Saturday
Apr232011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill HSI goes nuclear
Apr 23, 2011 Climate: HSI Randy Brich, writing for the Nuclear Power Industry News blog reviews the Hockey Stick Illusion:
In a masterful expose on scientific sleuthing, practiced primarily by Steve McIntyre and his fortuitous statistical economist friend, Ross McKitrick, Montford’s captivating climate science chronology commands attention and must, I assume, be giving Mann and his co-conspirators fantastic fits.
H/T Fergalr
Reader Comments (31)
An excellent review. I've added a supportive comment.
Energy industry rag supports book which is critical of climate science. Who'd a thought it.
And you lot try and accuse climate scientists of having vested interests....
ZDB...I thought you guys were in favour of nuclear, being low on CO2 emissions and all that stuff.
I feel sorry for ZDB.
I am still seeing double with all those alliterations.
Well done Bishop! I think that was Z's message as well.
Baxter 75
And isn't it also the case that the nuclear industry sees the global warming scam as its best chance of major expansion of the industry over the next few years?
Sad when people don't know which side their bread is buttered.
ZDB: "Energy industry rag supports book which is critical of climate science. Who'd a thought it"
Sorry Zed you've obviously been away, but George Monbiot has declared that Nuclear is green, it is after all renewable. The one thing for sure is if our politicians persist in their incredibly stupid attempts to eradicate coal, oil and gas as energy sources there will only be nuclear, so they don't have a dog in the fight.
Z
The carbon credit bribes not doing enough to stave off dissent in the "energy industry"?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/8468572/Electricity-firms-get-100m-for-nothing.html
Congratulations Bish, this is a brilliant review and Randy Brich is not a lightweight. In fact his website is very interesting and informative. There is a very imformative interview with a Dr Fox about radiation which I would recomend to all your readers.
Cannot say enough about the HSI, am insisting that all my friends read it.
A very good and well deserved review.
The combination of blog sites such as this one, Climate Audit and Whats Up With That and your book, which provide accessible and comprehensible reporting, are indispensable in the face of relentless government funded propaganda. This is a battle of ideas which will run and run for years on end.
I do hope you have another book in preparation which updates the story to include coverage of Climategate, the various Parliamentary and UEA enquiries and the many questions that were ignored and left unanswered by them. In this connection the propaganda campaign now being waged by the AGW party is also worthy of close examination. It seems to be a deliberate strategy. The first stage is to ignore the critics (the enquiries are evidence of that). The second stage is to try to wear them down, first by abuse (deniers, flat earthers) and then by attempts to discredit them (the BBC stitch ups). In many ways it is an unequal struggle because the full power of the state (Acts of Parliament and taxpayers cash) is marshalled against the sceptic cause. That makes it all the more encouraging that your book continues to get wider and wider acknowledgement and a growing reputation for telling it how it is.
The review says:
For someone who is following a certain section of the climate establishment, you cannot imagine how hilarious the implications of this above true observation is. I'm sure Keith Kloor and Randy 'gasbag' Olson will fall off their chairs upon reading this bit. :)
For all the millions of dollars of funding and the cash at their disposal, the climate guys do not have a single interesting story to tell. All the cool stuff has come from the skeptics, and with skeptic involvement - the Glaciergate-Pachauri-Hasnain fiasco, the Pachauri-North-Monbiot fracas, the North-Lewis-Nepstad-Monbiot Amazongate drama, the Hockey stick illusion-McIntyre-McKitrick-Montford story and so forth.
Fortuitous. 35 years ago I thought I knew what this word meant: happy (or welcome) chance. I looked it up again today, and from what I can see, the meaning hasn't changed. Either I don't know, or cannot understand in this context, what fortuitous means, or I am not hep with the story. Clarifications are welcome.
P.S.: I'm a great fan of the Hockey Stick Illusion. Mr. Montford has a fine turn of mind, and I hope he commits more of it to paper.
Nobody noticed my "glowing review" pun :-|
Pluck,
35 years ago, the word simply meant by chance. People insist that since in sounds like fortunate, it must be positive, so now it has a lucky tinge to it. In this context, I assume it means it is by lucky chance that Steve M had a stat buddy when the job at hand needed stat expertise.
J
firgaIR
I didn't notice it because it wasn;t very (nuw) clear
(nu)
Apr 23, 2011 at 8:13 AM | Unregistered CommenterZedsDeadBed
Tell me ZBD, what is the second line of page 33 in the book?
I would bet my life you have not even read the book but then again, criticism without knowledge is your forte! Nice to have faith without proof but many of the worlds problems have been caused by the same blind following the blind!
Good review of a good book. I bought my first copy before it was available on Amazon.com. Since my wife in a fit of spring cleaning tossed that copy, I had to buy one from Amazon. It is still a good book that tells a good story, albeit a story with factual grounding.
Once again, congratulation.
Thanks James. What I was hoping to elicit is any information about how Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick formed their contact and began their collaboration. That it was fortuitous is a surprise, not because it was happy or welcome, but that it was due to chance (which is poetic, or ironic, for statisticians so to meet). It rather reminds me of a point by Emily Dickinson that begins, "We met by chance, But we lingered by design…" If there is more information about how this collaboration began, I would be interested. I have read the HSI, but not memorized it. It may have been covered there, but I cannot recall it.
BH
What a cracking review.
Yeah, but once Monbiot's Climate Change sceptic blog alert went out a few "We don't need to read no stinkin denialist book already debunked by Tamino at realclimate" turn up. And they get feisty. What part of "if you don't read it you don't get comment" don't they understand?
The saga of comments on Randy Brich's article continues.
A terrific and well-deserved review, Andrew. I've added my CDN $0.02 to the comments there.
Randy Brich has now responded to the derogatory comments on his review of the HSI.
'Anuke' showcases the 'you're-all-denialist-scum' attitude so perfectly I thought first it was a caricature.
I always find it odd that people of apparently limited curiosity and necessarily limited understanding are the most 'certain' about what they 'know'.
(see comments below Brich's HSI review).
I wouldn't believe the Bishop too much!
He's got an axe to grind.
OK, he makes his points carefully and clearly. He eschews the use of ad-hominems and straw-man constructions but don't be fooled by his apparent honesty.
Yes, he utilises logic and factual content to make his point but, and this is very important, his unashamed usage of such devices clearly makes him "Not a merry model of a modern Climate Scientist"
He's soo yesterday that only old-timer, tobacco-funded and fact-fuelled fossils could take him seriously!
Personally, and I'm 110% correct here, is that you should get your Climate facts from the Climax Psyientits at RuleClimate or the winer of the 2010 "Best Psyience Bloop" - SepticSighence.
That's where our MVP, DZB, gets his information from and, you have to concede, she hasn't got anything wrong at all, so far!
RoyFOMR:
I didn't miss the satire (it was pretty thick), but two interesting points were brought up: 1) Mr. Montford's honesty or lack thereof: it's immaterial as he is a source of information, not an arbiter of truth. 2) Mr. Montford has an axe to grind: perhaps, but he has put a keen edge on it.
Apr 23, 2011 at 8:13 AM | ZedsDeadBeat
"Energy industry rag supports book which is critical of climate science. Who'd a thought it.
And you lot try and accuse climate scientists of having vested interests...."
OOOOhhh! Owwww! Gosh, that hurt!!! Another super intelligent barb from ZDB [not]
Actually I wonder that even she doesn't realise that the nuclear industry has a major "vested interest" in cAGW. After all, if you are daft enough to believe in the cAGW religion, the only worthwhile, reliable electricity sources are hydro and nuclear.
Anyone who realises that cAGW is fraudulent piffle won't take long to discover that, compared to nuclear, a modern coal plant would be at least a third cheaper and take much less time to build.
So exactly what 'vested interest' is she suggesting?
Pathetic. At least she's consistent.
Ah, you saw through me then, did you pluck?
Next time I won't be so subtle:)
RoyFOMR,
The dangers of having humor pass over the heads of half my listeners (or almost listeners) is familiar to me so I don't object to the degree of subtlety. I am interested in what we should expect from a Source of Information and more amused by the suggestion that a source of information should be trusted if it is honest and unbiased. Information from any source should always be compared to and contrasted against information from other sources. I am not a believer in authorities however honest and unbiased I am told that they are: even if true, it doesn't mean that they are competent or careful. Before the internet appeared on my desk, I used to keep twenty-four dictionaries on the shelves of my office. I acquired them over a period of years because none of them had all of the information needed to understand a word and its usage. The information they provided was often inconsistent and even contradictory. I did find that some dictionaries were more reliable than others and some were more "authoritative" (meaning, better researched) than others and that some had an axe to grind in being either prescriptive or fancifully and uncritically descriptive. All I wanted to know was what a word meant, how the meaning had changed over time, how to use it, and what would people most likely understand the word to mean or mean by it if they were to say it.
The thing I enjoy about HSI and this site is that they are sources of information, clearly expressed, reliable to some degree and "authoritative" to some degree. Your suggestion that it should be possible to discredit a source of information by questioning its honesty or bias prompted my comment.