December 13, 2009
-
Climategate and The making of Scientist Slaves
If you don’t know what Climategate (aka CRUHack, Swifthack) is, see my last post that lists lots and lots of accounts of it.
My very favorite account I just read and didn’t include in that post. It’s the analysis of the AP. I think it is the most fair and even handed account I’ve read. And I’m generally very critical of the AP. Anyway, here is that account. I highly suggest you read it.
Now here’s my own personal abstract polemical account of what’s been going on in the general society with regards to Science and how Climategate is a part of it:
—————————-
Did you know that if you’re a scientist you are no longer allowed to crack a joke?
Not only that, but you’re not allowed to use any possibly misleading phrases in your work. Nor can you make any passionate phrasing of your opinions about anything. And for goodness sake don’t you DARE insult anybody you don’t like or disagree with. Ever.
At least… not if you write it down and certainly not where anybody can hear you.
Because it’s become clear that we want to create a world that goes beyond the need for mere transparency to the creation of a kind of Scientist slave. Slaves whose every word and thought are subject to the analysis of the Public. Their every word and thought is apparently fully allowed to picked apart and analyzed, misconstrued and misinterpreted to serve political interests and they are not given leave to defend themselves. Scientist puppets who must watch every word they speak and every thought they think to make sure it does not give the appearance of a lack of neutrality or worse yet dares to contradict someone’s previously established point of view.
That I think is the lesson of the so called “climategate” scandal wherein ten years of emails from scientists from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit were blatantly stolen and then mined for a few problematic lines that were then used by the Climate Denial Industry to cast aspersions on the entire Scientific Community and fuel a twisted kind of conspiracy theory narrative that would be laughable if it weren’t so frequently believed.
At current there is no evidence that this was a benevolent “leak” as the story is being told by some. No insider was aghast at the horrible lies being perpetrated within CRU and as a matter of conscience had to sneak out the contents of these emails for the sake of the world. No Judge was consulted when this information was obtained. There was no just cause established or reasonable suspicion ascertained before the emails were made public. The emails were simply stolen. And most likely they were held them until just the right moment, before the Copenhagen talks in order to do maximal damage.
The emails show some carelessness bordering on stupidity by Scientists under extreme pressure by Climate Deniers and who like most people, never imagined that their personal emails would be held up to public scrutiny and review. One thing in the emails is potentially very serious and may represent a criminal act by at most four scientists. That needs to be investigated to be sure, but it not even in conjunction with all the other emails is even the least bit suggestive of a vast climate change conspiracy.
Even if all four of the Scientists in question are totally corrupt that does not say anything about all the other scientists at CRU or their data. Even if every Scientist at CRU is corrupt and all the data from there is suspect, it says nothing about the hundreds of independent Scientists and institutions around the world who have independently using dozens of different data sources come to the same conclusions. And indeed the source data is still readily available in its original unaltered form. Almost every scientist or group of scientists who analyze the data comes to the same conclusions though of course with differing levels of confidence.
The events of the last few weeks have been grotesquely insulting to all scientists everywhere. It suggests that Climate Scientists have no rights to privacy and no rights even to formulate their own opinions in private or to share them in private correspondence. They are apparently not allowed to be passionate in their beliefs or critical of each other’s works not even in the privacy of their own homes.
But maybe you think it’s all reasonable? Scientists should be subject to this level of scrutiny! Science must be pristine, unaltered, unblemished, absolute transparency! Science above all must be PURE!! Everything they say needs to be examined! Otherwise they might pull a fast one on us!
Well then if that’s reasonable, fine. Let’s apply the same exact standard to everyone. Every institution. Every individual. Every email or letter you ever wrote will be exposed to every person in the world to pick over and analyze. And why stop with emails? Let’s do every phone call conversation. Let’s do every online chat. You certainly should no be able to hide behind the anonymity of blogging nor should your private blog entries be safe. No Journal or Diary shall not go un-data mined. And every single conversation you have too. Let’s put it all down record it, put it on paper and provide it for free to the public domain for scrutiny.
I for one can’t wait to see what kinds of dirt we can dig up about a number of high profile corporations! Not to mention a goodly number of politicians. Let the data flood begin!
Actually no. That would be a horrible world. A world without privacy. A shallow world of pretense. A world of sneaking about and looking over our shoulder and fearing being stabbed in our backs. I doubt any of us would be able to stand living in a world like that. The benefit of catching some of the most evil entities red handed, though satisfying, would not be enough to justify the corruption of our world order that would entail.
That standard is unreasonable. Nobody should have their personal emails exposed to the world and picked over and picked over by reporters and anyone with a grudge against you for weeks on end. It isn’t fair for regular people and it certainly isn’t fair for Scientists who in any kind of rational world would hold a position of respect and regard akin to that we hold for teachers, nurses, doctors, and social workers. Oh wait. We treat all those groups pretty damn badly these days too. Sigh…
In the case of these scientists the worst we found was the suggest that certain emails be deleted though we know not the cause or whether or not they were actually deleted. I wonder how many of our email boxes would be similarly pristine when held up to the same level of scrutiny.
Transparency IS important in Science, of that there can be no doubt. But there is a point where transparency goes overboard and you’re not talking about just confirming the validity of scientific exploration. At this point your demand for information starts to look more like a witch hunt with an end result of pacifying or enslaving your targets to the whims of your own beliefs.
Comments (4)
“Climategate (aka CRUHack, Swifthack)”
More evidence of dogmatic, partisan ideology.
You do know that I come here for entertainment, not to actually learn anything, right?
@soccerdadforlife - Oh it’s obvious that you come here simply to be an ass and a troll. Which is perfectly fine, to each his own. But believe me I never imagined that one such as you could be convinced to consider another perspective via facts or reason. Which is why I generally ignore you except when you say something blatantly false in which case I correct the record so that no passerby might be misled by your lies.
@nephyo - Well, if you actually bothered to engage opposing arguments, such as those by McIntyre and McKittrick, who are some of the best-of-class skeptics, you might be taken more seriously. What happened to all your traffic? Don’t you just possibly think that there possibly might be some serious problems with the climate-change data from CRU and Australia?
Let’s think about the questions that should be raised by the climate change alarmists. Does the climate change? Is there a trend to the change? If so, is it short or long? Is it significant? What components are there in the climate change, if it occurs? Is it anthropogenic? If so, how serious is the anthropogenesis?
Now let’s look at questions raised by the climate change skeptics. Where is the raw data that the alarmists used? What’s up with attempts to prejudice the scientific dialogue by messing with the peer review system? The model looks like no matter what data is input, a hockey stick result is always output.
We know that the CCAs have been stonewalling instead of releasing some of the raw data (it may be embarrassing for them to admit that they lost it, but that may be something that can be remedied). We know that there has been some discussion about messing with peer review (this may not be that serious). We know that some of the raw data is missing. This is a problem for the alarmists. However, more serious is the charge that the model is prejudiced as to outcome. None of it looks good for the alarmist contention, which may be a good thing for everybody (except the alarmists, who may lose funding) if long term, anthropogenic climate change is not a significant problem.
I don’t have a horse in this race, other than a view that science needs careful testing and I am always skeptical about modeling arguments in any context. Of course, in my several decades of experience, I’ve seen several wild claims from eco-alarmists (population, oil, nuclear winter, etc.), so I don’t get very excited anymore by alarmists. The empirical data for the last decade has been markedly cooling, so that always weighs heavier in my mind than data from computer models. I used to be convinced that warming was happening until I discovered the empirical evidence for cooling in the last decade.
@soccerdadforlife - You are very odd.
“What happened to all your traffic?”
That’s the second time you brought that up. Why do you have such an obsession with MY traffic? Trust me you are the only one monitoring and worried about how much or little my blog is being read. Nobody cares.
The implication though that the number of people who read my blog has some kind of correlation with the veracity of my claims is nonsense. It’s also a really odd argument for a climate denier to even suggest. For IF it’s the case that sheer numbers of believers or fans makes something true or false then there can be no doubt that Climate Change is real. Nearly every government in the world accepts the truth of Global Warming. There’s many hundreds of scientists who accept Global Warming. And in most countries belief in Global Warming is still held by large majorities of the public as it was in the United States in 2003 though recent negative propaganda may or may have changed that.
But no, it’s ridiculous to say that merely the number of fans of a thing makes it true. The things I wrote in my blog were not guaranteed to be true back when five of my posts were featured on Xanga’s front page and I got hundreds of comments. Nor were the things I wrote in my blog guaranteed to be false in the days before that when I purposefully chose not to interact at all with the Xanga community and got zero comments on 99% of my posts.
Traffic doesn’t mean much. It tends to have to do with how well your site is advertised and how much people like reading what you say and how willing people are to read through what you say. And I’d much rather write things that make people uncomfortable and that challenges them that are true then something that makes people feel good and confirms their pre-existing misconceptions.
I have to ask you though. Why you are here?
You’ve made it clear you think I am too indoctrinated to change my perspective and you’ve already said you don’t come here to learn anything suggesting you aren’t interested in adopting any other persepctive. And if you are so certain my posts get so little traffic, it’s hard to see that you are wasting your time reading and replying it in order to give other readers your perspective in my comments. A better expenditure of your time would be to frequent other more popular blogs. And indeed most of your comments don’t have any content to them. They are just empty snarks so if you are trying to enlighten any possible readers you’re doing a poor job of it. So why are you here? If you don’t like what I write, then it would be easy enough for you to leave.
Oh but you told me. You’re here for “amusement”. Basically you’ve admitted you’re here to troll. Your behavior bears that out too with the empty snarks and only responding with discussion after you’ve triggered a response and with even your “discussion” generally leading with a barb intended to nettle. It could just be your natural style but you’ve certainly exhibited text book trolling behavior and “amusement” is the text book trolling motivation.
In addition to the two statements I’ve already I identified as rather trolling, you made at least two more in your latest response that for lack of a better time I’ll explain right here.
“if you actually bothered to engage opposing arguments, such as those by McIntyre and McKittrick,”
This is ironic and odd considering the vast majority of your comments have not engaged in any of my statements or arguments. Usually as I described above you post “snarks” just like you did in this thread. Or you post a link with no context or discussion. It’s almost as if you hadn’t read my posts at all. Nor am I sure have you followed the many links I’ve posted that lead to sites that have on many occasions dealt directly with the arguments of McIntyre and ClimateAudit. Shall I, in every post go into a detailed description of everything he says that is misleading and disingenuous? No doubt I COULD do that research for you but it’s easy enough to do on your own and most importantly it wasn’t the subject of my posts. My posts have each had specific topics and perspectives that I wanted to express. I did not write them with the intention of pleasing your expectations of what I “should” write. Suggesting that I am avoiding engaging is just a way to cast doubt on what I say. It’s exactly the same strategy used by Climate Deniers even though Climate Scientists regularly engage in the debate about their works every single day and they avoid nothing. There are many sites that go into depth refuting global warming denial. I’ve linked to them before.
“The empirical data for the last decade has
been markedly cooling, so that always weighs heavier in my mind than
data from computer models.”
This is why nothing you say is credible. You stated this before. I refuted it in extreme detail. I posted the actual temperature record. I posted the links that describe in detail how all five of the most popular temperature records coincide. The satellite temperature records most beloved of deniers (even though they are generally less reliable) show a temperature increase of anywhere from 0.12 degrees to 0.20 degrees per Decade depending on how the data has been analyzed. The surface temperature record shows a 0.17 degrees increase per decade. Neither the surface temperature record nor the satellite record show anything that could remotely be called dramatic or marked cooling this decade. None. So either everyone everywhere except your favorite deniers is lying, all thermometers and temperature measurements suddenly don’t work anymore, or you and your favorite deniers are stating things that are blatantly obviously false. Either you trust thermometers or you don’t. Or more likely you are writing this false statement, again, knowingly simply to troll me.
I have to admit I never really understood trolls. What value is there in disrupting a conversation and trying to make people angry? I don’t really get why people find that funny or entertaining in the slightest.
So the real question I ought to be asking is why don’t I follow the generally accepted internet practice for dealing with trolls and just block you? Generally, I’m against blocking though. I don’t see any value in it. Also I’ve certainly seen many trolls boast of being blocked and using it as an absurd kind of evidence of their “victory”. Trolling is after all inherently linked to bullying and the pleasure bullies get from bullying is often greatest when they get the target to back down.
And the only other generally accepted approaches to dealing with trolls, are reverse trolling (also known as troll baiting) and ignoring. I’m generally not very skilled in the trolling arts nor do I enjoy it, so the first has been out of the question Though I have to admit that *this* comment could certainly be seen as a kind of reverse trolling. It’s generally not my style and I think the history of this blog bears that out. Generally, I ignore trolls unless they are egregious.
So why am I writing this rather lengthy reply to you now? Partly because I am indeed curious as to why you are here, in case your motivation runs deeper than simple desire to amuse yourself by trolling. Perhaps it is simply the environmental and health care related posts that you enjoy trolling but there are other posts that you have an interest in? Perhaps you really ARE interested in engaging in a meaningful dialogue and simply spoke in haste and in error when you said you only came here for amusement. Perhaps some event occurred in the past that I long forgot that engendered in you this grudge against me that you feel a need to carry out in insulting mocking comments on my blog? Who knows. I thought that it was at least worth the effort to at least ask you.
But primarily, I am responding because I feel I would be remiss if I did not explain to you exactly why it is that I, barring any kind of change on your part, am going to completely ignore you from now on. As I almost certainly should have CONTINUED to do. But I could not help myself this time.