Thanks for all your morally courageous and intellectually honest efforts, even though approaching threats to human wellbeing and environmental health loom ominously before us. Imagine what would immediately occur if everyone followed your good example. In the face of such daunting global challenges as humanity confronts in our time, it is so easy to curse the darkness and, by so doing, choose NOT to light candles, as you are doing. Keep lighting candles.

Always,

Steve

Or Pehaps IFR is like many of the wonderful renewable technologies that my green friends tell me are viable here and now.

Good, I say, stop whingeing and start selling the stuff. Oh, they say, but I need you to hobble my competion with punitive taxes and give me large subsidies besides – but the technology really is viable.

So, Perps, do you want to raid the public purse also? Or do you just want big brother to strangle the competition for you.

And you quote a long dead Chinese philosopher for what reason?

“I never said that peer-review is a guarantee of scientific quality…”

Really?

One can easily be forgiven for taking that to be your implication.

“A very recent example of this is the error-strewn …”

“A laughable example is the deceitful…”

Rather makes my point, thanks.

I never said that peer-review is a guarantee of scientific quality, it is the bare minimum of the quality of science. After the pre-publication peer-review, there is the extended review by scientists working in the same field who assess it and choose whether or not to cite it as a reference in their own work.

First of all one has to see where it was published. A bad sign is where a work is published in a journal where the focus is far outside the specialty concerned and where the available reviewers are operating outside their own specialism.

A very recent example of this is the error-strewn “Falsification of the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effects within the frame of physics”; Gerlich and Tscheuschner. Published in the International Journal of Modern Physics.

A laughable example is the deceitful ‘Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’ ARTHUR B. ROBINSON, NOAH E. ROBINSON, AND WILLIE SOON. Witness the cherry-picked science, errors, pseudoscientific sleight of hand and sheer garbage.
Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
Published in the Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons.

It’s why I ‘lurk’ about on both sides of the many ‘arguments’ that interest me.

There is no sport in permanent agreement.

For example; Barry’s attitude towards nuclear power is almost indistinguishable from mine, however much of his other written opinion is the antithesis of my long held views.

It doesn’t stop me from visiting this site regularly and reading his work though – life’s rich tapestry and all…

Chris appears to like Confucius. Well here’s another one for him:

“Knowledge is merely brilliance in organization of ideas and not wisdom. The truly wise person goes beyond knowledge.”

Confucius

Chris writes:

“You clearly deride objective science …”

Science is not objective. It is influenced by ‘directionality’, purpose and funding.

However, here is an association dedicated to the pursuit of ‘objectivity in science’ http://www.objectivityinscience.org/ – I’m sure Chris will support its goals.

Chris writes:

“…how does your computer work? All that peer-reviewed scientific …”

I’ve long found the lauding of peer-reviewed publishing comical especially in the context of ‘blog’ discussions.

Some seem (Chris perhaps) to believe the mere fact a paper has been peer-reviewed is a guarantee of its veracity and the quality of the work therein.

Such is their faith in the system of peer-reviewed publishing they are compelled to speak of it in hushed and reverential tones and never question its ‘new truths’.

However, to many others who are not members of the cosy little academic publishing ‘club’, peer-review is merely a superficial technical edit of papers submitted for publication in ‘journals’.

Journals which can no longer be considered anything more than ‘information laundering operations’ for vested interests, be they promoters of AGW or other dodgy ‘discoveries’.

Peer-review does little to prevent the publication of mediocrity and relies on information submitted by the authors of the papers being reviewed no matter how shoddy.

In the vast majority of cases no attempt is made to audit the authors’ research or repeat their experiments.

Some naively believe reviewers to be impartial independent experts, but they are in reality often either competitors or colleagues of the authors of the papers they review.

This cosy “I’ll scratch your back” incestuous relationship leads to the promulgation of so called ‘science’ based on flimsy and at times fraudulent evidence and the rejection of other papers because they don’t suit a reviewer’s ideology.

There are few (if any) journals that require authors to archive and make publicly available the primary data, methods and code used to support the contents of papers published under the pretentious banner of ‘peer review’.

So I couldn’t care less whether the technology used in my shiny black box is as a result of research published in a ‘peer-reviewed’ journal or not.

Chris wrote:

“Perhaps you might inform yourself of the science before forming a strong opinion concerning the climate.”

Here, let me direct Chris to another quote from Glikson’s Seneca:

“Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.”

Seneca

You clearly deride objective science in favour of the superior type of ignorance touted by your favoured political ideologues – how does your computer work? All that peer-reviewed scientific mumbo-jumbo A.K.A. Quantum physics must be some kind of left-wing / communist conspiracy.

Perhaps you might inform yourself of the science before forming a strong opinion concerning the climate.

Or as Confucius put it:

Knowledge without thought is futile; thought without knowledge is perilous.

It’s insane.

If we don’t stop now, we’re in for a world of hurt.

Left-leaning publications and online spaces like webdiary and bravenewclimate provide a reasonably good forum for people like Andrew, just as Online Opinion these days provides a protected space for denialists. People with opposing views are not excluded from either place, just in a minority.

Hanging out in places where you’re in the majority is more comfortable, and it can certainly assist you in ignoring evidence that globally, the positions are far and away the other way around.

It’s politics pure and simple Jeremy C and your side of the argument is fortunately losing traction.

The sad references to ‘Crikey’ and ‘Web Diary’ nail the colours of the AGW cause firmly to the unconscionable left’s mast.

And if you want to give me a real belly laugh just say ‘peer review’.

It’s also amusing that Glikson quotes a ‘stoic’ in his web diary harangue – stoics after all took great pleasure in advocating views which are contrary to common sense.

Cite your peer-reviewed evidence. Full citations are required in detail, including page numbers and paragraphs. No books with hundreds of pages without a hint as to where the supporting reference is [assuming it exists], (this was the ploy recently used by Gerlich and Tscheuschner). There had also better be a lot of evidence, because of the accumulated mountain of P/R evidence that already exists.
Note that sources like ‘Energy & Environment’ and WUWT don’t cut the mustard.

Just because the science isn’t perfect [it never will be], that doesn’t mean that we should see that as a reason to ignore the science.

Like Gareth, I also consider that you are talking b*ll*cks.

Note, your failure to respond substantively, will be taken as a full admission of your deceit.

The long version included positive (amplifying) feedbacks of power concentration, and under resourcing of regulatory power (negative) feedbacks to serve democracy.

Consider what the core function of the IPA and Hartland Institute is. They preach small government and “free market” (wink, wink). Despite supporting governments and policies enforce monopoly protection, barriers to entry, and deliver hobsian choices to the consumers.

These institutes are funded by entrenched concentrated power. They provide the arguments to serve the interests entrenched consolidated power. The current vested interests would be divested of market value if coal and existing energy assets were devalued.

This might seem quite mercenary (and it is) but we live in system where maximising profits in the enforced priority. If an organisation fails to maximise profits, it risks getting bought out, assets stripped, or it directors get replaced or prosecuted for failing to serve the interest of shareholders.

Thanks for the post.

I would like to know why do the denialists do it? What is it about global warming, the science, the efforts to try and do something to avoid disaster that gets them going so?

Is it ideology? With organisations such as the IPA, Heartland etc you would think so but there are also some left wingers who are denialists as well.

Is it ego? A lot of them seem to have extraordinary egos (d’you remember how some denialists used to compare their stance with that of Galileo – I used to find that amazingly funny and so did many other people and so perhaps the collective laughter did penetrate such vanity so that they stopped it).

They do seem to exhibit common characteristics, as you have pointed out, and mainly exhibited around how they both frame and engage over the issues e.g. always challenging Gore, Hansen et al to debates knowing they won’t and then crowing about it, or else putting it in terms of control and ideology which perhaps mirrors how they see life.

I would really like to know what drives them especially over such a serious matter or is it just that there have always been such groups in society and the difference here is its a world circling concern. Or is it that they are just, and I hate to use this term, fanatics. I’m willing for other posters to call me on using this term if I am using it unjustly.

But why do they do this?