Tuesday
May032011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Sheppard on Sheppard
May 3, 2011 Climate: CRU Climate: MWP Kate Sheppard is interviewed about her recent article about Climategate at the Energy Now blog.
May 3, 2011 Climate: CRU Climate: MWP
Reader Comments (38)
Let me get this right:
Kate Shepherd writes a pretty one-sided review of Climategate and now we are being treated to Kate Shepherd interviewing herself?
It would be marginally more interesting to hear Phil Jones interviewing himself.
Or Michael Mann interviewing himself.
Or even Sir Russell Muir interviewing himself.
Or perhaps Sir Paul Nurse interviewing himself.
Oh wait ... I guess we've already been treated to all of those.
What planet is this woman from?
Is this Phil Jones's mum? She seems to have a soft spot for him.
Meanwhile, the consensus takes a knock as CAGW supporter Osama bin Laden gets wasted.
The Mafia, cybercriminals, VAT fraudsters and many Enron alumni are all still alive and pro-consensus, however. So the lowlife content of the consensus is still looking healthy.
she certainly seems handy with the whitewash....maybe she can do some work on my garage? She seems insistent that the emails were "stolen" although she does say that there was sophistication in selecting the emails to circulate in terms of keywords and getting through certain passwords. Why not just admit that an insider job is the easiest and most plausible explanation? She has also clearly not studied what the various enquiries concluded given that they did not focus on either the scientific integrity of what CRU was doing, nor on the possible breaches of law and academic integrity. In other words, she is not much of a journalist, is she!
Extraordinary. So much wrong in so short a time frame. Must be some kind of record. Have Guiness been informed?
But at least she's a riveting public speaker.
Embarrassing... also I think I am going to call myself Jiminy Cricket Ace-Reporter....
My simple question is, if there is no body under the patio, why jump up and down a year and a half later on the flag stones, waving your arms, telling people to look away.
Mother Jones: "No really, there is no body under the patio, no, not at all... quick look isn't that a fox at the end of the garden?..."
Refuse collector: "Excuse me Ms., but I am just here to put the bins out. So there isn't a body under the patio? Interesting..."
Climategate is one body they cannot bury...
Well, Norfolk Constabulary are due to report back to Andrew Montford as early as tomorrow with details of monthly expenditure on the UEA investigation. So we may soon have a pretty good idea to what extent this is an ongoing investigation. It would be very disappointing to hear that the investigation had been canned because of austerity cuts... but if it hasn't been canned then with the evidence provided by university officials they should be pretty close to making an arrest by now.
You watch this woman who is clearly intelligent and well educated. You then compare what she says with this image of intelligence and education and your mind is suddenly numbed. Someone so clearly ignorant of a subject should just keep her mouth shut imho.
You watch this woman who is clearly intelligent and well educated. You then compare what she says with this image of intelligence and education and your mind is suddenly numbed.
Not really. Most of the Politburo in the USSR years was also intelligent and well educated. It didn't stop them being evil.
I don't agree with Sheppard's views at all, but I think her article is quite good. She's done a lot of research, and gives a reasonably fair voice to people like McIntyre. She doesn't use silly words like "denier", but examines variants of scepticism. Her on-camera speaking is nowhere near as good as her writing, but that's not a crime. Some people just stumble and stutter (as she does) when speaking in public. It doesn't say anything about the quality of their arguments. Think Tony Blair - does his smooth speaking improve his logic?
To my mind, this is a really good post from Bishop Hill. It reminds me that there are people whose views are very different from mine, but who are nonetheless thoughtful characters forming their views through their own careful sifting of facts. If we had more Sheppard types on the other side of the debate, we would be having a much better debate.
I enjoyed the video clips of floods & forest fires they played while she talking on.
So honest.
@ pytlozvejk - yes, maybe, but the objective is the truth, not good debate. She plainly shows her bias and/or gullibility in the first statement - by repeating that the emails were hacked. After that I stopped watching.
4.24: "Links were posted on denier blogs"
Yes - clearly intelligent and well educated. [/sarc]
Dunno about that - she seemed dim to me.
Dim and unquestioning - a bit like Sarah Mukherjee in fact.
I agree with your last comment though.
The video has to stand on its own two feet... that is the nature of the embedded and deep linked media on the internet.
And the video is embarassing. Both to those who know the "truth", and to those who know the "lies" within.
These CAGW people remind me of the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, who tested whether a woman was a witch by tying her to a chair and throwing her into the village pond. If she drowned, she obviously lacked any dark powers, but if she survived, it meant she was a witch and she was immediately burned at the stake.
In the same way, whether it is less hurricanes, more snow or less snow, it is always 'global warming'.
J4R / foxgoose
Being intelligent and well-educated does not, in my experience, preclude one from being thick.
Or perhaps 'dim' would be more polite. All too often those who have spent long periods of time gaining qualifications have no awareness of how other things relate outside their chosen field. One reason why very intelligent people, especially those who have chosen an academic career, appear to lack simple common sense but believe that their intelligence is enough to make up for it.
Since nobody actually "knows" whether the CRU emails were leaked or hacked, the University is putting the bravest face on it (like you would) and Shephard is giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Which calls into question not her intelligence but her journalistic instinct which I submit, m'lud, she doesn't have one of!
What she does have is a lazy mind which finds it easier to accept what 'authority' tells her because it is authority and since it is authority her conscience is clear. She's not alone.
She referred to the computer experts at CRU.
She must be easily impressed, and does not check information supplied
How embarrassing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is this the state of investigative reporting ?????
A 5 year old could do better.
Kate, here's what happened to Phil (courtesy of Eric at WUWT):
1) Pesky requests for emails
2) Desire to delete emails, but...
3) Fear of losing something important, so
4) Gather emails into archive then delete local copies and
5) Claim the emails have been deleted, which is half true, but
6) Shocking to some decent staff member, who
7) Leaks the email archive
Mac
You exaggerate. But most 10-year-olds could.
Just say "prove it" and wait for the reaction. 10-year-olds are very good at that!
"Climate science has basically been at the receiving end of the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known—that's the bottom line," Mann told me when I visited him at his Penn State office last November.
- And she swallowed this??? — And did she actually read the mails instead of just regurgitating the whitewash?
I thought climate science was "the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known"
Certainly on the back of government funding, the backing (financial and in kind) of the NGOs, the uncritical support of most of the media (how much would that cost of you had to pay the advertising bill), the support of the likes of Fenton and Grantham (same thing applies), it damn' well ought to be.
@pytlozvejk, do you want to bet she did not use the word "denier"? Say 1m EUR ...
For a journalists she seems to have never got to grips with the definition of the word ‘question’ , once she has done that she can move to ‘investigate’ and find out why it’s not the same as ‘regurgitate’ even if its sound the same.
I am afraid that I found her description of the "Hockey Stick" to be a little lacking. There is a good book written about it that she might benefit from reading.
pathetic (you can lead a horse to water...)
no wonder Steve Mc seems to have given up (she talked to the guy forgodssake).
with these people the deck is stacked against truth/open eyes, sad again to see the 'experts' seem to hold sway.
Kate Sheppard/Elizabeth May Canada's Green party leader... same look, same talk, same BS.
Is there a new definition of the word "stolen" I don't know about? When I was a lad "stolen" meant the original artifacts were missing from their usual place and in the possession of person of persons unknown. The artifacts were no longer in the place they'd been left and weren't available to the people they'd been stolen from.
@niels (slightly embarassed) yes, I gather from other comments that she said "denier" in the interview. I must confess, I didn't watch the whole interview, nor did I read the whole article. There's a limit to the suffering I'm willing to endure for the sake of science.
@lapogus yes, the objective is the truth, and yes, her statement shows the fallacy of her position from the outset. But I'm willing to cut her some slack because this is effectively her religion. It's like debating with a Mormon. A Mormon believer starts off with some dubious core beliefs (the gold plates etc), otherwise he's not a believer. But it's still possible to have some very good debates with well-informed Mormons. And the Mormon church has, over time, changed many of its beliefs in the light of scientific advances. So an intelligent warmist like Sheppard is unlikely to abandon her core belief in man-made warming, but over time she might come around to a Lomborg-like position that CO2 limitation will only leave us much worse off. I can happily live with that, because it leaves her the freedom of belief, and it doesn't impose mad restrictions on everyone else.
@ 4:14 - Wait, someone hacked into realclimate to upload the emails? That seems rather odd.
She did actually say "denier" at 4:24.
And she also referred to the CRU's "computer - sort of - experts" who did an internal evaluation into the emails (5:03)
So many subliminal messages.
Andy
I think the "sort of" is a reference to the fact that the investigation was done by the CRU IT guy. This is in the minutes of Muir Russell's meetings. These suggest that there was no agreement on the hack/leak question within UEA.
Didn't anyone notice her voice and demeanour change as the interview progressed? If she'd been a tortoise, her head would be way back in her shell by the end. I'd like to see a psychologist's take on it.
The video seems to have disappeared.
RE:". . . university officials determined that it was someone from the outside who broke into the server. . ."
I've asked about this elsewhere but perhaps someone with professional experience can comment. Is motive not the first aspect one looks into? And then opportunity, etc.
What I'm wondering is, who would know where the server in question was, or indeed, that there was a central server; and further that there was something there worth their while to hack? I find it hard to believe that some technonerd with the ability to hack into the server did so on a whim or just to see what was there and got lucky.
-barn
Gosh, Foxgoose, you really do have it in for me, don't you? Dim, unquestioning, failed everything, stupid, airhead - I've been having a look at a few of these strands, and you appear to try and bring in my name, seemingly just to load on more personal abuse, during the most unrelated of conversations.
I say it again - why not identify yourself and your background, so we can have an exchange of views rather than you using almost anything as an excuse to make fairly unpleasant attacks on my career and personality? Why hide in the shadows if you feel so strongly? I mean, do you really want to take me into a paddy field and beat me to death, as you suggested in one of your other posts? Because if you do, I would suggest that I may start to feel rather more alarmed than I would do about debating climate change policy. Why would you want to do that, anyway? Does this not rather go against the grain of allowing free and vigorous debate, which I assume you support? Or do you only support it if the people speaking agree with you, and if they disagree - you are entirely in (goose)step with Mao?
I am surprised that such vitriol emerges from a vacuum. Do I know you? If I do, let's meet and you can say all this to my face.
The internet can be a fantastic tool for debate, information exchange and education. However, it also allows people to sit on their own and depersonalise other people, making it much easier to launch these personalised attacks which have, in fact, very little to do with the scientific method that so many correspondents on this site rightly value. Rather like the black book of journalists. Many commentators make the giant leap, with no empirical evidence, that not having studied science at university means you are intellectually incapable of adopting scientifc method, and this is turn makes you incapable of communicating environmental ideas. Do you therefore assume every journalist with a science degree (and I admit there are not many, it's something I raised when in the BBC myself, although, obviously, without a science degree, my views are entirely invalid) is always right? What about the ones with science degrees that are, as you would put it, "warmists"? Are they right as well?
Foxgoose - who are you?