Bishop Hill Hewitt again
Sep 2, 2010 Climate: HSI I'm still can't take the smile off my face at the ridiculousness of Nick Hewitt's 'review'. It's just so hard to comprehend how one can reach the rank of full professor and still be unable to put together a coherent argument (although who knows, perhaps this is normal at Lancaster, Phil Jones' alma mater). Come to think of it, it's hard to comprehend how one can become a full professor without being able to spell 'practice', but that's probably just me being pedantic again.
And once again, we have a review that could have been written without actually reading the book at all. Not a single quote from the book, not a single fact disputed. I'm wondering if I should christen this kind of thing a "Hewitt", in honour of Professor Nick.
How many more Hewitts do you think there will be before next week?
Bishop Hill
Doug Keenan in the comments:
Suppose that the arguments presented in HSI are valid. Then a scientific conclusion that was major for global-warming science, and was published in the top scientific journal, and had been considered established for years, was not just wrong, but unfounded and rubbish. And the discovery of this came from an outsider. What would that say about global-warming science?
HSI brings global-warming science into disrepute, to some extent. And the global-warming scientists do not want to accept such a thing—because their self-images are founded on the glory of their science. In other words, from Hewitt’s perspective, HSI is an attack on his identity.
This is not about science, but about the self-images of the scientists.
Reader Comments (46)
There is no counter-argument, so opinionating at right-angles to the (apparently unexamined) text is the only option available. Hence it is taken. Expect more of the same.
But you know this...
Dominic
"How many more Hewitts do you think there will be before next week?"
A few, presently drawing straws, and I will be very surprised if there is not a damn sight more after the 14th!
But maybe, just maybe, somebody might actually read, comprehend and then report.
Surely one of the many effects of AGW cannot be the extinction of all MSM investigatory journalists?
'How many more Hewitts do you think there will be before next week?'
Many parameters required for modelling and projection for this scenario are subject to considerable uncertainty.
But given the recent and unprecedented rise in reviews, it is very likely that there will be significant and possibly dangerous increases from the 2010 baseline.
Dominic
There appear to be a lot of Hewitts on recent politicians' memoirs...
Hewitt and the others are like children who see other children with things they want and then start to throw stones at them - puerile and largely mindless
The absence of any critical review has seriously got up noses of the faithful. As a consequence, they have commissioned more negative reviews than you can shake a stick at.
It doesn't matter about detail or quality, they will be used to claim that the HSI has been widely and comprehensively debunked.
As for Nick Hewitt, his simplistic review demonstrates his blind faith in the AGW religion.
I guess "there's none so blind as....................Nick Hewitt".
'How many more Hewitts do you think there will be before next week?'
The ones lurking in the background with aces up their sleeves, waiting to serve up an ace are presumably Latent Hewitts.
I have long learned that if you stick your head above the parapet you can expect bricks to be thrown at it. Once the initial shock has passed you become inured to it. You need to develop a thicker skin dear boy, a Mandelsonian as it is sometimes known. Do not waste your time responding to every second rate reviewer (the poor spelling is a giveaway). As long as you feel your argument is sound you should have no difficulty fighting your corner. Do not expect your opponents to roll over. Take the fight to them and relish the combat. You are famous and fame is a bitch goddess. There is no going back.
Will "Hewitting" become the AGW equivelant of "Fisking"?
Equivalent! Doh!
The fortran77 Computational Regression Analysis Prognosticator engine (also used by the MET office, and aka ?) is indicating about 1700 possible UK reviewers...and here is the list:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/uk-science-statement.html
Yes, Nick Hewitt is among the candidates. Another successful climatological prediction...
Dominic
Excellent funding pitch!
Hyperthermania
"Latent Hewitts" - nuff said, made my day!
I don't know about how many "Hewitts" you'll find before next week but back in February this year there was a item on Anthony Watts' site by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of the Columbia Earth Research Institute relating climate deniers and tobacco companies. Anthony Watts when off on the guy big time. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/22/the-most-slimy-essay-ever-from-the-guardian-and-columbia-university/. I don't think anyone heard from Professor Sachs since.
That'll be the same Met Office that didn't get round to reporting that August was the coldest for 17 years. Imagine the press releases from them if it had been the hottest one for 17 years.
Prof Hewitt opens with -
"The physics explaining climate change is simple." and then carries on with some very elementary radiative physics to conclude, "everything else being equal, the Earth will warm up."
So that's it then, climate change is about the earth warming up. If it doesn't warm up or cools then presumably climate change ceases.
Science really is that simple, isn't it? It's time for those struggling with GUTs to pull their fingers out and try to keep up with the Climate Scientists.
""The physics explaining climate change is simple." and then carries on with some very elementary radiative physics to conclude, "everything else being equal, the Earth will warm up."
Clearly the good prof is willing cannon fodder for the bookmaker.
He's clearly a betting man who suscribes to all the best journals, Nature and the Sporting Post, places his stakes and only remembers the short-odds, infrequent, winners.
Consensus is the revenue-rich reason why bookies rake it in; the "every thing else being equal" bit explains why punters stay poor.
Your impoverishment, oh unhappy professor, lies less with your addiction to Lady Luck than with your delusion that you would gain brownie-points by brown-nosing to your superiors.
The latter, in your case, are clearly an overwhelming majority.
It's a wise rabbit that stays in its hole. The same cannot be said about those, not dissimilar to a recent reviewer, who once identified keep on digging!
The review you describe is the way climate scientists arrive at conclusions. Generate enough papers regardless of the quality or correctness and then claim consensus. In this case, write enough negative reviews, whether or not they actually review the contents of the book, and then claim that the book has no value.
I wondered if the readers of this magazine were used to having their intelligence so insulted. Apparently not, all the rest of this months book reviews show signs of the books having been actually read and their contents fairly (as far as I can tell) evaluated. Certainly none of the others are hatchet jobs.
Might be worth having a look at next months letters page.
Dominic said:
Using a basis period of 1979-1999 we can say with some certainty that the future is grim. For anomaly calculation purposes we can safely ignore the last ten years without actually explaining why. Making some basic assumptions not necessarily grounded in fact, each Hewitt causes two more the following week and nothing can prevent it. Any attempts to convince me otherwise will be met with me sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting 'I can't hear you'.
The time a Hewitt remains in the environment has never accurately been determined but for policy making reasons I have taken them to be everlasting. I am sure you have already realised it is worse than we thought. My Global Critic Model shows the rate is increasing at an astonishing rate. The model also shows that the past population of Hewitts declined drastically from 1970 to the present day. Although this does not entirely chime with the historical record the predictions for future Hewitt levels are cast iron. The full code for my model is at the end of this post.
By September 2050 not only will the surface of the Earth be too hot to be habitable, the population too large to be sustained and weather too extreme to be survived, there will be more than 4 million Hewitts appearing in a single week and the cumulative population of Hewitts will be approaching 3 billion. The following week will see the end of the human race as we know it with the entire population of the planet becoming Hewitts.
As this hypothesis has now been published it is therefore entirely correct but, there is much I must claim I do not know whilst still maintaining with a straight face that the matter is in fact settled, otherwise my funding will cease.
The Global Critic Model:
Y = X ^ 2 , where X is the number of weeks since last week and Y is the number of Hewitts.
I bet 97% of negative reviews are vacuous.
Forgive me for bringing a touch of levity to the discussion, but I wonder whether the English language has a collective noun for hewitts, as we do for a pride of lions, or a gaggle of geese. Might it be a hysteria of hewitts?
Feynman noted that all of physical science's basic equations from Galileo and Kepler to Newton, Maxwell, Planck and Einstein, through Heisenberg and Schrodinger, could be scribbled on the palm of his one hand.
Whether high-school algebra or elementary calculus, these formulations may seem simplistic, but as the Master said, "Subtle is the Lord." Trivializing centuries of genius, this malodorous Prof. Hewitt betrays the hubristic arrogance typical of his ossified academic ilk.
If "science is simple," let's see der grosse Herr Professor Hewitt propose some objective, rational, independently verifiable hypotheses, rather than mouth Cargo Cult cliches broadly refuted over decades by Edward Lorenz, Benoit Mandelbrot, Ilya Prigogine, and other genuine truth-seekers. "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht": Boshaft aber sind Prof. Hewitt and his Green Gang coterie of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al., Luddite sociopaths who want you dead and are cheerfully sabotaging global energy economies to just that end.
So the good professor thinks that the physics explaining climate change is simple, does he? Silly me - here I was thinking that the climate is a massively complicated system, of which we have very little understanding, relatively speaking.
I always thought it was only post-normal scientists who claimed that things were simple - and that only so as not to confuse the politicians by telling them the truth (that "nobody knows nothing").
But then what would I know - I've only got a degree in the "Queen of Sciences" (or "Maths", as it's known to the Great Unwashed), as opposed to Chemistry
I think RealClimate should invite Professor Hewitt to post his review as a guest article.
It's interesting to look at the relatively few one/two-star reviews of HSI on Amazon, as they tend to follow this pattern too (emotive language, pejorative expressions, no proper explanation of why the reviewer thinks the book is wrong), although there are exceptions. Comments such as "it was a waste of time reading the book" or "some kind of partisan agenda is at play", or "a crazy tale of data manipulation and vast conspiracies" are rather common.
Or they slag off other reviewers. "The majority of people reviewing the book are celebrating the fact that it supports their pre-existing bigotry and valids [sic] their delusions of superiority over most of the world's best scientists."
Not all negative reviews/comments follow this pattern, but it's revealing that many (most?) of them do.
I think the study of Hewitts, and in particular what drives people to produce them, is a highly desirable venture. If any good at all can out of this shameful episode of alarmism, it would be a dramatically improved understanding of human motivations and frailties. That would add a little to our defences against the next one, and perhaps reducing the harm it will cause.
Collective noun: a Wardful of Hewitts?
Suppose that the arguments presented in HSI are valid. Then a scientific conclusion that was major for global-warming science, and was published in the top scientific journal, and had been considered established for years, was not just wrong, but unfounded and rubbish. And the discovery of this came from an outsider. What would that say about global-warming science?
HSI brings global-warming science into disrepute, to some extent. And the global-warming scientists do not want to accept such a thing—because their self-images are founded on the glory of their science. In other words, from Hewitt’s perspective, HSI is an attack on his identity.
This is not about science, but about the self-images of the scientists.
A "Howling" of Hewitts?
No one who had an interest in Science could fail but to be drawn into reading the HSI and be unable to put it down or look forward to the next chapter. Whether one agreed with it or not, one would wish to replicate the calculations, explore and challenge the arguments or dig deeper into the statistics and statistical methodology.
Any real review by a scientist would reflect this reading and the process you followed. Your arguments for or against presented, but certainly a respect for the book itself.
Mr Hewitts reaction says a lot about his feelings for Science and the Scientific Method.
I note the same three monkey phenomenon in politicians and media.
Cognitive Dissonance
Mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The concept was introduced by the psychologist Leon Festinger (1919–89) in the late 1950s. He and later researchers showed that, when confronted with challenging new information, most people seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists. Cognitive dissonance is nonetheless considered an explanation for attitude change.
How about a "cry of Hewitts"? Already in use as a collective noun. The word also has the sense of yelling loudly. Plus there's an allusion to "hue and cry."
Or perhaps this is too pedantic.
I will just add that it's disappointing that someone who calls himself a professor would call the HSI "pedantic" and say that the readers of CW should read something else. At the very least, those who read the HSI get a good introduction into the fields of paleoclimatology and the necessary statistical methods. Surely someone who really cares about science and learning would appreciate that?
Reading Prof. Hewitts review, and the comments in the previous thread, and this one, I was struck by a couple of patterns and possibilities.
This, and earlier 'unimpressed' reviews of HSI, follow a similar pattern, and share similarities with comments and reviews of papers, books or posts deemed 'hostile' to climate science orthodoxy - McKitrick, McShane and Wyner etc.
The reviews all follow a similar pattern, and are noted to not address the content of the book. The papers and posts are examined strictly as climate science papers or posts and are dismissed as either not advancing the science, or not offering alternatives or interpretations.
Using the above review as an example - it starts, as most do, by restating the physics and the concerns/conclusions. It moves on to note that the books subject - paleo is one 'small' area of climate science, but does not address the physics of the climate system. McKitrick might show shortcomings of temperature series, but does not suggest alternatives. McShane and Wyner use methods (Lasso?) that are not used in Climate Science, or whatever.
In many extended blog exchanges on several blogs, particular aspects - hockey stick, temp adjustments or accuracies are defended tooth and nail.No error, uncertainty or omission is admitted or even acknowledged. When the position becomes completely untenable, the response switches to 'Oh well I don't really know very much about field XYZ, dendro, paloe, temp or whatever, and I'm not very interested in it. And inevitably, 'But it doesn't matter anyway, as it's only a small part of the picture, and there is overwhelming evidence.....'
The above suggest to me that we are misunderstanding what is being said, which is the simple statement, 'The science is settled'. Once you understand and accept that, it all becomes quite clear.
I have this tedious and tiresome book that challenges Climate Science. All that is necessary is that I restate the science, which c'mon, we KNOW is settled. Therefore the book is clearly in error.
I mean it doesn't touch on the settled science, it talks about the way the scientists work. But that is irrelevant. We know what the science is, and that it is settled. And anyway, even if it did have a point, it only addresses a tiny part of Climate Science, and says nothing about the physics, so it is doubly irrelevant.
Nothing to see here, move along. The book is rubbish.
As I think some past religious institutions used to maintain, 'You are clearly guilty, as you have been arrested, and you are here. All that remains is to establish what it is, that constitutes your guilt.'
Doug Keenan is absolutely right. If we pull back the curtain, the great Oz is seen to be rather pathetic. The "scientists" don't practice the scientific method, they don't check their work, they don't check their instruments, their quality control is pathetic. HSI gives a peek at how bad it is with regard to only one iconic study. There are a bunch more. Imagine how bad Hewitt will feel when the whole sordid, incompetent mess becomes common knowledge.
Unfortunately for him, there aren't nearly enough fingers to plug the holes that are springing up in his dike.
Andrew
Take a look at what the IPCC "plagiarised". (The author of the book was involved in the IPCC so maybe it's not quite plagiarism - but he certainly brough his preconcieved notions to the table)
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/09/book-ipcc-plagiarized.html
I wonder if Nick Hewitt would find this type of thing appropriate since he's such a good critic?
a purse of Hewitts?
artwest says: Sep 3, 2010 at 3:23 AM
"Might be worth having a look at next months letters page."
Not worth a wager that Chem Brit will allow any correspondence that might be construed as critical of Hewitt's review.
A Hewitt review is one that informs its readers about the reviewer, rather than that which is reviewed.
A Hewitt review:
Reveals the level of intellectual integrity of the reviewer.
Reveals the degree of passion for science of the reviewer.
Reveals the mind set of the reviewer.
Is really a review of the reviewer.
The great thing about being a Hewitt is that you can go through life without having "why" questions in your head and this simplifies everything. "Because" is the accepted philosophy of a Hewitt.
Because he said so.
Because I said so.
Because it is.
The sad thing about Hewitts is that they are blissfully ignorant of their condition and at the same time are incapable of disguising their condition from the rest of the world.
Suggested collective noun
A PREJUDICE of Hewitts
"Not worth a wager that Chem Brit will allow any correspondence that might be construed as critical of Hewitt's review." The letters page of CiB is sometimes controversial so I wouldn't rule this out, particularly if the letter is reasonable in tone and critical of specific points. Asking if the reviewer had actually read the book might be a worthwhile point
In comparison however, Bob (Eddie the Eagle) Ward, rocks.
If your going to laugh at his spelling errors perhaps you ought to look to your own :) "I'm still can't take the smile off my face" ought to be I not I`m lol
Mark
I'll never make professor now!
According to Hewitt:
" measurements unambiguously show the concentrations of these gases are rising and have done so since about 1750."
The first 100 years of which were a bit cold, as I recall...
>perhaps this is normal at Lancaster
I don't know what the hard science departments are like there, but Lancaster has for many years been full of left-wing green activists in the sociology/Science-and-Technology-Studies/Institute-of-the-Environment sort of areas. There used to be lots of anti-GM types there, like Robin Grove-White, now thankfully retired.