Quick Hitts

The newest Quick Hitts Podcast, “Ask Dave,” is now available for your listening pleasure.  It explains how people can believe the earth is 6,000 years old, why parents should buy red washcloths, and things to consider before naming your baby “Thor.”

A couple of weeks ago Rich White sent me an electronic copy of his book “Smokescreens, The Truth About Tobacco.”  It’s clear and well written and he provides a good explanation of anti-tobacco research, including not only the science, but the politics behind it.  I especially liked his chapters on second hand smoke.

You can find excerpts from the book, and the book itself, at his site, Smoke Screens.

Here’s a commercial you’ll never see on American TV.

Spin is always entertaining, especially when it’s obvious and poorly done.

A couple of years ago it was revealed that Al Gore, the poster child for the Global Warming Will Kill Us All movement, used thirty times more electricity at one of his three mansions than any of his neighbors.  The apologists spin was pathetic.  “He has a huge staff.”  “He buys carbon offsets.”  (Yes, from a company he owns.)  “He’s installing solar panels and making the mansion more green.”

A year later, after his greening of the mansion, he used even more electricity.

“He’s not really our poster boy.”  (Yeah, right.)  “It’s irrelevant.  It doesn’t change the facts.”  (He has a long history of getting his facts wrong.)  “It doesn’t matter.  Only the evidence matters.”

They were right on the last one.  Facts are facts even if the primary spokesman is an egotistical hypocrite whose lifestyle completely contradicts his message.  It’s reasonable, though, to expect an issue’s primary spokesman to set a personal example.  Gandhi’s message would have been a just a little less effective if he delivered it wearing a Brooks Brothers Suit and a pair of natty oxfords.

Now the spinners are desperately trying to do damage control on the hacked e-mails that reveal a pattern of leading AGW experts trying to bury information, hide data and discredit critics.

Here’s how to do real science.  First you come up with a hypothesis.  Then you try to disprove it.   If you can’t, the next step is to give other scientists a shot at disproving it.  If they can’t then maybe, just maybe, you’ve discovered something worthwhile.

There are things you don’t do if you’re a real scientist, especially if you and your collogues are the leading scientists on global warming.  (Paragraphs in italics are direct quotes from these e-mails.  Bolding is mine.)

You don’t delete data.  Ever.

“Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. . .
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?”

You don’t change it either.

*”[T]ry and change the Received date! Don’t give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.”

And most importantly, you don’t screw with the data itself.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.“

When the data doesn’t support your conclusions you don’t blame the data or your instruments.

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

You make all your data freely available to any qualified parties who ask for it.  You don’t hide behind legal contrivances or other technicalities to keep it hidden.  (FOI refers to the Freedom of Information laws.)

The skeptics will try to hang on to something, but I don’t want to give them something clearly tangible. Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions not to respond – advice they got from the Information Commissioner. As an aside and just between us, it seems that Brian Hoskins has withdrawn himself from the WG1 Lead nominations. It seems he doesn’t want to have to deal with this hassle.
The FOI line we’re all using is this. IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI – the  Skeptics have been told this. Even though we (MOHC, CRU/UEA) possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don’t have an obligation to pass it on.

In another e-mail he says:

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? – our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.

We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it!

You answer and debate your critics.  You don’t ever try to silence them.

This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…

In another e-mail he says:

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !

And so now the spin starts.

The first spin is “This data was stolen!”  That’s true, but irrelevant.  (The Pentagon Papers comes to mind.)  It’s the content that matters.

We’re told that scientists use the word “trick” to describe a clever technique.  I’m not a scientist, but I’ve worked in close proximity to them and heard hundreds of their conversations.  It was always fascinating, even when I couldn’t understand everything (or, sometimes, anything) they were saying.  I never heard them use the word “trick” that way.  “Hack?” Yes.  “Kludge?” Yep.  “Trick?” Never. And the spinners haven’t come up with an explanation for “to hide the decline,” although I’m sure they will.

We’re told this is all quote mining taken out of context.  Fortunately, we now have access to a database of all the e-mails to see if that’s true.  I checked all the ones listed in this article, and reading them in context makes them more damning, not less.

I’ve seen articles insisting that this proves nothing.  It’s just a few scientists having a private conversation.  It doesn’t show any kind of vast conspiracy, orders from the UN, secret cabals, etc.  That’s true.  What it does show is worse: respected leaders of the AGW movement showing serious contempt for the basic rules, conventions and practices that make science work.   That’s enough, and  far more damning than any shadowy conspiracy theory.

The practice True Believer’s got spinning the Al Gore story will come in handy trying to spin this mess, but even with the mass media on their side it may prove to be too Herculean a task. This goes much deeper than  a power bill from one errant hero.

True Believers will never change their mind any more than Kirk Cameron will admit that today’s bananas are the result of evolution. They’ll make excuses and nod knowingly at each other. On the other side, hard core deniers will say “See, see, this proves that there’s absolutely no such thing as global warming,” and they’ll be just as wrong.  Real Skeptics (I count myself among them) will become more skeptical.

The real damage to the movement will be the effect on people who are still sitting on the fence. This is going to have a tremendous influence on their conclusions, and if True Believers can spin enough to prevent that, we should wire them up to generators.  It will create have enough free power to solve the global energy problem and render the question moot.

Someone asked this question on Ask The Atheists.  This was my answer:

• A skeptical viewpoint that will make you much less susceptible to scams and rip-offs. You won’t be as likely to risk your health on alternative medicines, fall prey to con-men, swallow the latest pseudoscience scare, etc.
• Time. The religious waste an enormous amount of time on church and church related nonsense. You get all that time back and can use it however you like.
• Money. See: Time.
• Laughter. Many faiths have no sense of humor, especially about themselves. As an atheist you can enjoy the comedy of artists like Mr. Deity, Pat Condell and Tim Minchin.
• The Pursuit of The Answer to Life’s Biggest Question: Why Are We Here? Godders tell us we’re here to worship the big sky daddy. How boring. As an atheist, you get to decide your purpose (or purposes) in life, and you’re free to change your mind anytime.
• And best of all, bacon. Tasty, tasty bacon.

Pfizer is abandoning the New London, CT site where their greed led to abolishing property rights for every single American.

The city of New London sold 24 acres of land to Pfizer for ten bucks, but Pfizer didn’t want to have to look at the older houses that dotted the waterfront.  They claimed they wanted the property to build hotels and convention centers, so the city used eminent domain to force people out of their homes, with the intention of handing their property over to Pfizer.  It resulted in a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Eminent domain, which was intended for building public works like roads, bridges, dams and the like, had been abused by local governments for decades.  They’d confiscate private property and hand it over to companies.  This was a chance to put an end to it.

The Court, once again demonstrating their supreme ignorance of the constitution and the intent of the founding fathers, issued a 5-4 ruling saying such theft was perfectly OK.   The ruling essentially eliminated private property.  Anyone could lose their home or business if anyone else could convince a few local politicians they’d pay more property taxes or build a prettier building.

Pfizer promised over three thousand new jobs and tax payments of $1.2 million dollars a year.  They built their facility and moved 1400 people there.  Now, in an attempt to prove they’re even viler than we thought, they’re pulling most of them out, and are looking to sell or lease the property.  The grand hotels and convention centers they promised to build on the property they stole from the homeowners never materialized.  Those lots are now covered with rubble.

So now, after flipping off every property owner in the country, Pfizer is giving the final finger to the town that helped them create the mess.  I can only surmise that Pfizer has some mad scientists in their research division who have figured out how to distill pure evil into a pill, which they provide to their executives, the politicians of New London and at least five Supreme Court Justices.

The Pew Research Center just released a survey about the public perception of media bias.  Before reading the rest of this article, check out the results and rate your own reaction.  How many times did you say “What The Fuck?”

First we have to ask if the survey itself is biased.  If it had been done by Media Matters, FAIR or Accuracy in Media, taking their biases into account would mean we’d have to discard the results, which would make this a very short article.  But Pew has been around for a long time and has earned a great reputation.  We can be confident the numbers accurate.

This is a survey of people’s perception of bias, not actual bias.  That’s fine, because bias can’t be accurately measured.  It’s often subtle, coming down to the choice of adverbs or adjectives or the prominence given to specific stories.  Like pornography, I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I watch it.

Here are the WTFs I found in the survey:

The first one is minor and expected – the green band in the middle.  Every news organization is biased, but when that bias is the same as a viewer’s, the viewer mistakenly views the outlet as unbiased.  It’s disappointing that a third of the people suffer from this blindness, but not surprising.

Next comes the rating for MSNBC.  I find it amazing that anyone could think MSNBC bias is tied with CNN and NBC.  While the latter are obviously lefty, MSNBC is as far to the left as Fox is to the right.  I can only conclude that people with this opinion have TVs with very poor audio.  With better sound systems they’d have noticed that every time a lefty is interviewed on MSNBC you can hear faint slurping sounds coming from under the desk.

14% think Fox is mostly liberal, and ABC and CBS are mostly conservative, and 11% think the rest of the lefties are mostly conservative?  WTF!

The biggest WTF, though, comes from the preponderance of liberalism in the news.  While we can argue about the precision of these perceptions, the general results are bang on – Fox is right wing and all the others are left wing.  Half the US population calls themselves conservative, but only one out of six organizations is smart enough to take advantage of that.  The rest cling to their liberalism and wonder why they’re losing viewers faster than fundamentalist teenagers are losing their virginity.  All of them, except MSNBC, have been in business longer than Fox, so they have far more experience and should have more business acumen, but instead they keep to their lefty ways and wonder where all their viewers went.  What The Fuck?