Bishop Hill A study in groupthink
Feb 26, 2012 Climate: other Maurizio Morabito pointed out his Twitter exchange with Bora Zivkovic, a blogger at Scientific American. Zivkovic is rather worked up, but I think it's quite interesting too see what he has to say. He is clearly very much out of the same mould as Peter Gleick, viewing his cause as beleaguered by wicked big business. It's a fascinating study in groupthink.
(I was also amused by the argument that dissentients will not debate, when the Gleick affair seems to have had its roots in Gleick's refusal to speak to Heartland.)
Please try to avoid simply venting in the comments.
When slimey Watts sends his hordes over, result is a comment thread like this: bit.ly/yCkrtp full of greedy, duped cowards.
Finding it hard to make up my mind on Gleick. All made harder by the fact that Heartland is in the business of making and selling lies.
@krelnik @kieranmulvaney those who comment for free are really dupes, not realizing they could be paid for it by the denialist "think tanks"
@danfagin I agree w/Horgan this was big strategic blunder. But ethics are shadier: is he a journalist, scientist, activist? Whose ethics?
@omnologos GW denialism is dangerous, criminal and slimey. Again. #climate
@omnologos "enemies"? You admit you are waging a war on science now. #Gleickgate
@omnologos Heartland is waging war. Scientists were naive thinking that "truth will prevail". Money prevails, Kochs win. Have to fight back!
@omnologos is "questioning alarmism" a phrase coined by Dezenhall or Luntz? The proper terms is "denialist" so let's call it as it is.
@omnologos terms "alarmism" and "warmism" werr invented by rightwingnut PR hacks. We should continue calling you all denialists.
@omnologos btw, how come I see your tweets, I thought I blocked you years ago?
@omnologos ask the Kochs. Green Leviathans exist only in wet dreams of greedy, slimy, denialist rightwing cowards.
@omnologos and your repeated attempts to draw my employer into a personal discussion with ME is another typical rightwing slimy tactic
Denialists should be studied by psychiatrists. So much projection.
Educating people does not work, it assumes the 'deficit model'. Exposing shennanigans, sources of money, finding hypocrysy - that may work.
I should be able to open up the submission form for the next #openlab on Monday, bear with me...
Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era' bit.ly/zVL5pT Sad and scary when scientists are intimidated.
RT @lexalexander: Gleick was wrong no Q and end does not justify means. But what he did is NOT morally = buying denialism & its consequences
Catching up: @mocost's terrific piece skeptically sizing up the evidence for neurogenesis. bit.ly/wioUua
Right versus pragmatic bit.ly/y4CU9a
Ethical considerations regarding Heartland/Gleick bit.ly/w6DbTJ by @scruffydan
Thank you! RT @raewing: Hooray! @PSMHopkins @sunbrae @BoraZ @artologica @j2wade you are all going into my fake book's real acknowledgements.
LOL, this tweet out of context could be misinterpreted ;-) RT @raewing: @BoraZ Good nuts!
@rvitelli @raewing a recipe book for a Tea Party (with Mad Hatter)?
#SciOVanuatu! RT @mistersugar: I'm hoping to go w/ family to #Vanuatu this summer. Anyone want to come along?
@wittier @sciencecomedian @blocke23 Lying about science is also un-American, thus Heartland and denialist liars need to be stopped.
@raewing too many gallons of icecream ;-)
@wittier @sciencecomedian @blocke23 denialists are free to speak, but their speech should be received by sharp debunking and laughter.
@wittier @sciencecomedian @blocke23 if denialists had any arguments worth considering, they'd debate instead of bankrolling PR liars.
Wasting Twitter characters to say "have a good day" is so rude.
@RyanMadanickMD LOL! No, that's what rightwingers like to do when they want to duck out of a debate.
RT @blocke23: Gleick's strategy may have been "misguided" but climate is NOT trivial issue. H.I. must be stopped by a diversity of tactics.
IN climate "debate" one side won with facts, the other side won with dirty money and lies. That's politics for you, I guess.
Republicans 4 Environmental Protection vs. Heartland #climate disinfo campaign: Climate #Science Watch awe.sm/5fsrD
Reader Comments (126)
Tweets on Tweeter
I'm compiling a list of the best and worst contributions to climate science. I'd be interested to hear comments ... particularly those who have significantly contributed to the sceptic cause who I may have missed. And of course, the real fun is working out which are the most outrageous warmist contributions. All help appreciated.
For info, John Harrison (after whom I named the "awared), lived in the 18th century and developed a watch that literally changed the world as we know it. It enabled accurate mapping. The Royal Society put up a prize for someone who could find a way to measure longitude. He clearly did, but they refused to give it out to him.
What was that all about? The twitterati have developed their own language.
I've always had doubts about whether Care in the Community is the right policy for the most severe cases. Now I think my unease was well-founded.
Confirms my belief that only twats tweet. 140 characters might be too many for a novel, but it's way too few for rational discourse.
TWITS TWEETING!
Bora Zivkovic isn't just a blogger at Scientific American. He's their Blog Editor. Whatever that means.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/pressroom/whoweare.cfm
Trying to avoid venting, but this convinces me of two things. Firstly, to avoid Twitter, which I must confess I do not really understand (wrong age group?), but seems to get many people into an awful lot of trouble. Secondly, that Warmists such as these appear so seriously demented and vitriolic that their "cause" / religion / dogma must be extremely suspect.
Perfectly sane. No, really.
I've noticed it here is Australia as well - the warmers seem to really believe we are funded by oil companies and big business. One particular case was last thursday when I was criticised for not publishing a more balanced view of global warming as editor of AIG News. The warmers assume that any thing they submit will be automatically censored, and use that as the reason for not submitting in the first place. Mind you some academics wanted me sacked as editor some years back, which back fired on them. I have the vague impression they might be a read delusional if they really, truly believe that we are funded by their beta noires. They seem unable to comprehend that perhaps our opposition to the AGW issue is based on it being dodgy science and not because we are right wingers etc. They simply can't understand that the AGW hypothesis might be flawed, and that if we do oppose it, is because of base and ulterior motives. This attitude is a real worry.
Thank you Bish.
The point is that BoraZ is no small-time loser. He's in charge of much of Scientific American's online presence, and works a lot for his "Science Online" meetings (for some reason, "Science Online" meetings are done in person, not online...but that's a different story).
If a guy like him has a mind so messed up about climate change to call "denialist" anybody with any question about climate change (I bet BoraZ would call our own Richard Betts a "denialist" if he corresponded with him anonymously); well, then, we are literally surrounded by climate idiots, and they're in charge of telling the nations what the science is.
It's watermelons all the way down!
How much rubbish is passed as "scientific journalism" these days? More than a ton, of this we have full evidence.
ps for anybody now familiar with Twitter...try to read each paragraph as an independent thought. Although in the case of BoraZ, there isn't much "thought", just blind ideology.
Twitter is neat for posting / sharing interesting links, without the need to make a big affair of it. I have put interesting people on my feed, which results in a good daily reading list in my areas of interest.
Now, debating on Twitter? Nah.
spelling correctors - tad delusional, and it doesn't like French as well, bete .....
"How much rubbish is passed as "scientific journalism" these days?"
I always thought that "science journalist" was just a different term for "press release rewriter"?
Huhneslammer
That was in no way aimed at you. Just Glieck and Twatting in general.
'I always thought that "science journalist" was just a different term for "press release rewriter"?
Except for in the case of Loopy Louise Gray at the Torygraph who doesn't even bother with rewriting them. Cut and paste alone is good enough for LuLu.
I had a similar exchange on a forum I visit occasionally - pre-Gleick.
A few people were having a friendly discussion about AGW vs CAGW etc. when of course someone rolls into it and starts throwing the "Denier" word at contributors including myself. I pointed out the origin of the phrase in relation to the AGW debate and asked if they could find a different term, and also pointed out I had avoided phrases such as "Alarmist" or "Warmist" or any religious type names.
The response was to double the D-word count per sentence, I could detect the mouth foaming from several time zones away. He went on my ignore list and I continued to debate with others and it went to a friendly conclusion.
I went back and looked at this person's responses and they had got more and more wild - very much along the lines of the words used above - anti American (I'm not even American so why would I care ?), anti Science in fact anti Humanity. The last one was ironic as I suggested it would be a better investment of the $bns being spent on the IPCC etc. to try and make sure that those who are hungry had food and importantly clean drinking water. It seems I was promoting over population and that would destroy us all.
The simple lesson really is as soon as someone starts to use insulting words for the other side - whatever side that is, pro or against - then they have disqualified themselves from the debate and should be ignored.
There are many layers of pro and skeptic views, that gets lost most of the time in the debate. Just like politics most of us are in the middle somewhere.
Leo Tolstoy 1898
"I know that most men - not only those considered clever, but even those who are clever and capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical or philosophical problems - can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty - conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives."
or the variant:
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
gixxerboy
Thanks, but no offense!
Louis Hissink
If you were the editor of anything I contributed to, I should try to depose you. Do you understand how poor your posting was?
Get a grip before no-one takes you seriously.
Don't blame the medium.
Sure, idiots use Twitter and e-mail, but not everyone who uses Twitter or e-mail is an idiot.
Ultimately it is all meaningless. While people like Zivkovic, Gleick, Mann, Trenberth, Briffa, Jones etc try to make this into a scientific argument, because they are funded to churn out hypotheses about the climate and the ecosystem, it is nothing of the sort. It is all about politics.
Sceptics, and scientists who dissent from the 'consensus', could falsify, debunk and disprove every element of the AGW narrative and see off every member of the 'team' and make a laughing stock of the 'cause', but we will still come under assault. For this is all about politics and ideology, even if the prominent actors don't realise it.
Ultimately if it is not climate change it will be some other vehicle connected to 'sustainability' that will be used as a means of controlling the population and redistributing wealth from the industrialised world to the developing world in a way that enriches the corporates.
From the United Nations down, every tier of governance has been tasked with executing the 'progressive' agenda, which in reality is regressive for all of us. It's not some crackpot conspiracy, it's just the way those with power and wealth are steering the ship.
This direction of travel will not be defeated by butting heads with a small band of AGW blowhards who are lavishly funded to continue producing 'findings' and 'projections' that fit in with the actions needed to further the overarching agenda. Until people start to tackle the root cause of the disease instead of the symptoms, we will continue to go round in circles playing 'he said, she said' while our democracy, liberty, wealth and individual rights ebb away.
Expose the distortions, errors, scientific flaws all you like, but don't lose sight of what is really going on and why.
His photograph is interesting.
To me he has the tight lipped, fixed, fake grin of the true fanatic - trying to keep control whilst gripped by violent emotions. Gleick often has a similar look.
I've known a few people like that - but, oddly, never in a business/professional context.
They were always heavily involved in activities like politics, religious movements or the administration of recreational clubs - where people can achieve quite powerful positions without the formal checks & balances that a business or professional environment imposes.
I suspect a lot of them read the Guardian - but that's probably just me ;-)
Huhneslammer
No worries fella. Just wanted to be clear the response was not aimed at you.
The wish your pseudonym avows seems increasingly likely. Go well,
An above tweet: Educating people does not work, it assumes the 'deficit model'.
JK Education DOES work, you are mistaking your propaganda for education, Why don’t you try real education:
1. Present real facts with out hidden declines, without cherry picked trees, without lies about Himalayas melting next year.
2. Also present those inconvenient facts. You know like the solar vs. climate graph being a better correlation than CO2 vs climate. Don’t forget all those other proxies that DO NOT support your conclusions.
3. Prove that the current and historical temperature data is accurate.
4. Prove that the current temperatures are historically unique. (Not unusual, but unique.) See items 1&2.
5. Prove that you models actually have predictive value, or quit making predictions from them. (We have all seen Hansen’s three scenarios from his congressional testimony and we have sen the actual temperature which is lower than his predictions if we SERIOUSLY CUT CO2.)
6. Prove that CO2 is the actual cause of warming. In the real atmosphere with H2O, convection, evaporation, and sublimation, not merely in a lab jar. In other words, do that instead of having so called experts express probabilities. (Of course the reason you use opinions of alleged experts
is that there is no real evidence.)
7. Prove that the expected warming will actually harm instead of hurt mankind.
As a start, you could actually debate the other side, instead of merely claiming to want a debate while refusing invitation after invitation.
Before you actually debate, I suggest that you be able to actually prove that man’s CO2 is or WILL (not may, but will) cause dangerous (not a little, but dangerous) warming. And please don’t waste our time with all those things that are NOT actual evidence: unusual weather is NOT evidence of its cause, melting ice is NOT evidence of its cause, drowning polar bears are not evidence of man’s CO2, CO2 FOLLOWS temperature in Al Gore’s ice cores, nature emits about 97% of the annual CO2 emissions, water vapor causes about twice as much greenhouse effect as CO2, correlation is NOT evidence of causation, and climate models are not evidence for a variety of reasons including the fact that they are considered crap by the top climate scientists in their emails.
Here is you chance to devastate the denialists. All you have to do is present real proof instead of faked data, personal attacks, and threats to doubter’s and their employers.
An above tweet: Exposing shennanigans, sources of money, finding hypocrysy - that may work.
JK: Do you really want to talk about hiding the decline, trying to get editors fired, peer reviewing friend’s papers, deleting documents subject to FOI, dishonest presentations, and divulging papers entrusted to you for peer review?
Do you really want to talk about the BILLIONS you alarmists are getting for your alarmism?
Thanks
JK
You have to try *very* hard to express anything nuanced on twitter - it usually involves a few exchanges where you establish good faith, so it tends to amplify things a bit.
Maurizio, I'm sorry, I can't make head nor tail of all that. Years ago I did some post grad abstract algebra corses, but this is beyond me. WTF is it all about?
I avoid twitter.
The vacuous chasing themselves.
anyway:
"Expose the distortions, errors, scientific flaws all you like, but don't lose sight of what is really going on and why"
Feb 26, 2012 at 10:19 AM | Autonomous Mind
Agree.
Climate change is the screen hiding the true agenda.
Doubtless "climate change" will morph as people get bored with it after nothing happens.
"water change" anyone ?
corses, corsets, courses - take your pick
I think what we see there is a classic case of advanced paranoia. No idea how to counter that.
NQOT (Not Quite On Topic). Rather bother with that problem endemic to the warmist faction, I'd like to take up your Grace's point: "(I was also amused by the argument that dissentients will not debate, when the Gleick affair seems to have had its roots in Gleick's refusal to speak to Heartland.)".
I'm not so sure about that — since the Heartland's release of the incriminating mails sent under an assumed name, I have come to think that that particular act was premeditated well beforehand and that just prior to carrying it out, the invitation to debate came out of the blue. The offer to debate was simply inconvenient, and he had to wriggle out of it as best he could with a weasel response, involving among other things the sly shifting of Bast's quotation marks around the word "entertainment".
Maybe a good subject for a future post.
GrantB - I assume you're serious about your request. Just imagine if the above were a collection of independent quotes by BoraZ. The "@" indicates he's mentioning or talking to someone (@krelnik=twitter user "krelnik").
The "#" indicates a topic.
"RT" means "retweet" - he found something worth re-tweeting. So "RT @mistersugar" means somebody called "mistersugar" has written something and BoraZ is copying it with attribution.
If people write "MT" instead, it's a modified re-tweet, for example changing a word or sentence to keep the same meaning but in a shorter way.
=====
I wonder how many times BoraZ write about "rightwingers"? Is SciAm the magazine for the International Socialist Party nowadays??
Well as I learned from the excellent David Appell interview with the AGU guy, if they can hire the no science knowledge Chris Mooney as a communicator!, knowing his repute, then there is a clear disconnect with reality associated with these climate bods. We just have to be patient and wait for the number of petard hoisting events to cascade as I'm sure they will - I think there will be a tipping point soon ;)
Death by a thousand twits. What have we done to deserve this?
Its just so absurd! I mean on what 'side's are Ben Pile and James Delingpole! Gathering 'sceptics' is like nursing cats. That is why I so look forward to Ben's unfortunately to occasional pieces. I love the fact that politically we are so different but we are rational. The difference being we think for ourselves, we stand up on rational, human legged and honestly examine what is delivered to us!
Maurizio, yes I was serious so thanks for the explanation. It is a little clearer but I detest twitter. We have TV debates where twitters from anonymous twitter twats are streamed underneath. It is extremely annoying.
Nevertheless the next time SWMBO and I are having a minor tiff, I will suggest we do it via twitter. At least I'll keep her to 140 characters.
I vow never to write on a phone again! Forgive the errors - I, of course, meant 'hurdling cats' - what would be 'nursing cats'!?
GrantB - you're still watching TV debates? Are you insane? 8-)
Enough already! Let H.I. and Gleick and the various downhill blogs twatter on about the whole thing through the courts and let us get back on the subject of CAGW. The warmists are just trying to use this like a herd of trolls trying to drag us away from the science. We have enough with our resident 3-4 trolls (who seem to have disappeared) on this site and. Watch the magicians other hand.
I always remember Carlyle's beautifully vivid description of the mad Robespierre - 'green'! Of course Carlyle knew something about fanaticism, being someone so desperate to believe in a God he couldn't believe in.
The authorship of the faked memo has yet to be established and it is certainly worth reminding ourselves that Gleick was in the frame well before his own - possibly limited - confession, on account of his (unusual) writing style being a good match with that of the faked memo.
Indeed, what would 'hurdling cats' be? How about 'herding cats'?
Maybe 'curdling hats' are worn by yoghurt makers.
Ha ha, Rich! Blame Google and my terrible education!
Foxgoose, what is ironic, for me, is that, for instance, the Jehovah Witness people have always been unfailingly polite and with a sense of humour! I remember, once, on one of their 'doorsteps', I joked that, I would love to hear them, but unfortunately we were part of a Devils Covenant. They found it more amusing than perhaps it was. The point is that people who truly are secure in their beliefs don't foam at the mouth. These AGWers don't believe in anything they say. They know it is a lie. The essence of a fanatic!
For the record, here's the "horde directive" post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/24/quote-of-the-week-18/
It is short enough to repost as a comment, so I'll do so here. See if you can spot where I'm giving instructions to the "hordes".
===========================================
Quote of the week
Posted on February 24, 2012 by Anthony Watts
I’ve seen lots of quotes this week, many surrounding the Gleick Fakegate affair.
This one stands out.
From John Horgan at Scientific American who asks:
Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?
He writes:
I’ll give the last word to one of my students. The Gleick incident, he said, shows that the “debate” over global warming is not really a debate any more. It’s a war, and when people are waging war, they always lie for their cause.
=======================================
Pure evil aren't I?
Lysenko lives!
This is a private tragedy playing itself out in public. I think we should leave Mr Zikovic alone as he fights his demons.
"Yet while the immortal Heracles banquets at the divine table, his mortal phantom stalks about Tartarus, among the twittering dead; bow drawn, arrow fitted to the string." -Robert Graves "The Greek Myths"
JohnM
Try "sustainability" or "biodiversity", John!When Sir Paul Nurse and Prof Steve Jones gave us the benefit of their inexpert opinions on global warming, they showed that the be-medalled and be-titled don’t necessarily have much common sense. The average bloke on the top deck of the bus has no difficulty in accepting that scientists can be incompetent, deceitful, intellectually thuggish or just plain wrong. Climategate and Fakegate showed that the sanctimony and the unctuous self regard of the global warming climateers is built on bad science and worse ethics. Those like Messrs Jones and Nurse simply cannot conceive of such a possibility, and they remain silent while our would-be moral guardians indulge in all sorts of skulduggery, in the absolute certainty of the virtue of their crusade and the malevolence of everyone else: “denialists should be studied by psychiatrists” in the above piece encapsulates that intolerant mind set.
Who are these guys?
Just how many Henghist and BBD clones are out there?
It's scary just how many loons are convinced "The End is Nigh".
Even scarier that alot of them are in Government and other positions of power and influence.
Why did we let the loonies take over the asylum?
Pete H at 11:43 wrote:
"Enough already! Let H.I. and Gleick and the various downhill blogs twatter on about the whole thing through the courts and let us get back on the subject of CAGW. The warmists are just trying to use this like a herd of trolls trying to drag us away from the science.[...]"
Actually Pete, government and the corporates are using global warming/climate change science to drag us away from scrutinising their global agenda. Getting back to the subject of CAGW as you suggest, while missing the big picture, is exactly what they want you to do.