Bishop Hill Technology issues
Oct 8, 2014 Climate: other A few days ago I wrote about the reactions to a talk given by polar ice specialist Peter Wadhams, whose utterances at a Royal Society conference had elicited a mixture of amusement and amazement because of their lack of scientific rigour.
In an interesting development it seems that Wadhams has retaliated by attacking the conference organisers - Gavin Schmidt, Mark Brandon and Sheldon Bacon - for the latter two, writing letters of complaint directly to senior officials at their universities. The response of the organisers is here, and it's quite amusing, as it seems that Wadhams is even holding them responsible for things tweeted by people outside the meeting.
Josh
Posted by Josh: This reminded me that I was able to attend a couple of the RS Arctic sessions and which included Peter Wadhams' talk. With all the busyness of the rest of the day visiting Bristol I had forgotten to scan in the cartoon notes, so here they are.
;)
Click on the image to view a bigger version
Reader Comments (81)
JerryM, if you are bored, how about sending a few tweets to your followers?
thats right jerryM how long is it now I have not had a twit from you ?
Josh's exchange:
"So has global temperature gone up?"
"No, but let's worry anyway"
perfectly encapsulates the warmist line. Their problem is that no worry = no funding.
Having watched and listened to Peter Wadhams and Lord Deben abuse Peter Lilley and Dick Lindzen at a seminar, it comes as no surprise to me that Peter Wadhams can give it out but can't take it. As has been discussed at BH earlier, this is not his only shortcoming.
@ DocBud, johanna, AND ptw,
JerryM is right, you're all getting a bit over-heated, easily done, and I admit to doing it in the past - but, please, give it a rest.
Josh's cartoon puts to rest Peter Wadhams' assertion that Gavin asked no questions in the Q&A. As Gavin said perhaps Wadhams didn't recognise him.
I dinned do nuffink?
I am not even allowed to make a valid contribution anymore??
ice:
if there is more of it => global warming!
if there is less of it => global warming!
if there is just the same of it => global warming
conclusion: many many more research funding needed to jet around , expeditions, to know more about this
intriguing susbtance.
Some academics are always complaining about lack of attendance, people not paying attention etc.
It never occurs to them that the reason might be that they are useless lecturers and their lecture is a complete waste of time.
For some reason the good ones don't have this problem, but then the good ones don't need to sell their souls to the cagw gravy train.
A very senior scientist repeats personal convictions and some unsettled data that have been criticised before.
Tweeters express criticism of schoolboy quality. Why did Prof Wadhams participate in the setup?
We should be worried.
I have seen this pattern in pre-tweet times.
It is quite similar to some chapters in plate tectonics developments, with Wegener, a polar scientist well before my time, then S Warren Carey, a friend now deceased, being the seniors.
It has resemblances to the Helicobacter/ulcer story of Marshall and Warren, in which a dangerous mix was ingested as a measure of by conviction one of them, contrary to conventional science communication methods.
The tone of the tweets re Prof Wadhams, with their clear expressions of unease, suggest to me that the perps are worried because Wadhams might be right, but that the perps lack the scientific skill to prove this.
I would keep watching this case, for the science, not for the impact of the tweet, which we will get used to, rapidly.
To the tweeters, grow up.
An example of fairly gentle academic mobbing, but mobbing nevertheless and probably premeditated. Some climate scientivists have much to be profoundly ashamed about, and this display of rudeness adds but a tiny stain to some very blotted copybooks.
Re getting stuck into Johanna and DocBud, etc etc. And their disagreements.
This is a CONFERENCE? Right? Presumably the attendees CHOSE to go there, and probably PAID? Or their employer paid.
In that case a bit of respect is appropriate. (And likewise in pre-twit days if you want to go to a conference and read a book, then being politely asked to not attend future conferences might be appropriate).
Likewise in big companies I have worked for, attendees at meetings all whip out their laptops and go through their email. If they want to do that, then they should sit in their office instead of gobbling up money on business class flights and accommodation.
Getting a physical bum on a seat costs a lot of money. That should be a consideration for taking attendance seriously and paying attention.
Those who claim to be able to multi-task (yes I really can listen, take notes, read emails, and be a twit) need to do a few experiments showing that NO HUMAN AT ALL can effectively multi-task. The only ones who can are deluded.
To paraphrase an old joke: 90% of people can't multi-task. The other 10% are telling lies..
As we all know wimmin can multitask or so they always claim , but they have a trick: Everything they do goes pear shaped.
(Jus their very own diet is an example, with most of them)
If you set yourself up and court publicity and then lord it for all to survey, then thick skinned you should also be. Plus, if you build your house on drifting ice make set preparations for the inevitable drink dunk and the Polar bears feeding frenzy - for it will be you on the menu.
Pete Wadhams is a discombobulated old twit, whose best years are way behind him. And still, like an addict he craves the oxygen, the glare and fame of publicity. How can he now shun it, because he doesn't approve of the tone of the message? Inevitably, those who live in vitreous academic ivory towers should not cast lapidary fragments - these types cannot take it but certainly they can dish it out - are we to feel empathy for them - I trust not.
Wadhams, who is way out on just about all of his contentious theorizing - to do with the Arctic sea ice extent and hypothesizing over sea ice disappearance/diminishing. The proposed link to man made warming is so tenuous it is barely credible to the average Joe on the street, let alone people who purport to study the Arctic Basin and in particular polar sea ice.
Know this as well, as we have said on here often enough, the Arctic sea ice extent whether it is greatly expanding or decreasing is not a definitive signpost of man made warming [how can it be?] nor, of cooling but as the planet cools - we may expect more sea ice in the Boreal hemisphere.
A word of advice at last.
He will have a more than generous stipend, why not go and enjoy it - somewhere nice and warm?
I tend to be with Joanna on this one.
One of the most pleasant things about being retired is that one can choose the events one attends. If most of the principals in this silly little saga are not retired, perhaps they should consider it. I can thoroughly reccommend not ever again having to attend staff workshops on topics that were never important, or listening to career bores who have exceeded their professional shelf life and were never half as clever as they imagined they were in their heyday.
And manners, in whatever situation, should never be regarded as unfashionable. Even at conferences where speakers or presenters are obvious neverwassers rather than up-and-comers.
Alex, It's "neverwozzers." But, nice catch.
I fail to see why people who have been sent to a conference that they didn't want to go to in the first place (which often happened to me) because they knew it was a waste of time and money, should bow down in obeisance to the boring and self-important presenters.
I mean, being rude? Being rude would be sending a raspberry, yelling abuse, creating distractions in the room etc. Not paying attention is simply a function of a person not considering it worth their attention. I have done it in meetings countless times, without in any way disrupting the meeting.
If a presenter is not able to capture the attention and respect of the audience, that is a reflection on the presenter, not the audience.
Yous won't be laughing this time next year !
Cambridge prof. predicts Arctic summer sea ice “all gone by 2015”
http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/08/big-call-cambridge-prof-predicts-arctic.html
Johanna
Totally agree. There's a great NLP phrase I read once and try to adhere to:
"The quality of a communication is in the response you get"
Of course most people blame the listener not the story teller.
And if the Arctic summer sea ice is all gone by 2015 why does that matter?
Or shouldn't I ask?
Damn you Mike Jackson with your awkward questions.
This discussion is all about Twitter. :)
James Delingpole joins in to help calm the dispute down.
He gives the answer to Mike Jackson's question. Wadhams told the Guardian that if the summer Arctic ice did all go that would mean "global disaster".
I suggest, Micky H Corbett, that if you attend a conference that you were apparently forced to attend by your employer against your will, presumably having been strapped into your business class seat and fitted with a tracking device, with the presumption that listening to the self-important speakers is a waste of your time, there is a strong likelihood that your presumption will prove true. One's employer would seem to have a different opinion as to the worth of the conference and some expectation that one might try to get some benefit out of it given that they are paying you.
The last conference I went to, in August, a young colleague presented a paper on some research we had done together. His employer was keen that he do the presenting. He put a lot of effort into his
presentation but was still very nervous all the same. All went well, the room was full of delegates, including senior executives, keen to hear what he had to say and some intelligent questions were asked. Self-important he was not, so I'm glad he wasn't talking to the tops of people's heads as they twittered, texted and emailed away.
For myself, being self-employed, I cannot afford to devote three days to a conference even though I am paying for it. But when I have to prepare a quote to meet a deadline or respond to somebody's questions, I do so from my hotel room, not in the conference hall merrily typing away on my laptop.
The climate alarm industry is sustained by intimidation - the intimidation of serious damage in the future if we do not comply with their demands today. Wadhams joined in with great gusto, and was doing as well as any of the other heavies in getting attention on such as the BBC, and thereby invigorating the industry with renewed assurance that they were winning the day. But, oh but, Wadhams blundered. Like our hapless Met Office, he made forecasts that could be checked within a few years against observations, and these forecasts failed. Now the Met Office, no doubt with teams of advisors and committee meetings galore to deal with such inconveniences, was smart enough and quick enough with the damage limitation. Stopping the publishing of fatuous forecasts by such as Vicky Pope being one such action. Not so Wadhams. When 2013 failed to see the Arctic sea ice all but disappear, he shifted the date merely to 2015. Bad move. Makes the brothers and sisters of the movement very unhappy. Loss of credibility means loss of income in due course, not to mention the risk of great ridicule. They must have decided to increase their resilience by throwing Wadhams under the bus, and the shoddy little tweet-mobbing at his presentation was a sign of this being well underway.
As always there is likely more to this than meets the eye.
Wadhams has been an observational researcher - direct measurements of ice thickness from submarines etc. In the climate world there is always the clash between the old observational guys and the new 'modelers and satelliters'. Funding goes to the new and fancy - models and satellites.
What is on display could well be an alarmist arms race to the bottom - Wadhams, with his data points and inverse exponential curves and the new guard with their climate models that show the physics-revealed Arctic ice loss.
Wadhams has applied for funding to the UK NERC and has lost (in the past). Apparently NERC money goes heavily to the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) in Southampton, instead.
Sheldon Bacon, one of the organizers, is from the NOC. The complaint went to two of his bosses at the NOC. So this is Wadhams sticking the finger in the eye, so to speak.
I find it laughable that climate modelers who could not predict the global temperature slowdown, climate sensitivity, or Arctic ice or Antarctic ice should be snickering about anyone and consider their estimates to be based on 'physics' whereas the people making extrapolations from data are fools for 'joining the dots'.
The reason we're getting this stuff is that Wadhams actually is doing exactly the same things as the IPCC, and all the modellers, he's forecasting the future. Because he's been at it longer he has "form" in that none of his forecasts have come to fruition their being made within timescales over which they can be checked.
I read the tweets contemperaniously and got the impression that the twitterers thought he was talking a load of old tosh from the tweets. This appears to have offended Prof. Wadhams, who clearly believes he can make things up and they will come true, so in typical academic fashion he tried to stab them in the back by complaining to their bosses. Hence their attempt to explain themselves. It was I believe our very own Doug McNeall, who asked the sensible question arising from the tweets which was to the effect that if they (the organisers/community) were so unimpressed with the good Professor's work, why did they invite him to give presentations. For some reason this, although for me the tweet that hit the nail on the head, appears to have been viewed the the Bacon/Schmidt/Brandon axis as "off beam"/slightly disrespectful. I have to say that it was the first thing that came into my mind when I read their tweets - why have him there in the first place if you are, a priori, sure he's talking a lot of tosh. Strange world academia.
Delingpole thinks they are throwing Wadhams to the wolves because the penny might have dropped about their own prognostications, but I'm not sure, I don't detect the slightest doubts from any of them that they could in any way be even slightly wrong, my take is that they find Wadhams irritating.
DocBud I don't even come close to understanding why, or how, you've got not listening to speakers at conference and doing something else to be grossly ill-mannered. I have to say that in the Wadham's case I can see why he saw the tweets as schoolboyish and unprofessional, I presume that he felt they have no respect for him and were trying to humiliate him. He should have left it at them not respecting him and wondered why, and what he needed to do to get their respect, it would have been a more mature response. That same rule applies to anyone giving a presentation at a conference - you have to earn the respect of the audience, not expect it.
From the Guardian, circa 2000: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-August/014938.html
http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/218537/Dawn-of-a-new-ice-age
Fred Pearce at the Telegraph, 2007: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/3305457/Berks-at-NERC-snub-Peter-Wadhams-again.html (has the above 'personal' quote)
Geronimo, you have a 30 minute slot, 20 minutes for the presentation, 10 minutes for questions. Delegates sit down knowing the title and sometimes a brief abstract. If you are in the audience, at what time are you likely to decide, this guy isn't deserving of my respect, time to start twittering? I'm not talking about a specific individual, I'm talking about a general principle that, in my humble opinion, if you choose to sit in an audience then you afford the speaker respect, by which I mean you listen to what they have to say. You are free to think it is utter tripe, but you should form that opinion based on giving them a chance to air their views, not a pre-conceived notion that they are self-important bores. But then I'm the sort of person who will put my book down and give air stewards my undivided attention while they tell me about safety procedures I've heard a thousand times before. I just think it is good manners, curse my parents who have saddled me with these out-dated notions.
You may like twitter or you may hate it but this tweet I saw the other day rings true;
It wasn't the ECHR that got Ayshya King Proton Beam Therapy, it was twitter,
Meanwhile I'm starting a crowdfunder to get santa a wetsuit and a canoe...
Is there a sea (ice) change happening? Was Professor Wadhams critiqued by the team for his previous predictions?
DocBud
The only conferences I have been to in my career where on: materials science during my PhD (MRS Fall meetings in Boston among a few), and space propulsion / space stuff (both when I was employed and with my own company).
The International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC) is a great one with a lot of interesting and funny people at it. Plus the talks are usually good and genuinely interesting and there's always a few drinking sessions.
The IAC is also a good laugh. I once gave a talk on large plasma thrusters where we were hitting 100s of mN (milli) thrust levels. Only to be followed by a bloke talking about MN (mega) hydrazine thrusters. Kind of put things in perspective.
But to get back on point being able to communicate effectively and with some flair is the name of the game. And one that people appreciate.
"Is there a sea (ice) change happening? Was Professor Wadhams critiqued by the team for his previous predictions?"
I follow Mark Brandon on twitter and had an interesting couple of tweets with him. The news from the conference was all bad and all because of human emissions, as far as I could tell. What struck me, and still does, is the moot acceptance, in the absence of any evidence, that the Arctic's loss of sea-ice was novel and caused by human beings. As far as I know the only observational evidence we have is from the satellite era, and some stuff from the 1950s, but the news coming out of the conference seemed all bad. What struck me was that if they were providing this evidence to me I'd ask, what I would consider to be the crucial question, can we assume that the Arctic hasn't lost ice in previous times, which the cliscis didn't seem to be addressing.
So I asked Mark if the cliscis were indeed saying that they knew there hadn't been similar ice losses in previous times. He's a nice bloke but he lost it with me and, said I'd said that the cliscis were saying that there hadn't been similar ice loss in past times and there was no point talking to me - when I hadn't, I'd asked if that was what they're saying, which if they weren't the simple answer would have been to say no. But then I think Mark knew where that would take us so chose to interpret my question is such a way as to close down the discussion..
I would love to be educated by Mark and his mates on why they're certain that the current state of the Arctic is unique and caused by humans, but they don't seem to want discuss the "unique" bit.
interesting reading.
Until the Royal Society come to a conclusion on what happened, given that Peter Wadhams complained to the most senior people at my university, I cannot comment on what I think people's motives are etc.
But can give a point of fact.
First: the Discusssion Meeting wasn't focussed on "negative" things. It was focussed on the physics of sea ice and its impacts. The schedule of the four days of the meeting is clear on that one.
Second. It seems lots of people missed what some may consider "good" news. For example, Dirk Notz gave a fantastic talk explaining how the sea ice climate feedbacks act to slow and prevent sea ice melt. His whole talk was framed around "why hasn't the sea ice in the Arctic gone already?". And Andrey Proshutinsky gave a good talk based on oceanographic data which (as people in forums such as this have been suggesting for a while) led him to predict that over the coming decades Arctic sea ice will increase in extent. I tweeted that. People seemed to have missed it. And another example from Gavin Schmidt's talk which attempted to deconstruct the "methane bomb" scenario.