Why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth? Posted by Pointman on August 2, 2013 · 50 Comments

One of the climate alarmist’s standard responses to any criticism of the theory of global warming is that unless the person is a climate scientist themselves, the point being made is from a position of ignorance and can therefore be ignored. As with most propaganda designed to silence any opposition, there’s an element of truth in it.

However, I think there are a number of obvious rebuttals to such an arrogant and dismissive stance.

The regularity with which the skeptic community eviscerates alarmist papers indicates to me that they’re actually more on top of the hard science than the alarmists researchers. In general, the depth of science expertise in the skeptic community is reflected in the technical content of the leading skeptic sites and the quality of the comments, which indicate an unusually high proportion of visitors with some sort of science, engineering or mathematical background; slightly geeky to be frank but the knowledge in other areas extends well beyond those narrow confines.

In contrast, the alarmist blogosphere doesn’t really do much in the way of hard science content, but rather acts as an uncritical cheerleader and a launchpad for various propaganda initiatives. “That’s what they’re for” was the sneering remark made about them by one of their own high priests in the Climategate emails leak.

This science lite flavour is reflected in the character of the regular commenters there, who’re more like politically chic activists seeking some type of scientific authority figure’s validation of their belief system and sometimes exhibit an unquestioning acceptance coupled with an appalling ignorance of even the most basic principles of science. They’re more of an arty rather than sciency crowd, perhaps because they mistakenly assume art is somehow a less demanding discipline than science. Fittingly enough, any time I’ve seen them trying to put art at the service of the cause, it’s been truly dreadful.

This knowledge weak audience demographic is reinforced by the ferociously intolerant moderation policies, which tend to shunt the enquiring or technically minded visitors of an undecided persuasion over to the skeptical sites. What can one say except thank you for all those quality recruits you’ve driven in our direction in the last few years. We have the wherewithal to persuade an open mind, rather than just demand their blind compliance. One volunteer is worth ten browbeaten conscripts.

There is a tacit admission of this difference in the level of expertise between the two communities by the alarmist retreat from provocative hard science papers, which run the risk of being shredded by the skeptics, and a new vogue of papers based on polls and other essentially subjective metrics, which yield the requisite propaganda headlines but can safely be argued over to no definitive conclusion ad nauseam. They’re more metaphysics than science and they all tend to revolve around the novel idea of scientific proof by consensus.

Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France during WWI, famously remarked after yet another military disaster that war is too important to be left to the generals. In an analogous fashion, when a branch of science is being used to justify the complete restructuring of the global economy, it’s no longer a scientific issue but a political one.

More importantly, it’s the ordinary person who’s being asked to finance initiatives, which will lower their standard of living and significantly increase their tax burden for the coming decades. If you’re the one actually doing the paying, you very definitely want a say, even if you’re not a rocket scientist. He who pays the piper, gets to call the tune.

So, if global warming is too important to be left to the scientists, how can the ordinary person arrive at a reasonable judgement as to its validity? We all have our own way of getting to understand something and personally being a from first principles type of person, asking basic questions about it has always been mine. When it comes to people, meaning the climate scientists in this particular instance, I find the most revealing questions to ask usually begin with why, so let’s take that approach. The seemingly simple but difficult trick is to ask the blindingly obvious questions.

Why is it that every one of the cockups and blunders we uncover in their papers always err towards a warmer global climate?

Why do they persistently withhold the data on which their conclusions are based?

Why do they, in their own words, hide behind Freedom of Information laws, as a reason to keep such data hidden?

Why do they, in their own words again, hide behind Non-disclosure Agreements, as a reason to keep the data hidden?

Why are they so vague about the exact methods used on the data to derive their results?

Why do all their computer climate models run hot?

Why have they consistently overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to CO2?

Why don’t they ever design experiments attempting to disprove their theories?

Why do the Climategate emails reveal their deep private doubts about the science, which they’ve publically reassured everyone was settled?

If the science was so solid, why’d one of their number feel they had to resort to identity theft to discredit the opposition?

Why are they telling each other to delete emails to circumvent Freedom of Information requests?

Why do they feel they’ve got to “redefine the peer review process” to prevent dissenting science papers being published?

Why do they need to get science journal editors removed from their jobs because they dared to publish a dissenting paper?

Why, after being the beneficiary of billions of dollars of research funding in the last two decades, haven’t they by now proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt?

Why is anyone who simply questions the science being equated with a holocaust denier?

Why are they attempting to substitute science by consensus for scientific proof?

Why do they say the world suffering six successive years of freezing winters is somehow caused by global warming?

Why have global temperatures not risen in the best part of two decades while CO2 levels have kept on rising?

Why in the decade following 1990, were the number of ground temperature stations selected to calculate global temperature reduced from the available 14,000 to a mere 4,000?

Why for Russia, with a land area over twice the size of the USA , are only a handful of southern ground-based thermometers selected to calculate its temperature?

Why has the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) been saying for years that the average temperatures calculated for Russia are quite simply wrong?

Why did it fall to a skeptic volunteer force organised by Anthony Watts to regrade the data integrity of the alarmist’s few cherry picked temperature stations?

Why is there an unexplained divergence between the global temperature derived from satellite observations and their ground based measurement?

Why did it take them nearly fifteen years to finally concede that the global temperature had not risen in all that time?

Why at the end of nearly every one of those fifteen years was it loudly proclaimed to be the hottest one on record?

Why did the experts we’re supposed to trust, not feel the need to correct such annual scientifically inaccurate claims?

Why, in the absence of the heat predicted by their theories, do they suddenly assert it must be by some mysterious mechanism hiding undiscovered at the bottom of the world’s oceans?

Why isn’t the Argos network of ocean monitoring buoys showing any such warming?

Why, in the absence of any global warming, did they switch the threat to climate change?

Why do we see supposedly objective scientists acting like catastrophists, haranguing us to do as they say or we’re all going to die?

Why can’t we get a straight answer to those simple questions rather than abuse, outright propaganda or simply being ignored?

Why can’t these supermen of miraculously settled science ever say they just don’t know?

There are no doubt a lot more simple questions like these which a more knowledgeable person than myself might pose and there may perhaps be a reasonable answer to one or two of those questions, but when they all begin to stack up like that, the ordinary person knows there’s only one inescapable conclusion – they got it wrong and know it. It’s by now all about them scurrying to protect their status, reputations and that mountain of research funding our taxes are paying for.

There is no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn.

It’s all a cruddy morass of deception, exaggeration, evasion and ever bigger lies to cover up the shrinking corner they’ve painted themselves into, and with every establishment investigation of their activities, that paint always turns out to be a rather thin coat of whitewash.

When you catch a liar out, they invariably cover themselves by telling bolder and more outrageous lies. That’s the tangled web of deceit we’re looking at and by this point in time, and as always happens, people start ignoring whatever they’re saying.

You see, in the end, you don’t need to be a climate scientist to make your own mind up about them. After all the lies, deception and dishonesty, why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth?

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman:

Know your enemy : the alarmist scientist.

Global warming and pathological science.

Click for a list of other articles.