By Dr. Tim Ball
The most recent aberration of climate science is the apparent cherry picking of ocean temperature data by government scientists, Richard Feely and Christopher Sabine. The objective is not to determine what is happening, but why it is happening, and then link it to a human cause. This, cart before the horse approach, was the raison d’etre of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from the start. In order to emphasize why it is happening, it helps to detail, for politicians, the damaging effects. In this case, it is the deleterious impact of human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere that is not only causing warming, but, they claim, also changing the acidity level of the oceans (ocean acidification). All this challenges the claim that humans are distinctive as the “moral ape” a concept explored over 2000 years ago in Aesop’s fable of, “The Apes and Two Travellers”.
Kudos goes to Marita Noon for bringing this story to our attention. Disturbing, beyond what they did, is that they see nothing wrong with their actions. Worse, they reject the explanation. This behavior in climate science appears to reflect the mentality developed in western society, and is summarized beautifully in the cartoon.
These aberrations are part of a wider trend, ironically identified by Osama Bin Laden when he said the west has lost its moral direction. The fact we don’t want his moral direction either, doesn’t make it any less true.
The problem is multiple in its forms, but simple in its trend and essentially summarized by two modern dictums.
· You only broke the law, or the rules, if you got caught. Even if you get caught, you brazen it out with the help of a lawyer and/or a public relations person.
· If you are not with me, you must be against me. Only listening to or associating with like-minded people reinforces this. A recent WUWT article underlined the degree to which this occurs, when the author opened by saying he did something unusual, he read the “alarmists” web site RealClimate.
As usual, the response by Sabine was more an attempted cover-up. It, and the original article, reveals another example of the climate scientist’s art of cherry picking and believing that the end justifies the means. Roseanne D’Arrigo was the first to put this on the public record as reported by Steve McIntyre.
“D’Arrigo put up a slide about “cherry picking” and then she explained to the panel that that’s what you have to do if you want to make cherry pie.”
D’Arrigo was preceded by the first major exposure of cherry picking in the IPCC climate science by Benjamin Santer in the 1995 Report. Only a few, including Fred Singer, Fredrick Seitz and John Daly, knew what was done. The cover-up was relatively easy, especially when the big guns of the New York Times and the Guardian were fired.
Santer’s changes were spotted early, but Nature, a journal that was freindly to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) gang, didn’t publish the rebuttals until 5 months later (12 Dec 1996). One identified the cherry picking, the other a natural explanation for the pattern. By then the PR cover up was under way. On July 25, 1996 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) sent a letter of defense to Santer. The letter is evidence of CRU influence and a PR masterpiece. It narrowed the focus to two questions, the science, and society’s reaction. They said the only relevant science was in “peer-reviewed scientific publications – not the media. This challenged who controlled information. The Internet is the final stage of democracy, because it took information out of the hands of a few and into the hands of everybody. The AMS argued for their retention of control of information and thereby the debate.
“What is important scientific information and how it is interpreted in the policy debates is an important part of our jobs.” “That is, after all, the very reasons for the mix of science and policy in the IPCC.”
John Daly correctly called this “Scientism”.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/no_author/climate-and-truth/
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