Bishop Hill Royal Society has lost the argument, cannot be trusted
Jun 27, 2014 GWPF Royal Society Readers will remember Nurse's infamous speech in Melbourne, in which he issued a fairly spectacular attack on Nigel Lawson:
We saw that, for example, in Britain with a politician, Nigel Lawson, who would go on the television and talk about the scientific case, and he was trained as a politician; you made whatever case you can to convince the audience. So he would choose two points and say, look, no warming is taking place, knowing that all the other points you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case, but he was just wanting to win that debate on television. And that is of course over-spilling political views into your science.
As Lawson pointed out in a subsequent letter Nurse's statement was entirely untrue:
So far as the latter is concerned, you claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie.
To the best of my knowledge Nurse has never provided any evidence to support his claim nor defended himself against the accusation of lying. People more cynical than I might therefore assume that he had conceded Lawson's point.
For this reason, I was much amused by Nurse's recent speech at the Parliamentary Links day earlier this week, during which he said:
...organisations that are bombastic, resorting to personal attacks and misrepresentation, are likely to be resorting to such tactics because they have lost the scientific argument, and so their scientific advice should also be treated with caution.
At last we can find something to agree on!
(And before anyone asks, yes I know that Nurse was actually just attacking GWPF again, but given that he has never provided any evidence of personal attacks either - apart from vague allusions to their being in the Nullius in Verba report somewhere - I don't think we should take him seriously.)
Reader Comments (55)
nofixedaddress: I am from North Carolina. You are burning our damn trees, not yours!
The only thing that will change Nurse's mind is cooling appearing after this temperature plateau. The only skeptic these anti-industry faux-greens are really worried about is Mother Nature. He is just trying to convince people to not bother to look at the actual observations for themselves because only accredited climate scientists can properly interpret data to conclude that up is down, cooling is heating and that surely it is only evil corporations preventing us from having free energy for life.
But rejoice; DECC says that 20% of our energy is now from [heavily subsidised] renewables so apparently we are well on the road to ditching fossil fuels. I had always suspected the way UK.gov would meet these CO2 targets was by bringing in the guys who compile the phony unemployment and inflation statistics.
The two comments mentioned, by me and by Bruce, are now posted on that RS blog.
(Probably whoever moderates the blog works 9-5 M-F).
How on Earth could anyone prefer the word of the President of the Royal Society to a man whose daughter is Viscount Monckton's sister in law?
Russell. It does not matter who says what: it is the facts which count. Science has often been about status. being proved wrong an hence loss of stats is more important for th PRS-Nurse than a non scientist. Fear of loss, and particularly , fear of loss of status of one's professional standing prevent many people from admitting their mistakes.