Bishop Hill Nullius at Climate etc
Feb 11, 2012 Royal Society Judith Curry has also written about my GWPF report.
In my recent presentation to the IAC, discussed on the thread Questions on Research Integrity and Scientific Responsibility, I stated that I felt that issues of institutional integrity and responsibility were arguably issues of greater concern than the ethics and behavior of individual scientists. Montford has lucidly described the “what.” I am trying to understand the “why.” I have an idea why individual and groups of climate scientists have been behaving this way (see my previous essay reversing the positive feedback loop), but why the Royal Society?
I encountered Lord May at the Royal Society Uncertainty Workshop, and I liked his presentation Science as Organized Skepticism. However at the end, or in the questions, he dismissed climate change skepticism. Lord May is a biologist, where does his conviction on climate change science come from? I am trying to understand this.
The "why" is a really, really difficult question, and I think there is no simple answer.
Reader Comments (54)
There are several important articles by Lindzen through the years that show in detail the massive and pervasive pressures that have been brought upon all relevant scientists to either sign up for the scam or else shut up and go away. Scientific societies get taken over by bureaucrats and activists. Most of his examples are particular to political and scientific societies in the USA, but of course the processes are quite parallel and as we know many key actors go back and forth.
Read this 1992 article if you want to see how entrenched these processes were already in the 1980s, when the main templates of rigid "consensus" and "the science is settled" had already been constructed and employed:
Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus
Richard S. Lindzen
Vol.15, No. 2, Spring 1992
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html
"You hear that 97% of scientists in a certain field support a viewpoint" (Paul Matthews)
One problem is that the "consensus" viewpoint is ill-defined and often misrepresented. That dynamic is explained here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/09/an-overview-understanding-the-global-warming-debate/ A second problem is that the alternative viewpoints have a high noise to signal ratio, often incorporating theories not directly related to climate but supposedly suppressed by the establishment.
@ Mike Feb 11, 2012 at 2:50 PM
quote
"I am in the middle of re-reading Anthony Browne's The Retreat of Reason which deals with the growth and effects of Political Correctness.
While it doesn't mention global warming specifically, the relationship is clear.
There are things you may say and things you may not say; some views are acceptable even if they fly in the face of the known (or easily ascertainable) facts while it is quite common to deny or conceal facts which do not fit the current paradigm.
Anyone who doesn't follow the politically correct line is not just wrong but evil. And so on."
worth repeating your comment @ well worth a thread on it's own, PC is killing common sense, harmless, no offence intended discussion in the UK (imho) & has gone mad with it's power to silence.
Why? As an outsider I can explain it quite simply: arrogance and stupidity. Arrogance grows and exposure of your stupidity is less likely with accession to high office. That goes for academia, business, and government alike. Result is bad leadership and wrong decisions that usually impact only the commoners below you.