Bishop Hill Crusher Nurse fails to squeeze
Sep 4, 2014 GWPF Royal Society A retweet into my Twitter feed points me to an article in the Guardian. Paul Nurse it says, is wants people to "call out serial offenders who are using misinformation on science issues". The article is here.
Nurse is calling for malefactors to be "crushed and buried", which sounds as though he has been reading too much of the Marxist literature he apparently favoured at one time, or perhaps indicating too many hours spent in front of Game of Thrones. Amusingly though he doesn't seem to want to call out and crush any such bad people himself, nor even it seems to give them a gentle squeeze:
We have to be aware of, and beware, organisations that masquerade as lobbying groups, which we see a lot in climate change. We have to be aware of politicians that cherry pick scientific views, even ministers who listen to scientists when it's about GM crops and then ignore them when it's about climate change,
We know who he means of course, because he has made such allegations against Nigel Lawson in the past. On that occasion, Nurse got himself into a bit of a pickle, unable to defend himself from Lawson's accusation that he was lying. Eighteen months later, he is reduced to repeating the general allegation, still without any specific details of the offence, but this time minus the name as well.
You have to laugh.
Bishop Hill
The Mail's coverage includes this from Benny Peiser:
Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, accused Sir Paul of using 'the language of extremism'.
'If he can't live with critics and sceptics that is too bad. But there is no need to use this kind of violent and aggressive vocabulary.
'Scepticism used to be a sign of science itself. When scientists cannot cope with that, and instead use this language of extremism, it is a sign of desperation, a sign they are losing the plot.'
Reader Comments (58)
I think you nailed it. I was wondering what his language reminded me of: Lenin, of course! Why is it that these top scientists are so servile to power?
Big PR push, I wonder if they're receiving forecasts of an awful winter for the UK?
The second link leads us to the GWPF.......but to an error message there.
[Thanks - fixed]
This is what he really means.
Any RS members out there care to comment on Nurse's remarks?
Nurse is an utter disgrace. The RS are a bunch of ..................... snip
Adolf too said his aim was to destroy all dissenting political parties
Nurse was elevated because he was a Marxist (SWP = Trotskyite). Like the majority in the scientific establishment, he is an inferior scientist, a good plodder. Now they are shown up as rabble rousers for failed Climate science, always a clever fraud hiding a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind, they are showing their true character.
Economy improving, energy security in danger, election in the offing. The PR campaign is not just aimed at Lawson and it is only just starting.
It's a travesty that Nurse ever became a FRS, let alone its president. Mind you, there are many other dodgy "scientists" in the RS these days.
You have to laugh indeed. From an interview with Nurse:
"he sold Socialist Worker and took part in student protests, including an occupation of the vice-chancellor's office."
"Nurse's undergraduate socialist spirit is still alive and well: he wouldn't be against scientists getting involved in activism."
I'd say he's quite right to attack "influential figures who distort scientific evidence to support their own political, religious or ideological agendas."
That's why Nurse got the job. If he doesn't push, he's out.
I know exactly the sort of people referred to in this article and the one of
the biggest and most brazen examples is ..........er PAUL NURSE.
Utterly rejected at the ballot box, these loony lefties focused on getting control of councils, charities, green organisations, once-irrelevant institutions and countless quangos and they now dominate our society. We now have political correctness replacing factual correctness everywhere we look.
http://www.investegate.co.uk/centrica-plc--cna-/bus/update-on-boiler-inspections-at-heysham-1-and-h---/20140904070900Z1486/
Adam Gallon wonders if a cold winter forecast has been promulgated.
I hope not in view of the above Regulatory News link in which Centrica warn shareholders that the prolonged problems at Heysham and Hartlepool nuclear plants will knock .9p rather than the earlier forecast of .3p off the next dividend.
We are approaching BIG trouble without doubt.
There is more than a wisp of desperation about this a recent barrage of denunciation of sceptics.
They realise that they are losing public opinion and hope for a last victory at the Paris meeting. Some hope! China and India aren't going to agree to anything. Does anyone sane think that Putin will cooperate?
Any hope of a Kyoto 2 or 3 belongs in a Monty Python sketch involving a parrot.
Just sent this to The Royal Society.
"Senior scientist urges peers to challenge influential figures who misuse science to support preconceived beliefs”
So says Sir Paul in The Guardian and asks that such figures are called out.
I hereby call out Sir Paul Nurse for serial offending by accepting and adhering to a hypothesis and treating it as a religion.
He repeatedly distorts the truth and attacks anyone challenging the scenario he adopts.
Nurse is a shameful parody of President of the Royal Society.
He should be replaced with a man of science.
John Catley
Another Guardian article where a fairly limited person vents his spleen. It is appalling that the media allow people to make so many unsubstantiated statements unchallenged. I suppose that is what the Guardian is about these days, pandering to the Green Taliban. He is such a hypocrit, he talks about "cherry pick scientific views" and yet that is exactly what the climate alarmists do all the time. He seems unwilling or unable to understand this.
In the time he has been president of the RS, we have seen him being amazingly childish coupled with making unpleasant statements in areas he knows nothing about. What a real disappointment. No wonder the RS is now looked on with derision.
Material of the type that worries Sir Paul would die out if it was wrong for years on end.
There would also be far less of this worry material if logical, clear rebuttals were to come from those who presume to know better.
It is so, so common to have obfuscation, evasion, appeal to authority instead of a straight answer to a strait question.
Man up, Sir Paul, get your 'ecolytes' to answer the main questions - like, do GHGs really heat he atmosphere to a significant extent?
Did he ever issue a correction to his assertion that the human contribution to the plus side of the CO2 cycle was seven times the contribution of natural causes? The actual figure, I believe is something like 3.5%. Or maybe he doesn't need to issue a correction, he could just crush anyone who points out his collossal error.
What is interesting is how extremists like Nurse use projection in their attacks against others.\:
"We have to be aware of, and beware, organisations that masquerade as lobbying groups, which we see a lot in climate change."
-Just what he and his fellow climate extremists have done with the RS
" We have to be aware of politicians that cherry pick scientific views, even ministers who listen to scientists when it's about GM crops and then ignore them when it's about climate change,"
-So many politicians, scientists and others are echoing the the anti-GMO spew even while calling skeptics "den!ers" and ridiculing them.
Nurse, like Holden in the US, is reduced to name calling and obfuscation in order to keep the AGW money machine alive.
'You have to laugh..'
Er - no you don't - because these people have influence and the ear of government, and are STILL peddling complete falsehoods relating to climate, resulting in wind farms; biomass; and other lunatic solutions to a problem which doesn't exist...
Nurse better watch his back. Professor Cox's recent eloquent musings on all things scientific, including climate change, might be his opening gambit in seeking Nurse's job.
@Steve Jones Aha! I did think that read like a job application, was wondering for which job....
I agree very strongly with sherlock 1: laughing at these people is a serious mistake - as he says, they have influence and the ear of government.
I also agree with Graeme No.3 that China and India (and Russia) aren't going to agree to anything (substantial) at Paris. However, as I said on Unthreaded this morning, the greens have got that covered. They're developing a useful plan to ensure the UN circus keeps on rolling notwithstanding failure of the Paris conference: LINK. An extract:
At least Lord Lawson has come out at last. Instead of pretending be a charity, he is now openly a political lobbyist financed by right-wing and oil money.
To the tune of....a mere fraction of a percent of the money Green Peace has funnelled in to political coercion when it comes to Mann Made Global Warming (tm).
But that's ok because Green Peace belongs to the right religion so they can campaign with their tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in finance for energy policies that merely speed up the deaths of the poor and sick during winters.
Mailman
EM: Seeing as you 'know' that Lawson is being "financed by right-wing and oil money" perhaps you would care to tell us which right-wingers and which oil companies are contributing? And are these any of the same right-wingers or oil companies financing the warmist fraud?. (Don't try to tell me that Soros is not a Capitalist)
OK, Nurse, how about Greenpiss and WWtF for starters. Or don't you consider them to be lobbyists? They're certainly masquerading as environmental conservationists.
@ EM
"At least Lord Lawson has come out at last"
Oh, come on, you're usually better than that. At least (or at last) say something sensible, or relevant, or genuinely informed, or funny ... or in fact ANYTHING as long as it's not so damned predictable and dull!!
EM,
Nurse, lifelong extreme leftist, is using his position of authority to suppress science that interferes with his politics.
No Jerry, that's a about par for the corse for dear old EM :)
Mailman
I have long since dismissed Nurse from my search for leading promoters of cagw who deserve to be classed as admirable. It is easy to find bullies, or opportunists, or control-freaks, or the ill-informed, or merely weak characters prone to severe nervousness. But where oh where are any really admirable ones?
aka "lobbying groups".
How on earth can you tell if they're masquerading? They pretend to lobby, but don't really? Is that what he's alleging?
I've never known a serious science student to take part in student politics.
Compare Nurse's charge against scientists in The Guardian: "Nurse's call to arms goes against the stance of some scientists who refuse to debate people who have certain world views" with Lawson's account of how difficult it was to actually get Nurse to a debate (if he actually went at all: "The long-discussed meeting between a group of climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society on the one side, and me and some colleagues from my think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the other, has now at last taken place. It was held behind closed doors in a committee room at the House of Lords, the secrecy — no press present — at the insistence of the Royal Society Fellows, an insistence I find puzzling given the clear public interest in the issue of climate change in general and climate change policy in particular. The origins go back almost a year, to a lecture by the president of the Royal Society, the biologist Sir Paul Nurse". Indeed the unwillingness of Warmists to attend debates is notorious.
Paul Nurse to champion the resurrection of Ad extirpanda:-
Ad extirpanda was a papal bull promulgated on Wednesday, May 15, 1252 by Pope Innocent IV which authorized in limited and defined circumstances the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_extirpanda
Harry Passfield - EM: Seeing as you 'know' that Lawson is being "financed by right-wing and oil money"
See my comment on unthreaded. Is EM BM? Shorely shome mishtake.
I guess Nurse is talking about groups like 10:10 with their exploding children video, and 350.org with their witless maundering......
Sep 4, 2014 at 10:01 AM | John Catley
That seems entirely reasonable to me. Let us know if you get a response (probably wishful thinking).
Maybe I can help Sir Paul. One of the worst serial offenders of misinformation on climate science is the inappropriately named skepticalscience.com. They launched the http://theconsensusproject.com/ website last year. Every comment appears to misrepresent scientific understanding - whether the traditional variety or the IPCC "consensus" distortion.
Or maybe Sir Paul only has a very subjective standard of misinformation?
Surprisingly, the article does not allow reader comments. /
At least Lord Lawson has come out at last. Instead of pretending be a charity, he is now openly a political lobbyist financed by right-wing and oil money.
Sep 4, 2014 at 10:45 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
I see you are being ironic. Good to see you have seen the light and realised what Greenpeace, the WWF etc are !
What is Benny Peiser's background, I never trust Wikepedia?
We should all "call out" public sector bodies that exceed their mandates, a very common occurrence, such as the BBC (a public service broadcaster) becoming a propaganda outlet for renewable energy and AGW (still a mere hypothesis), and the RS and Met Orifice adopting advocacy roles.
This is all about selling the preposterous notion that Nigel Lawson represents anyone or that he has a credible opinion about science which he absolutely doesn't.
The role of the GWPF is very simply to discredit opposition to climate science. A plague on both your houses.
Physicists vs the global warming industry http://goo.gl/70tzt
It is about POLICY which Lawson most definitely has credible opinions on.
kellydown
Paul Nurse is referring to the distortion of science. As for policy, every retirede politician is about as useful as an oily rag. He has done the dirty business he was asked to, namely destroy British industry with American monetarist economics.
Nurse talks about others 'distorting science' yet when it comes to major datasets being tortured into showing the precise opposite of recorded natural cooling trends, when it comes to IPCC-supported models having similar value to tea leaves at the bottom of a mug, and when it comes to an endless array of completely failed predictions, from Nurse - Britain's 'leading' scientist, we hear precisely........nothing.
He's an activist. Nothing more or less.
Nurse is a stain on RC flag: Whether he is right or wrong, criminalizing those who do not share his (limited value) opinion and wanting to crash tham, is not a 21st century democratic scientific behaviour but a totalitarian inquisitionnal behaviour, hence to stain.
Where's Harry Enfield when you need him?
"Oi Nurse! Naaaoooooowwww..."
Sir Paul is perfectly entitled to support AGW/Climate Change if he wishes to - even though not a 'climate scientist' - he is free to express an opinion. What he and others like Sir Brian Hoskins, chairman of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, should not do is make open attacks on people or undermine organizations simply not because they hold alternative views. It is underhand and dishonest.
It is time for Sir Paul, at least, to withdraw from his post, before he makes an even bigger fool of himself, and damages the reputation of science not only in his own field but others which are honest and established.