,000 members) — we have decided to make the letter public. SIGNATORIES (2 June 2015)— Roger Cohen Fellow, American Physical Society Laurence I. Gould Past Chair (2004) New England Section of the American Physical Society William Happer Cyrus Fogg Professor of Physics, Emeritus Princeton University May 8, 2015 Samuel Aronson President, American Physical Society One Physics Ellipse College Park, MD 20740-3844 Dear Dr. Aronson, As three members of the American Physical Society, we are writing on behalf of the nearly 300 other members who signed our 2009 and 2010 petitions to the APS taking strong exception to the 2007 Statement on Climate Change. Those petitions called for an objective assessment of the underlying science, leading to a more scientifically defensible Statement. We wish to call attention to important issues relating to the processes that led to the 2007 Statement and the Draft 2015 Statement. In developing both the 2007 Statement and the current Draft, the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) failed to follow traditional APS Bylaws. In particular, regarding APS statements the Bylaws state: “The Chair of POPA has the responsibility for ensuring that the statement draft incorporates appropriate APS member expertise” (XVI.B.2), and, “Anyone, particularly POPA and Council members, who can reasonably be perceived to have a conflict of interest, shall recuse themselves from all aspects of the Statement process, including drafting, commentary, and voting. The President of the APS shall be the final arbiter of potential conflicts of interest” (XVI.E). Examples of relevant process exceptions include: 1. APS email records show that the original 2007 Statement was rewritten “on the fly, over lunch” by a small group of firebrands who arbitrarily inserted themselves in the process, thereby overruling the prerogatives of POPA and the APS Council. Thus, in “reaffirming” the 2007 Statement, the current Draft is referring to one that was produced by a bogus process and led to much ridicule of the APS, especially for its use of the infamous “incontrovertible.” In an attempt to disown this public relations fiasco, in 2012 APS (presumably POPA) quietly introduced a new paragraph break in the 2007 Statement so as to alter the original intent of the passage. Thus, the description of the Statement presented today as “Adopted by Council on November 18, 2007” is untrue and a violation of APS Guidelines for Professional Conduct (http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/02_2.cfm, paragraph two). 2. In the process of developing a Draft 2015 Statement, APS failed to consult any of at least 300 members, including Nobel Laureates, NAS members, and many Fellows, who were deeply dissatisfied with the 2007 Statement. Thus POPA deliberately failed to seek and incorporate interested and appropriate member input, as required in the Bylaws. 3. In the process of developing a Draft 2015 Statement, POPA failed to take into account the findings of the broad-based workshop, chaired by Steve Koonin, which faithfully and expertly executed its charge to assess the state of the science in global warming. The Koonin committee did the APS proud, conducting the only serious review of global warming science by a major American scientific society that we know of, while simultaneously realizing the objectives of our 2009 and 2010 petitions. Having thus advanced the interests of physics and the Society, POPA subsequently ignored the Koonin workshop and its product. POPA once again returned to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as its sole source of authority on the science, thereby abrogating its responsibility to the membership to properly conduct independent scientific assessments. 4. The Chair of the POPA committee has failed to identify serious conflicts of interests by its members. For example, a few years ago, one member of POPA, representing himself as an agent of a politically active nongovernmental organization, demanded that a Cleveland-area television station fire its meteorologist for expressing some doubt about IPCC statements on global warming. On every scientific point, the meteorologist was right, and we are glad to say that he retained his job. These process exceptions by POPA cloud the legitimacy, objectivity, and content of the current Draft. In considering this, along with the strong basis for continuing investigations of unresolved key scientific questions in the global warming issue, it is clear that the best course of APS action is simply to archive the 2007 Statement without further attempts to replace it. We ask that you take this step in the interests of the Society and its membership. We trust that you will share this letter with the APS Council. This is a very serious matter, and we intend to pursue it. We look forward to your response. Please respond to Roger Cohen, rogerwcohen@gmail.com; P.O. Box 2042, Durango, CO 81302. Sincerely, Roger W. Cohen Laurence I. Gould William Happer c. Presidential-Line Officers: Malcolm R. Beasley, Past President Laura Greene, Vice President Homer Neal, President Elect

Government-induced Climaphobia….Was IPCC Complicit?

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Is ‘Deliberate Deception’ An Unfair Description Of ‘Official’ IPCC Climate Science?

/ June 1, 2015

deliberate-deceptionGuest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

When a scientist’s work is revealed as wrong, the reason is rarely an issue. The error is identified and corrected by the author Unfortunately, that is not always the case with climate science errors. Often the question is whether it is a matter of incompetence or malfeasance? Either way there is a problem for an accurate advance of science. Normally, a simple determination is that a single mistake is probably incompetence, but a series of mistakes is more likely to be malfeasance. However, again in climate science, that doesn’t always apply because a single major error to establish a false premise to predetermine the result can occur. Usually, this is exposed when the perpetrator refuses to acknowledge the error.

All these issues were inevitable when a political agenda coopted climate science. Two words, “skeptic” and consensus”, illustrate the difference between politics and science in climate research. All scientists are and must be skeptics, but they are troublemakers for the general public. Science is not about consensus, but it is very important in politics. As a result of these and other differences, the climate debate occurs in two different universes.

A major challenge for those fighting the manipulations of the IPCC and politicians using climate change for political platforms is that the public cannot believe that scientists would be anything less than completely open and truthful. They cannot believe that scientists would even remain silent even when science is misused. The politicians exploit this trust in science and scientists, which places science in jeopardy. It also allowed the scientific malfeasance of climate science to be carried out in the open.

A particularly egregious exploitation was carried out through science societies and professional scientific groups. They were given the climate science of the IPCC and urged to support it on behalf of their members. Certainly a few were part of the exploitation, but a majority, including most of the members simply assumed that the rigorous methods of research and publication in their science were used. Lord May of the UK Royal Society was influential in the manipulation of public perception through national scientific societies. They persuaded other national societies to become involved by making public statements. The Russian Academy of Science, under its President Yuri Israel, refused to participate. At a United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) 2005climate meeting he was put in his place.

“The Russian scientist was immediately and disrespectfully admonished by the chair and former IPCC chief Sir John Houghton for being far too optimistic. Such a moderate proposal was ridiculous since it was “incompatible with IPCC policy”.

Israel, a Vice-chair of the IPCC, knew what he was talking about from the scientific and political perspective.

Politics and science of human-caused climate change became parallel through the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The political framework evolved as Agenda 21, and the science framework evolved through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Figure 1).

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Figure 1

The challenge was to control the science by bending it to the political agenda, which had the effect of guaranteeing scientific conflict; these created inevitable points of conflict that forced reaction.

The first was in the definition of climate change given to the IPCC in Article 1 of the UNFCCC. It limited them to considering only human causes of change.

Climate change means a change of climate, which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable periods of time.

Because of the political agenda people were allowed to believe the IPCC were studying climate change in total. The reality is you cannot determine human causes of change if you do not know or understand natural causes. The forcing diagrams used in early IPCC science Reports illustrate the narrowness (Figure 1) and its limitations.

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FIGURE 1: Source, AR4

They identify nine forcings and claim a “high” level of scientific understanding (LOSU – last column) for only two of eleven. Of course, this is their assessment.

Most people, including most of the media don’t know that the science reports exist. This is because the Summary for Policymakers Report is released with great fanfare months ahead of the science report. As David Wojick, IPCC expert reviewer explained:

Glaring omissions are only glaring to experts, so the “policymakers”—including the press and the public—who read the SPM will not realize they are being told only one side of a story. But the scientists who drafted the SPM know the truth, as revealed by the sometimes artful way they conceal it.

…

What is systematically omitted from the SPM are precisely the uncertainties and positive counter evidence that might negate the human interference theory. Instead of assessing these objections, the Summary confidently asserts just those findings that support its case. In short, this is advocacy, not assessment.

Actions speak louder than words. Some of us started pointing to the limitations and predetermination of the results created by the original definition of climate change. As Voltaire said, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” Typically, the IPCC people listened, but only to offset not deal with the problem. Quietly, as a Footnote in the Summary for Working Group I AR4 Report they changed the definition of climate change.

“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.”

It is a convenient comment to counter those who challenge the original definition, but little else. If it was true AR5 should be very different. For example, it should refer to the Milankovitch and Svensmark Effects and include them in their computer models. It is not possible to make it true because the original structure of the IPCC and its Reports was cumulative. Each Report simply updated the original material that was restricted by the original definition. The only way they could make the new definition correct is to scrap all previous work and start over.

When science operates properly this wouldn’t happen. Predictions of the first IPCC Report (1990) were wrong. Normally that forces a reexamination of the science. Instead, in the 1995 Report they changed predictions to projections and continued with the same seriously limiting definition. The entire IPCC exercise was a deliberate deception to achieve a predetermined, required, science result for the political agenda. It is not science at all.

If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest. Anonymous

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Gov’t Induced “Climaphobia”…..When Will They Learn?

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When Will Climate Scientists Say They Were Wrong?

/  May 29, 2015

Guest essay by Patrick J. Michaels

Day after day, year after year, the hole that climate scientists have buried themselves in gets deeper and deeper. The longer that they wait to admit their overheated forecasts were wrong, the more they are going to harm all of science.

The story is told in a simple graph, the same one that University of Alabama’s John Christy presented to the House Committee on Natural Resources on May 15.

michaels-102-ipcc-models-vs-realityThe picture shows the remarkable disconnect between predicted global warming and the real world.

The red line is the 5-year running average temperature change forecast, beginning in 1979, predicted by the UN’s latest family of climate models, many of which are the handiwork of our own federal science establishment. The forecasts are for the average temperature change in the lower atmosphere, away from the confounding effects of cities, forestry, and agriculture.

The blue circles are the average lower-atmospheric temperature changes from four different analyses of global weather balloon data, and the green squares are the average of the two widely accepted analyses of satellite-sensed temperature. Both of these are thought to be pretty solid because they come from calibrated instruments.

If you look at data through 1995 the forecast appears to be doing quite well. That’s because the computer models appear to have, at least in essence, captured two periods of slight cooling.

The key word is “appear.” The computer models are tuned to account for big volcanoes that are known to induce temporary cooling in the lower atmosphere. These would be the 1982 eruption of El Chichon in Mexico, and 1992’s spectacular Mt. Pinatubo, the biggest natural explosion on earth since Alaska’s Katmai in 1912.

Since Pinatubo, the earth has been pretty quiescent, so that warming from increasing carbon dioxide should proceed unimpeded. Obviously, the spread between forecast and observed temperatures grows pretty much every year, and is now a yawning chasm.

It’s impossible, as a scientist, to look at this graph and not rage at the destruction of science that is being wreaked by the inability of climatologists to look us in the eye and say perhaps the three most important words in life: we were wrong.

This article appeared in TownHall.com on May 29, 2015.  Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.

Tom Harris Fights for the Right to 2nd Opinions, Re: The Climate Change Debate!

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Citizens’ Climate Lobby founder must rein in overaggressive volunteers

Posted: 28 May 2015

By Tom Harris
In my December 29, 2014 Augusta Free Press article, “Taming the climate debate”, I wrote about the importance of working to establish a social climate in which “leaders in science, engineering, economics, and public policy” can “contribute to the [climate change] debate without fear of retribution.”

At stake are trillions of dollars, countless jobs, the security of our energy supply, and, if people like Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) founder and president, Marshall Saunders, are right, the fate of the global environment itself.

So, it is a tragedy that, because the debate is now riddled with censorship, personal attacks, and even death threats, many experts are afraid to comment publicly. Saunders should consider whether the behaviour of some of his CCL volunteers is exacerbating this problem.
In describing their “Methodology,” CCL assert on their Website that they “believe in respect for all viewpoints, even for those who would oppose us.” In his September 20, 2014 article, “Speaking Truth to Power – and to Friends,” former NASA scientist and now CCL Advisory Board Member Dr. James Hansen writes, “Founder Marshall Saunders espouses respect and love for political opponents of a carbon fee…”
In that light, let’s examine how some CCL volunteers have behaved when faced with opponents of their belief that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing a climate crisis.
My interactions with the group started in late 2012 when CCL (Canada) spokesperson Cheryl McNamara had the following letter to the editor published in the Vancouver Sun in response to my December 26 article, ”Ottawa must get real on climate change”:
Readers Get Real About Climate Change, Vancouver Sun, December 28, 2012

Any self-respecting newspaper would not seriously consider printing an opinion piece by
someone who claimed smoking isn’t harmful to human health. The evidence on human-
caused climate change is clear, too. Tom Harris is funded by the oil industry and denies what 97 per cent of climate scientists confirm: greenhouse gases are contributing to our warming planet. The irony is that Harris also worked with the APCO, an independent communications consultancy which tried to advance the idea that tobacco isn’t harmful to human health.

Cheryl McNamara, Toronto
The points made in McNamara’s letter are completely false.
  • I have always opposed smoking; both my grandfather and aunt died miserable deaths due to smoking excessively. As an airworthiness engineer at Transport Canada, I contributed to getting smoking banned on long haul flights in our country. We found that aircraft air filters would become plugged, so pilots were exposed to so much second hand smoke that their visual acuity was significantly reduced, presenting a flight safety hazard, especially at night. My engineering peers would laugh to see me now accused of helping the tobacco industry.
  • I have never been “funded by the oil industry.”
  • I have never denied that “greenhouse gases are contributing to our warming planet.”
  • My employment with APCO had nothing to do with tobacco and I only heard about their supposed promotion of “the idea that tobacco isn’t harmful to human health” after I left the company in 2006.
CCL had made similar erroneous charges against me earlier in the year in the Edmonton Journal which I ignored. However, since the falsehoods were continuing even though they were provably wrong, I notified the Vancouver Sun about the problem. They agreed with my corrections and took the CCL letter off their site and the original URL no longer functions.
Despite my requests to representatives within both the Canadian and American CCL that they remove the offending letter from their site in their list of media triumphs, they would not. How does this fit with Saunders’ goal of “respect and love” for opponents?
This sort of thing has continued ever since, CCL representatives repeatedly attacking me with erroneous and irrelevant charges when I disagree with their stance on climate science. A recent example was CCL’s Pete Kuntz’s May 23 letter to the editor of the Union-Bulletin in Walla Walla, Washington. Kuntz is listed as writing from Northglenn, Colorado.
Besides the usual CCL accusations of ICSC receiving funding from vested interests, Kuntz wrote “Harris is a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry.”
A quick check of the Website of the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada shows that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a lobbyist for anyone, let alone “the fossil fuel industry.” We consider lobbying mostly a waste of time until the public better understand the science, which is why we concentrate on public education.
Kuntz also repeated CCL’s old chestnut about my supposed pro-tobacco work: “Harris used to work for Big Tobacco back in the day when it was denying smoking causes lung cancer, fake ‘doctors’ and all (DeSmog Blog).”
I never respond in kind but simply make appropriate factual corrections when possible. But it isn’t long before CCL personal repeat their bogus claims in other media outlets.
So I was not surprised to see Kuntz’s May 25 Augusta Free Press piece “Climate change denial is a scam,” this time identifying himself as hailing from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He repeated CCL’s tall tales about my pro-tobacco work as well as ICSC’s supposed funding sources, something he could not possibly know since the identities of those who help ICSC cover its operating expenses have been confidential since I started as Executive Director in 2008.
The suggestion that my opinion is for sale is, of course, seriously offensive, and begs the question: how does this fulfil Saunders’ goal of “respect and love” for opponents?
It does not matter who funds us. All that matters is whether what we are saying is correct or not, a point we are happy to debate with anyone. If funding sources did matter, then we note that most climate scientists are employed by organizations that promote the hypothesis of dangerous anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (DAGW). These researchers obviously have a direct interest in supporting their employers’ point of view.
Perhaps most ironic in Kuntz’s Free Press piece is his criticism that I and Bryan Leyland, my co-author, are not scientists but are engineers. He does not seem to know that engineering is applied science and requires a good understanding of science and applied mathematics. With both Leyland (MSC—Power Systems) and myself (MEng—thermofluids) having advanced degrees and having spent many years studying climate science and computer modelling, we are quite capable of commenting meaningfully on the evidence for and against DAGW.
But qualifications do not prove anyone right. All that counts is the validity of what is being said. For instance, before being trained by Al Gore in 2007, Saunders’ professional career was in real estate brokerage specializing in shopping center development and leasing. Yet we never criticize him for lacking a background in the field because, once again, the accuracy of his comments is all that matters.
Kuntz directs readers to a site critical of the second year climate science course I gave to 1,500 students at Carleton University in Ottawa. He fails to mention that both the course originator and current instructor, Earth Sciences professor Tim Patterson, and I have debunked the critique as hopelessly naïve and misleading. I even went on TV (see here) to respond to the attack.
In defense of his position on the science, Kuntz proclaims, “Every climate scientist publishing in peer-reviewed science journals worldwide agrees.” Nonsense. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change reports list hundreds of peer-reviewed papers published in the world’s leading science journals that either question or refute the DAGW hypothesis that CCL holds dear.
Kuntz concludes by directing readers to the CCL Website, saying, “They’ve got a realistic plan.” Like many of CCL’s published letters, there is no mention of his affiliation with CCL.
Kuntz and McNamara are just two examples of CCL spokespeople who seem to ignore the respectful approach advocated by their founder. Saunders will soon have an ideal platform from which to remind them that their passionate belief in their cause does not give them license to abuse opponents. From June 21—23, one thousand CCL volunteers gather in Washington DC to “hear from inspiring speakers, receive lobby training and go to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress.” Let’s hope CCL’s president and founder uses the opportunity to rein in overly aggressive members of his team.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (www.ClimateScienceInternational.org).

The 97% Consensus Theory, is Based on Misinformation, and Weasel words….

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Claim that 97% of scientists support climate alarm cannot be supported

Ross McKitrick, Special to Financial Post | May 25, 2015 | Last Updated:May 25 7:45 PM ET
More from Special to Financial Post

Ross McKitrick: Cook, being a PhD student in psychology with a background in communication studies, is hardly in a position to dismiss the membership of the American Meteorological Society as “fake experts.”

AP Photo/The Bakersfield Californian, Casey ChristieRoss McKitrick: Cook, being a PhD student in psychology with a background in communication studies, is hardly in a position to dismiss the membership of the American Meteorological Society as “fake experts.

This study design may simply be a circular argument 

In my column I pointed out that people who invoke the 97 per cent consensus often leave vague what is actually being agreed upon. John Cook does this too: Note that his wording is consistent with a range of interpretations, including that greenhouse gases definitely cause only a tiny bit of global warming.

Manufacturing doubt about climate consensus

Scientists have observed distinctive greenhouse patterns such as winters warming faster than summers and a cooling upper atmosphere.

He cannot claim that 97 per cent of scientists believe greenhouse gases cause a lot of warming and that this is a big problem, since the surveys either didn’t ask this, or did but didn’t find 97 per cent support.

Cook, being a PhD student in psychology with a background in communication studies, is hardly in a position to dismiss the membership of the American Meteorological Society as “fake experts.” As to fakery, I would refer readers to the analysis of Cook’s work by social psychologist Jose Duarte, noting that the word “fraud” appears 21 times in that essay alone, and it is not even the harshest of Duarte’s essays on Cook’s discredited methods. Economist Richard Tol has also published detailed excoriations of Cook’s work at as well as in the peer-reviewed literature, as have others.

The Illinois study asked 10,257 Earth Scientists “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” The question was vague to the point of meaninglessness. It only refers to “a,” not “the,” factor; it only refers to “human activity” in general, thus conflating land use change, conventional air pollution emissions and greenhouse gases; and it only refers to “changing” mean temperatures (since 1800), without specifying a portion of the total observed. So someone who thinks greenhouse gases caused only a small fraction of the warming would answer Yes, as would someone who thought they drove it all.

The Illinois authors received 3,146 responses. After seeing the answers they selected only 77 as being relevant, and of these 75 (97 per cent) said Yes. What puzzles me is why two answered No. And why the authors asked 10,257 experts for their views when they only considered 77 qualified to answer.

The Princeton study started with 1,372 experts and found that 97 of the ones they deemed the top-100 publishing scientists in the climatology field were also contributors to the IPCC or had signed statements supporting the IPCC position. Hence 97 per cent yadda yadda. But this study design may simply be a circular argument, since the top climatology journals are not double-blind, so it can be difficult for critics of the IPCC to get their papers published. In other words, this result might simply be a measure of the level of clique-citation and group think in the sample they selected. In this regard it is quite noteworthy that the AMS and Netherlands surveys were anonymous and they found nowhere near 97 per cent support for the IPCC conclusion.

Government-induced Climaphobia…..Gov’t Lies, and their “useful Idiots” swear to it!

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Scientific integrity versus ideologically-fueled research

Posted on May 25, 2015

by Judith Curry

The main intellectual fault in all these cases is failing to be responsive to genuine empirical concerns, because doing so would make one’s political point weaker or undermine a cherished ideological perspective. – Heather Douglas

I have spoken often and publicly about my concerns about the integrity of climate research.  When I have used the words ‘integrity of research’, I have been referring generally to the adherence of the Mertonian norms of science and a general sense of ‘trustworthiness’.

The role of values in scientific research, and whether research is value laden or should be value free, is a subject of extensive debate.  A perspective on all this that makes sense to me is that provided by philosopher Heather Douglas.

Heather Douglas

Scientific integrity in a politicized world, by Heather Douglas.  See also HD’s talk on youtube. Excerpts:

As of late, the term “scientific integrity” has been used as an overly broad slogan encompassing everything good in research ethics. In this paper, I provide a more precise and narrow account, where scientific integrity consists of proper reasoning processes and handling of evidence essential to doing science. Scientific integrity here consists of a respect for the underlying empirical basis of science, and it is this scientists are often most concerned to protect against transgressions, whether those transgressions arise from external pressures (e.g., politicization) or internal violations (e.g., fabrication of data to further one’s scientific career).

If this value of science is to be protected, evidence must be able to challenge currently held views. This requirement creates certain demands for the structure of how other values (whether ethical, social, political, or cognitive) can play a role in science.

Depending on where one is in the scientific process, values have different legitimate roles they can play, with legitimacy determined by the need to protect the value of science. Consider the following two roles values can play in our reasoning: direct and indirect. In the direct role, values are a reason in themselves for our decisions. They evaluate our options and tell us which we should choose. An indirect role for all kinds of values (political, social, ethical, cognitive) is needed and acceptable throughout the scientific process. Science is thus a value-saturated process.

This view of values in science can now provide us with a clear definition of scientific integrity. First, as described here, scientific integrity is a quality of individual scientists, their reasoning, and particular pieces of scientific work. Thus, a person, a paper, a report can all be said to have scientific integrity. The crucial requirement for scientific integrity is the maintenance of the proper roles for values in science. Most centrally, an indirect role only for values in science is demanded for the internal reasoning of science. When deciding how to characterize evidence, how to analyze data, and how to interpret results, values should never play a direct role, but an indirect role only. This keeps values from being reasons in themselves for choices when interpreting data and results. In addition, values should not direct methodological choices to pre-determined outcomes, nor should they direct dissemination choices to cherry-pick results. This restriction on the role of values, to the indirect role only at these crucial locations in the scientific process, is necessary to protect the value of science itself, given the reason we do science is to gain reliable empirical knowledge. We do science to discover things about the world, not to win arguments. Protecting scientific integrity as so defined thus protects the value of science.

What does this view of scientific integrity mean for our understanding of the politicization of science? Clearly, political forces could cause a scientist, either voluntarily or through coercion, to violate the proper roles for values in science and thus violate scientific integrity. Examples of this include scientists pressured to (or for their own political purposes deciding to) fabricate evidence, cherry-pick evidence, distort results, or stick to a claim even when known criticisms which fatally undermine the claim remain unaddressed. The main intellectual fault in all these cases is failing to be responsive to genuine empirical concerns, because doing so would make one’s political point weaker or undermine a cherished ideological perspective. It is to utilize a direct role for values and have that determine one’s results. It is to use the prima facie reliability and authority of science, which rests on its robust critical practices and evidential bases, and to throw away a concern for the source of science’s reliability in favor of the mere veneer of authority. It is to turn science into a sham. No wonder scientists get so upset when violations of scientific integrity occur.

For example, a failure to respond to criticisms raised repeatedly and pointedly is a clear indication of a problem. If a scientist, or a political leader using science, insists on making a point based on evidence even when clear criticisms undermining their use of that evidence have been raised, and they fail to respond to those criticisms, one is warranted in suspecting that the cherry-picked evidence is but a smokescreen for a deeply held value commitment serving an improper direct role, and that ultimately, the evidence is irrelevant.

Violations can also be detected in overt or covert interference with the activities of scientists. Political actors may not like the results produced by scientists, but their response should not be to declare them by fiat to be otherwise. Instead, politicians can legitimately question whether the evidence is sufficient to support certain policies, whether other policy options might be preferable, or whether value commitments should demand contrary courses of action.

In addition, one needs to assess whether a sufficiently diverse range of scientists (to ensure adequate criticisms of each other’s work are being raised) are working on a range of projects that do not just serve a narrow set of interests. If power and money draw the efforts of scientists into a narrow range of projects, society will not be well served. Even if the science being done is performed with perfect integrity, the results may be distorted and politicized simply because they are the only results available. This is a much harder problem to track and assess, and has not been the main area of concern with the politicization of science. But I suspect it will become a key area of debate in the coming decades.

JC comments: Points that I find to be particularly insightful and relevant to climate science include:

• If this value of science is to be protected, evidence must be able to challenge currently held views.  Premature declarations of ‘consensus’ and attempts to marginalize those that disagree have become institutionalized in climate science, with strong statements of advocacy being made by professional societies (e.g. AGU, APS).

• . . . failing to be responsive to genuine empirical concerns, because doing so would make one’s political point weaker or undermine a cherished ideological perspective. JC: Climate science is rife with such examples, the most notorious example being the ‘hockey stick’. Another example is Lindzen’s iris hypothesis (which is the topic of a forthcoming post).

• If a scientist, or a political leader using science, insists on making a point based on evidence even when clear criticisms undermining their use of that evidence have been raised, and they fail to respond to those criticisms, one is warranted in suspecting that the cherry-picked evidence is but a smokescreen for a deeply held value commitment serving an improper direct role, and that ultimately, the evidence is irrelevant.  JC: Well this pretty much sums up the approach being used by President Obama and his advisors with regard to climate change.

•  One needs to assess whether a sufficiently diverse range of scientists (to ensure adequate criticisms of each other’s work are being raised) are working on a range of projects that do not just serve a narrow set of interests. JC: This is an issue of key importance for climate science, which was raised recently by the post Is federal funding biasing climate research?

Joe Duarte

Of direct relevance to the concerns raised by Hayward, Joe Duarte writes aboutIdeologically-fueled research, pursuant  to a comment on his recently published research Political diversity will improve social science.  Duarte focuses on an example from the social sciences, but these ideas easily generalize to climate research.  Excerpts:

If you believe your ideology is true, but look out upon the world and see that large numbers of people don’t embrace it, it can be frustrating. You have a list of issues you think must be urgently addressed by society, yet society is not addressing them, perhaps doesn’t even see them as problems to begin with. This can create a lot of dissonance – why don’t people see what we see or think as we think? One way to resolve that dissonance is to assume that there must be something wrong those people, that there must be “causes” behind their positions other than simple disagreement, much less any wisdom on their part. So the next step is to inventory the uncharitable reasons why people don’t embrace your ideology, the ideology you just know is true and noble.

Environmentalism is a rather new political ideology, and possibly a religion or a substitute for traditional religion, and it’s alarming that social psychologists are promoting it and trying to convert people to it. Embracing new, abstract, and somewhat ambiguous values like “nature” and “the environment” is just assumed to be equivalent to rationality or something. Environmentalist values are contested by scholars all over the place (though not so vigorously within academia), but the field seems unaware of this, and unaware of their status as values, as ideological tenets, as opposed to descriptive beliefs about the world.

What’s more, we often see researchers declare outright that their motivation is to advance their ideology, to spark political action, and so forth. I think it’s impossible to argue that the field is not biased when researchers declare themselves to be political activists and that their research is an outlet for said activism.

This researcher has already decided that holding a particular position that she disfavors has a certain class of “causes”, including behavioral and neural bases. She has pre-emptively shrunk reality, the reality that she will allow herself to see. Rather, she is extremely likely to find what she is looking for.

Science requires us to be more sober than this. We can’t go in having decided already what kinds of causes must be in force.

It seems to be in the nature of ideology to convert ideological tenets and value judgments into descriptive facts/concepts in the mind of the ideologue. It’s a good protective immune system for an ideology to have, to pre-emptively marginalize and de-legitimize dissent as corrupt or ignorant and thus deter one’s members from closely examining alternative schools. In any case, a valid social science needs to immunize itself from this sort of ideological embedding.

 JC reflections

The ideology that I am concerned about is what I have termed UNFCCC/IPCC ideology.  In the way that I have defined it, there is nothing wrong per se with an ideology; the problem is with ideologues – absence of doubt, intolerance of debate, appeal to authority, desire to convince others of the ideological ‘truth’, and willingness to punish those that don’t concur.

If the community of scientific researchers was sufficiently diverse to accommodate a range of ideological perspectives,  ideology wouldn’t have much impact on the overall scientific oeuvre.  However, when a single ideology is adopted by the professional societies and enforced by the political party in power, then we have a serious problem.

As an individual scientist, navigating all this in a highly politicized environment can be a real land mine.  But the problems – with only a few exceptions – aren’t with individual climate scientists, but with the institutionalization by professional societies of a particular ideology, the general liberal bias at universities, and arguable biases in federal funding of climate research.

It is very good to see philosophers and social scientists tackling these issues; it would be even better to see non-partisans from these fields analyze the situation in climate science.

Government-induced Climaphobia Strikes Again!

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Tom Harris explains why the climate promises are a joke

Posted on May 25, 2015  

Harris is an engineer with a special interest in Climate studies and GHG agreements. Here he explains the hypocrisy of the Lima “promises” on reductions in emissions.

It’s like any agreement with a leftist agenda, the words hide the intentions. In any international “promise” on GHG no verification, no enforcement–window dressing.

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/23/harpers-climate-pledge-is-hot-air

Harper’s climate pledge is hot air

Canada has no way to ensure developing nations keep their commitments

Tom Harris, Guest Columnist

First posted: Saturday, May 23, 2015 07:00 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, May 23, 2015 11:51 AM EDT

In announcing the Stephen Harper government’s new greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets earlier this month, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq said Canada will “work with our international partners to establish an international agreement in Paris that includes meaningful and transparent commitments from all major emitters.”

But Canadians are being tricked.

Any GHG emission reduction pledges made by developing countries in Paris later this year will almost certainly not be enforced.

Written in bureaucratese, the convoluted first sentence in last December’s “Lima Call for Climate Action”, the United Nations’ last major climate change agreement, indicated exactly that.

It reads: “The Conference of the Parties, Reiterating that the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) shall be under the Convention and guided by its principles…”

The ADP are the back room negotiators who are drafting the text for the big climate deal to be signed in Paris in December.

The “Convention” refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed by former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney and hundreds of other world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

And the ADP’s work will adhere to the UNFCCC, including its critical Article 4: “The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.”

So, under any treaty based on the UNFCCC (which all UN climate agreements are), developing countries will keep their emission reduction commitments only if we in the developed world pay them enough and give them enough of our technology.

Also implied in the article is that, even if we give them everything we promise, developing countries may simply forget about their GHG targets if they interfere with their “first and overriding priorities” of “economic and social development and poverty eradication.”

Developed nations like Canada, on the other hand, do not have this option. We must keep our emission reduction commitments no matter how it impacts our economies.

It is not as if the UN has been hiding this “firewall” between developing and developed nations.

It has told us repeatedly in UN climate change agreements in Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban and Lima that, “development and poverty eradication”, not emission reduction, takes top billing for developing countries.

Actions to significantly reduce GHG emissions would entail dramatically cutting back on the use of coal, the source of 81% of China’s electricity and 71% of India’s.

As coal is by far the least expensive source of electric power in most of the world, reducing GHG emissions by restricting coal use would unquestionably interfere with development priorities.

So, developing countries simply won’t do it, citing the UNFCCC in support of their actions.

Some commentators have speculated that tougher requirements will be imposed by the UN on poor nations over time as they develop.

The only way this can happen is if there are substantial revisions to the UNFCCC treaty.

China, India, and other developing countries have clearly indicated they will not allow this to happen any time soon.

Chinese negotiator Su Wei summed up the stance of developing nations when he explained that the purpose of the Paris agreement is to “reinforce and enhance” the 1992 convention, not rewrite it.

Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in part because it lacked legally binding GHG targets for developing countries.

So why is the Harper government supporting a process that will result in our country being stuck in another Kyoto?

— Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition, which opposes the hypothesis carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are known to cause climate problems

Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director,
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
P.O. Box 23013
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 4E2
Canada

More Countries Caught Manipulating Their Climate Data. FRAUD!

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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION
Al Gore: green house gases and sweat.
More Countries Caught Manipulating Their Climate Data
Photo of Michael Bastasch
MICHAEL BASTASCH

05/19/2015
Weather agencies in Australia, Paraguay and Switzerland may be manipulating temperature data to create a sharper warming trend than is present in the raw data — a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent months.

Most recently, Dr. H. Sterling Burnett with the Heartland Institute detailed how the Swiss Meteorological Service adjusted its climate data “to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments.”

In his latest article, Sterling wrote that Switzerland’s weather bureau adjusted its raw temperature data so that “the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.” For example, the cities of Sion and Zurich saw “a doubling of the temperature trend” after such adjustments were made.

But even with the data tampering, Sterling noted that “there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data- tampering.”

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“Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists,” according to Sterling.

The Swiss affair, however, is not the first instance of data “homogenization” catalogued by scientists and researchers who are skeptical of man-made global warming. In January, skeptic blogger Paul Homewood documented how NASA has “homogenized” temperature data across Paraguay to create a warming trend that doesn’t exist in the raw data.

Homewood found that all three operational rural thermometers in Paraguay had been adjusted by NASA to show a warming trend where one did not exist before. Homewood also found that urban thermometers in Paraguay had similarly been adjusted by NASA.

“[NASA is] supposed to make a ‘homogenisation adjustment,’ to allow for [urban heat island (UHI)] bias,” Homewood wrote. “The sort of thing you would expect to see at Asuncion Airport, Paraguay’s main gateway, handling over 800,000 passengers a year.”
“However, far from increasing historic temperatures to allow for UHI, [NASA] has done the opposite and decreased temperatures prior to 1972 by 0.4C,” Homewood added.

Before that, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) was forced to admit it adjusts temperatures recorded at all weather stations across the country. Aussie journalists had been critical of ABM for being secretive about its data adjustments.

“Almost all the alterations resulted in higher temperatures being reported for the present and lower numbers for the past–with the higher numbers being used to demonstrate a historical warming trend–than the numbers that were actually recorded,” wrote Sterling.

“Downward homogenizations in recent years were rare. In some areas, downward temperature trends measured over time showed a significantly increased temperature trend after homogenization,” he added. “The difference between actually measured temperatures and homogenized temperatures topped 4 degrees Celsius over certain periods at some measuring stations.”

Global warming skeptics have increasingly become critical of adjustments to raw temperature data made by government climate agencies. Such adjustments seem to overwhelmingly show a massive warming trend not present in the raw data.

Such adjusted data has been used by climate scientists and environmental activists to claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record. Adjusted data also shows that 13 of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.

NOAA and other climate agencies have defended such adjustments to the temperature record, arguing they are necessary to correct for “biases” that distort the reality of the Earth’s climate.

NOAA scientists increase or decrease temperatures to correct for things like changes in the locations of thermometers (some that were once in rural areas are now in the suburbs or even in cities). Scientists have also had to correct for a drastic change in the time of day temperatures were recorded (for whatever reason, past temperatures were recorded in the afternoon, but are now often collected in the morning).

Other adjustments have been made to the data to correct for such “biases,” but global warming skeptics question if the scope of the data adjustments are justifiable.

The U.K.’s Global Warming Policy Foundation has created a panel of skeptical scientists from around the world who will evaluate temperature adjustments to find out if they are scientifically justified.

“Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising,” Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said in a statement.

“While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from — or less certain than — has been suggested,” said Kealey, who has been appointed chairman of the foundation’s investigative task force. “We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.”

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