Bishop Hill The foolishness of the overqualified
Dec 17, 2013 Climate: Sceptics Climate: WG3 Jonathan Rowson has a golden collection of academic qualifications, having got himself a first class honours in PPE, spent a year at Harvard and got a PhD from Bristol. Oh yes, and he's a chess grandmaster.
I'm not sure he isn't a bit slow on the uptake though.
The Climate Change Collaboration, an alliance of Sainsbury family charities have just paid Rowson to produce a sceptic-bashing report under the banner of the Royal Society of Arts. Seeing another formerly distinguished academy dancing to the green tune is fascinating, particularly when the financial reward for doing so is so obvious, but when you see the tone of the report it is more interesting still. This is in essence an extended exercise in name-calling, with "denier" and its variants appearing hundreds of times. What we have then is green charities paying an education charity to spew venom at people who disagree with them.
You get the impression that the money has been pocketed and the report prepared with a minimum of effort:
‘Denialism’ is more assertive, involving campaigns of misinformation seeking to misdirect people’s attention from the truth with means and methods documented in Oreskes and Conway’s classic work Merchants of Doubt and in modern Britain, propounded by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Given that Lawson and Peiser have said repeatedly that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the denier tag simply will not wash. Did Rowson even bother to look at their pronouncements before writing this sentence? It doesn't look as if he felt his paymasters would be bothered at the lack of some support for such a critical remark or even if it were true. This tells us a great deal the intellectual and ethical standards at the RSA and at the Sainsbury charities.
Rowson, like so many of people who venture into the climate debate from the social science side are unashamedly ignorant about what the climate debate is about. It doesn't matter how many articles you write about climate sensitivity, with all that implies; to the Rowson's of this world you are a denier. This failure to engage with the actual arguments made suggests a highly developed sense of intellectual cowardice or the kind of casual dishonesty that we see so often from greens.
I fancy it's the former. The whole thing is intellectually vapid and so far removed from the reality of the climate debate as to suggest the author simply had nothing better to do with his time.
Reader Comments (111)
It's a classic. Rowson arrived late but arrived screaming.
Clearly dowsing can't work. There is no peer-reviewed model that will accommodate it in current physical theories.
Those contributors above who think otherwise are guilty of giving more credit to the evidence of their own eyes than to accepted scientific models.
Lovely to have you here Chanda (Is that the male form of my grandaughters's name of Chandana?) but would be really nice if you could make some sort of contribution
Hardly 'stealth denial', far more stealth politics heading towards a totalitarian state!!
When the term "denial" is used it is never defined properly what non-denial consists of. In this paper it seems to include
- That catastrophic anthropogenic warming in not just inevitable, but the most pressing problem facing the human race.
- That it is possible to do something about it at a national or personal level, without net harm being caused.
- That action is itself ethically desirable. It is striving towards a "higher" form of living.
In this respect the Stern Review could be a form of "denial", as it is based on the assumption that there are limits to policy. No matter how bad the potential problem, it could be that there is no effective policy out there, or that the "treatment is worse than the disease". However, this accusation could be removed if the intent of Stern was to remove any doubt of the moral imperative for action.
They've resorted to sermons now?
"It's a classic. Rowson arrived late but arrived screaming." --Brute
Yes. If there's anything worse than being late to the party, it's being late to the pyramid scheme. I suspect Rowson will regret buying into the meme.
Jonathan Rowson - "...an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill."
I don't think this paper is an issue at all.
It's pretty meaningless, but as far as I can see, it's running with ideas which are about 5-7 years old. It assumes that the science is completely watertight, and addresses the question of "How do we get people to believe this?".
That's no longer a credible way to operate. It was a possible warmist tactic when there had been a 'short' pause in global warming, and all warmists expected it to continue going up in a year or so. By now there is a widening gap of credibility - more and more researchers are falling off the bandwagon. As it gets colder the hypothesis is crumbling. If you stay with the argument that the science is settled, and the only problem is to get people to truly believe, you are just going to be left at the post....
Great story:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/two-high-school-students-take-on-teacher-over-climate-and-win-standing-ovation/
Willard (6:33 PM):
He is being ironic, right?Dodgy Geezer (9:52 PM):
You have missed one important part of the argument - whatever happens is yet more proof! Even if the Earth ends up a frozen ball, the AGWistas will merely gloat yet more: “See! We told you!”Quite how anyone can believe that the temperature of a planet hinges solely on the trivial variations in concentration of a trace gas truly beggars belief, yet they do – with a zealotry that must make many religions very envious. There is far too much money now invested in the scam; should it fail, entire economies will collapse.
Can anyone remind me again how silly insults and childish name calling this report of full off , are part of the 'scencetifc approach' ?
To anyone who believes they can 'dowse' for water or anything else under controlled conditions: there is one meeellion dollars waiting to be collected here:
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html
Please go ahead and apply. Many dowsers have tried and failed. There are two likely reasons why it appears to work in some cases: first, someones dowses for water in a hundred acre field, drills a well, and finds water - success?! Only if you drill several more holes in the same field and find NO water. Second, someone dowses for a drain or power cable on a plot of land, and finds one - success?! Not necessarily - man people could make a good educated guess as to where drains or power cables might run, given a particular plot of land and associated buildings; in many/all cases, the dowser is subconsciously 'guessing' correctly where the relevant item is.
The JREF challenge will involve something like identifying the one barrel out of fifty that contains water, the rest being empty. If you can do that, you win a million dollars.
STATEMENT by Chairman of SCEF
To put other commenters in the picture, over the last few months as Chairman of the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum I have been quietly writing to various newspapers and media whenever they used the word "denier" to refer to us sceptics, to let them know that we sceptics are not "deniers" and to ask them not to use or allow that word to be used about us as it is not only wrong but libellous. This I believe we could (if we had the money) substantiate in court, because almost by accident, when we formed the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum, we had a consultation on our views and this the sceptic view shows this hateful lie is a libel.
This quiet campaign has appeared to have been reasonably successful with a marked reduction in the use of this libellous term.
However, it would now appear this campaign has come to the notice of the Sainsbury family, who I know very well make a huge amount of money from wind development in Scotland. I know this because when I was a member of the Scottish Parliamentary Renewable Energy Committee Jeremy Sainsbury was instrumental in pushing through the legislation in Scotland and it was people like Jeremy who wrongly used a Scottish Parliamentary committee for their own gain. Indeed I complained that this parliamentary body was run by lobbyists for their own gain at the time, but as we have found so many times, the complaint was not upheld by the presiding officer of the Scottish parliament.
So to me, this appears to be a quite immoral attack: a hate crime. But this is not just any hate crime, it is the worst kind of hate crime committed by a wealthy business motivated by money. They are using their wealth to launch a hideous attack on ordinary people in Scotland who threaten their financial interests. They have told what appears to be an intentional lie intended to damage the reputations of those who they know are unlikely to be able to defend themselves ... committed just days before Christmas the season of supposed goodwill to all men.
If nothing else, this immoral and hateful act shows the kind of evil we are up against.
Re: Mike
I recently wrote to the BBC to ask them what their editorial guidelines were on using the word "denier". This is their response:
The BBC seem to agree with you.
@Willard
..As it gets colder the hypothesis is crumbling.
You have missed one important part of the argument - whatever happens is yet more proof! Even if the Earth ends up a frozen ball, the AGWistas will merely gloat yet more: “See! We told you!”...
Er... not quite. I was talking about the real scientists, who are gradually dropping their support for this mess. As this happens, those who rely on continuous repetition of 'The Science is Settled!' will be ever more isolated.
As it happens, my wife is an artist, and well acquainted with the RSA. I asked her about this. Her comments were:
1 - 'Art as Social Action' is a current 'in' topic. See http://artforsocialaction.com/ for instance.
2 - There has been a long tradition of artists 'supporting' social movements and making political protests - Picasso's 'Guernica', for instance, or Goya's Third of May. Lots of current artists do work on subjects like the 84/85 Miners strike.
3 - All artists involved in the 'Social Action' movement are going to be very 'left-wing' - but in the 'Islington Thinker' mould. Many of their art pieces involve social interactions which are indistinguishable from afternoon tea. But with a grant...
4 - None of the artists doing this work are intelligent, or able to produce independent concepts. The whole of this field is therefore ridden with banal clichés. As an example, she cited a seminar she attended a few years ago where they were required to produce a piece of art attacking the fast-food franchise Mcdonald's ...
I've said it before: The only thing we deny is the fantasy/fraud that is CAGW.
Another FRSA eh?
The RSA is an wanker joke. Apart from a relatively few people who have obviously been granted it on an honorary basis (otherwise wouldn't dream of joining, if they've ever heard of it), anyone can join.
All you have to do is nominate yourself and a few fictitious or unlikely referees (they won't check), pay your money (annually), and you're welcomed with open arms, free to use this pseudo suffix.
It is possible for me to accept that members of the RSA can be brainwashed, with repect to the CAGW hypothesis, without being culpable -- since they do not have a scintific background.
It is not possible for me to accept that the majority of the members of the Royayal Society itself or the American AAAS can allow themselves to be braiwashed, with respect to CAGW, without being culpable. They do have enough of a scientific background to be able to discern -- irrepective of their scientific speciality -- that the scientific evidenc for CAGW is rapidly vanishing in front of our eyes.
There is such a thing as culpable ignorance and the truth is that they have simply not taken the trouble to do their homework.
When the history of our times comes to be written and the historical analysts try to to uncover the reasons why CAGW is taking so long to die a huge part of the blame will have rest on the shoulders of the run of the mill scientists, in the leading sciontific oprganizations, for not having taken the touble to uncover truth and speak out openly.
Dodgy Geezer:
You misunderstood my message (and attributed it to the wrong person). No true scientist would get upset by people questioning his work -- in fact, he would welcome it!
I use the term AGWista to mean the sheeple such as chunder etc. who have a messiahnistic view of the pseudoscience being peddled here. A REAL scientist wuould welcome doubt, as he does not only want the accolde, his true goal is the TRUTH.
(and this is the last time i'll post on my mobile!)
I think the word of the week for the alarmists is 'shrill' as time slips by and the political will drifts off from 'the cause ' these headless chickens feel the ground moving from under them . So, because it has worked in the past , they result to screams of 'its worse then we thought ' in the hope that will bring the people back on line. But , as many times before such as their attempts to label AGW sceptics as evil , they have simply overplayed their hand and the people now have 'alarm fatigue' and all they are doing is preaching to the faithful.
Rowson (...) completed a PhD thesis on Wisdom at Bristol University. [Wikipedia]
I find it amusing that COIN (Climate Outreach and Information Network) in more grownup circles, is an acronym for Counter Insurgency. They're not really having much luck suppressing us guerrillas ...
Pointman
The real deniers are those who pretend the models that predicted rapid warmth are not falsified. Some still even deny that global warming has not been on hold for 17 years now. At what point the silent majority of scientists are going to speak up and reject the notion is difficult to predict but it must happen at some point as long as the planet is not actually warming.
But it's interesting that when they attempt to define climate change you see clearly that they don't believe manmade warming is a fact at all - just a scientific position that a lot of scientists push. Well it's certainly a plausible position but that doesn't mean you can ignore what nature in favour of unvalidated and clearly pessimistic models.
It seems to stem from an inbuilt philosophical angst that man's industrial progress is eating away at the planet somehow. No amount of facts change that pessimistic viewpoint it seems. I have a character sitting across from me with exactly that viewpoint. I am still trying to work out why. Obviously people make up their mind early and then just read stuff that confirms their preferred worldview. We are all guilty of that.
But there is also a secondary denial process among these faux-greens; they effortlessly combine their endless pessimism about mans effect on the planet with boundless optimism about mans capability to make renewable energies viable. The dogma is that evil capitalists are preventing cheap energy.
Rowson (...) completed a PhD thesis on Wisdom at Bristol University. [Wikipedia]
Would that be Norman Wisdom then?
Mike @ Dec 17, 2013 at 11:30 PM
Excellent post and thank you for your efforts.
"Jonathan’s Doctoral research at the University of Bristol
featured an analysis of the challenge of overcoming the psycho-social
constraints that prevent people becoming ‘wiser’."
A wise man learns the facts before, not after, he writes about them.
@Radical Rodent
Dodgy Geezer: You misunderstood my message (and attributed it to the wrong person)....
Whoops! Many apologies! The only (and inadequate) point I can raise in my defence is that it's hard to concentrate while your wife is going on in your ear about Jeremy Deller...
I wondered where those Sainsbury Nectar Point questionnaires were going.
Emotional Denier - oh dear, nearly right. I guess I need to adjust my random radio button generator again !
There is value in studying the survey results.
It is quite easy to envisage ways to mimic what the author, Rawson, is trying to do, but persuading people to go in the opposite direction to his.
I can't imagine why he made this survey public because it helps his 'enemy' so much.
......................
The big error that Rowson and most of his ilk make is contained in his words "The overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real and poses a significant and ongoing threat to the stability of the human habitat is now well established, and is deliberately not repeated in any depth or detail here."
I suspect that many readers here will say that their interest arises because they do not agree that the science is settled.
So FAIL to Rawson for failing to pick up a serious matter, one that he needed to address and not gloss over.
WTF is an "educational charity'? Has the UK tax system become so degraded that any lobby group can call themselves that and get tax privileges? When did that happen?
Apologies if I made a factual error (and there is no confirmation of GWPF's status) - but even if it is true, at what point did helping people, i.e. "charity" become synonymous with political lobbying?
Other countries, e.g. Canada in re Suzuki's mob have taken action against precisely this. Facts about the situation in the UK would be much appreciated. Bish -maybe worth a post in your abundant spare time ;).
Johanna,
Here is a link to the GWPF's data held by the charity commission. There registered charity number is 1131448
You can also read the Charity Commission Guidelines on campaigning and political activity here.
Pointman
The founder of COIN - George Marshall was very involved in the start up of Earth First (UK) with multi millionaire Goldsmith's (Ecologist) backing..
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cas91XXqRNwC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=George+marshall+earth+first&source=bl&ots=sYEjrIeH-0&sig=iuDMj0CaPTOVgJNWm5igxh3EI5w&hl=en&sa=X&ei=In6xUpn_A_LT7Abm8IDABw&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=George%20marshall%20earth%20first&f=false
George Marshall's route into climate change catastrophism is a must read
http://www.ecoglobe.ch/motivation/e/clim2922.htm
(George formery senior Greenpeace, Rainforest Foundation, fighting Chevron in the rainforests,)
George was also the founder of the Rising tide activist group, which had the original' ? 'Deniers - Hall of Shame' back in 2001-02.. and here is George writing about climate deniers in the New Statesmen in 2003 - he gets rolled out in the Guadian as wel, and Dr Adam Corner (also Guardian) , is his COIN policy advisor.
http://www.newstatesman.com/node/146820
- a who's who of climate deniers, with an Exxon smear or 2 (remember he was fighting Chevron in the rainforests,)
George in my opinion has made the debate toxic...
to quote George from a Campaign Against Climate Change Meeting, (he is on the board)
"[About the word "Climategate"] It probably came from Marc Morano first.
- Look at the word “sceptic”. It’s a very carefully chosen word.
- I rather use “denier” – and I’m delighted to say it works.
- But they’re [Climate Change sceptics] doing a better job than us at the moment [on communications]."
http://www.joabbess.com/2010/04/17/sceptic-backlash-questions-answered/
This is like the latest grand opus from sks. The AGW fanatics are reduced to fabricating a grand evil conspiracy to climate skeptics and name calling. While dismissing transparent rent seeking schlock like this is tempting, I understand that in late 1920's and early 1930's Germany people dismissed the rants and conspiracy accusations of a certain Austrian and look where that got them. AGW ideology is in many ways a very malignant corrupting ideology. This need for its true believers and opinion leaders to blame the failures of their theories on those who point out the problems with it is not healthy.
At some point, Rowson and the Sainsbury's will realise that they have built a sandcastle below the high-water mark, and the tide is coming in.
The beach will still be there for them to play on tomorrow.
I posted the following on
http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2013/socialbrain/agenda-climate-change/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rsaprojects+%28RSA+blogs%29
The science of climate change is far from "settled". Anyone with some background in statistics, physics and computer modelling can read the original papers with no difficulty. (I have a research degree in engineering and a career involving mathematical modelling, so no problem for me.) Anybody who cares to look can see the assumptions that are made by climate scientists, which so far have not been verified. Just one such assumption, as yet unverified, is that atmospheric water vapour strongly amplifies the effect of other greenhouse gases.
All predictions of global warming are based on the output of computer models. The Met Office has confirmed this: "Computer models are the only reliable way to predict changes in climate. Their reliability is tested by seeing if they are able to reproduce the past climate, which gives scientists confidence that they can also predict the future.".
The Met Office's last sentence involves the fallacy known as "testing on the training data", since records of past climate were used to "parameterise" the models*. Hindsight does not verify that a model is a correct representation of the physical reality.
The only real test of a model is whether it can predict future observations. By this measure, the General Climate Models referred to by the IPCC have failed. Fifteen years ago, steady and rapid warming of global temperature was confidently predicted. This has failed to materialise; global temperature has remained essentially constant for that time.
In any other branch of science, such a failure would have resulted in reappraisal of all results. Note that the failure of General Climate Models to predict the lack of global warming over the past fifteen or so years is not open to dispute - the predictions are on record and the temperature records are readily accessible.
Anyone who disputes this central failure of climate science is the one in denial. People such as me who ask for concrete evidence do not merit such a title and we find it offensive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*"Parameterise" means replacing aspects of the physical system that are not well understood to model precisely by simple mathematical formulas whose coefficients are chosen to reproduce previous observations.
Excellent comment Martin.
With so much material to use it can be difficult to focus and encapsulate thought in a short, comment sized format that will impact a neutral reader.
I think you've achieved that admirably.
Thanks Simon. Yes, exactly what I set out to do. Had I detailed every shortcoming of climate science and its practitioners that I know of, it would have come across as an unhinged rant.
Ironically, that illustrates what a crock of steaming poo climate science is.
Martin: I second Simon's strong commendation. GK Chesterton made the point that some things have so much going for them that when you are challenged to produce it you can easily sound like a gibbering idiot, as if there's no supporting evidence at all. "What's the point of civilisation?" is the example he gives - a smarmy question from radicals a century ago far from irrelevant to ultra-greens today. It takes considerable self-discipline to produce something this effective when the smell of steaming poo is so overpowering.
That is a brilliant ending, if I may say so. Denier is of course offensive for more than this. But it is utterly offensive at this, what you might call base, level. (It just gets more base from there.) Well done.
Excellent Post Martin A
I would suggest that a main problem is the combination of lack of maths skills combined with practical skills of many scientists, especially those in the geology, biology and environmental sciences. A physicist may come up with a theory which may take decades to disprove and no-one will die . However, an applied scientists/engineer responsible for undertaking complex calculation,extensive experimental research, where the result of failure is death has to be very sure of their work. The Comet Aeroplane crashes were because square and not round windows were used
Whether a wind turbine is profitable is of lesser importance than it does not collapse and kill someone. Therefore the structural engineer has to be far more certain of their design than an economist.
The IPCC produce reports every 5years . Therefore 3 reports have failed to predict the overall trend which is flat. Even if the third report prediction was wrong, the fourth and fifth reports predictions should be correct if the models were fit for purpose.Even if peaks , troughs and gradients are not accurately predicted, then whether the gradient is+ve, -ve or 0 ( flat) should be predicted : even in something as complex as large earth sized environmental models.
It would be nice if Rowson et. al. knew how to spell Celsius......
Thank you for your comment, Dodgy Geezer.
Can you help me find a reference to our beloved Bishop's assumption that the denier tag only applies to those who deny that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas?
***
While waiting for an answer to my first question, I also have another question related to this assumption.
This assumption does seem to imply that it's OK to use the D word but only for those who deny that CO2 is a GHG. Is that correct? Sky Dragons may be waiting for a decision on that matter.
This is understandable, for then they could be the true deniers.
Many thanks!
Phillip Bratby @ Dec 17, 2013 at 5:10 PM
I concur completely, Phil. This is a classic illustration of 'WALOOC'. - What A Load Of Old Cobblers!
The PPE is a degree invented by Oxford for those who do not possess the intellectual wherewithal to tackle a single subject degree but whose parents are wealthy enough to buy their kids a place.
Richard 4:04 pm
"Celcius" Tee hee
> The PPE is a degree invented by Oxford for those who do not possess the intellectual wherewithal to tackle a single subject degree but whose parents are wealthy enough to buy their kids a place.
That's an interesting way to put it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre#Early_life_and_education
Follow this link for an astonishing list of attributes of "deniers":
rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_warming_denialism#Hierarchy_of_global_warming_denial
It's so all encompassing that you'd be fairly hard pressed to find many cliamte scientists that aren't also "deniers".
The same site has some nasty diatribes about various named deniers, including Steve McIntyre - exactly what does he deny?
@willard, 4:16PM
You have to work backwards via scepticism to come to the limit of doubt. How far you go is currently immaterial as we have no warming of the sensible kind and which clearly shows that all bets are off. However, if you are drawn to the precautionary principle, then clearly the whole of climate science requires to be revisited. After all, all that extra CO2 must be doing sumfink.
Reminds me of a toungue in cheek definition of over educated people or experts. "Those who know more and more about less and less until they reach the pinnacle where they know absolutely everything about nothing."
Last night I posted Lord Monkton's graph showing no warming for 17 years on facebook. One guy came back with a comment on everything must be in balance and context. Somewhat annoyed I posted two graphs...1) The Holocene we live in with the 10,000 years since the Climatic Optimum clearly sbowing we are quite cool compared with 10,000 years ago. 2) A graph showing peaks and troughs of this and the five previous Holocene's...all of them showing temps warmer than today.
It is the lack of this type of empirical data that keeps AGW afloat.
The reaction from the AGW guy was along the lines of "thanks...very interesting.."
I may not have converted the guy but there are now doubts....