Bishop Hill Paul Dennis responds to the Indy
Feb 7, 2010 Climate: CRU Paul Dennis is highly unimpressed by the Independent's editorial this morning and has responded in the comments with an angry denunciation, which is, in my opinion, thoroughly deserved.
I am growing tired of the lazy, careless and vacuous journalism that seeks to smear by insinuation. This newspaper asserts that 2 prominent climate bloggers (who spoke at the Heartland Institute) who associate with Paul Dennis a 54 year old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia.
I don't know what the Independent is trying to insinuate but to me associate in this context strikes of conspiracy, subterfuge etc.
A few minutes checking archives would have revealed that my association is that I have written several comments relating to isotope geochemistry and how it may be used to determine past climates at several websites, including climate audit, WUWT, and Air Vent. I am passionate about the public understanding of science and making my science accessible to others. One way, in this modern age, is to engage in blogs. A little more research might have shown the journalists that I also hold some small grants to enable me to develop science education programmes that involve schools in some of my research and that are also to develop 'open notebook' science methds in teaching and research. For those who are unaware open noterbook science is the complete publishing of lab notebooks on the web, raw data, successful and unsuccesful experiments, comments etc. It is the laying out of the genesis of ideas, development of hypotheses and tests, the experimental approach through to interpretation, write up, publication. In addition my laboratory is completely open to anyone who would like to visit and see how we use isotope geochemistry as a tool to understanding natural processes.
I have never met any of the bloggers referred to in the article. I sent Jeff Id a copy of an important paper I wrote with colleagues on climate at the southern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, which by the way showed a strong warming. I wrote to Steve McIntyre once to invite him to give a seminar, and I also wrote to ask if he was aware of anything on the web that could have been hacked from UEA computers. Attempts to paint me a 'denier' (see the article headline are way clear of the mark and I take it very much as an insult.
It is because of this lazy reporting and repeating of memes that I refuse to talk to any newspaper journalist including Paul Bignell of the Independent on Sunday.
Paul Dennis
The Independent is exhibiting the worst kind of gutter journalism and seems incapable of understanding that it is possible to believe in manmade global warming while having an abhorrence of secret data, withheld code and all the shenanigans of journal nobbling and publication gatekeeping that seem to be a feature of Hockey Team science.
Reader Comments (17)
Unfortunately I have to agree. I have always regarded the Independent as a somewhat leftie but generally sound paper.
This diatribe is way out of the normal rhetoric.
I can only assume it is an attempt to differentiate itself from the Grauniad's new found equivocal stance - for marketing purposes.
"I am growing tired of the lazy, careless and vacuous journalism that seeks to smear by insinuation. "
Paging Alanis Morissette!
Has he ever mentioned this over at WUWT or Climate Audit?
Paul Dennis appears to be the only true and honest scientist that has emerged at UEA. He has the proper attitude to science, that it should be completely open and available for all to review, criticise and replicate. It is admirable to open up one's work to scrutiny and risk having one's mistakes discovered. However, by being open, it is far less likely that there are errors to be discovered.
By contrast, the Independent shows it is not fit to be used to wrap one's fish and chips, but is best left in the gutter.
I am growing tired of the lazy, careless and vacuous journalism
There's another kind? Who knew.
I think I will keep the "Indy" article though - a classic. Reds under the bed - you really can just make it up.
Just loved the pic of Steve M - presumably hanging around in the park waiting for the brown envelope from his oil handler.
I don't know about characterising his response as angry, but I like the way he just states the facts and uses the comment sections of media outlets to do it. There is something quite wonderful about that. He depicts someone who has nothing to hide no weasel words at all about how he *feels*, just statements of facts.
Paul Dennis:
Your outreach on the blogs will be appreciated by many of us, and I very much hope that recent press comment will not deter you from continuing with it.
Dialogue between climate scientists and sceptics, as opposed to salvoes of invective, is one of the good things that should come out of the present upheavals. On the other hand, having seen the kind of insinuation and bile that The Independent has printed today, it would seem that this is not something that the activist wing of climate science, as represented by the likes of Bob Ward, wish to promote.
It is time for many more mainstream climate scientists to make it clear that such interventions on their behalf are unwelcome. But will they dare do so?
TonyN (Harmless Sky)
Innuendo loosely stitched to innuendo - it immediately stuck out as trash journalism even to a non-scientist. Paul shouldn't worry about it.
In the competition around climate change the Indy is the clear loser. It hasn't broken any big stories, and when it's had a good smallish one (I'm thinking of David King's 'fraud' interview) it didn't even realise what the story was!
Lazy journalists aside, I am totally impressed with the 'open notebook' method Prof. Dennis is developing.
Now that really is something to applaud, because - or so I was taught, a long time ago - its the experiments which seemingly end in 'failure' from which one learns most. Thus - open notebooks for the scientific community are to me a brilliant step to engage the whole scientific community in ongoing research.
Lets not forget that science is not, nor should it ever be, some sort of secret endeavour, only for some initiates. After all, scientific exploration of what we now call natural sciences took off in the 19th century, driven by amateurs, gentleman scientists, and some ladies as well.
With the internet at our fingertips, are we really implying that only a select few are sufficiently 'intelligent' to understand the arcana of, say 'climate science'? That sounds positively medieval to me.
There are no arcana - and wasn't it some eminent scientist who maintained that any scientist worth his or her salt must be able to convey his ideas and results in such a way that a normal person was able to understand them?
Lets go for 'open notebooks'!
@Paul.
What TonyM said!
I believe Paul Dennis is being too generous by attributing the hatcet job in the Independent to "journalistic laziness". IMHO this is part of a PR counterattack. Please see the pieces at DeepClimate and deSmogBlog. This is a concerted effort to off-set the enormous damage done to the activist environmentalist agenda by the recent exposures of the shoddy and misleading work of Pachauri and lead writers of the IPCC's AR4.
It reminds me of the coordinated attacks on Bjorn Lomborg. Michael Crichton could have written a sequel to State of Fear.
"...With the internet at our fingertips, are we really implying that only a select few are sufficiently 'intelligent' to understand the arcana of, say 'climate science'? That sounds positively medieval to me...." - Viv Evans
Yes, Viv, they are not only implying it, they are hammering that nail every day. The issue is not just a few rogue elitists in Climate Science, it is the existence of an elite in every major institution in society with a fairly unified world view and perception of man-kind. It views people like us as being too ignorant, short-sighted, materialistic, hedonistic, selfish and shallow... to know what is in our best interests. We are hemmed in with laws and regulations... all in our own best interests, of course.... laws to cover failing to wear a seatbelt, using a cell phone while driving... removing the tag from a mattress or failing to warn a customer that the coffee in a styro-foam container is hot. Common sense, personal judgment and personal responsibility are all subordinated to state regulation.
I can't speak for the UK, but in the U.S. of the 1960s and 70s college educated people amounted to about 9% of the population and the vast majority were liberal arts majors. These were the professionals who exercised judgment, made autonomous decisions and succeeded or failed based on them. Today, 25% of all adult Americans have a college degree, but the courses they take are oriented toward careers and the jobs they are being prepared for are jobs hemmed in with standards and regulations that eliminate any semblance of autonomy or decision making. The children of the 21st century are being groomed to be a technically proficient proletariat with the delusion that they are independent, critical thinkers.... awareness of the dangers of AGW being a self-congratulatory case in point.
To Professor Dennis--
Never be ashamed of being called a skeptic (American spelling...). Skepticism is the bedrock value of all good scientists. The whole point of the scientific method is proceeding in a way such that you minimize the chance of fooling yourself. The history of science is, unfortunately, filled with people who don't seem to understand this. Of course, I'm assuming that the Independent is using the word "denier" as, to them, a politically more satisfying synonym for "skeptic". Most skeptics have been called deniers, as have a good portion of "lukewarmers".
"it is possible to believe in manmade global warming while having an abhorrence of secret data, withheld code and all the shenanigans of journal nobbling and publication gatekeeping that seem to be a feature of Hockey Team science." That's certainly a logical possibility. After all, McCarthy alleged that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were awash with communist spies, and his data was scant or invented. And yet we know in retrospect that the gist of what he said was true. What a proud boast for Climate Science - "We're as accurate as McCarthy was - our facts are bogus but we're right by fluke". Stranger things have happened.
Frank O'Dwyer,
I presume you're referring to Under Rug Swept , the theme song of the IPCC and climate data hoarders.
To paraphrase the Indy's original sales strapline:
"It's governed by consensus. Are you ?"
This does sound like a real scientist! I sure would like to hear his views of the data manipulation by the "trusted "sources and the shockingly corrupt solution of carbon credits?
Following my analysis, billions of persons on our planet receive the mortgage loans at different creditors. Thus, there is great possibilities to receive a short term loan in any country.