One problem with the recent discussion of epistemic closure (or, in my preferred terminology) agnotology ( (that is, the manufacture and maintenance of ignorance) on the US[1] political right is that a lot of it has been discussed in fairly abstract terms. However, there is a fair bit of agreement that climate change is both a key example, and that the rightwing construction of a counternarrative to mainstream science on this issue marks both an important example, and a major step in the journey towards a completely closed parallel universe of discourse.
Climate change as a whole is too big and complicated to be useful in understanding what is going on, so it is useful to focus on one particular example, which does not require any special knowledge of climate science or statistics. The Oregon Petition, commonly quoted as showing that “31000 scientists reject global warming” not only fits the bill perfectly but was raised by Jim Manzi in his critique of Mark Levin.
So, it provides a useful test case for understanding the agnotology of the right.
The Oregon Petition has been around since the 1990s, so it’s had plenty of time to to be checked out. A 1998 version attracted 17000 signatures, and a subsequent effort in 2008 brought the total to 31000.
Here’s the Wikipedia article, a further debunking from DeSmogBlog and here’s my own investigation from 2002. Some basic points
* “Scientist’ In this petition means anyone who claims to have gone to university (initially, they had to claim some study of science subjects). The number of actual (PhD with published research) scientists who reject any part of the mainstream consensus on climate change is far smaller (Wikipedia provides a list of such scientists who have at least one published article)
* The petition and its reporting are dishonest in obvious ways (fake PNAS style, misreporting of the content) etc
* The promoters, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine are obvious fruitcakes
These points are easy for anyone to check, and have been so widely reproduced that a majority of the top hits on Google are debunkings. Yet, until Manzi’s takedown of Levin, I’m not aware of anyone on the conservative side of politics who has criticised the petition. On the contrary, it has been uncritically reproduced time after time (here, here, here, and a long list (with a further thorough debunking here)
To put it simply, you would have to be either a fool or a liar to suggest that this exercise had any credibility. Yet as far as I can tell, Jim Manzi is the first person on the right to offer overt criticism of this exercise, and the reaction he received suggests he will probably be the last. But the reactions Manzi received certainly give us some insight into the agnotological processes at work on the right. Essentially no-one (feel free, as always to point out exceptions) cared at all about the facts of the matter: are there really 31 000 scientists who dispute mainstream global warming theory? Rather, most of the responses amounted to circling the wagons in one form or another.
The best way to understand the rightwing approach is in legalistic terms – the aim is present advocacy for the general proposition “We are good, people who are Not Like Us are bad”. Since this is advocacy rather than analysis, it’s OK to present only evidence that supports your case, and to obfuscate or ignore disconfirming evidence. And, as in standard legal argument, it’s OK to argue simultaneously for multiple, mutually inconsistent hypotheses, as long as they all support the same final conclusion.
To switch analogies, it’s like a game of basketball scored in talking points. Fouls (in this context, talking points which get discredited) are just part of the game, with the object being to get away with as many as possible on your side, and to draw as many from the other side as possible (of course, this objective is subordinate to the overall goal of scoring as many points as possible).
So, with something like the Oregon petition, the archetypal rightwinger would simultaneously advocate all of the following:
* The petition shows that 31 000 scientists reject AGW (lots of examples above)
* There is no scientific consensus supporting AGW, so even if lots of the petition signatories aren’t really scientists, the main claim behind it is correct (see, for example, here)
* The scientific consensus supporting AGW is wrong, and its proponents are dishonest, so its OK to present non-scientists as scientists if that will promote the truth Here, particularly in comments
* AGW is being used to promote statist policies, so, even if the hypothesis is true, it should be criticised in order to undermine support for such policieshere
* Even if policies like emissions trading schemes aren’t really statist, and are a response to a real problem, they have been put forward by environmentalists and liberals (people who are Not Like Us) and must therefore be opposed by any means necessary. (implicit in just about everything written on this topic – can anyone locate an explicit version of this?).
Although this example is particularly clear-cut, it’s not atypical. Look at rightwing discussion of almost any topic (any environmental issue, health care in the US, Obama’s personal history, WMDs, effects of tax cuts and many more) and you’ll find factoids doing the rounds even though five minutes with Google would show that they are absurdly wrong.
This kind of thinking is by no means unique to the contemporary right. But it is ubiquitous, and the staying power of the Oregon petition indicates way. Even the silliest claim, once made part of the canon must be defended to the last. In extreme cases, there is the option of dropping an utterly discredited talking point and then saying “we never said that”. This is one thing the Internet has made much harder, with the perverse result that obstinacy in error has become more entrenched.
Since it’s usual to claim some kind of symmetry in these things, I’d invite examples of similar things on the left. To lay down some ground rules, I’m looking for simple, and obviously false, factual claims, not leftwing beliefs about complex issues that you might think are held in the face of strong contrary evidence (that is, to take the analogy above, things like the Oregon petition, rather than AGW ‘scepticism’ as a whole). Also, I’m not interested in beliefs held by some fringe groups on the left, but only in claims that are generally accepted by mainstream liberals/progressives/social democrats, or at least widely stated and never repudiated.
fn1. All of this applies to the large section of the Australian right, particularly in the commentariat, that takes its cue from the US. However, for the right as a whole, the process is rather less advanced here.
John Quiggin 
Well there are 2 gems, Hank Roberts’ avatar and bill’s comment.
@bill
Agnotasaur – I like it, but I don’t think it quite does justice to Tony G’s contributions. Rather than “Agnotasaur” maybe he is better characterised as the “Agnotologised” – the unwitting tool of those devising the Agnotologic memes. As far as I know he doesn’t create any memes, just dutifully propagates them and AFAIK he doesn’t have anything material to gain by doing all his good work.
Tony G’s comment is up just as I’ ve come from a Facebook page that has a newspaper report on the gulf oil spill.
BP we already know about.
It seems the accident is likely to have occurred because of dodgy components and work involving- you guessed it- Halliburton.
But we are not supposed to have the brains to join the dots and if we do, folk like Terje and Tony G will apply such strenuous obfuscations derived of such prostitutions of intellect, to justify the nakedly unjustifiable, that you gasp, then really wonder at the mentality of these pocket Salusinzskys and Miranda Devines.
“Agnotology”.
Well, have seen two separate links, one from LP, one from Facebook, describing Ron Paul’s homepage carrying the tale that the rig was actually torpedoed by the North Koreans.
After twenty minutes, am still too shocked to laugh..
@fran
Well, isn’t that this cuckoo-like species ‘native’ territory; on someone else’s patch, furious, repeating itself endlessly, and with a hide and skull that’s impervious to penetration?
I cast no aspersions whatsoever over this site or its regulars…
@bill
As you’d know, a cuckoo is by definition, an invader, who tries to supplant the offspring of the bird whose nest it invades (sometimes tossing the rivals out) so as to be fed in their place.
JQ – I suppose that it is better to be regarded as a basically honest propagator of lies than just a garden variety liar but I’m still feeling slighted by your unsubstantiated slur.
My honest understanding of “hide the decline” is that the curve fitted to a set of proxy temperature data points exhibited a downward slope at the end point. The downward slope was not statistically significant but nor was it asthetically pleasing in the conext of saying the world is heating up. To improve the asthetics of the curve the proxies were blended with actual temperature measurements over recent decades and the resultant curve passed off as one more of many historical temperature reconstructions that showed a warming trend. This data polishing technique, driven by a desire to market a particular message, was supported in private by the likes of Michael Mann despite his previous public remarks that such splicing of data was not appropriate and was never done by practitioners in the field.
Is this fraud? As I said earlier when you used the word I’m not sure it is technically correct. However I don’t think what happened was appropriate and in my mind it represents a case of being so caught up in selling a given conclusion that you are willing to polish the data to remove an asthetic aberation that makes the data look to the casual observer slightly less convincing.
Does this prove AGW is false? Firstly no it doesn’t. Secondly who cares, it isn’t the point. The point is that somebody tried to pass themself off as offering scientific data whilst engaging in marketing a message by playing silly games with the data.
@bill
Perhaps you should quite rightly (caste aspersions) Bill. Lots of us do already. Join the club. But our mission is to point out to the great “brainwashed” their own personal failings…
Is that not a deserving reason to tolerate some of the “regulars.”??
If I remember correctly the tree ring data from some latitudes – and only some (northern ) latitudes – diverged from the temperature and all other proxy records after about 1960. The ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ was a statistical device used to reconcile this tree ring data.
You can call that ‘selling a conclusion’ if you wish, but that rather means you have to wear it when the same high standards are applied to your own arguments, don’t you think?
I also seem to recall that he actually said this more than a decade ago. During which intervening time all the other data has continued to back?.. our side. Without exception. (Waits for squawks about ’98, ’95, ’05, or whichever is the denier ‘decline’ starting date du jour)
@TerjeP (say Taya)
I also considered you basically honest and fair minded. But what you are doing here is not satisfactory because:
1. I take your second paragraph as given, without acknowledging its content corresponds to the conclusions reached by the investigating committees. I make this point because I do not wish to rely on my memory and this paragraph is not crucial.
2. The crucial bit concerns your last pargraph. You write: “Does this prove AGW is false? Firstly no it doesn’t. Secondly who cares, it isn’t the point. The point is that somebody tried to pass themself off as offering scientific data whilst engaging in marketing a message by playing silly games with the data.”
3. Suppose it were the case that an individual scientist has, on one ocasion, not worked to the highest standards, then this is clearly a matter to be dealt with by the employer institution and any scientific association to which the scientist belongs.
4. The scientific conclusion on AGW is of public interest. You acknowledge that you have no evidence that AGW is a false.
5. To say, as you do, that the conclusion in 4. is ‘not the point’ but 3 is, means you are confusing the public interest with the interest of an employer institution and scientific associations. I would call this a categorical error in your argument. In this regard, may I refer to #33, p2, regarding my little note on the ‘signature of scientists’ in the case in question.
“The point is that somebody tried to pass themself off as offering scientific data whilst engaging in marketing a message by playing silly games with the data”.
Jeez, for a second there I thought that sentence was a perfect descriptor of denier SOP … but then realised it was written by Terje so it could only be targetted at professional climate scientists rather than Carter/Watts/McIntyre/Plimer/Monckton (take your pick).
Can we have a comment from you Terje on the cherry-picking of the above ‘No warming since 1998’ crowd … I mean we’ve just had the warmest decade on record haven’t we ?
TerjeP (say Taya), there have been papers such as Ammann and Eugene Wahl of Alfred University who have analysed the Mann-Bradley-Hughes (MBH) climate field reconstruction and reproduced the MBH results using their own computer code which contradict McIntyre and McKitrick findings that 15th century global temperatures rival those of the late 20th century and therefore make the hockey stick-shaped graph inaccurate. No bull.
@bill
Bill that one went straight over the cuckoo’s head Im afraid..
mosh,
Jones and Mann are the ringleaders of a gang of so-called scientists who are scamming us on climate change. No one else on the planet is smart enough to scientifically publish conclusive evidence refuting their lies. In return for their scamming genius the scientists get handsomely rewarded by gullible taxpayers.
As Gavin Schmidt gloats “For reference, that is $820,000 over 8 years (3 grants I think), and funded 4 graduate students, my salary and a couple of research associates. And note that 50% goes right off the top as overhead. Work out how big the lap of luxury it is that I was sitting in”.
Terje,
You have stated on this blog that Phil Jones deliberately obstructed FOI. Don’t let the naysay’ers deter you from continuing to propogate the truth.
Hiding the sinister decline in a spurious tree ring data that doesn’t represent global temperature is very wrong. We should only ever use one data set for scientific reporting.
Iain, interesting comment but of little epistemological value.
So Terje, you think it’s OK to level accusations of fraud on the basis of disagreements over how to splice data together, but you’re cool with stealing and misrepresenting emails, and the obvious dishonesty of, among others, Plimer (falsehoods about volcanoes repeated despite being regularly refuted), Monckton (communist world government), Wegman (plagiarism on a massive scale), the claim that “hide the decline” referred to a decline in global temperatures, the slanders of people like Iain and Tony G. and so on.
Fair enough, but don’t expect me to stop calling you out for propagating and excusing the lies that are all your side has to offer in this debate.
@John H.
It is true that there are some who support an extreme ‘blank slate’ version of human nature. But it is also true that there are others at the other extreme. Pinker tends toward that other extreme and tends to uncritical to any explanation for what he sees as supporting evidence except what he strongly believes. This is the weakness of much research in this area and is what makes much of his endeavors less than scientific.
Pinker tends toward that other extreme and tends to uncritically reject any other possible explanation for what he sees as supporting evidence except the explanation he strongly wishes to believe.
John, it has been reported Labor’s new resources rent tax of 40% will have no impact on the mining sector as the structural tailwinds behind the sector are so strong that tax increases won’t derail for the long-term emerging-markets story remains quite positive contradicting the dishonest scaremongering Coalition’s position.
John – I have said on this very blog that Plimer was being dishonest regarding volcanos. In terms of the emails I don’t know who or how them became public domain and neither do you. They may have been stolen or leaked. And I’ll say again that fraud is your chosen word not mine.
@Michael of Summer Hill
I can’t see the tax going forward at all – the combination of press coverage and mining claims and the use of superannuation to lead people to believe their interests are aligned with big corporate interests via the share market will work against any substantive tax. I hope I’m wrong but I think it will be watered down and/or pushed so far forward as to be meaningless
Avatar stolen and slightly modified from:
http://www.cracked.com/funny-3809-internet-argument-techniques/
Gregh, the 40% levy on the petroleum industry has not hurt them. Have to go.
@Michael of Summer Hill
I don’t think the issue of tax or not wil be decided on substantive grounds ie on the economics – instead it will be decided on political grounds. Who will win the marketing campaign – the govt or the mining industry. I think mining as they will probably have the support of the media. But if that support can be swung toward the govt then the tax will go forward. Will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few days.
Perhaps a way to get this thread back on track would be examples of claims without evidence made by both sides of politics.
The ability of IT to revolutionise education (or business, or administration) would seem to be a big one.
Inflation is always bad would be another.
Terje – the “decline” referred to is a decline in correlation between some tree ring data and recorded temperatures. Tree ring data is a proxy affected by many factors, which cannot be assumed to be constant. Where the proxy reconstruction diverges from the record, researchers re-align the series to accord with the recorded temperatures. This has been patiently explained, in detail, many times, in easily-accessible places. Would you rely on hearsay in other areas of importance?
My observation that the base of belief against AGW is wider than for most delusions referred to the general population. There are very very few scientists in the field who challenge AGW.
While funding by industry is part of the story. Anxiety on the part of those who think AGW challenges the ideology of the free market and liberty is another. I think maybe a third factor is a half-grasped notion of the consequences of a slowdown in growth in the context of increasing economic difficulty among the general population and strong pressure from elites to gain and hold a greater share – more severe in the US than here. I do not think that so many people can be deluded for so long without some stronger factor than propaganda.
@James
another claim made by both sides would be that people (read ‘the young’) are different now
@TerjeP (say Taya)
They (Mann et al) explained what they did in the scientific article(s), and have published further scientific commentary posing the question as to why that particular set of tree ring proxy data would be consistent with the other tree ring proxy data series, but then go flat/downwards (ie the decline) near the end of the time period when other tree ring proxy data did not. In other words, something weird happened near the end of the time period for that particular tree ring proxy data, when compared with what happened for the other data sets used in the study. Until the reasons for the decline in that subset of tree ring proxy data are understood, it’s difficult to know what to make of it.
In the study they (Mann et al) used actual thermometric data to replace that particular set of tree ring proxy data, but only from the start of the down trend through to the end of the time period under analysis. They are clear that they have done this and why. Therefore it is not fraud. It is reasonable for other scientists to question whether the “decline” in that subset of data should have been treated in this way, compared with just including it anyway, or dropping the whole subset and treating it as suspect, or even using both proxy and thermometric data for the time period in question.
They haven’t hidden the decline in the sense that they’ve tried to conceal its existence from anyone in the scientific community or the relevant science journalist community. Once the data is used by third parties – policy advisors, politicians – it crosses from the realm of scientific discourse to the realm of political discourse, and so does the interpretation of the graphical representations of the scientific results. The political realm is one in which the details get the spin cycle treatment, and it’s where nuance and disclaimers present in the scientific discourse get promoted or dropped in the political discourse. To what extent various scientists anticipate this treatment of their scientific articles in the political realm, I cannot say, except to observe that the lead time from fieldwork to analysis, writeup and publication is a long one, in which case the political caravan may have moved on well before the article hits the scientific community at large. Quite some prescient trick to know to “hide the decline” well before the first political use of it could potentially occur.
If the 40 per cent tax does slow down extraction, and it may slow down extraction a bit, that is hardly a problem. Those resources simply stay in the ground to be extracted and sold at a higher price down the track, which in not necessarily a bad thing. Also, slowing down the boom is not necessarily a bad thing either. Because the boom is already creating significant distortions and dislocations in the Australian economy. New home starts are significantly lower than they otherwise would be, because similar resources are used in mining. These missing houses bump up rents and put upward pressure on house prices. A variety of people are getting significant windfall gains from the resource boom; the 40 per cent tax will simply spread those benefits wider. The resources are Australian resources, not the resources of the mining companies. Australia and Australian governments would be remise to simply continue to give this wealth away.
Abbott is being his predictable opportunist self in supporting mining companies against the interests of Australians. Supporting big mining, which has in the past been a bountiful sponsor of right wing think tanks, is probably good opportunist politics for the coalition. If Abbott continues to sing their tune, he can probably expect ‘rivers of gold’ to flow into coalition coffers.
Look forward, between now and the election, to more ‘chicken little’ talk about the crushing impacts on mining, on jobs, on super funds, from Abbott, the coalition, from mining interests, the Murdoch media, and from various paid lackeys mainly employed by ‘think tanks’.
I haven’t yet read all comments other than the first page. This is indeed a toughie, and I don’t have much to contribute. I was thinking about left conspiracies that I used to entertain 2 decades ago but killed when I decided to try them with evidence – they may jolt other thoughts.
1) CIA was involved with The Dismissal. A very local conspiracy, so few followers. No evidence and pretty dead nowadays – and probably very few followers long time ago, like me and a mate 🙂
2) Oil companies colluding together to buy up and suppress alternate forms of energy/motor transport. IE the tech exists but those that know are paid off, knocked off to keep it hushed. (for sure, oil companies will bribe pollies to keep subsidies flowing their way thus stifling research and innovation, that’s not a conspiracy – I’m talking about the conspiracy to keep currently available and viable alternates crushed – ie Pritchard’s steam car (of the 80s I think) was crushed by big business rather than just not being taken up by consumers/govt fleet). Yeah, I had this for a little while too – again, no evidence and whilst I sort of wish it was true, there’s nothing to back it and plenty to counter.
But I don’t think there’s a left position on these 2, even though a few may have held them – so it doesn’t make JQ’s cut and can’t hold a candle to the Oregon Petition and the global scientific conspiracy corrupting all data for their grants.
Terje, do you really think the theft and subsequent handling of stolen goods would be morally different if it were (as has been plausibly suggested) an inside job, ie a leak rather than a hack. Either way, the criminal stole and published other people’s private email.
Would you be happy with your office being robbed as long as it was done by a fellow-worker and not an outside thief? I’d find this worse, not better.
Terje, if someone knows that a crucial report has been suppressed, that it has potentially high impact upon the direction of a government policy, or upon criminal activity (eg police corruption), then they might be justified in “leaking” it to the press and/or public. It is harder to appreciate how releasing a hotpotch of teasers scattered across 13 years is justified – that should be up to any legal authority acting upon the leaked report, for example. If the leaking of something is in fact utterly unjustified, that may expose the whistleblower to criminal or civil charges, depending upon the effect of the leak (to the original party).
In the case of leaking a report, the protection for doing it is a whistleblower’s claim of leaking because of the moral harm in not leaking it. For example, the leaking of the airport security report by the author had the direct result of forcing $200 million of security upgrades and changes to security processes. The previous government – Howard government – had tried to bury that particular information while putting a good spin on the airport security, and that is why the leak was justifiable. Mind you, it didn’t help the whistleblower any – he was targetted by an unhappy government – but them’s the breaks. Furthermore, a whistleblower is an “insider” concerning the detailed knowledge of the problem they are attempting to redress. In the case of releasing a thin gruel of selected emails – CRU case in point – covering an extended period of time, and very likely chosen by an outside party and not by an insider, well and truly crosses the line between whistleblower leaking, and criminal access and theft of material. I might think that a company is doing something immoral but as an outsider what I think is no justification for me to break and enter (electronically or physically). Instead I should take my suspicions to the police or other appropriate authority, and let them decide if my evidence, or lack of provides sufficient grounds for action.
Gotta go.
John,
Would it be morally different – yes.
Would it change how happy people are – probably not.
The moral argument for theft isn’t that tough. Those that advocate legalised theft (taxation) rationalise it all the time on the basis of utility and the greater good. I think the legalisation of theft should be kept to an absolute minimum and I think those that leaked / stole the email should face potential legal sanctions if caught. However the legal and moral question are not equivalent. I don’t think you should be legally allowed to steal somebodies axe. But if your axe is handy and I need it to knock open the door of a burning house to rescue some imperiled children then I’ll happily steal.
Now answer me this. If my neighbour steals from me with the help of the government should I be happier than when she steals from me despite the government opposing it? Arguably the former is a more miserable predicament.
Donald – my personal hunch is that the creation of the file was an inside job. I suspect insiders also released it but I’m more circumspect on this point.
Terje, your axe argument is spurious – it is covered by the defence of necessity. When in a hole, it is best not to keep digging.
That would entail a spade not an axe.
This might be ‘examples from the left’ of the sort you’re looking for, though minor compared to the Oregon Petition thing:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascienceblogs.com+pacific+garbage
A couple of needed corrections by advocates — one made, the other not yet made — are also noted here: http://blogs.chron.com/climateabyss/2010/04/forests_declining.html
Of course these are examples of people pointing out the problems, not propagating them, which may ruin them as counterpoints.
The main point, Terje, is that you are endorsing or excusing theft and invasion of privacy which were then used to promote defamatory lies, causing substantial personal suffering for those affected, such as Phil Jones. I’m amazed you still don’t see this.
And the fact that no-one else on the right is troubled at all by this or by the fact (of which even the slowest of them must be dimly aware) that their “experts” have no regard for the truth ought to be troubling you. We are seeing a trickle of defections in the US as people (sometimes quite surprising people like David Frum) find this too much to take. But apparently your tribal loyalties trump everything else.
Jones is a public servant and the computers that he and his cohorts used for the emails were also funded by the public purse. The information that he collated and decided not to make a available, was also publicly funded. He doesn’t own it, the public that funded it do. If a third party decides that the theft (hoarding) of that public property (emails, information and research) by Jones is not satisfactory, then for the public good the whistle blower is entitled to release it. Stuff Jones privacy.
It is more than apparent that Jones and the little clique of climate scientists have been less than transparent and forthcoming with their workings. All of Jones’ work and the emails are public property and as such there can be no theft or invasion of privacy in relation to his climate work.
@Tony G
Awesome! I’m going to head down to my local university now and empty all the staff’s wallet’s – they were paid from the public purse no doubt – and ‘leak’ their computers, and read all their emails and snail mail and cards sitting on their windowsills then say they contained nasty comments that eludes to a gigantic conspiracy that involves monkeys and, I don’t know? Superfish?. Then, the government is all paid for by taxes, so I’ll move onto parliament house! I hear it was made out of some nice building material, so I’m going to start with the walls. I’ll need something to house all the computers I got at the university. They can keep their computers, but I hope it doesn’t rain or they’ll be mighty useless. I’m also going to ‘leak’ their electricity to run my ‘leaked’ computers.
There will be a lot of computers though, so I may need help running them all. I know! I’ll just get some public servants, I am the public, they are servants, therefore they are my servants! I’m going to get one to fetch fruit for me, have the women fan me with big palm leaves and have the men slave – sorry, serve – away at the computers. Maybe I can get them to design a Monkey and Superfish conspiracy? I’ll have to ruin Tony G though as he understands the logic that got me to the top… I’ll put Tony G at the centre of the conspiracy and watch everyone stuff his privacy! I’m sure he’ll understand that it’s justified. I bet he’ll even be at the front of the pitchfork brigade!
FO you are obviously a public servant.
Anything I do at work on the computer they supply me is their property. Private emails are exactly that…. ones I do at home in my own time on my own computer. The public sector mentality around here is sickening.
@Tony G
Wrong.
I’m a uni student writing on a university computer. I had to move over one as I just ‘leaked’ the mouse from the one I was on before.
If some of my income is supplemented by centrelink does that mean that a proportion of me is now everyone’s property? I hope it’s a part of me that I don’t use much, otherwise this could get messy.
JQ – the endorsing or excusing of theft and the invasion of privacy is central to your entire philosophy so stop trying to pretend you occupy some sort of moral high ground. You don’t. You routinely advocate that people should be screwed for the greater good. In any case I have not endorsed or excused theft.
The balance between what public service information should be available to the public who they serve, and what shouldn’t be available, has shifted quite significantly since the days of “Yes Minister” (still one of my favourite shows). I’ve worked in both the public service and small and large private enterprise: both the PS and large private enterprise have gone a long way down the path of the “fishbowl workplace”, one in which a small case of flatus becomes a national incident within seconds. There is a point where demands for public accountability cross over into tabloid journalism – gossip rather than relevance. Technological advances have made it possible to be much more prying, simply because of the sheer level of detail in what is recorded these days. Exactly where and when a given employee enters and leaves various buildings, offices – perhaps even the bathroom – and CCTV footage of their movements, are being stored permanently on disc now. Should be interesting to see the result of the first FOI that goes so far as to pull those sorts of records out…
The most relevant episode of “Yes Minister” is probably “Big Brother” 🙂
@Donald Oats
we’re seeing the complete breadkdown of trust – not just in the workplace through the application of surveillance technologies but also in public campaigns to convince people that what was once normal is now far too dangerous to even contemplate. A recent example might be swimming pools, which are increasingly seen as death traps – even more so now, even though now they are fenced.
One for Tony G
It rips the lid off dodgy science!!!
Update, Update, Update, latest report suggests ‘The thaw of Siberian, Canadian and Alaskan permafrost increases the dissolved organic matter content in the water of the central Arctic Ocean. In the 12 years beginning with 1996, the figure increased two times. International scientists heard this at a conference in St. Petersburg Wednesday. The conclusion came after researchers compared measurements by a German expedition in 1996 and by a Russian expedition in 2008. The research vessels were respectively ‘The Polar Stern’ and ‘The Akademik Fyodorov’. The permafrost gives way as the Earth becomes progressively warmer’. No bull.
TerjeP (say Taya), your last comment about JQ is way off the mark. But as for the 1,000 or so stolen e-mail messages or in the ensuing controversy the scientific consensus remains firm that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.” In hindsight you may have been better off arguing a case that global pollution is real and that global warming is directly related to human activity. Just ask the residents of Hong Kong who have recently experienced the worst air-quality pollution levels up 14 times WHO recommendations.
Fran
it is just one weather station;
It doesn’t compensate for this lack of knowledge.
Update, Update, Update, the US National Academy of Sciences have published the following letter from 255 members, including 11 Nobel laureates, defending climate science which contradicts the push in Australia by the IPA and crank John Roskam to discredit the science and former Liberal leader Turnbull.
Climate Change and the Integrity of Science.
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”
For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.
Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected. But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Much more can be, and has been, said by the world’s scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices. We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the un restrained burning of fossil fuels.
We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.