by Judith Curry
There is a remarkable and disturbing story playing out in the biotechnology academic community over industry funding related to genetically modified food.
Some context is provided in this Wired article from last Feb entitled Anti GMO activist seeks to expose scientists’ emails with big ag. Excerpts:
After receiving a FOIA request from US Right to Know—a nonprofit dedicated to exposing “the failures of the corporate food system“—the University of Florida notified Folta, a food and agricultural science professor at the university, that he would have to turn over all of his e-mails relating to correspondence with 14 different firms involved in agribusiness.
The request is a response to public arguments by Folta that genetically modified foods are safe. Prominent scientific organizations agree with Folta on GMOs. “Every…respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion,” reads a 2012 statement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
This is in stark contrast to the general public, only 37 percent of whom believe that GM foods are safe. And various activist groups believe that organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science may have fallen victim to a massive and well-orchestrated industry PR campaign.
Chassy points out that it was part of his job, and the job of all food scientists, to build bridges between universities and industry. To smear anyone who works with industry, he says, would be to relegate research to the ivory tower and cut higher education off from important funding sources.
“As a department head I have not always been sure about the proper relationship between a university and industry,” he says. “That’s an important discussion to have, rationally and publicly. But these requests are not about rational dialogue. They are destructive, unethical, and immoral. They are looking for words to twist and take out of context.”
“When someone is saying things that are against the scientific consensus, then you ask yourself: ‘What’s going on here?’” he says. “But when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.”
A rather hyperbolic update is provided by the Riskmonger blog- Anti-GMO McCarthyism: Its getting shilly out there. Excerpts:
Twitter and Facebook have been abuzz over the last eight days with blitzkrieg attacks on pro-GM scientists or anyone that questions the claims of the pro-organic lobby.
Open, communicative, intelligent, energetic and kind: these are character traits of University of Florida professor, Kevin Folta, that made him Public Enemy #1 for the organic industry’s attack on GMOs. They have been using the US Freedom of Information Act to troll through millions of personal emails of 40 pro-GMO academics (provided to Ruskin at US taxpayer expense) in the hopes of finding some juicy information.
On Folta, they found that Monsanto funded University of Florida a total of $25,000 USD earmarked to organise and travel to 12 science communications events. So out came the attacks that Folta was a liar, hypocrite and Monsanto shill. Folta had said in the past that he had never received funding from Monsanto for research, and these travel expenses for science communications events were clearly not part of research funding (and for anyone who has ever organised events, 25K is actually peanuts).
I deeply respect not only Folta’s integrity, but also his courage and perseverance to engage the mudslingers. But as it is said on the farm, if you want to wrestle a pig, prepare to get muddy.
There is no bigger wrestler in the shill-pit than Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He took his shots at Folta on twitter, calling him a liar, shill and a despicable person. Taleb has been on an emotion-laden campaign against Monsanto (perhaps to promote a paper he had published last year on precaution that has not been well-received) and has reduced the debate to name-calling anyone who disagrees with him. The irony is that the author of the Black Swan had, in that seminal work, very clearly articulated the risks of confirmation bias, so his unwillingness to listen to other ideas or those who disagree with him is surprising and quite disappointing.
Like McCarthy’s campaign of intimidation, with the organic lobby’s fight against GMOs, free speech, open thought and public discourse suffer in the endless barrage of zealous allegations. Civil liberties and the right to pursue research have succumbed to pressure from the moralistic mob waging war on science. The haunting thought is that unlike McCarthy’s Washington in the 50s, today we have social media to amplify any crank’s microphone.
Kevin Folta responds
Folta has been very active in responding on twitter and on blogs. Here are two posts:
- An online Q&A at The Winnower
- A blog post at Science 2.0
From an interview with Folta on Talking Biotech:
Within these documents were private discussions with students, friends and individuals from corporations, including discussion of corporate support of my science communication outreach program. These companies have never sponsored my research, and sponsors never directed or manipulated the content of these programs. They only shared my goal for expanding science literacy.
I am a public scientist that has dedicated thousands of hours of my own time to teaching the public about science.
It is absolutely clear how this has changed things. People call me rather than email…we’re talking little seed companies, fruit growers, you name it. They don’t want their names, companies, questions to be out in public. Their competitors can FOIA me to find out what they are thinking.
I know that no young scientist will ever enter into public discourse around any controversial topic in my state. If you dare work in GMO policy, surveys or research… if you work on climate or sea level rise… if you work in fertilizers or pesticides… if you work in any area with an activist push-back– you’re going to be dragged through the mud for your life’s work.
Should there be zero connections between corporate/industrial interests and university research? Should it be limited to sponsored professorships (where the company gives the university money to pay for the salary and maybe lab startup funds, but has no control over who is hired or what they do). Should corporate research grants be allowed, which lets them push for specific directions of research, but not control the results or what is published? Or should there be full scale collaboration projects between academic and industrial researchers? What limits should there be?
PLOS
Another thread of this drama is playing out in response to a blog post on PLOS blogs by Paul Thacker and Charles Seife entitled The fight over transparency round two. Excerpts:
But transparency laws remain a fundamental tool for monitoring possible scientific misbehavior. The fruits of that labor are plain to see: UCS has itself cited internal scientists’ communications to make the case that science has been corrupted in instances involving ghostwriting, the manipulation of scientific data at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the altering of scientific conclusions at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Despite the potential for abuse, transparency laws are potent weapons in investigators’ pharmacopeia and will be increasingly important in the coming decade as universities become more entwined with corporate interests.
Last week, Nature reported that the University of Florida had provided them with emails that U.S. Right to Know had FOIA’d on one of their researchers. The article also does not report on an email titled “CONFIDENTIAL: Coalition Update” from the researcher to Monsanto in which the scientist advised Monsanto on ways to defeat a political campaign in California to require labeling of GMO products.
UCS maintains that FOIA requests for scientists funding remains fair game, but anything beyond this apparently intrudes into academic freedom. It remains unclear how companies providing canned answers to scientists on scientific topics or scientists advising companies on political campaigns upholds the principles of academic freedom.
Kevin Folta responds [link]:
An entry at PLoS* Biology Blogs, written by Paul D. Thacker and Charles Seife, shows the danger of releasing public records to individuals set to attack professors because they dare to teach a facts in a subject steeped in emotional angst.
In a breach of journalistic ethics, this author team published false and misleading information [JC note bolded above]. While Thacker contacted me about other information regarding this FOIA request, neither author contacted me for clarification about this email prior to this vicious blindsiding.
I never had any role as an advisor for Monsanto’s policies and I had no idea where they could have possibly got such ideas. I would never start an email with “CONFIDENTIAL”, so it seemed fishy. I asked them to provide the email they reference, which they kindly did.
Now it was crystal clear. The original email was not written by me, despite what Thacker and Seife imply. I did not write “CONFIDENTIAL : Coalition Update”. The note was sent from someone in the No On 105 camp to Lisa Drake, a government affairs person for Monsanto, which the email clearly reveals!
This email was my criticism of the anti-labeling rhetoric with a person that works for Monsanto. It was hardly me providing strategic campaign advice to defeat labeling as the authors state.
So Thacker and Seife fail to ask questions, and instead manufacture a false interpretation that paints me as some sort of confidential-email spin meister with a master plan on defeating a bill that had been voted on two years before this email string took place.
Wrong author of the email, misrepresented content, wrong date, wrong state, and portraying me as a stooge of the company, when I was criticizing the company. Did they get anything right? Why would they do that?
In the age of the internet, the truth does not matter. The message you want to propagate can be told, and it will spread like wildfire. And spread it did.
My alleged monkeywrenching of the California GMO labeling initiative as a Monsanto secret PR agent has now spread Twitter and is now installed as a permanent part of the “can’t trust scientists, can’t trust Folta” narrative.
JC reflections
Where to start on this one – there are fascinating parallels and anti-parallels with climate research.
First lets start with consensus. Folta stated the GM consensus was as strong as that on climate change. Well probably that is true, but only because Folta is responding to inflated 97% consensus stuff. The GM food issue is extremely complex, one might even say wicked. I follow this issue fairly closely, for a variety of reasons. The most insightful article I’ve seen on the subject is by Jon Foley: GMO’s, silver bullets, and the trap of reductionist thinking. The controversy surrounding Foley’s article is summarized by an article at the genetic literacy project.
I also find it interesting that only 37% of the U.S. public think that GMOs are safe (analogous to the relatively small % of the U.S. public who think humans are causing dangerous climate change), in spite of the declared consensus by experts.
And in one of the interesting anti-parallels with climate change, Chassy states: “But when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.” So I guess Grijalva witch hunts against climate skeptics are ok, but there shouldn’t be witch hunts against consensus scientists?
The Union of Concerned Scientists said it is ok to do FOIA to uncover information about funding, but other motivations for FOIA requests violate academic freedom. I’m with Paul Thacker on this one; FOIA requests, when appropriately targeted, have unearthed publicly important information.
The state of Florida has very extreme sunshine laws. But should the state of Florida control the emails a university scientist writes from home on a weekend from a private email account to a colleague or citizen or journalist or employee of a company on a topic that does not relate to the faculty member’s university service, teaching, or research grants awarded to the Florida university? This whole issue of private emails is huge and a major issue in the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Folta has raised the important point about such witch hunts: I know that no young scientist will ever enter into public discourse around any controversial topic in my state. If you dare work in GMO policy, surveys or research… if you work on climate or sea level rise… if you work in fertilizers or pesticides… if you work in any area with an activist push-back– you’re going to be dragged through the mud for your life’s work.
Folta asks some important questions that need to be addressed: Should there be zero connections between corporate/industrial interests and university research? Should it be limited to sponsored professorships (where the company gives the university money to pay for the salary and maybe lab startup funds, but has no control over who is hired or what they do). Should corporate research grants be allowed, which lets them push for specific directions of research, but not control the results or what is published? Or should there be full scale collaboration projects between academic and industrial researchers? What limits should there be?
I find particularly interesting the fact that a relatively small amount of industry funding unrelated to Folta’s research – earmarked for outreach communications – is sufficient to tarnish Folta as being under the influence of big ag. Folta provides a good retort at Science 2.0. Where do we draw the line regarding industry funding in terms of being regarded as a source of bias? Does funding for travel count? Does an honoraria count (say less than $5K)?
I am following all this pretty closely on twitter – Folta has done a pretty good job of handling this and isn’t playing the victim card.
This episode illustrates how a potentially legitimate FOIA request can get twisted by the media with amplifying effects of twitter that serve to confuse the public and damage the reputation of the scientists. In hindsight, the way the Climategate emails was rolled out, after very careful scrutiny by the targeted bloggers, was handled pretty responsibly. Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline.”
yep witch hunts and hit science.
There was a recent study on GMC crops and pork health.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/05/18/gmo-foods-inflammation.aspx
“At that point, the now fully mature (and very large) animals were slaughtered according to industry standards. All personnel involved in the study were blinded, including the veterinarians who performed the autopsies at the end of the study, meaning no one knew beforehand which animals were receiving which feed. Two years ago, the first-ever lifetime animal feeding study involving GE corn revealed major health problems, including massive mammary tumors, kidney and liver damage, and early death. That study, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, also attempted to separate out the effects of glyphosate.”
versus
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/06/study-says-gmo-feed-may-harm-pigs/#.VdPbtvlViko
“On his Science Denialism blog, Mark Hoofnagle, Ph.D., referred to the study as a “fishing trip,” as it did not set out to answer a hypothesis but instead measured a range of parameters in hope that any differences between the groups would appear. The study should have been treated as preliminary research before engaging in hypothesis-driven testing, he said.”
The author in bold, retracted the referenced study. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637
Looks like the boxing gloves are off.
Thanks for the links. Some of the comments following the food safety article are particularly troubling – almost hysterical in their views on GMO. Hoofnagle’s point on “fishing trips” deserves repeating, again and again and again. It pretty much captures some of what has been happening in climate science, especially paleoclimatology.
I’m still trying to figure out who pays to put the ‘C’ in front of every AGW in the rejectionist blogosphere?
russ, Everything is about the C. MAGW Mild Anthropogenic Global Warming just isn’t very inspiring is it? If there isn’t a C there isn’t any crisis. No need for “It’s game over for humanity (as we know it)” type comments or books like -Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity – by James Hansen available used from $3.99 on Amazon.
Are you the Seitz who writes negative Amazon reviews without reading the actual book?
russellseitz: ’m still trying to figure out who pays to put the ‘C’ in front of every AGW in the rejectionist blogosphere?
Isn’t that primarily Paul Ehrlich, James Hansen and others who warn that AGW will be catastrophic, and other such with the help of the thesaurus? Would anybody be campaigning against fossil fuels for “benign” AGW, a sort of BAGW?
Jay Currie: as its cover states, Mark Steyn did not write the book in question :
He compiled it without much regard for the norms of ellipsis or the sense or meaning of many he quote mined.
Having written about Steyn since 2007 , I had a duty to warn potential victims that they will encounter little new in his latest amateur legal brief- his career of deliberate misquotation continues as it must, because he rivals Rush as a font of misinformation.
russellaeitz: I had a duty to warn potential victims that they will encounter little new in his latest amateur legal brief- his career of deliberate misquotation continues as it must, because he rivals Rush as a font of misinformation.
Compiling and publishing a lot of material that is not new can be useful, as with the Pentagon Papers in days of yore or the many Annual Reviews.
Perhaps you would be willing to compile a volume of Steyn’s deliberate misquotations? You could append it to your amicus curiae brief in favor of Mann in Steyn v Mann — Mann needs help.
matthewrmarler:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that also the purpose of the IPCC?
:D
Here is an interesting tidbit for you anti-GMC guys.
Olivier Voinnet, http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/19/embo-investigation-yields-two-more-retractions-and-three-corrections-for-voinnet/
An award winning trans-genetic whiz kid is becoming king of retraction watch.
“…I have read that the posts showing fabrication of data in the figures of many of Prof. Voinnet’s articles were viewed by some people as having little importance. The rationale being provided is that the results are still valid because other labs have been able to show the same results. That is NOT completely true. The practice of fabrication of data by the Voinnet lab has had serious negative impact on the field of RNA silencing. Many investigators are, in fact, not able to repeat some aspects of his reported results or have conflicting data. However, once results are published in high impact journals by a powerful and important senior investigator such as Prof. Voinnet, there is little chance to get funding to pursue conflicting data and further experimental approaches are stalled. I am a tenured scientist, approaching academic retirement and can therefore afford to bring these items to light. However, because the consequences of Prof. Voinnet’s unethical behavior are not yet clear, many scientists more junior than I am are afraid to speak up and risk the wrath of Prof. Voinnet, should he remain the powerful force he has been in the past.
In summary, I think that Prof. Voinnet’s unethical behavior has damaged the field immensely because it is no longer clear what is true in his work and what is fabricated. In my opinion, these are serious incidences of scientific misconduct and I hope that your investigations will consider them as such.”
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/04/13/investigations-into-voinnets-work-announced-critic-publishes-original-peer-review/
deja vu all over again.
Before you look, was Voinnet primary funding from industry?
From the Report of the ETH Commission of Inquiry set up to clarify allegations against Prof. Olivier Voinnet of ETH Zurich (pp14-15):
The key here, IMO, is the focus on immediate payback: publication, high impact factors, frequent and “quick-turnaround” citations, etc. The very real value of being careful, taking the extra time to be sure the right images were published, going ahead with the original images rather than “beautified” replacements, was seriously deprecated because of its longer time-frame.
In addition, both real expectations and the technology for finding failures to meet them have been advancing rapidly over the last decade. So the older papers were published in an environment where there was little or no expectation that any review such as that of Pub-Peer would take place. Once the tradition was in place, a great deal of incentive would have been necessary for later papers to have been subjected to more rigorous care.
That incentive is in place now. Not just for Prof. Voinnet’s lab, but for everybody.
No, Dallas: The superfluous C is a PR invention alien to the scientific literature.
Unfortunately, existential threat inflation is not the rhetorical monopoly of the left.
sitz, “No, Dallas: The superfluous C is a PR invention alien to the scientific literature.”
Well, it is a PR invention, and it isn’t a left monopoly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/opinion/obamas-catastrophic-climate-change-denial.html?_r=0
Just like most commodities climate science needs some marketing hook to sell its wares. Just about every person is or should be aware of marketing basics. The fun thing though is using some of the over-selling points a bit satirically. MMMGW, Mediocre Mann Made Global Warming I think is pretty catchy.
No need Matthew: many outraged mis-quotees are already on Mark’s heels. Ditto James Taylor and Mark Morano, whose standards of ellipsis are louche as Oreskes & Conway’s
Science is a brutal field. Science is more political than just about any other field that I can think of – including politics. Unfortunately, green marxists are now operating in the field, using bullying tactics and personal attacks, and making it even more brutal. Hopefully science will emerge intact eventually, but right now we are in a dark age. I wish I had solutions, but I think the only cure in the end is sunlight (openness and reason).
Hmm, guess that makes Ken Cuccinelli and Chris Horner blazing Green Marxists. Wooda Thunk
Rabett, where were you when I called for signatures on an open letter to Cuccinelli asking him to stop going after Michael Mann? I don’t see your signature there…
Thomas, Eli suggests you consult with Roger Pielke Sr. on demand twits
If science is more political than politics, is politics more scientific than science?
Green Marxists!
I love the smell of kool-aid in the morning.
Green marxists.
Nothing new, probably dates back to the collapse of Marxism with the Berlin Wall, when many took refuge with their totalitarian cousins the Greens.
Official name is Watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watermelons-Environmentalists-Destroying-Stealing-Childrens/dp/1849544050
Oh the Wicked Witch of the West! Always promotin’
experimentation. Always increasin’ productivity…
Say ‘ No’ ter Western Wizards like Norman Borlaug,
‘ the man who saved a billion lives,’ cross breeding
wheat when we ought ter be reducing crop yields,
ought ter be heading back ter luddite technology
and agricultural yields of the Golden Age, reducing
populations of wicked. pesky humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Criticisms_and_his_view_of_critics
Norman the Great! And let’s not forget George the Great:
http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/About/History
Of course, with all that food and illumination, those two have created a terrible servant problem for us toffs. But one moves grudgingly with the times.
Oh my, moso, George Westinghouse was a younger
member of one of those pesky large families that the
Greens luv to hate!. Shouldn’t have been around, kinda’
like Beethoven.
Greens only hate large families when the belong to other people. Their own are of course exempt from the need to reduce world population to less then 1/10.
What happened was Green Peace recruited a group of children a few decades ago and then sent them to indoctrination camps to become climate scientists and promote the Green Peace agenda by making stuff up for the cause.
I’m a fan of Taleb. Fooled by Randomness was good. Black Swan was more of the same, but very enjoyable.
But, he’s wrong on climate and probably wrong here too. Two things he’s missing, 1) His studies are about social systems, not physical/chemical/biological processes (though biology could relate), and 2) GHG emissions do not increase complexity/uncertainty. (That would imply that climate would be less chaotic smaller fluctuations in CO2. As it is, the only increase in variability is summer/winter concentrations, in which NH winter GHG release stabilize climate.
He’s fallen victim to the myth that man is outside nature and that nature is in some absurd divine balance absent man. He should be worried about the complexity human behavior adds to human systems when reacting to these trivialities.
The extreme irony of Taleb on climate is that his claim to fame arose from his correctly diagnosing financial risk models as being wrong (failing to identify risk) whereas in climate, he believes the models being used by the consensus despite abundant evidence that they are inaccurate, at a minimum.
Of course, a simpler explanation is that Taleb has a conscious or subconscious bias in both cases, but that said bias was right in one and wrong in the other.
I think it’s just general risk aversion. People are tell him that we’re creating risk, and we are, and that’s what all he sees. He’s just missing the big picture. We’re aren’t simply creating new risks, were just changing risk. It’s not worse, just different (and probably better).
Aaron,
What Taleb did originally was the opposite of risk aversion: he took bets on events in which he believed risk was underestimated. Basically betting that a 1 in 10000 event in reality would happen 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 – which is the opposite of risk aversion.
We all have confirmation bias. All of us. I am no exception. it sits on my shoulder telling me to stop looking where I should not. To use metrics and methods that are favorable to my team’s hypothesis regarding siting.
It has taken stern discipline to reject such subterfuge. We have paid careful attention to the criticisms of our pre-release back in 2012. We have pushed long and hard against our hypothesis, adopted the most unfavorable methods for expressing it. (Yet it stands.)
We assert that LST via surface stations is highballed between 60% and 100%. That brings down the AGW trend by ~15% (seeing as how ~70% of surface is ocean).
We agree that AGW exists. But we also claim that it is not as severe as past records indicate — and is proceeding far less severely than the bottom-to-top CMIP models indicate. We further suggest that even the rational top-down empirical models, exemplified by Lewis, Curry (2015) may be a bit on the high side owing to acceptance of the current surface record.
As per usual, this particular alarm has a grain of truth: it has warmed, and I do not doubt that mankind is primarlily responsible. But also, as per usual, the outlandish conclusions have little or no bearing on the current evidence.
(I note that Doc Rabbet has commented here. I’d be interested in his reactions to our findings.)
Cheer up, Aaron- chaos is too simple to be readily understood.
Judith –
What is the evidence that you use for making the following statement (please note the bolded part)?:
“I also find it interesting that only 37% of the U.S. public think that GMOs are safe (analogous to the relatively small % of the U.S. public who think humans are causing dangerous climate change), in spite of the declared consensus by experts..”
What do you mean by “relatively small?” Relative to what?
i understand it as relative to the 97% expert consensus.
To me, this shows that scientific consensus can favor either the left or the right. The scientists aren’t all lefty greens opposed to any big business at a cost to their discipline. The consensus on GMO safety shows that the science is what prevails regardless of who it favors. There has been no case made for GMO’s harm to the health. There may be other problems with big ag corporate global monopolies outside of science, but health isn’t it.
Another explanation for scientists sometimes supporting the political left and sometimes the right is that scientists follow the money. I’m sure there’s more money available from Big Ag than from anti-GMO crowd. Similarly, funding for climate science seems to favor alarmism. If people were not so worried about global warming, the field would get a lot less funding.
Really? I’d be curious to see how much anti-go spends and big ag. I’d be suprised if big ag spends much at all.
They can’t touch us — we are entirely unfunded. Our time. Our dime.
To me it shows that the anti-science movement is usually fueled by a pseudo-religious belief system that is based on the myth of the noble savage or some sort of fall of natural man story. This belief system holds that our high standard of living is evil because it goes against the “natural order”. This belief system is responsible for anti GMO, anti-vaccine, anti-pharmaceutical, anti-corn, anti-wheat, pro-homeopathic medicine…..
Like all religious belief systems, it is often based on small kernels of truth. It is also full of contradiction and hypocrisy.
Agreed….
“..The Marxism they offer [post marxists], a self-advertised critique of capitalism imperialism, place Third World failures at the doorstep of corporate capitalists.” (goes on to explain many third world failures are actually a result of third world corruption and backwardness).
https://books.google.com/books?id=K3iNfEn1Us4C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=gottfried+third+world+capitalism&source=bl&ots=NOL7AR-bD1&sig=HkddyMsWxXTdQODCnDUqoabNe4k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBGoVChMI9eyih-C6xwIVyyoeCh3BwwTi#v=onepage&q=gottfried%20third%20world%20capitalism&f=false
GMO isn’t a right or left issue except where the organic industry comes into play.
The biggest complaint I have with the anti-GMO crowd is that they don’t seem to care if equally dangerous radiation or chemical mutagenic breeding is used such as was used for golden barley, but (ex: http://shop.goldminenaturalfoods.com/ORGANIC-GOLDEN-WAXY-BARLEY-1-LB/productinfo/0111-1601/) but the more specific gene implantation techniques used today are somehow bad.
I certainly do share concerns about how GMO crops are being used to monopolize/oligopolize seed production, but these are legal/public good issues – not scientific ones.
The original link on radiation mutagenic plant breeding and “golden promise” barley: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28crop.html?_r=0
As I note above: it is ironic that single gene transplantation is somehow considered less safe than random mutation of an entire genetic code set. How does anyone know what other mutated genes may lurk inside a breed which has exhibited some desired property created via radiative mutation?
JimD, You make a good point that people even in the modern age are not trusting of science. And, I agree we need to change that. If CAGW is yet another false alarm that will be bad for the cause of science and modernity. And, the backlash will be exponentially worse if government takes action on faulty science that they promoted.
My question to you is why did George Soros spending his money backing anti-coal climate policy initiatives and then invest almost two million in distressed coal stocks here? Not that it’s illegal to kill a market then buy it.
He can sell his coal stocks for a huge profit to some lugs willing to buy them, and start the cycle again, meanwhile continuing to put some of his profits into philanthropy. Seems like a shrewd businessman.
The main point I made on the scientists was that this shows that the scientists don’t always have a consensus that the left and greens will like, which goes against a common misconception I have noticed around here. Scientific consensus just is. Politics don’t matter in it. It’s easy to separate them.
Bias is like a virus looking for targets of opportunity to infect. In can strike right. left of the middle. Who would have thought Margaret Sanger, liberal hero and founder of Planned Parenthood was a big believer in eugenics? http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/5/grossu-margaret-sanger-eugenicist/
It’s easy to force fit pieces when you have a trillion-piece puzzle.
And what I get from this is that the left and greens will always swing to whichever side of science that results in the most hand wringing and panic that can be used against business and capitalism. Consensus only matters to them when it’s one they believe in.
That and it’s always apparently Ok to forge evidence when you can’t find what you ‘know’ must be true. Funny how climate skeptics never have to make up fake ‘confidential’ e-mails and memos. ^¿^
Because of the climate debate, a lot of people here conflate Greens with Scientists. Greens are independent, sometimes supporting the consensus science and sometimes against it. What drives them is not scientific consensus, but probably some deep connection to the Earth and its conservation. In this sense it is more like a religion. There may be an overlap where some scientists can be actively green on some aspects where their interests overlap, but they may well be against the Greens on others, like in the example of Hansen and nuclear power. In that area the Greens are an obstacle to a sensible science-based policy. Bottom line: don’t be fooled by the emission-control example that Greens and Scientists are always on the same side. They are separate types of people in what drives them.
Better to say ‘climate scientists’ rather than just ‘scientists’. Climate scientists are a separate tribe, and one that tends to be a lot more green than your typical scientist. Has to do with the self-selecting nature of participation in the field I think.
Bottom line: don’t be fooled by the emission-control example that Greens and Scientists are always on the same side. They are separate types of people in what drives them.
I agree with your comment up until you think the claim is that “Greens and Scientists” are always on the same side. I think most agree that scientists per se are a cross-section of the political colors of the population. There are fields that are weighted in particular political beliefs, and I think many would say climate science is one of those. I agree religion is a driver of bias (if not the definition,) and that many green-lobby is a religion.
This is why for scientists to hear the claim that being skeptical of CAGW is being against science are alarmed about the rhetoric. You don’t hear the leader of the free world and John Kerry calling the anti-GMO lobby “flat earthers.”
It seems to me that the legitimate dividing line is not left-vs-right but scientific results-vs-policy preferences. For example, requiring a GMO label on food products is a consumer information issue, not a scientific one. In that regard, scientific researchers have no particular expertise to offer and become “fair game” when they express policy preferences (just as we all do).
What’s wrong with simply: Believers or Deniers? They have been in use for many centuries. Works well when discussing any important question, I have found.
Try it for yourself.
“I believe God; I don’t believe in AGW.”
How hard was it?
1) Being a “denier” implies willful disbelief regardless to evidence.
2) A believer implies not needing evidence.
3) A skeptic gives conditional belief based on weight of evidence relative to the claim.
4) A propagandist calls their site “skeptical science” while practicing 1 and 2.
There has always been enough evidence to become a Believer, people are just reluctant to study what the book says about unbelief. The Unknown god is even mentioned in it. We understand why we are called fools by others, it is well known.
“How hard was it?”
Apparently, pretty hard, since you failed at implementing your own system.
What’s wrong with simply: Believers or Deniers?
“I believe God; I don’t believe in AGW.”
I don’t see the word “deny” in there anywhere. I thought it was about believers and deniers. I would argue that saying “I don’t believe in God” and “I deny God” are not identical. Historically and psychologically. Again, how hard? Harder than you think.
Even the Pope, has decided the book of Job too old.
Is it foolish to have faith is based on a rationality of benefit to self and the world (and no harm)? One hears the CAGW point made, “…and if we’re wrong there was no harm done.” Even if there was not obvious harm in further damaging the credibility of scientific findings per se, and the lost opportunities and economic loss, the hidden harm is in allowing religious rationalizes dictate public policy.
Is delusion ever cost free?
I agree with you completely, religion should have nothing to do with policy.
What’s wrong with simply: Believers or Deniers?
It misses out the +almost all= non-believers in CAGW – the Skeptics (who are far more numerous than Deniers).
Both Believers and Deniers believe the science is settled – just in opposite ways. Skeptics think it isn’t settled; could go either way.
Deliberately miscategorising Skeptics as Deniers is a propaganda tactic favoured by the most extremely dishonest believers.
Then I am an Agnostic about AGW.
Punksta: Deliberately miscategorising Skeptics as Deniers is a propaganda tactic favoured by the most extremely dishonest believers.
Very good point. +10
In time you will find that as you continue to debate the weather you have missed the main point. Carry on.
Seems to me Mr Lewandowsky could do an insightful study of correlation between fear of GMO’s and fear of future climate change. I will go out on a limb and guess the correlation would be very highly significant. But I am pretty sure he won’t. Too bad.
==> ” I will go out on a limb and guess the correlation would be very highly significant.”
Do you have any evidence?
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2015/7/2/for-the-106-time-gm-foods-is-not-polarizing-issue-in-the-us.html#comment21358594
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/1/21/mapkia-episode-31-answer-culturally-programmed-risk-predispo.html#comment20740687
Joshua,
Your link suggests that there is a very strong correlation in Europe, but much weaker in the USA. Seems a large part of that difference has to do with how aware the public is of GMO’s in the states…. which is not very much. About a quarter have never even heard of GMO foods.
Joshu@,
Writing your name hangs a comment in moderation.
Your link suggests that there is a very strong correlation in Europe, but much weaker in the USA. Seems a large part of that difference has to do with how aware the public is of GMO’s in the states…. which is not very much. About a quarter have never even heard of GMO foods, and most claim to know little about them.
With all the talking you know there must be Progress somewhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/23/us/snail-darter-is-taken-off-endangered-list.html
You’ve come a long way baby.
The general public is tuned to sound bites and is not competent or interested in understanding fraudulent and (intentional or unknowingly put out) cognitive / logical fallacies in any discussion or debate. I find it astounding that anyone with a brain would say something like “…(b)ut when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.” Is it an honest statement (could someone be so gullible or stupid) or just prop agitate? If you gag all research and debate science is truly doomed. I am somewhat sympathetic in FOIAs if there is suspicion of collusion between sponsors and researchers to come up with the answers/story a sponsor would like to see. That also happens in management consulting and independent auditing but that is more in the private sector. You normally don’t have FOIAs of major corporations unless there is a regulatory investigation underway.
Somewhat related, or the other side of the coin: activist funding:
Tapping the taxpayer to stop coal in its tracks: NSW Environmental Defender’s Office behind Carmichael coal delay The Australian 19/8/2015 Chris Merritt Legal Affairs Editor
The Federal Court case that delayed the Carmichael coal project in Queensland’s Galilee basin was run by a publicly funded legal centre that helped develop a national strategy of litigation and protest aimed at disrupting the coal industry. The Carmichael project, in the north Galilee basin, was delayed after the NSW Environmental Defender’s Office, acting for the Mackay Conservation Group, argued that the federal government’s approval process had paid insufficient attention to the fate of the yakka skink and the ornamental snake.
The EDO, which relies on the NSW government for much of its funding, is one of the organisations that helped activists draw up a national anti-coal strategy in 2011. In the last financial year, the EDO received $750,000 from a statutory fund controlled by the NSW government. In the two previous years it received $1.2 million and $1.4m. All grants from that fund, known as the NSW Public Purpose Fund, must be approved by the state Attorney-General.
In 2011, peak environmental activists thanked the EDO and other groups for their “extensive input” when they produced a strategy document titled Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom. That document shows the Galilee basin had been targeted by green activists four years ago for a campaign of litigation aimed at challenging the approval of coal projects on a variety of grounds, including their impact on endangered species.
The 2011 strategy document outlines plans to spend up to $3.7m disrupting the nation’s major coal producing regions and delaying new projects. It outlines a budget of $925,000 for what it refers to as “the battle of Galilee.” The $925,000 budget included $270,000 for three “community organisers”, $110,000 for a senior campaigner and operating costs, $30,000 for a public campaign, $40,000 for events and “outreach” and $40,000 for hydrology and marine experts.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/nsw-environmental-defenders-office-behind-carmichael-coal-delay/story-e6frg9uf-1227489049491
– this is a $A16bn project to feed high quality coal to Indian power stations and bring electricity to tens of millions. I’m not sure how many skink species and sub-species there are in Australia (did a quick Google) but it’s probably thousands. Faustino
While everybody, including activists and Deep Greens, merrily coasts along on the back of fossil fuels, there doesn’t seem to be much activism for this carbon reduction scheme:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/upgrade-coal-power-and-cut-15-of-emissions-will-the-greens-consider-coal/
Of course, one can’t guarantee that USC technology won’t cause asthma in skinks. Especially the kids.
Let’s face it. Scientists do scary stuff. I once read an article in CNN, in which a physicist responded to “What would happen if a Micro-blackhole were created in the Super Hadron Collider?” His response was “Well, we could encase it and launch it into space.” I sent the professor a note saying “Well, it’s more likely the black-hole would bore to the center of the earth, and yo-yo back and forth, gaining mass” (if it weren’t for Hawking’s Radiation). The professor admitted he had made a mistake, speaking too quickly but that didn’t comfort a friend of mine. Nor any of the other people who had the capacity to think about it.
Scientists do scary things. GMO is scary because it uses life forces and can spread exponentially. Creating “human brains,” a headline on Drudge is scary. Computers are scary. Figuring out how to turn a benign flu into a deadly one, and then wanting to publish the results is *really* scary.
Meanwhile, it seems as if not a month goes by when some supposed settled scientific fact is refuted. The last one I read is “Saturated Fat causes heart attacks.” Seems there is no evidence it is actually bad for you. Or the EPA second hand smoke finding. These actions make people consider that there is significant bias in scientists. Given that most people probably think of “Scientists” as “Science,” you know, those people, how is it possible to distinguish between flighty things, like the Super Hadron collider making a black hole that ends up swallowing up the earth (and, if Hawkings is wrong, maybe it is happening as we speak!). Or a terrible variant of GMO crops that poisons crops around the world?
Very hard to feel comfortable if scientists are not pure on the whole, saying things that are solid, not suppositional, but that could hurt the ordinary person, either by fancy or actuality.
Scary? Scary is driving on a road with another person heading in the opposite direction with a closing speed of about 40 m/s with only a line painted on the road for separation.
With a high probability of the other driver texting.
The Climategate emails that surfaced in late November 2009 and incredible attempts to justify poor science as “Peer-reviewed 97%-consensus science“ have destroyed public confidence in government science.
Regretfully, I agree distrust is now well justified for reports from any agency – EPA, DOE, NASA, etc. – whose budget is reviewed for Congress by the US National Academy of Sciences.
It’s not only Climate Science.
It may even be in motion.
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/8/9375/htm
If true, should the public be informed?
And the next president for US National Academy of Sciences will be Marcia McNutt, famous for having written – as Editor of the Science Magazine:
“The time for debate has ended. Action is urgently needed.”
Karl Popper – the master mind behind the modern scientific method; Poppers empirical method; is famous for many quotes – among these:
“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.”
When we see all the falsifying experiences related to the global warming theory, Marcia McNutt seems to be much more an activist than a scientist.
Absolutely agree omanuel. The climategate emails were among the most disturbing thing I ever read. The destruction of science right before my eyes.
That and the harry read me file
The major issue for me is: accountability. Are those who have an anti-GMO agenda willing to suffer financial loss as a result of their campaign?
If one sets out to ruin the reputation of someone for their research and views, are you willing to suffer the financial consequences of personal financial ruin if you are wrong? Case law would help here.
In addition, would lawyers who take cases of individuals who wrongly harm another, be liable for their case defense; i.e., terminate a case with extreme prejudice. Case law would help here as well.
It seems to me that our Constitution allows some one to run their mouth until the words do “break someone’s bones.”
Cases of wrongful harm settled in the court of personal inequity.
“And in one of the interesting anti-parallels with climate change, Chassy states: “But when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.” So I guess Grijalva witch hunts against climate skeptics are ok, but there shouldn’t be witch hunts against consensus scientists?” – JC
Well, witch-hunts are OK in climate science,
“Folta has raised the important point about such witch hunts: I know that no young scientist will ever enter into public discourse around any controversial topic in my state.” -JC
Sure – that’s the reason for the Mann witch-hunt. A lesson to others scientists; look what we’ll do to you.
“Folta has done a pretty good job of handling this and isn’t playing the victim card.” – JC
Oh, another lesson!
” In hindsight, the way the Climategate emails was rolled out, after very careful scrutiny by the targeted bloggers, was handled pretty responsibly. Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.” – JC.
Oops, Judith hasn’t learnt any lessons.
Final lesson – my, what a wonderful symmetry between the crazy anti-GMO’ers and the obsessive anti-IPCC/AGW’ers.
They indulge in witch-hunts, aiming to target and persecute individual scientists they perceive as the devil (Mann/ Folta), and are possessed of an absolute and unshakable belief in their own interpretation of the science in stark contrast to what most scientists have concluded, and it’s all because the scientists are ethically compromised (GMO -big Ag funding ; climate science – big Govt funding/ career opportunism) shills.
Michael, do you know the difference between a comment and a quotation?
It seems not.
Peter,
I know what a quotation is. They are meant to be the exact words used by a speaker/writer, indicated by the use of ” “. .
As per below;
Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.” – JC
Or not.
This bit, ““Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.” is not a quotation, because you can’t find that string of words as used by the writer.
Some might call this dishonest.
But I’m reminded of this rather incisive comment;
“In future I will simply assume you are a conduit for untrue statements rather than their originator”.
And that is a quote.
Don’t be a “Michael”, Michael, “scare quotes” aren’t the same as verbatim quotes. A bit ironic isn’t it?
Michael
I haven’t been following this thread so this may be out of context but according to the BBC those words were used here;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15538845
Or perhaps its two sets of quotes run together into one?
tonyb
Michael
The update at the end of the BBC link should also be read for fuller context
tonyb
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.3 | August 19, 2015 at 10:23 am |
“Don’t be a “Michael”, Michael, “scare quotes” aren’t the same as verbatim quotes. A bit ironic isn’t it?”
Fascinating cap’n – show us the difference.
Michael, Scare Quote def :Scare quotes, shudder quotes, or sneer quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase to signal that a term is being used in a nonstandard, ironic, or in another special sense.
cap’n,
“Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline”
Is this socratic irony or a “special sense”??
Captain Dallas
So how do you tell the difference between an actual quote using quotation marks/speech marks and one that is used ironically?
If I quote someone directly I would put speech/quote marks round it. Surely a scare quote should be shown in a different manner otherwise people will think it is attributable directly to the person concerned?
tonyb
tonyb, “So how do you tell the difference between an actual quote using quotation marks/speech marks and one that is used ironically?”
Lack of accreditation.
Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.”
No he/she/they said.
Michael, “Is this socratic irony or a “special sense”??”
A speceal Judithic ironic sense
Well, it seems you’re not too careful about attributing things to person who actually said them.
cap’n,
Thanks, that was quite an awesome attempt at lame sophistry.
Can we have some more?
For instance, try to explain away that Judith used this dishonest ‘quote’* when referring to the climate gate emails.
I eagerly await.
* – see, that is how scare quotes are used.
Michael | August 19, 2015 at 10:09 am |
…
This bit, ““Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.” is not a quotation, because you can’t find that string of words as used by the writer.
The literal quote from a Phil Jones email (freshly quoted from the FOIA text file, spelling errors and all) is:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. “
“Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline. ” is a quote.
And, yes, it is pretty obvious “Mike’s nature trick” was being used to “hide the decline”.
Ah, but PA, after the emails skeptical science among others tried to ‘splain the trick as meaning something else.
Does it mean Jones is trying to be as cute as Mann? That seems more like an un-nature-al trick.
““Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline. ” is a quote.” – PA
Yes.
And this – “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” ??
Wheel out the sophistry please!
Michael, the meaning is identical.
The sophistry is all yours.
Yes, ellipses forgotten, but absolutely identical meaning. A smallish error by gbog standards.
So as usual, when Michael claims someone else is lying or practicing sophistry, it invariably actually means he is.
Michael
I am with you on this one. If I take quotes for one of my articles I try to ensure that if there is any discontinuity in the words, that I put in a …..to separate the two parts of the extended quote and show they belong together and enclose them all in speech marks and attribute a name to them
If the words are merely enclosed by quotation marks I would take that as being a literal word for word quote from the person named.
tonyb
climatereason:
This is kind of a no brainer. I don’t think the mistake is a big one, and I’m sure it was inadvertent, but it was definitely a mistake. It should be corrected. You cannot alter a quotation but present it as unaltered.
Incidentally, that is an annoying problem with Mark Steyn’s new book. I’ve seen at least three misquotations in it because of quotes receiving minor unmarked changes. It’s really annoying because now every time I see a quote in the book, I feel like I need to go check it to see how accurate it is. I figure if I can spot misquotations when going off memory, I can’t trust there aren’t more serious problems lurking about.
Tony,
It doesn’t detract from the fact that the meaning is unchanged.
Michael appears to be the one who’s looking for witches behind every ellipsis
Brandon and Peter
Quotes are quotes. Michael’s was a trivial example but the meaning of an extended paragraph can be changed by selecting bits from it and leaving out the meat.
Anything with quotation marks should be what the person actually said with the dot device used to demonstrate there is more to the quote than is shown.
As I say, it was trivial in this case as the meaning wasn’t changed but this type of thing is more than semantics.
tonyb
Yes I’m sure all agree proper quoting is vital.
A slight mistake made in haste I imagine. Michael’s thrust, though, was though that there was dishonesty and intent to mislead here.
Which, given that the meaning is obviously identical, as even he can see for himself, is obviously a flat-out lie on his part. His usual style, it need hardly be said.
Tony,
Michael is accusing Judith and others of dishonesty and deception.
Anything with quotation marks should be what the person actually said with the dot device used to demonstrate there is more to the quote than is shown.
As I say, it was trivial in this case as the meaning wasn’t changed but this type of thing is more than semantics.
tonyb
Citations, sources.
data, workings,
else-wise any-thing
goes, tra la.
Evi-dence tossed
down the memory-
whole, like BOM
temperature historic
records down-under in
the continent of Oz, tra la..
Michael is accusing Judith and others of dishonesty and deception.
Itself a patent deception, as we’ve seen.
But speaking now as his pro-bono blog ‘lawyer’, though, I can only plead in mitigation my client’s complete and utter idiocy … er … Reduced .. Mental .. Capacity, or something – yeah, that’s it … and desparation. He no longer knows what he says, m’lud; his life has lost all meaning ever since the climate stopped obeying the politically correct climate models.
climatereason, I fully agree. This was a misquotation, but that doesn’t tell us how serious a problem that is. A misquotation can be, like in this case, a minor thing. In other cases, you can quote a person perfectly accurately yet completely distort the meaning of what they said. The issue of whether or not something is an accurate quote is important, but it is largely separate from whether or not the quote is a fair representation of the idea being quoted.
Strange timing gives us a perfect example of this. A user kindly bought me a copy of Mark Steyn’s new book. I just got it in the mail today. Prior to that, I had noticed his book contains several small misquotations as he made minor changes to quotes that didn’t change their meaning, but changed their form (things like capitalizing words, making them appear to be the start of sentences). That bothered me a bit, but it seemed relatively unimportant.
Then I opened the book today I read the first quote in it. It’s accurate. There isn’t a single word or punctuation mark misplaced in it. Even so, its meaning is completely distorted. The misquotations in the book didn’t change the meaning of anything, yet just by giving false context to an accurate quote, Steyn managed to greatly distort it’s meaning.
Shorter punskta; Michaels right.
Peter,
Read this again;
“This episode illustrates how a potentially legitimate FOIA request can get twisted by the media with amplifying effects of twitter that serve to confuse the public and damage the reputation of the scientists. In hindsight, the way the Climategate emails was rolled out, after very careful scrutiny by the targeted bloggers, was handled pretty responsibly….”
And them comes the miseading ‘quote’.
Wonderful irony, no?
Michael, there was nothing misleading about the ‘quote’.
The only thing left out of the ‘quote’ was the detail of how the ‘trick’ was performed – nothing more, nothing less.
You’re the only one who’s trying to mislead.
Peter,
Yes, mangled quotes, mis-represented , mis-leading context etc…..
And now Brandon is saying that he’s found more of the same in the Steyn book.
What a surprise.
Michael, it was neither misleading, misrepresented nor out of context.
And we’re not, at least we weren’t, talking about Steyn here.
You’re just creating mischief – end of
It wasn’t misleading, Michael knows it, yet he keeps on trying to mislead.
Just like another Michael.
Brandon –
Were the Steyn misquotes misleading ?
Peter,
The topic is witch-hunts.
And what could be more topical than Steyn’s book – the latest installment of the Mann witch-hunt.
What did Brandon find with the very first quote of Steyn’s book? – “…its meaning is completely distorted.”
Burn that Mann-witch!!
Judith is spruiking it, of course.
Mann is a proven serial science crook – damned by his own emails.
There is no misleading involved in publicising this, no witch-hunt in publicising egregious undisputed malfeasance.
Mann is a proven serial science cr**k – damned by his own emails.
There is no misleading involved in publicising this, no witch-hunt in publicising egregious undisputed malfeasance.
What’s more, it’s precisely the refusal by the climate establishment and their supporters to see anything wrong with what Mann and the other Climategaters did, and sack and/or discipline them, that drags the name of science into the mud, and leaves reasonable lay people with no real option but to stop just believing what ‘scientists’ tell them.
Michael, “cap’n,
Thanks, that was quite an awesome attempt at lame sophistry.
Can we have some more?”
I believe you have quite a few examples now. Let’s face it “a spade” means “a spade”. Now you can quibble over the meaning of means (as opposed to is), quibble over spade has several meanings or quibble over the imprecise use of quotes, but the first goal should be to try and understand what was meant.
Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline, isn’t an exact quote from the emails. Quotation marks are not restricted to just exact quotes. Blog posts are by default are opinion.
<This episode illustrates how a potentially legitimate FOIA request can get twisted by the media with amplifying effects of twitter that serve to confuse the public and damage the reputation of the scientists. In hindsight, the way the Climategate emails was rolled out, after very careful scrutiny by the targeted bloggers, was handled pretty responsibly. Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.”
Now do a few missing … change the meaning? Not in my opinion. Was "Mike's Nature trick" not used to "hide the decline"? Well if the proxies had not indicated declining temperature after 1960 the trick would not have been needed. BTW, the trick now seems to start in 1902. The paragraph just means "in Judith's opinion", skeptics handled the release of information pretty well in comparison to others.
Now we might be able to find some code to reveal a hidden meaning, but without that, most readers aren't having the issues understanding her meaning that you are. Perhaps she pushed just the right buttons?
We are seeing classic ‘tribalism’ at play here and I am surprised that jos&u£ has not weighed in.
Of course Michael was trying to infer Judith was being dishonest when the omission she made was trivial. However just because it was Michael who pointed out the mistake doesn’t mean he was automatically wrong and that Judith should be automatically defended.
Her slip was trivial but it doesn’t get away from the point that, whenever possible, and none of us are perfect, quotes made within quotation marks should be what that person actually said. If it has been paraphrased that should be indicated usually by the means of…..
Paraphrasing is often necessary if a quote is long or long winded but it should be made obvious that this has been done.
Tonyb
“Quotation marks are not restricted to just exact quotes. ” – cap’n
Well actually they are. That’s their express purpose; to delineate the exact words uttered/written from all other kinds of summaries, paraphases, and approximations.
Punksta:
Not in any material way. Or at least, not the ones I spotted from pictures posted to Twitter. I have no idea what I might find once I manage to read the book. As the post I linked to in my comment (here’s the link again), Steyn’s book definitely has misleading stuff in it. It just seems arise from him misrepresenting what quotes are about, despite getting the actual words correct.
And if you follow me on Twitter (I don’t recommend it), you’ll know the problem is a lot worse than that one post details. Remember, I wrote a short eBook to help people understand why Michael Mann and his work are terrible/dishonest because I was so bothered by how deceptive his book was. Despite that, less than half an hour ago I tweeted this:
I an genuinely dumbfounded at how bad this book is. Like, it might be a fun read if you just take Steyn’s word at everything and don’t think about or examine anything he says, but once you start looking at what he says, you’ll find he misrepresents so many things it’s ridiculous.
I’m thinking the book must get better soon, but I don’t know if I have it in me to find out.
(But Judith’s mistake is nothing like that. Her’s was a minor thing that didn’t affect the meaning of anything, so it was irrelevant save in that it is important to get quotes right for the sake of getting them right.)
Of course Michael was trying to infer Judith was being dishonest
Indeed. So either
– he knows full well she wasn’t, and is lying for effect
– he is deeply mentally challenged
No point asking him I guess …
tonyb
You do realise the irony in this Tony?
Assessing that as a trivial omission is the very epitome of climate tribalism.
It’s a quotation so famous entire webpages have been devoted to it. And is subject to considerable divergence (geddit?) in interpretation to put it mildly. All of which Judith is very well aware of, naturally.
verytallguy
I can only assume you put pen to paper before reading the whole of my post.
As I point out, both sides are guilty of tribalism and just because Michael was making a somewhat mischievous comment does not mean he was wrong and that those responding were blameless in making an automatic defence.
The sub thread was also about context which you completely failed to reflect in mining that part of a much longer series of comments.in which I basically agree with Michael
tony,
Tony,
Nobody is suggesting that Judith didn’t make a small slip or trying to defend it – such a trivial matter shouldn’t even warrant two seconds of someone’s time.
And nobody would object to Michael or anyone else making a small comment about the correct usage of quotations.
But that’s not what he’s doing – he’s trying to turn it into a big thing about dishonesty and deception, and milking it for all it’s worth – and it’s THAT which I’m taking him to task about.
Punksta,
We know that Judith is just a conduit for untrue statements.
capt:
It wasn’t declining temperature – it was an inconvenient decline in the Briffa series, which they ‘hid’ by graphically truncating the Briffa series earlier than the others.
Michael
Well we certainly know *you* are a conduit for untrue statements. Or possibly moron, you haven’t yet got back to us on that.
But do you have anything more on Judith than a missed ellipsis that makes zero difference to meaning ?
Michael
Well we certainly know you are a conduit for untrue statements. Or possibly m0r0n, you haven’t yet got back to us on that.
But do you have anything more on Judith than a missed ellipsis that makes zero difference to meaning ?
Tony,
so, my response make you think I hadn’t read your post, and now I find your response to that makes me think you didn’t read mine.
Tribalism, Great, isn’t it!
Anyway, what I was trying to say is that you don’t (I think) actually agree with Michael, other than superficially.
You think Judith made a trivial omission. Michael thinks she deliberately misrepresented Mann to smear him. (please, both, correct me if I’ve misrepresented you here)
Your repeated assertions that Judith’s mistake was trivial seem, to me at least, to be a “tribal response” in themselves. Wiki , for instance, says of the quote
The two phrases in question being those conjoined here by Judith.
Given Judith’s obsession with Mann, it seems rather unlikely she was unaware of all of this.
VeryTallGuy –
But the phrases clearly were NOT joined out of context.
Just another climate lie by Wiki, looks like.
Punksta
An assertion, which many others would disagree with.
Paranoid, much?
Well, this is another in the line of interminable threads initiated by trollery. Just skimmed it, but it looks like alarmist attack k-9 mikey found some minor Judith faux pas and has made a federal case of it. Judith doesn’t seem to have noticed. Anyway, it’s unimportant. I am just wondering why our little friend willy hasn’t chimed in. He is usually all over this stuff. I am worried about his absence. Maybe his pall verytrollguy knows something?
I was flipping through Mark Steyn’s new book, and a passage happened to catch my eye. Steyn references a YouTube video of a presentation given by Richard Muller, now best known as the head of the Berkeley Earth (BEST) group. Steyn says:
Now this was a speech, but there was a Powerpoint presentation with text on the screen, so that does make sense. What followed, however, is wrong:
There’s quite a bit more text, but that wasn’t anything Muller wrote on his presentation. That’s something Muller said, out loud. It’s understandable he might not include the ellipsis while speaking because he wasn’t necessarily using quotation marks while speaking, but when Muller wrote it on the screen, he wrote:
So Steyn did get the quote wrong, by creating a transcript of Muller’s speech that created a false quote then claiming it was written text by Muller rather than spoken words. Judith Curry may well have copied the text straight from Steyn’s book, trusting that he would have gotten the quote correct.
Not to be a broken record, but this book has tons of errors and distortions. I highly recommend nobody copy anything out of it on the assumption Steyn got it right.
I see our little publicity hound brandoon has taken the opportunity to promote his twitter twitting and 99 cent e-book. He’s going after Steyn, now. Steyn may never write again.
peter, “It wasn’t declining temperature – it was an inconvenient decline in the Briffa series, which they ‘hid’ by graphically truncating the Briffa series earlier than the others.”
I used, “if the proxies had not indicated declining temperature after 1960 the trick would not have been needed. ” Which doesn’t mean temperatures dropped only that “the proxies” indicated that it did drop. That is the divergence problem real temperature diverged from the “temperature proxy”.
From skeptical science, <The "decline" does not refer to a "decline in global temperature" as often claimed. It actually refers to a decline in tree growth at certain high-latitude locations. This decline began in the 1960s when tree-ring proxies diverged from the temperature record.
As far as I know, no one ever claimed that decline in proxies for temperature meant anything other than the proxies were not all that great as thermometer replacements. SS starts by winning a non argument point. Note the use of quotations.
Their second point, <"Mike's Nature trick" has nothing to do with "hide the decline". "Mike's trick" refers to a technique by Michael Mann to plot instrumental temperature data on the same graph as reconstructed data over the past millennium.
Note the use of quotations.
I disagree with their opinion but I didn't have any problem following their train of thought.
It’s great how Mann’s MBH98 makes it into every post. I hope he doesn’t mind.
Very Tall Guy:
“The two phrases in question being those conjoined here by Judith.
Given Judith’s obsession with Mann, it seems rather unlikely she was unaware of all of this.”
First, I concede there is likely some tribalism on both sides of the climate issue. I think Tonyb and Brandon are showing very good faith. I would hope it catches on. You showed a little good faith to me once upon a time at ATTP and I remember and appreciate it.
Back to your statement, you didn’t specifically give us your understanding of the Climategate Phil Jones quote, and its meaning. Why do you not feel that truncating the Briffa data plot was part of the “trick,” along with splicing the temperature record on?
Do you agree with the following current Wikipedia entry on the issue?:
Tallguy –
Hardly. So whereiin lines the imagined change of context and meaning?
Wiki. Again, their bias on climate is legendary. Perhaps you also imagine the BBC is open and objective ?
Ron,
I’m not into the detail on this, but yes, the Wiki summary you quote seems reasonable as far as I’m aware; the Muir Russel enquiry I quoted was rather more critical but certainly not damning.
I’ve not read the whole wiki page and I’m not familiar with the outcomes of the other various enquiries.
Punksta
I guess that’s a “yes” on the paranoia front then.
Only to someone fitted with your custom blinkers, Tallguy.
Punksta,
there are basically two possibilities here.
Firstly, you’re right and the BBC and Wiki are conspiring against you to hide the troof, aided and abetted by the world’s scientists.
Secondly, you’re wrong and Wiki and BBC reflect reality.
I think we may have arrived at our destination, “in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence”
VTG, there’s a wealth of first-hand information easily available out there, yet you choose to put your trust in wiki articles – and you admit you haven’t even read those through.
Many of the people you’re arguing with here were actually around at the time it happened, and some were right in the thick of it.
Do a modicum of proper research before shouting the odds.
tallguy –
Firstly, you’re right and the BBC and Wiki are conspiring against you to hide the troof, aided and abetted by the world’s scientists.
Oh, dear, the clapped out old “conspiracy” strawman yet again,
One more time then – you don’t need a conspiracy to explain why people or institutions ARE acting in their own interests, since that is exactly what you’d expect.
(Which of course is exactly what goverment-funded climate science is doing – piling on the alarm to soften up resistance to a Bigger Brother – more taxes, more regulations, more social controls. And the BBC, being of a generally totalitarian bent, is right behind any argument that might bring about acceptance a Bigger Brother).
Here’s a tidbit to bring up you up to speed of how govenment climate science works, and what the ‘Investigations’ like Muir-Russel’s into Climategate found unexceptional. It explains why, besides yourself, by now only greenwashed young schoolchildren are gullible enough to actually believe the evidence of CAGW “may be overwhelming” (in your own tangled idiom).
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
Government climate science is riddled from top to bottom with bias and corruption. Like the BBC does, adults who profess to believe do so for the abovementioned ideological reasons.
Punksta
OK… definitely not a conspiracy then.
You do realise you sound beyond bonkers?
vtg, “OK… definitely not a conspiracy then.
You do realise you sound beyond bonkers?”
Bonkers, Fruit Loops, etc. generally refer to “abnormal” behavior. The norm has to be used to determine the abnorm. You realize that just by commenting on climate change blogs we are all abnormal.
Tallguy –
Yes, “bonkers” is indeed how sane people sound to gullible simpletons.
I think we’re done Punksta. Enjoy your weekend.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=crook
Michael | August 20, 2015 at 7:05 am |
Peter,
Read this again;
“This episode illustrates how a potentially legitimate FOIA request can get twisted by the media with amplifying effects of twitter that serve to confuse the public and damage the reputation of the scientists. In hindsight, the way the Climategate emails was rolled out, after very careful scrutiny by the targeted bloggers, was handled pretty responsibly….”
And them comes the miseading ‘quote’.
Is this a deliberate attempt at humor?
Exact quotes eh?
“From: Phil Jones
To: Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: FOIA
Date: Fri Jan 21 15:20:06 2005
Cc: Ben Santer
…
I wouldn’t worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. I’ll be passing any requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to deal with them.
Cheers
Phil
At 14:35 21/01/2005, Tom Wigley wrote:
Phil,
Thanks for the quick reply.
The leaflet appeared so general, but it was prepared by UEA so they may have simplified things. From their wording, computer code would be covered by the FOIA. My concern was if Sarah is/was still employed by UEA. I guess she could claim that she had only written one tenth of the code and release every tenth line.”…
These are fundamentally dishonest people. Any work product they produce cannot be trusted and they should not receive any future funds from the US government.
They should be cheerfully complying with the law by dispensing their code and data – paid for with taxpayer money – with enthusiasm to anyone who asks.
Disappointingly, that is not the attitude displayed.
And yes, much of the CRU funding comes from the US government:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/18/doe-funding-for-cru-placed-on-hold/
Wonderful irony, no?
Isn’t “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” a quote from Richard Muller?
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/29/keiths-science-trick-mikes-nature-trick-and-phils-combo/
For what it’s worth, I discussed how Muller’s statement got translated into an inaccurately described misquotation (typing that phrase felt odd, but it’s right) in Steyn’s book, which may well be where Judith took the quote from. You can find it in the body of this post where I’m talking about Steyn’s book.
Oh, sorry. I just realized I originally discussed it here, on this very page and just copied it to that post. That means it’d probably be easier for you to see the explanation by going here instead since you won’t have to leave the page.
I hope that Prof. Folta is tenured. I am surprised how vicious people can get, possibly from a lack of GMO food. It is well known that so-called organic foods contain increased levels of natural toxins.
“Well known?” The only thing I’ve seen possible parity. References appreciated.
Meanwhile, let’s not forget the Odwalla death(s) and illnesses.
Juice for humans! Don’t knock it, there is juice in that sugar!
Just remember E. Coli is all organic.
Right you are. There is not a lot of data there.
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/03/20/myth-busting-are-synthetic-pesticides-used-with-some-gmos-more-dangerous-than-natural-ones/
I’m reminded of the local furor in Seattle when the NPR station aired a piece on a Standford study which showed zero health benefits from organic food over non-organic. The level of comments received was so great that the very next day they aired a second piece and tripped over themselves trying to roll back what they said the previous day. All to pacify a bunch of yuppie, organic food partisans (who probably represent a high corrolation to NPR funding contributors) who were upset that someone had upset the belief system rice bowl.
This is a subject with which I have now three decades of personal familiarity on my farm. Some of the above comments (yeah, you MIchael and Edbarbar to call out a couple) reflect gross ignorance on this topic. Please inform yourselves before opining. Churchill’s dictum applies: it is best to remain silent and be thought a fool rather than speak and remove all doubt.
The two main GMO food crops are maize (corn) and soy. The two main modifications are ‘Roundup Ready’ (glyphosate herbicide resistance) and Bt (insect resistance, against e.g. corn root worm [a beetle whose ‘worm’ larvae are quite destructive]). There are also major cotton equivalents. Wheat and rice are mainly still just selective breeding for economic reasons (if you know anything about GMO). The big exception is ‘golden rice’, which could provide essential missing vitamins and prevent about 3 million cases of blindness per year in Asia, yet is vehemently opposed by Greenpeace.
Billions of feedings to animals and humans show there is no GMO food risk. Any assertion to the contrary is equivalent to Hansen’s ‘5 meter SLR’. BS. There are no, I repeat no, studies to the contrary. Including spurious blog claims about the FDA approved Flavr Savr tomato, which includes a single gene from a salmon species. Neither tomatoes nor salmon are ‘poisonous’. Nor when cooked or eaten together. Nor when GMO’d. GMO stuff IS tested rigorously in the lab before approval. Unlike CAGW.
The big negative GMO problem is Darwinian evolution, no different than antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals (e.g. MRSA). Thanks to GMO misuse, (lacking refugia, rotation, etc.) 10 million US acres are already infested with about 10 species of glyphosate resistant weeds, rendering Roundup Ready GMO already useless in those places. And those weeds will spread and ‘win’. Eventually on my farm. Same stupid generic abuse issue as prescribing antibiotics for viral colds. See the food chapter of ebook Gaia’s Limits.
If you want to feed 9.1-9.3 billion humans with some minimum calorie/protein diet by 2050, GMO is crucially essential. Else, get ready for mass starvation. Billions, not millions. Organic farming BS will not suffice. I did all the complex slog through calculations, crop by crop, region by region, using FAO data in ebook Gaia’s Limits. Not a beach read.
Test trivia questions: what country is the largest potato producer? What country is second? Has either been able to increase potato yields since about 2000? What percent of the worlds future total population do those two countries comprise? [The correct answers are quite frightening.]
Respond with counter facts rather than counter opinions. I did the research and the math. Now please show yours, or go away.
Rud, I’m not familiar with the issue, but the way it’s usually framed, it’s as if GMO RR created super weeds which threaten all agriculture. Isn’t it more like weeds and pests are constantly adapting and what happened was that mismanagement shortened the shelf life of their product (allowing adaptation to propagate faster than they’d like)?
Aaron, Exactly. The recomendation for RR stuff is never plant everything with it. Never drench everything every year with Roundup. Common sense. Don’t give Darwin an easy head start.
We crop rotate all contours to alfalfa (no RR available) on my farm, so not an issue. But on the big midwest flatland farms, the rotation is RR maize to RR soy. So as soon as any weed manages (per Darwin) to select via natural variation for the fittest (RR resistance, just like GMO artificially confers) that weed then propagates. Since there are no others of the species around to ‘dilute’ that naturally selected trait (the Darwinian requirement for precursor subgroup isolation is handily accomplished by big farm monoculture), the selected RR resistant genotype will propagate like crazy in those fields. And then spreads naturally. The graphs on this in Gaia’s Limits are as horrific as the spread of MRSA because of overuse/misuse of methicillin (modern penicillin variants- the cillin family) antibiotics in healthcare.
MRSA took about 30 years to emerge. Pigweed and giant ragweed (two real baddies) took less than 20. The first confirmed instance of a Bt resistance corn rootworm took about 25 years in Iowa. Confirmed in 2011. Good news, just go back to ‘chemical warfare’ using insecticides. Not so easy with weeds, since other herbicides against RR resistant weeds also kill the RR resistant crops!
Venture capital – industry funding which hunts. ;-)
Not always, Faustino. I used to run a corporate VC operation (for several years). That corp’s single investment helped advance cell phone internet connectivity, plus made $80 million, in one year by betting on 6 programmers presenting a novel idea.
As the Music Man said, “you got to know the territory”. Most don’t.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
What a coincidence–I just finished Kirsten Powers’ recent book “The Silencing” and it seems that there are many other areas that have been seeing these now-familiar tactics. It’s a light read and has probably too much anecdotal evidence but is, nonetheless, interesting. And it’s good to know that atmospheric science is not the only discipline under attack. :-)
It’s compluhcated ain’t it? Witch which hunts
are more okay than others? Take the survey.
# CAGW Climate Science?
# GMO Research Science?
# Non- 97 per cent Consensus Science?
# Non- Guvuhmint Funded Science?
( Any score below 3/4 AND U R IN BIG TROUBLE. )
I have no problem with GM foods in general, BUT I do have a problem with transgenic GM foods, e.g. transferring genetic material for example from fish in tomatoes to sustain their appearance for longer. You can end up where proteins, sugars and oils etc that are introduced into a foodstuff that was safe for you, now cause severe allergic responses.
There are wider environmental consequences; on the maxim that there is no such thing as a free lunch, GM crops may be more disease resistant for example, but there are insects that live on that mold that no longer grows on a crop, birds and other insects live on these and so on. The net result is whole sections of ecology could be damaged, possibly irretrievably and the financial consequences stemming from that could be generational.
You mess around with the environment at your peril the environment is even less understood than climate, its another example of a super wicked problem.
Perhaps another useful maxim to remember is :- Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite them, little fleas have lesser fleas and so on infinitom
Excellent points. It’s those unintended, unimagined consequences that worry me. They normally surface many years later when it’s too late to prevent.
We are so fortunate that head lice are uncommon around the world.
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2015/08/18/head-lice-now-resistant-to-common-meds-in-25-states
Wel have lots of time left, from what I have been reading.
Same with anything genetic. I imagine that young Stalin was a sweet little baby.
Most GMO is trans species. For example,Golden rice is two genes that collectively synthesis beta carotene, the metabolic precursor to Vitamin A. Psy is from the daffodil. Crtl is from a soil bacterium.
It is estimated that annually, about 500,00 children under age 5 going irreversibly blind from vitamin A deficiency, VAD, and that VAD contributes to up to 2 million deaths. There are about 190 million children with VAD, most in Asia. And this GMO rice is available free thanks to Syngentia and the inventors generosity concerning patent 7838749 and its sequelae.
The example shows how narrowly specific GMO actually is. It does not ‘scamble up’ the general metabolism as you seem to fear. As Matt Ridley pointed out in the WSJ recently, the older way (screening radiation induced random mutations for useful properties) is much more likely to result in unintended consequences.
“much more likely to result in unintended consequences” – we all glow in the dark??
How does one meet the EU & UK regulations for the correct identification in foodstuffs?
Bees transferring genetic material from one genetically copyrighted crop to another, who owns the copyright on the hybrid.
For example who is liable for death/injury for those with peanut allergies if eating food that does not contain peanuts but does contain peanut genetic material.
Who is liable for ecological damage, whose cause may not be identified for years later, and how does one put the genie back in the bottle.
And by the way I’m allergic to Daffodils do I come to you for compensation when eating GM rice.
“The irony is that the author of the Black Swan had, in that seminal work, very clearly articulated the risks of confirmation bias, so his unwillingness to listen to other ideas or those who disagree with him is surprising and quite disappointing.”
Not surprising to me. I’ve observed just the opposite many times. Those who protest very loudly against some behavior often are guilty of it in some measure themselves. Not being self-aware is commonplace; it’s only the degree that’s in question. And why we need kind friends to point it out.
It’s easy to see why funding can “tarnish” research in the case of private organisations. Vested interest.
So why not in the case of the state – a far bigger and brutally self-interested organisation ? Especially when there is such a monumental and patently obvious vested interest as the added taxes and powers flowing from climate policy ?
The irony is that the author of the Black Swan had, in that seminal work, very clearly articulated the risks of confirmation bias, so his unwillingness to listen to other ideas or those who disagree with him is surprising and quite disappointing.
The byproducts of government-grown-too-large — including the out of control government-education complex — is the real black swan in the room! It’s no longer a matter of, public be damned: it’s become, the public is damned. The productive are being forced to pay for both sides of never ending arguments where the only winners are those who are cashing a government paycheck.
Confusion:
There is no climate science as other scientific areas are organised in various societies organising congresses and debating to exhaustion every issue like the taxonomy of the smallest fungus or the extension of the universe. Agronomy and plant biology have such societies, peer reviewed publications, and congresses.
None is claiming any scientific consensus, this would be deemed ridiculous since they argue all the time. Bodies of knowledge can be more or less settled … until new insights are brought that activate new debates.
Climate science has been tamed by an intergovernmental organisation called IPCC working on the behalf of the UNFCCC whose objective is “The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.” (Treaties: Kyoto and the UNFCCC itself).
Here the consensus is clear, but not scientific or rather ascientific, and probably wrong because futile in its efficacy and unjust for its social and economic consequences.
Yet the huge money and fame Gore, McKibben, Hansen and Nye garner from climate change activism generates no concern about objectivity.
Angels and demons: the definition of morals-by-cause creates circular reasoning. Evil is no longer an outcome of action but of attitude. You are a criminal simply by not shouting the party line.
It’s no wonder activists speak warmly of China. Ideological totalitarianism is the background of extremists.
Perhaps we misunderstand ALL extreme groups. Climate, GMO, Islam or White Supremists. Are they all outcomes of poor reasoning or the logical outcome of strict binary thinking, i.e. right vs wrong?
I have postulated a theory of the Unique Solution Syndrome common to engineers. There is only one right or best way (to build a bridge, for example). Once you have chosen the solution to your problem, by definition all other solutions are wrong or inferior. There is no longer a place for discussion. Finding a solution is finding THE solution. Others are impossible.
Error is not an option for those suffering from the Unique Solution Syndrome. Are we congenitally prone to this as a species?
Extremism may not create angel-demon thinking. Angel-demon thinking may breed extremism
In sciences around substances and their dangers, natural or synthetic, no prudent scientist will never claim that anything is generally safe, knowing that it depends on many parameters such as quantity and mode of use.
In various serious studies, not founded by any particular industry, the conclusion has been that no specific danger could be identified with GMOs, or with weak electromagnetic radiations (cell phones networks).
Nevertheless activists will smear anyone making reference to that absence of proof of danger. For them it is a good strategy to find and unveil any ties with any related industry can be unveiled.
Suspicion and witch hunting is as old as human societies.
So how many “witch hunts” has he been on? I know he made a statement, but did anything come of it?
He’s still backpedaling on his demand for access to all:
“university financial disclosure policies that are applicable to (scientist name here), detailed information about any sources of external funding and grants he/she may have received, as well as any communications related to external funding. [A]lso copies of any speeches and testimony before lawmakers he/she has delivered, as well as salary and travel expense information.”
Even Comrade Grijalva admitted this demand was overreach (aka punishment and harassment for saying things in testimony different from policy goal support).
Once the word got out on this harassment (along with examples of lies in Grijalva’s “statement”s), the thought police captain backed off.
A cockroach acts quite differently in the dark than it does when the lights come on.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rep-raul-grijalvas-shameful-witch-hunt-against-climate-scientists_866050.html
The “organic” food industry’s likely $100 billion/yr size in the US would probably come as a surprise to those who believe Monsanto is a Godzilla in the field, trampling straw hat hippie farmers into the earth. http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Markets/US-organic-food-market-to-grow-14-from-2013-18
The tactics used against Folta are despicable. Regardless of position on issues, honesty and integrity still need support and slanders and smears need to be smacked down by all decent people.
I don’t know any skeptics who comment on any of the blogs I read who would be supportive of anyone smearing the hockey team, even though hockey team members have been involved in some pretty nasty smearing themselves.
Smears and slanders are standard operating procedure by the Left in politics today. We shouldn’t be surprised that anti-GMO activists bring their political tactics to this issue. Remember how Mann slandered Lawrence Solomon.
Far too many people today believe that any tactic that is useful in defeating their enemies is morally justified no matter how dishonest. Look at the continuing support for Obama and Clinton. As long as this kind of immoral and unethical attitude persists on a widespread basis, things will only get worse.
Stanton
I enjoy your comments, especially the legal explanations. But one only has to look at comments about Lincoln by his opponents to see the smears and slanders have always been part of the political process. The recent change is the spillover into science controversy, especially climate and as shown GMO. Not likely to improve till humans change. Still, one responds like Dr Curry has done at this blog and through her activism, so improvements come slow as the eyes of the public open. El Nino this year and then maybe a little ice age 2 will demonstrate natural variability and defuse “the billions for fantasy climate control schemes” in Paris.
Scott
Why stop at Lincoln? Go back to the Jackson-Adams race for some really, really nasty stuff. But Lincoln, Jackson and Adams were a couple of centuries back. Let’s focus on this one. The reality is that one party in the US uses slander as its basic strategy — racist, sexist, homophobe, hate-filled, mean-spirited, denier, et al. You simply cannot find anything nearly as vicious or as widespread from the other side. You can’t find any GOP senator in the last few decades with the kind of vicious rants that Ted Kennedy and the Senate Dems unleashed on Bork. You can’t find a GOP prez candidate with the kind of viciousness that Bernie Sanders unleashes in his standard stump speech.
We are already seeing poor people around the world suffer and die because of alarmist government policies. But you don’t hear skeptics screaming that alarmists WANT to kill people (even though we have the quotes from a lot of prominent environmentalists about how malaria is good because it kills off people). That’s exactly the kind of bogus, nasty argument that the Left uses all the time. See e.g. Obama and Sanders.
False equivalence is an ugly, ugly thing.
Stanton,
yep, Remember Bork had his blockbuster video account turned over to his antagonists. Thoughtfully he only watched Disney movies with his kids. The attacks on Thomas were breathtaking. One has to expect this from the participants who say ” Are you going to believe us or the lying videos someone shows your eyes.” And they troop obediently in line.
History is interesting with big problems to be faced and lots of infighting always.
Scott
Stanton,
“…Bork…”
Correct. In fact, the destruction of the reputation of Bork was such a deviation from precedent that a new verb entered the vocabulary – to Bork someone.
“it has become distressingly common for people to politicize every realm of life…. we’d all be happier if we agreed to a form of culture war detente and refrained from attempting to deprive people of their livelihood for daring to disagree with your politics.” (article about Denver politicians punishing Chic-fil-A)
“That’ll only happen when this sort of attack becomes unacceptably painful, on a personal level. So make ‘em regret it. Demonize, personalize, go after their jobs and their position in the community. You know, act like lefties.”
–Law professor Glenn Reynolds (a USA Today columnist)
“act like lefties”
The politicization occurs because there is a chance to lever that into money from the Federal Government. If we shrink government, concomitantly and drastically reducing Federal taxes, this problem will go away.
I haven’t studied GMO’s so I don’t know that much about them yet, but I agree with the logic that we will need some type of GMO industry/tehnology to feed everybody in 35 years. A problem with accomplishing that is that it seems to me that if you were against GMO science it would be much easier to propagate disinformation and scare stories for that than with CAGW. People can pretty much see for themselves that the Arctic ice isn’t gone but the ‘GMO mad scientist’ stories of ‘secret labs’ and ‘evil corporations’ can’t be as easily dispelled once the ball starts rolling. Access to unlimited information doesn’t equal scientific pragmatism in this day and age. I really didn’t think the future as depicted in ‘The Marching Morons’ or ‘Idiocracy’ was going to arrive as fast as it did.
So, who is funding headlines like this: Latest forecast suggests Godzilla El Niño may be coming to California
http://martinezgazette.com/archives/22568
Wagathon
Paramount Pictures?
tonyb
tonyb
So interesting to see if the rains come, if the floods come, mudslides and extreme events plus a spike in global average temperatures. At least the wildfires will be doused till the next dry spell. Last years El Nino petered out and if this one lasts we can expect new headlines. But at least wet. How is SE Great Britain?
Scott
I am in the south west of England in the county of Devon
After a cracking start the summer has been a little cooler than normal and after some very dry weather earlier in the year since around early July It has been a little wetter than usual.
If the winds continue to come the west it may be quite a mild winter.
Tonyb
Ah, yezzzz… the 10 plagues of So Cal — e.g., warm ocean temperatures of biblical proportion, sharks, stingrays, months of cloudlessness and unremitting torch-like heat, endless drought and dead lawns — never again to hear the sound of running water — wildfires, neighbors on fire, black skies, smoke and flies, then rain, mosquitos, malaria, floods, mudslides, inflicted on us by the Gods of the Leftists and libs because of our sins against the planet.
The teeny-bopper left wing of the Murdoch press (news.com.au) is now saying that Godzilla is just the start. Forget Godzilla, which is so last week. It cites the teeny-bopper left wing of the science press (Nature Climate Change) and one, David Karoly. It seems that everything is going to get more extreme unless…well, you know the drill by now.
Neither I nor my bamboo enjoy the El Nino conditions that come round every few years. But give me a Godzilla like 1998 over a baby chimp like 1902 or 2002. The conditions of 2007 to 2011 would be just fine (2009 El Nino included), thanks very much, the mid-nineties not so much…but like every human who has ever walked this planet I really have no idea what the conditions are going to be. Some handy indicators have got me betting pessimistically on red, but humble indicators will sell no copies of news.com.au or Nature Climate Change.
Maybe since we’re all so sciency these days we could make headlines out of stuff that has actually happened? Or is that too bo-ring? Australia being Australia we’re bound to deliver some Godzilla bushfires or drought for Paris. We do that somewhere every year (except the mid 1970s). Why not at least wait till they happen? Your jet trails to CDG and Orly will not be wasted.
EXCELLENT article on scotland ban of GM
Brian Wynne interviewed in the Scotsman: the Scottish ban of GM crops.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/scots-gm-crops-backing-like-a-religious-crusade-1-3862310 …
Judith
Generally GM is viewed with suspicion here, with test sites routinely targeted by activists determined to prevent GM crops. Until recently they were referred to as frankenfoods by the tabloid newspapers.
Unless we dramatically curb our populations it’s difficult to see how they can be resisted. As a vegetarian I have some sympathy with organics although most tests seem to show they are little better nutrionally than properly grown conventional alternatives. Generally the organic market here is relatively small partly because of cost and partly because their lower yields are not compatible with a small island such as ours where farming space is limited.
Tonyb
tonyb
by the way, Steyn’s book After America takes exception to the theory that EU and Great Britain in particular, should worry about population curbs. The birth rates are already below replacement of 2 per couple and barely exceed Spain’s low of 1.1 . Steyn is a lot of fun and sarcastic as all get out. Southwest of England is Lands End to me, a charming place. You should not curb your population, sounds so autocratic (Chinese communist party) but encourage younger couples to emulate William and Kate. The west needs expanding populations to seek freedom and independence and oppose climate controls. They won’t work (the controls) and will cede innovation and energy breakthroughs to rationing and energy curbs. The world needs to expand the pie, not cut it in finer slices. I loved visiting England, Scotland and Ireland although glad you calmed down the regicide of the royal family over the last 200 years.
Scott
Scott
Steyn is way off with his comments about population.
The uk is the size of new York state. When I was born there were some 48 million people living here..
Now there are some 65 million people and fitting them all in with all the attendant houses, roads, industrial estates, shopping centres, power stations, farming and all the other land hungry activities places a great strain on the ability of many people to live a comfortable life that is not marred by traffic jams. Queues and general erosion of quality of life caused by too many people living in too small an area.
It is expected that our population will reach some 90 million by 2050 largely fuelled by immigration. Unless we want to lose our remaining countryside that is far too many.
Tonyb
Whoops! Fat finger, meant to type 80 million by 2050 and not 90 million.
Tonyb
Tony
When I was in England 1963-65 the worst traffic jams I saw were the mass of bicycles, of workers leaving their jobs in Chelmsford. My memory tells me that they were exiting the Marconi plant.
Richard
Tony, as a vegetarian I have seen no evidence that “organic” foods have any advantage over others.
There will be no problem replacing brits dying off. The #1 male baby name in the UK is Muhammed.
Enjoy!
That SNP decision is amazing. What next, ban tractors and go back to plow horses? The damage shonky climate science has done is palpable here.
With AGW, the science is uncertain, predictions have not proven correct, and there has been a lot of fairly obvious misbehavior (climategate, Mann, Marcott,schmidt on 2014 hottest ever). And renewable ‘solutions’ are impractical to ruinous.
With GMO, carefully tailored very specific modifications for greater utility, lab tested, then field tested, then reviewed and approved. Underlying genetics well understood, with little uncertainty at the expressed gene level. Little possibility for ‘spillover’. Only negative is pest evolution.
How greenies like Greenpeace can be pro CAGW and con GMO is beyond me. Unless they are really just naive Luddites.
Most Greenies are simplistic utopians, believing that (a) their view of “good” is the only one and that (b) it can be achieved if we all behaved as they would like us to behave. Hence their unbelievably naïve views on energy, their disregard for scientific method and their assumption of the immorality of their opponents. It is fundamentally Orwellian and fascist.
I generally disagree with everything the SNP says and does on principle, but I grudging have to admit I am 100% with them an this. Once this genie is let out of the bottle there is no going back.
And by the way the Luddites were correct, they together with a large section of UK industry fought against the corn laws, which were stifling industry, and causing mass starvation. The Luddites were heroes.
It is not sufficient to use sample populations even large ones to predict future outcomes, a sample population is just that a sample, not the entire population.
By making crops insect and disease resistant has long term consequences which have not been thought out. Climate is difficult enough to deal with, but climate is but one small part of the larger environment.
I also object to the introduction of marker genes introduced into a crop in order to prove genetic ownership, such as genes to produce small amounts of antibiotics, to make such testing easier and cheaper for plant rights owners.
Nothing has been done with the legal aspects such as food labeling and the those that are trying to stifle this, well I can only conclude that they have something to hide, as anything so safe and so good would be something to crow about not hide.
Got a link? The Wiki page on the corn laws doesn’t mention Luddites, and vice versa.
What the Luddites are best known for is smashing machines that were the day’s version of disruptive technology
Luddites
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe
http://spartacus-educational.com/PRluddites.htm
Sorry, Wag, but biomass is needed for incineration – to make EU “renewable” statistics look good.
Mosomoso
Drax is looking to buy thousands of tons of bamboo. They are willing to pay any price. Do you know where we might get hold of some?
Tonyb
When you chip and pile moso bamboo it doesn’t ferment as much as wood. This would mean huge savings in nitrogen over the long trip by water. It’s also very light, thus economising marine fuel over the long trip by water (after the long trip by road to port and before the long trip by rail or road to Drax).
You just have to be careful not to trip over the lumps of coal lying about near Drax.
I like that
The main difference between generations in the US is easy to understand. Us moderns have lost touch with reality.
We moderns have things like a “strengthening El Niño” to deal with. We have to fact the fact that a warmer Pacific Ocean is surging toward America –i.e., nature is possibly bringing cataclysmic, once-in-a-generation storms this winter. In response, California gives tax credits to buy Teslas that run on energy that the last generation provided.
The “Greatest Generation” that pretty has passed relatively recently had to deal with cataclysmic, once-in-a-generation examples of man’s inhumanity to man — the Left’s Great Depression, WWII and communism — and by comparison, natural disasters like the California’s drought weren’t that big a deal; but, big enough such that they built the Hoover Dam and then brought water and power to California.
With regard to safety of GMO, we should all realize that humans have been creating GMOs for thousands of years by selective breeding. Although this does not typically involve trans-species transfer of genes, trans-species transfer of genes is very common in nature (conjugation and other natural mechanisms of gene transfer between bacteria, viruses picking up genes from their hosts, bacteria transferring genes to plants such as Agrobacterium-mediated crown galls, influenza viruses reassorting when two different ones infect the same host). Thus, addition or modification of a few genes to improve agricultural productivity does not do anything fundamentally different than nature has been doing forever, other than modifications made by humans are purposeful, whereas those made by nature are, presumably, random (and thus potentially more dangerous). Of course, if we really think nature is perfect and we want to practice the precautionary principle on all issues, then we need to stop all agricultural and biomedical research and simply let millions more people die in the future to restore natural selection/sarc.
On the issue of how far we need to go to disclose conflicts of interest, we are already doing that fairly well. Scientific journals require funding sources and other potential financial conflicts of interest to be disclosed. Universities that accept federal funds must train all faculty members on financial conflict of interest and must maintain an annual statement describing potential conflicts. As a scientist who has been funded by both government agencies and a large pharmaceutical company, I have seen no hint that industry funded results are any less reliable than government sponsored research. Perhaps my experience was an exception, but I know many scientists who have had similar experiences. I would expect that most toxicologists, for example, who work at universities have been funded both by industry and by government agencies. Very few of us see industry funding as “contaminated” in any way. In fact, I enjoyed my experiences with industry funded research, because it was designed to solve a particular problem and I had every expectation that it would be used to provide more effective answers to the FDA on a particular issue involved in drug development. Basic research, on the other hand, tends to be more risky and may not provide the benefits that had been expected. Both are needed, and the value of public-private partnerships, IMHO, more than justifies the risk of a small number of cases in which results are reported in a way that is inappropriately influenced by industry funding. Indeed, I do not have solid data on this, but I have seen many more examples of documented scientific misconduct in government-funded than industry-funded academic research studies. Dishonest scientists will sometimes be dishonest, regardless of the funding source, but I think the enhanced scrutiny associated with industry funded research makes even dishonest scientists less likely to “fudge” their results in industry funded work than in government funded work. Results from industry-funded studies are likely to be put into practice quickly, so if the results were not reliable and reliably reported, the academic scientist will at the very least lose that company as a future funding source.
Finally, with regard to use and misuse of FOIA, I think most academic scientists now understand that their emails can be subjected to public scrutiny. I do not know any who are overly concerned about this. However, there is concern about the ease with which messages can be misused with impunity, as in the case highlighted in this post in which the statements were misrepresented. FOIA laws should include provisions that prevent their use for harassment and that provide penalties for misrepresenting the messages acquired. Proving misrepresentation should not require proof of malice (as with libel laws), but should be determined by a judge or independent arbitrator with authority to levy significant fines on people who through either malicious intent or sloppiness misrepresent someone’s messages.
For posterity, i’ve changed the last sentence in the blog post o
Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline.”
Kudos acknowledging the misquote.
Would you like to enlarge on what you believe the meaning of is, as you’ve taken it out of its context, as originally written by Phil Jones.
The implication, to me at least, in how you write this is that you believe Phil Jones and Mike Mann conspired to deliberately deceive.
It would be great to hear that I’m wrong!
thanks
vtg
An interested participant at the time concludes there is no question they planned to deliberately deceive. To his credit, Phil jones sounded uncomfortable but Mann enthusiastic about the prospects of fooling the readers. What do you think those words meant? Impossible to believe it is a common phrase “used by scientists” to explain a lopping off of data and substituting a different type of measurement. This is old news but one should not beat a dead horse to try and bring it to life.
Scott
I did a whole post on this
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
vtg,
You are wrong.
Judith,
from that post “Not only is this misleading, but it is dishonest ”
ie you regard Jones, Mann and Briffa as “dishonest”.
That’s clear at least.
For the record, I’d regard the both your truncation of the quote and putting it without context as misleading, but *not* dishonest. Muir Russell concluded the same for Mann and Jones so you’re in good company.
the full quote
http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/final%20report.pdf
verytallguy: Would you like to enlarge on what you believe the meaning of is, as you’ve taken it out of its context, as originally written by Phil Jones.
In context, there was no “conspiracy” — Phil Jones copied Mike’s trick to hide the decline. The intention in both case was to “hide the decline”.
No one, to my knowledge (perhaps you know different), has ever quoted the complete context and made a showing that to “hide the decline” was anything other than a deception. There has been a claim that “Mike’s trick” refers to some sophisticated technique, but a descriptions of the technique always show that the intention was to “hide” the decline.
Well, Muir Russel says it’s misleading. Jones, Mann et al are just as smart as Muir Russel, so they also knew it is misleading. They did it anyway, to hide the decline from the skeptics. They mislead deliberately, which is dishonest. Except to tribal verytrollguys.
verytallguy: The reconstruction from the tree-ring density network was not shown after 1960, and thus in this sense it is “hidden” – but justifiably so: excluding the anomalous tree-ring density data is justified if the purpose is to illustrate the most likely course of temperature based on a combination of proxy and measured temperatures. Again, no deception was intended or practised
The decline was not hidden “in a sense”, it was hidden in order to hide the decline. Had “Mike’s trick” been “the best way of dealing with something”, the IPCC would doubtless not have removed the hockey stick from its web page.
In such circumstances, only the original author can really know what their intentions were.
Practically nothing can be “really” known, but in this “circumstance” an intent to deceive is the soundest inference, all things considered.
matthewrmarler:
Er… no. There was definitely a conspiracy, at least between a few people. Phil Jones, Michael Mann and several others all talked about the WMO figure while it was being made, talking about what would be done to make it. It wasn’t just that Jones went off on his own and copied something Mann did. He and a group of people shared a series of e-mails about it, discussing just what to do.
Brandon S? Er… no. There was definitely a conspiracy, at least between a few people. Phil Jones, Michael Mann and several others all talked about the WMO figure while it was being made, talking about what would be done to make it. It wasn’t just that Jones went off on his own and copied something Mann did. He and a group of people shared a series of e-mails about it, discussing just what to do.
You have a case. But in the “hide the decline” episode, I think a narrower interpretation is better: Jones copied “Mike’s trick”. I was responding to VTG’s post, and I think his focus was narrower, though a broader intention is compatible with what he wrote.
From Judith’s post on “hide the decline”, link above:
“With regards to the IPCC TAR:
In a post-mortem a few weeks later, Coordinating Lead Author Folland wrote that, although a proxy diagram was “a clear favourite for the Policy Makers summary”, the Briffa reconstruction “dilutes the message rather significantly”, adding that this was “probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2 at present”. Mann wrote that “everyone in the room” agreed that the Briffa series was a “potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint we’d like to show”. Briffa recognized there was “pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more ’”, but expressed many caveats, in particular that the proxies were not responding the way that they were supposed to and that that the recent warmth was “probably matched” 1000 years ago.
Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don’t think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I’d hate to be the one to have to give it fodder! (Mann Sep 22, 0938018124.txt)”
Looks like “everyone in the room” was in on the conspiracy, with Briffa being the only dissenter.
Don, I search your quote and came back to a 2009 CA post that lays it all out. There was a meeting of IPCC lead authors between Sept 1-3, 1999 to consider, among other things, what do about Briffa’s decline problem. They actually had a copy of the complete untruncated Briffa reconstruction and decided by committee it was better to bury it for the report and the greater cause. http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/
VTG, Just because Mann (and IPCC) have gotten away with this does not vindicate anyone. On the contrary, it shows something more alarming. it’s much worse than you thought.
Tallguy –
We still await your rationale behind the slight misquote being “dishonest”.
And citing Muir-Russel is no argument. He’s as crooked as the rest of them – a pal of the university bribed with taxpayer money to exonerate them. As with the various other Climategate coverups.
Very Tall says:
Punksta demands:
You just can’t make this up.
Go Team!
timg
Not according to Judith’s post, apparently.
Just trying to make you happy buddy.
And you are wromg in more than one sense. You are wrong in trying to spin a story where none is necessary, at least not if the objective is to lay out the facts and let people decide on their own.
It doesn’t require an advanced degree to understand the following:
1) Believing tree rings from a dozen or so trees can be used as accurate for measuring temperature over the past 1000 years requires a very large leap of faith.
2) Ditching the data from those tree rings when it diverges from the story you are trying to sell is second rate science at best.
3) Describing the process using terms such as “trick” and “hide” is not indicative of open and honest behavior.
jcurry, “For posterity, i’ve changed the last sentence in the blog post o
Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline.””
Ah, the skeptical science scare quote blog convention :)
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mark steyn has an entertaining new post
http://www.steynonline.com/7123/the-ugly-misogyny-of-big-climate
in which he discussed David Appel, Brandon Schollenberger and Aunt Judy
I was absolutely horrified when I read some peewee undergrad misogynist state you were against Mann for no other reason that you had once tried to get him in bed and failed. (Except they used far cruder terms.) By this post Steyn just convinced me I need to buy more copies of his book about Mann as gifts to others for the way he directly tackled this ugly misogyny that Mann appears to approve of and support head on and naming it for what it is, foul low base slander reducing a woman to a sex object rather than treating her as a human being. On top of all his other faults, Mann is also clearly a misogynist supporting other misogynists.
well that’s one i fortunately missed
tumbleweed
I for one don’t see anything wrong with viewing women as sex objects, its just that this is not an exclusionary perspective.
The poor little pudge doesn’t look like he has ever been propositioned, by a woman:
I know eh?
curryja: http://www.steynonline.com/7123/the-ugly-misogyny-of-big-climate
And Mann expects to prevail in a libel suit? He’s gross.
Huh? How does that post lead to the conclusion Michael Mann is gross? I think it shows Mark Steyn is gross in that he completely misrepresents what I said and did in order to paint me in a negative light, falsely claiming I defended Tamino’s sexist insults. I think it also shows Tamino is gross in that he uses sexist insults.
But it doesn’t show anything about Mann. The only thing the post even really talks about Mann doing is tweeting a picture one of his fans took to show support for him. That’s certainly not gross.
Brandon S? : I think it also shows Tamino is gross in that he uses sexist insults.
Yeh, I goofed. There was little about Mann himself, nothing gross. It’s the field that is full of gross insults.
I think one would be hard-pressed to show that tamino, Appell and you knew about the pronographic interpretation when the post was first put up.
> He’s gross.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gross
Poor brandoon. But he got off lighter than Greg Mann- Leaden.
Styne is so far beyond the minions he mentioned in both wit and PR ability it is really not a level playing field. It’s really not fair! We need the PC police to put a stop to this!
brandumb strikes again
Gotta love it.
Steyn is one of a kind.
Looks like someone beat me to it and bought Brandon a copy of the book. Brandon has a scam going on getting free books. I bought him Steyn’s last one.
While Steyn’s post is absolutely hilarious, it has a very serious side as well about the depths that the Mannboys will go to to slur those that disagree with them and they think are “dangerous”.
Judith I suggest you get Steyn to autograph a copy of this post so you can get it framed for your office.
Maybe Josh needs to do a cartoon :)
I salute your refusal to get neck-deep in petty tribalism.
He needs to raise the price point on his 99 cent e-books. I am getting a vision of brandoon standing in the median with a sad looking dog, a shopping cart full of stuff and a hand lettered sign. We could do him a mitzvah by chipping in to buy him a sense of humor.
Mark Silbert, that post shows more about the depths people will go to to slur people who speak out the “skeptic” heroes. Steyn’s post is completely absurd. If the sides of the debate were switched, people would be calling him dishonest for it, not praising him for it. The idea I said anything to defend Tamino’s insults is completely absurd, yet Steyn wrote paragraph after paragraph based upon it.
As for getting free copies of books, what can I say? A long time back I made a policy that I will read any book I’m given for free. It’s a good way to ensure I’m exposed to ideas I might otherwise not consider. It’s also a good way to ensure I read many books I will wish I hadn’t read. Believe me, these are some of them.
I can’t wait to see a cartoon by Josh. That would be a collector’s item.
Don, I am not quite sure how to take Brandon. Your characterization may be the real deal, in which case you gotta feel sorry for the guy. Steyn’s take was pretty perceptive too. I looked over some of his posts/tweets………kinda scary.
I am on my way to Seattle from Vancouver on Amtrak heading back to Santa Fe tomorrow. I spent some time re-bonding with the magnificent Pacific near Tofino. It’s still there, beautiful and majestic as ever. Can’t see that CAGW has had any effect.
A point conceded. And I had asked why would anyone buy the book? (Not a fan of the climate bickering.) Looking at column and LOL. Fine skills should always be appreciated.
Steyn does not have much trouble selling his books :)
No doubt about that Judith…no doubt at all. My interests are just places other than with personalities. I have to note, however, that in the past I have referred to you as ‘Ma Curry’ in the contexts of food fights at CE, and have yet to find a male blogger counterpart even close to worthy of ‘Pa’. That has to do with adult supervision and not misogyny. :O)
More stupid from Steyn.
Gender imbalance in some science feilds (hardly alone) is Michael Mann’s fault?
Judith, naturally, promotes this latest addition to the witch-hunt.
Steyn then tries to use the gender of some of the people he quoted a( a tiny handful) as yet another weapon to bash Mann – seems he finds their gender more interesting than their science.
Pretty desperate stuff.
Appel is getting his clock cleaned by most commenters. Good to see an actual “serial misinformer” get so pwned that they feel exposed enough to ‘fess up.
One thing though, he still has not corrected nor updated the original Quark Soup blog post where he accuses Steyn and Curry of dishonestly (dare I say implying fraudulently?) altering quotes. That means the alarmist trolls can continue to link to it to smear Steyn and Curry.
I pointed this out to Appel, hopefully it will result in a correction.
Judith, that post is horrible. What Steyn says about me isn’t remotely close to accurate. I didn’t say a word in defense of Tamino, and I’ve criticized him over this very issue in the past.
The only thing I did is point out Mark Steyn is completely wrong to suggest Tamino called you “Aunt Judy” as a reference to some term used in the p0rn industry, because he was. That’s not defending Tamino’s insults. It’s simply pointing out a bizarre thing Steyn said is bizarre. His reaction was completely unjustified, and it is nothing more than unabashed tribalism.
(On a completely unimportant note, there is no c in my last name.)
Steyn makes a very valid point when he says:
“It’s not just that Mann’s friend “Tamino” does not refer to Mann as “Uncle Mike”, or Schmidt as “Uncle Gavin” or Trenberth as “Uncle Kevin”, but they don’t even dismiss the guys on the other side in that way: Fred Singer is not “Uncle Freddie” and Richard Lindzen is not “Uncle Dickie”. Shollenberger defends Tamino because he believes that, in looking for a condescending sexist sneer, he just stumbled entirely innocently on a porno term.”
It would have been better to have stayed out of it. Steyn hit the nail on the head.
harkin1:
There is absolutely nothing to suggest Tamino’s use of the phrase “Aunt Judy” had anything to do with how that phrase might be used in the p0rn industry. There’s no indication Tamino, his readers, or Mark Steyn himself was even aware of that usage at the time Tamino called her that. In his book, Steyn makes it sound like he only just discovered that the phrase could be used that way.
So why shouldn’t I have pointed that out? Am I not allowed to say Mark Steyn said something wrong? Does me saying Steyn said something wrong automatically translate into, “Everybody Steyn criticized is right”? Of course not. Tamino’s insults were still insults whether or not Steyn described them accurately.
This sort of reaction is the same tribalistic nonsense this site has criticized time and time again from the “consensus” crowd.
Steyn was correct.
Brandon. Read harder. Parse harder.
Brandon
The only thing I did is point out Mark Steyn is completely wrong to suggest Tamino called you “Aunt Judy” as a reference to some term used in the p0rn industry, because he was
###$$
No read harder.
Steyn is noting that tamino uses a term which appears to have a porno meaning. That is true.
He makes no claim about tamino intention but rather notes that tamino readers take the discussion that way.
It’s a very sly piece of writing. Very sharp.
Steven Mosher:
If you had bothered to take your own advice and parsed what I said, you would have noticed I said it was wrong for Steyn to “suggest Tamino called” our hostess “Aunt Judy” as a p0rno reference. That’s because, as I said an hour ago in response to you saying much teh same at my site, I initially didn’t read Steyn’s book thinking I might have to parse it for subtle nuances allowing him to imply things then say, “But I didn’t really say that.” As I indicated there, the reason I didn’t immediately go back and fix my mistake is Steyn wrote an article responding to what I said without taking issue with my depiction, so it appeared he wasn’t bothered by it.
But as my comment here clearly shows, I’ve become well aware of the subtle distinction one could draw, hence why I used the word “suggest” instead of “said.” Had you bothered to read harder and parse harder as you tell me to do, you’d have noted that and saved us all the trouble of a stupid semantic discussion.
And BTW –
Credit where credit’s due, Brandon… Kudos. Between the sorry display by Laden and Mosher and Steyn and Judith and Mann, you come up squeaky clean. Perhaps damning by faint praise, but credit where credit’s due.
Little publicity hound brandoon has me persuaded on this one. There is absolutely no reason, other than tamandingo being a complete misogynist alarmist a$$hole, that the runt would slur Judith like that. He probably thinks that Judith is actually his Aunt. Why else would it be capitalized?
Mosh
Listen, there’s Test Match Cricket on and I’ve just had a very interesting offer from a senior Syrian Defector to transfer large sums of money into my account in a legal fashion, so you will realise I have better things to do today.
As far as I am aware I have never read anything of Steyn’s nor followed the Steyn/Mann case.
I was originally interested as I found myself siding with Michael over the correct use of quotations.
It is all very well to say read harder or parse more but surely that misses the point. Steyn is a polemicist and a communicator. As such he will be read superficially by many people and should be expected to get over his meaning clearly. If you need to parse everything surely he has failed, especially when we are dealing with a book, rather than a short article.
I’ve lost track, is this out in e-book form yet, as reluctantly it seems I must read it for myself. For balance is there anything that summarises Mann’s position?
tonyb
“If you had bothered to take your own advice and parsed what I said, you would have noticed I said it was wrong for Steyn to “suggest Tamino called” our hostess “Aunt Judy” as a p0rno reference.”
“According to @MarkSteynOnline, Tamino calls @curryja “Aunt Judy” as a porno reference.
No joke. Steyn actually says that.
#####################
no he doesnt.
Steyn doesnt actually say that.
he says that Tamino USES a term which APPEARS to have some pornographic references.
He is mute on tamino’s intentions.
that’s part of this trick.
who has the dirty mind trick.
“But as my comment here clearly shows, I’ve become well aware of the subtle distinction one could draw, hence why I used the word “suggest” instead of “said.” Had you bothered to read harder and parse harder as you tell me to do, you’d have noted that and saved us all the trouble of a stupid semantic discussion.”
I read what you wrote here.
““According to @MarkSteynOnline, Tamino calls @curryja “Aunt Judy” as a porno reference.
No joke. Steyn actually says that.”
Brandon: hence why I used the word “suggest” instead of “said.”
Brandumb: No joke. Steyn actually says that.”
I had to google this.
I wonder if Tamino considers how his ad hom says more about him than Judith.
” If you need to parse everything surely he has failed, especially when we are dealing with a book, rather than a short article.”
Actually not. Steyn has a very sharp style. If you just read casually as most of he readers do ( I imagine) then you come away with the impression that he is claiming one thing, however, if you read carefully
you’ll see the superficial reading is a trap of sorts.
An example of this style
“Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point. ”
“If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke. ”
Note that he doesnt say he would not extend the metaphor to the locker room.. he says he is unsure he would do so with the same zeal. nevertheless, the damage is done. The reader (some readers) will
of course extend the metaphor.. the whole point is to bring up the image without explicitly endorsing it or denying it.
Suppose I say
“I can see why some people compare Skeptics to holocaust deniers.
but Im not sure I’d go that far.” Once I say that the whole debate
is relaunched. Partly because figurative meanings are very hard to control. the audience basically takes over the meaning of your words.
good practioners of this style can always walk away and say
“I never said that”
Which is fricking Hilarious because of the people arguing that steyn made mistakes quoting people..
So at once I see people paying great attention to textual detail and then two seconds later, failing miserably at the same task. Its actually fun to watch people struggle with this problem.
A good example is Brandon who goes from
1. Steyn actually said that
to
2. Steyn suggested that.
In the grand scheme of things that’s a simple mistake. A rush job
on twitter versus something well thought out. But in the charged environment of this debate.. even small mistakes are unforgiveable.
All you Pollyannas need to know for sure that the term “Aunt Judy” has unsavory sexual denotations.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Aunt+Judy
Quit trying to spin this in Mann’s favor. He’s a pig.
> He’s a pig.
That’s an interesting word you got there, jim2. Have you ever considered calling Mike a dirty pig instead?
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
A tribute to the Keeling curve, with a wish.
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
A bunny could have great fun with this. Also from the urban dictionary:
Crazy aunt syndrome: The consistency of successful people to have at least one crazy relative. They inherit enough of the crazy genes to be different and unique, but not enough to be actually insane.
Steve Jobs definitely has crazy aunt syndrome.
well when i first saw your aunt judy statement, i figured it was ‘dotty’ rather than porno
It was wrong of Steyn to attribute the term to Tamino. It was one of his bloggers, and when pointed out to Tamino by David Appell, it was clear from the answer that Tamino had not heard of its other meaning, as had not Brandon, nor I for that matter. It is not a well known term except perhaps to those in Steyn’s circles. Steyn makes a big deal out of this, and finds ways to attack climate scientists through his own misfire on this matter.
JimD, “It was wrong of Steyn to attribute the term to Tamino. It was one of his bloggers, and when pointed out to Tamino by David Appell, it was clear from the answer that Tamino had not heard of its other meaning, as had not Brandon, nor I for that matter”
I don’t know if it is wrong or right, but Tamino hasn’t found much time to moderate such things. He seems to have quite a few posts where that comment was allowed.
Now on the bright side, my theory has been that incompetence is more likely that a devious conspiracy and using or allowing terms you don’t understand tends to support that theory.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/double-standard/
Heavy use of the term by Tamino in one of his own posts.
I use duckduckgo but you can use google (or any of the engines that track you) and get a similar result if you search for “Aunt Judy”
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aunt+Judy
Anybody who claims ignorance about this is too misinformed or dishonest for any of their other thoughts to be worth considering.
Score another one for Steyn.
Just my memory, my hunch the first time I saw it used was RL. He used it in a comment on Open Mind in November 2011, and I think it was used before that but I cannot find it so far. Somebody said Italian Flag for timeframe, but I think it may have been Rose’s pause article.
The porn definition somebody put up as proof is dated 2013, so its use predates that one.
As I said, look at his reply to Appell a year later than his own use. That was not a meaning he knew. Appell saw something else in the meaning as might have Tamino’s commenter ‘snarkrates’ that was quoted, and for sure Steyn did, but it looks like Tamino didn’t.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/yesallwomen/#comment-86528
JimD, Thanks for the link. It is pretty bizarre that David Appell points out that the term might be more offensive than intended then gets nailed for being a pervert of sorts. I really think your “side” is wound a tad too tight, at least in the blogosphere.
JCH | August 21, 2015 at 12:10 pm |
“Just my memory, my hunch the first time I saw it used was RL. He used it in a comment on Open Mind in November 2011, and I think it was used before that but I cannot find it so far. Somebody said Italian Flag for timeframe, but I think it may have been Rose’s pause article.”
“Judy Curry continues her crazy aunt act…” – Rabett Run, October 31, 2010.
I recall Rabett as being first, also
So, do you sincerely think he was secretly introducing the porn slant? I can remember my mother and her sister, my Aunt Rebecca (lord knows what that means) frequently talking about their gay aunt – 1950s and early 1960s. Apparently she was a gay person.
for all his many faults Eli has a keen and deprecating sense of humour. I doubt he was intending anything malicious.
tonyb
Eli used a related expression circa 2010/11:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/11/infra-digging-michael-tobis.html
“I doubt he was intending anything malicious.”
It doesnt matter what he intended. In the first place what he intended is not discoverable. In the second place using the term tells members of the tribe
that personal attacks are acceptable, especially when a thought leader like Eli engages in it.
“crazy aunt” can be seen as a play on crazy uncle ( a cousin of the funny uncle ahem ) and down the road it gets translated into Aunt Judy,
a term that has pornographic connotations to a certain class of people.
Trying to figure out whether those connotations were actually in anyone’s head is damn near impossible. you cant say yes, you cant say no.
All you know is what Steyn pointed out: the term has a meaning in
other linguistic situations. The more important argument he makes is this: If its not being used as a porno reference then how is it being used.
The Aunt Judy term along with all the other references to carnality
basically illustrate the same thing.. which was Steyn’s point to begin with:
It looks like mysogeny.
rather than playing interpretation games and fixing blame, it would
probably be better if folks just adopted the habit of calling scientists with Phds by their appropriate names. Dr. Mann. Dr, Curry.
yes yes I know I havent done this in the past. I’m saying its more contructive for folks to set the issue aside and try to improve going forward.
Psst I’m not insisting on being called mr mosher… mosh works fine for me
Mosh
I am interested in finding out the truth about the climate , wherever that may lead.
It would greatly help toward meeting that objective if people didn’t hurl insults at each other, indulge in conspiracy theories, generally throw up obfuscatory flak and didn’t assume the other ‘ side’ were complete idiots.
It would also be nice not to go down these long and circular diversions through a forest of nonsense.
Meeting those criteria might help to encourage those with serious knowledge to participate here and answer questions and help to move our collective knowledge forward
Tonyb
Mr. Mosher has it about right. Nobody can prove what those clowns’ intentions were in calling Judith “Aunt Judy”. It very likely wasn’t an expression of affection. Steyn merely pointed out a plausible interpretation that suits his purposes. He doesn’t have to prove anything, give any of those clowns the benefit of the doubt, or to be politically correct. Steyn is not a candidate for public, a priest, a news reporter, a school teacher, an Indian chief. He gets paid to be a sh!t disturber. Polemics is his bread and butter. And why would he pass up a perfectly fine opportunity to make his enemies look bad?
We don’t need to feel sorry for poor little tamino. If you are a male, that simpleminded clown has branded you as either a rapist or complicit in the rape and tyranny of fear that all women suffer. If you are a female, he has described you as a scared little chicken unable to look out for yourself. Condescending little pr!ck.
And whatever those little creeps meant by calling her “Aunt Judy”, it was part of the campaign of vilifying and marginalizing Prof. Curry for straying from the consensus reservation.
Thought leader, GEAFB:)
May I interrupt with some facts?
I know this may be unwelcome and the ‘skeptics’ all are a-buzz and falling over themselves to be the most enthusiastic Steyn-arse-kisser / Mann-hater they can possibly be, but……
Steyn is just hopeless. ‘Porno’ aunt???? Your collective credulity is wonderous to behold (Judith, you do yourself no favours here….as usual)
I believe (with moderate confidence) that the first use of the term was in 2010, thus, and I quote (you there cap’n?);
“Judy Curry continues her crazy aunt act….”
Thankyou Eli (though perhaps the rabbit may drop in and clarify if he can claim credit…).
And it was in response to Judith’s supremely incoherent Italian flag ‘analysis’.
Crawl back in your hole Michael.
You would do well to take harkin1’s advice to Brandon (above) on this.
Sorry Mark, facts be-gone…and now normal service can resume……rant on!
You are wrong Michael.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Aunt+Judy
There isnt anything too complicated about this.
You call someone a denier. They object to being compared to a holocaust denier. You claim you didnt mean that exactly, that the term denier has legitamate meanings.
You call someone Aunt Judy. They object because of the pornographic
implications. You claim you didnt mean that, you meant… well what the
hell does it mean to call a woman an Aunt?
I call you a punter.
Uncle Judy wouldn’t make much sense.
> There isnt anything too complicated about this.
More generally. P calls I a G. I objects to being compared to something dirty. P claims not to have meant anything remotely dirty, and that G has acceptable connotations.
All this during a summer where I calls those who share the same profession as P biased, witch hunters, suffering from post-traumatic stress or worse, questions their INTEGRITY ™, their diversity, and raises concerns about their communication strategy, their advocacy, their certainty. Et cetera ad nauseam. (And we’re just talking about one summer – it has been lingering for years.) Yet for an editorial by S who compared P to a G
Nothing very complicated indeed.
And also just this year….
I seem to recall Judith herself, likening Mann to the Charlie Hebdo terrorists.
But please let’s coninue our wailing and gnashing of teeth over some possible obscure porno reference, common knowledge only to the likes of Steyn…
Yes, Judith messed up on that Hedbo story. And we gave her a thrashing for that. Right, mikey. However, she ain’t gnashing her teeth over tamino’s nasty misogyny. She said Steyn’s post is entertaining. She is taking this very lightly. Why you getting all hysterical?
“Entertaining” is how you describe a piece containing blatant homophobia, Ms. Curry?
https://tonyhellerakastevengoddardisnotasociopath.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/judith-currys-endorsement-of-the-mark-steyns-ugly-homophobic-attack-on-michael-mann-and-greg-laden
tohyhellerexposed: “Entertaining” is how you describe a piece containing blatant homophobia, Ms. Curry?
It is only “blatant homophobia”, or even just plain “homophobia” if you ignore the use of “pansy” to mean “weak” or “effeminate” man. All Steyn wrote was that by remaining anonymous you are “weak”. He is challenging you to “stand up and be a man”. I do not myself oppose anonymity in public argumentation, but accusations that anonymous writers are “cowards” and such is quite common.
Go look at Steyn’s remarks about Laden getting Mann’s shaft up his ass and his long history of homophobia. Then come talk to me.
Tonyhellerexposed
You should have realised by now that some of us sceptics are not impressed by steyn. The link you make about his comment about laden and mann is stupid childish and unpleasant and steyn ought to be ashamed of himself. However, how that means that Judith ‘endorses’ this ‘homophobic attack’ escapes me.
Many people whose material you might agree with in full or in parts may not have an unblemished past. Arrhenius is a good example of that with eugenics.
Should we stop quoting Arrhenius because of that aspect of his past?
You make much too clear a link between steyns stupid remarks and judith quoting him in part.
See my conversation with Mosher above. I don’t understand the attraction of Steyn but I am assured he is sharp and clever. I’ve yet to see it.
tonyb
Nice try at diverting attention from Mann the liar, obfuscator, data torturer and self promoter to whether or not Judith Curry abets homophobia. My guess is that she doesn’t!
I expect no less from you.
Clearly Curry read Steyn’s piece containing the homophobic attack because Curry linked to the essay and called it “entertaining.” That’s obviously an endorsement of the piece and Steyn’s line of argumentation which included the homophobic attack contained within it.
How Curry could have read that passage and not be immediately repulsed by it is beyond me. It’s disgusting.
Tony
I suspect that link about the ‘ entertaining’ essay was on a different thread. Can you link to it please so I can read it and see the context.
Tonyb
Tony –
==> “You should have realised by now that some of us sceptics are not impressed by steyn. ”
Who were you thinking of, other than yourself? From what I’ve seen, Steyn has pretty uniform and enthusiastic support. Judith in particular seems to think that his divisive and insulting “zingers” are fynny.
Between Steyn and Tony Heller aka Goddard, I have had to revise my opinion that the climate wars are mere sameosameo. It turns out that what I thought was the lowest point achievable was just a stopping point in the way down.
Tony
Ok, found it. Will read it shortly
Tonyb
It’s this thread. See Curry’s comment from 7:55pm:
curryja | August 20, 2015 at 7:55 pm | Reply
mark steyn has an entertaining new post
http://www.steynonline.com/7123/the-ugly-misogyny-of-big-climate
in which he discussed David Appel, Brandon Schollenberger and Aunt Judy
Your gay dog won’t hunt THE. Steyn is mostly in the arts. Lots of gay people are attracted to that profession. So, I think you are wrong about any gay bashing by Steyn. Climate science, OTOH, appears to eschew women.
From the article:
…
I’ve spent most of my adult life around the arts and the media, and I would be surprised to find myself on a project with as few women as climate science. The editorial director at Faber & Faber, my publishers on Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, is Belinda Matthews; my publisher at Regnery, for The [Un]documented Mark Steyn et al, is Marji Ross. But it was very hard to find prominent female climate scientists.
…
http://www.steynonline.com/7123/the-ugly-misogyny-of-big-climate
tonyhellerexposed: Go look at Steyn’s remarks about Laden getting Mann’s shaft up his ass and his long history of homophobia.
You are changing your ground. First you referred to a specific piece, and now you bring in prior history. The piece that you referenced did not include blatant homophobia. Is Prof Curry somehow responsible for Steyn’s entire history? Hardly anyone is always right, and if one is responsible for another’s entire history, then nobody can be quoted.
tonyheller,
You are being disingenuous and humorless. Furthermore you are amping up Steyn’s words (re. Laden, who seems to be uncharacteristically quiet) to help stir up a political correctness backlash.
Judith Curry teams up with showman to smear Mann and you accuse me of amping things up? Choice.
And did you even look at Steyn’s remarks about Mann and Laden? You couldn’t have. If you think they are appropriate, then you need to have your head examined.
Josh@a
I said I knew nothing of steyn when you accused me of being disingenuous. I thanked you here for your support of me at Sou’s place and I don’t know if you saw it. I hope by now you will realise I was not being disingenuous and that I knew nothing of the steyn and Mann spat and what I have seen since then does not endear me to the guy. I find his work unpleasant And his style is not one I enjoy.
Brandon is running a series of critiques of his book and I shall follow that and decide if the book is worth buying in order to understand what this legal case is all about As I said in an earlier post it would also be useful to hear mann’s side.
Tonyb
Tonyhellerexposed has zero clue
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stick+up+their+butt
Steyn specifically said “shaft,” not stick.
But if you’re that desperate to defend a homophobe, knock yourself out.
Tonyhellerexposed
Ok, I have read the piece. It is stupid and unpleasant and not in a style I like.
I still do not see your homophobic accusation as this vague reference is in passing in a pretty confused paragraph. If you had not pointed it out I would have read the paragraph and just shrugged in bemusement at some of the references.
To understand them you would have to follow the underlined links. There are some 40 of these. Personally I would not have bothered to follow any of them as the story lines in which they were incorporated were just not interesting enough to bother wanting to do so.
Judith called it entertaining I suspect because she was amused to see Brandon Appell and Aunt Judy referenced.
To believe she endorsed a homophobic accusation assumes she saw it in the first place buried amongst all the other nonsense.
Tonyb
Let me put it to you in cruder terms. Steyn accuses Laden of being Mann’s “butt boy.” Do you at least get that gross homophobic reference?
homophobia huh?
What next the? Judy beats her dogs? Is a tax cheat? Oh my god, she voted for George Bush!!!
Thanks again for showing us your ability to dive ever deeper into the muck. Just what one would expect from an A**clown.
good grief, i definitely don’t beat my dogs
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207350792386552&set=pcb.10207350794026593&type=1&theater
Judy actually voted for Obama. I think she’s OK anyways.
“See my conversation with Mosher above. I don’t understand the attraction of Steyn but I am assured he is sharp and clever. I’ve yet to see it.”
He is sharp, clever, a good writer, edgy, non PC.
I view him as a comedian. entertaining.
Steyn plays the u have dirty mind game very well.
shaft/stick… plays the line perfectly
it’s entertaining. definately not PC. not for pansies.
There’s not game playing going on here at all. It’s blatant as blatant can be.
“I understand his devoted Mini-Me, Greg Mann-Laden, prefers to wear [the hockey stick graph] as a novelty tramp stamp: The shaft runs straight across the top of his left thigh and then the blade shoots up his butt.”
By having Laden take Mann’s last name, describing him as “devoted” wearing a “tramp stamp” taking Mike’s shaft up his ass, there is absolutely no mistake about Steyn’s abhorrent anti-gay rhetoric here.
If you can’t see that, you’re as backwards as Steyn.
Mosh
I have a comment in moderation amplifying my comment but do you really think this is sharp and clever?
http://www.steynonline.com/7123/the-ugly-misogyny-of-big-climate
I like the non pc bit but that only works if its funny sharp and clever.
For mostly sharp funny clever and non pc entertainment see ‘family guy’ who get away with saying the most astonishing things. I wouldn’t currently put Steyn in the same league but are willing to read some more of his essays if you would care to link to any you think fit the bill.
tonyb
matthewrmarler:
For what it’s worth, I read that piece and didn’t notice any homophobia. But I have noticed what appeared to be disturbing homophobia from Steyn before, and after going back and looking for it, I’d agree the trend seems to continue in this piece as well.
But it’s certainly not blatant. Every time I see Steyn make comments like these, I always wind up wondering, “Is he trying to put down gay people, or am I reading too much into this?” I wouldn’t read anything into the word “pansy” myself because social crowds I’m around don’t even realize it has anything to do with homosexuality, and the other cases are always just… eh?
Communication is fraught with difficulties. I prefer not to assume I know about deep seated bigotries and things like that without much more compelling evidence.
Now the little fake tonyheller is going to get all hysterical and call you a pansiephobic, Steven.
Tonyb,
I’m not sure where you’ve been. The Mann/Steyn lawsuit has been around for years and there have been numerous posts on CE about it and referencing it.
Whether you appreciate Steyn or not as a writer and commentator on life is besides the point. He is defending freedom of speech for us all. His latest book is clearly part of his defense strategy. It’s a remarkable piece of work in that it demonstrates that there is a long list of scientists that have taken strong exception with Mann’s hockey stick and his elimination of the little ice age and the medieval warming period (something i would have thought you would be aware of).
I strongly encourage you to buy and read this book and to become familiar with this lawsuit. Don’t let the hom-ph-bic feint through you off. Mark Steyn is someone that anyone interested in climate and science needs to follow.
Tony
You say
‘Steyn accuses Laden of being Mann’s “butt boy.” Do you at least get that gross homophobic reference?’
Where does he say this? In one of the forty links? My eyes glazed over the first time I read this strange piece and perhaps I have missed something. Where SPECFICALLY does it make that comment? Thanks.
tonyb
Good Lord. I’m not saying he used those exact words but that is precise sentiment he expresses using different words.
I don’t see it as “anti-gay rhetoric”, just anti-Greg Laden rhetoric.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving schm00k.
Because he’s putting Laden down for being gay. If you don’t get that, you’re just as bad as Steyn.
tonyhellerexposed, three words:
Get a life!
A tramp stamp is a tattoo typically on a woman’s lower back. That would be just above the buttocks. Just in case some might be wondering about the meaning of the term they are tossing around.
It is not even a particularly derogatory term.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nAUBWFdbVzE/Vdd29VhwqKI/AAAAAAAAN-o/4ANSYHRXiYI/s720-Ic42/02-badink2_6.jpg
I was considering a do not enter once upon a time when I was drinking
You people are beyond belief.
Steyn clearly holds that belief that if you are gay you are weak and submissive. If you don’t see that, you are blind.
I’m done with you people. Waste of time.
Mark Silbert:
I’m really not sure this is true. The more I read this book, the more I think it may actually support Michael Mann’s lawsuit. There are two key issues to this libel lawsuit: 1) Freedom of speech; 2) Truth. The book completely undercuts Steyn on point 1.
Libel laws are quite clear in that you do not have an absolute freedom of speech to say just anything you want. There are limits. The problems I see in this book make it appear Steyn happily flouts those limits on a regular basis, as a systematic part of his career. If that’s true, then that supports Mann’s claim that Steyn was acting with reckless disregard for the truth with his article. Because quite frankly, I think it’s clear Steyn acted with reckless disregard for the truth with his book.
If Mann’s lawyers can argue that effectively, I think they can win the lawsuit. It doesn’t matter that Mann’s work is fraudulent. If you can convince a jury Steyn will say whatever he wants to make people he dislikes look bad, without any concern for whether or not what he says is true, they won’t find in his favor. That’s because Steyn isn’t fighting for free speech. He’s fighting for his freedom to smear anyone with whatever baseless accusations he wants. It just happens that this time, when he got called out on it, his accusations were right.
Tony
But you put “butt boy” in quotation marks.
Brandon and myself took Judith to task on precisely this point just yesterday. if its in speech marks it should be something he actually said. Now you are saying he didn’t say that at all.
Perhaps you have been too close to this for too long. I grant you it’s a poorly written and expressed piece of work but to get the homophobic references you so stridently assert, you would have to know some sort of back story and perhaps follow all his forty links in the essay.
I don’t think the steyn piece reflects well on him but to claim that Judith is endorsing some sort of homophobic attack is stretching it don’t you think?
Tonyb
You don’t know the different uses of quotes. Go read a grammar book. I’m not going to waste any time trying to educate you.
Here, go educate yourself about how to use quotes around slang expressions:
http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/02/quotation-mark-uses-other-than-quotes.html
bye bye tonyheller.
You tried to use the fact that Judith enjoys reading Mark Steyn to smear her.
By the way, I couldn’t care less about Greg Laden’s orientation No matter what, he’s a p_tz.
Cheese done slipped off his cracker boy,
“Steyn clearly holds that belief that if you are gay you are weak and submissive. If you don’t see that, you are blind.”
Where do you get off trying to belittle American Gays?
Brandon
We seem to be in concert together at the moment as I am inclined to agree with you. I absolutely understand the free speech aspect but that doesn’t mean you can say anything you want.
I am hoping someone will link to some better pieces by steyn as at present my feelings towards him are rather negative and, I hate to say it, that although I think mann’s hockey stick was a poor piece of work, his case appears to have some merit.
I think I will need to read the book in full but would still like to see a summary of mann’s claims against steyn in order to try to understand the context. At the moment all I am getting is a shrill ‘ he said, no they said,’
Tonyb
Tony
No, you are wrong
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/quotes/marks
Only the exact words usedBy someone should be encased by quotation marks. Else how do we know when the exact words are being quoted or some random interpretation is being made?
Tonyb
Brandon S,
I am not a lawyer. I have no idea about your legal background. So in no case will I debate your legal analysis.
I will say that the large number of amici briefs filed in support of Steyn by the ACLU, The Washington Post, NBC News, The Los Angeles Times and various other notorious right-wing organizations, while none have been filed in support of Mann should be an indication of the relative legal strengths of the cases.
tonyb, “Only the exact words usedBy someone should be encased by quotation marks. Else how do we know when the exact words are being quoted or some random interpretation is being made?”
Two nations separated by a common language.
Judy,
I’m sure you don’t. In fact anyione who regularly inhabits this blog can pick up on how they are a part of who you are. I was making fun of that puffed up hellerexposed clown.
from tonyhellerexposed:
“I’m done with you people. Waste of time.”
Promises, promises.
Captain
You will remember that we had this self same discussion about quotation marks over thelatet few days.
I think tony he@ler has Reinforced the desirability of only putting someone’s exact words into quotation marks. He made up a phrase and put it into a quote as if someone had actually said it. It may well be that his interpretation may or may not be right, but you shouldn’t put words into someone else’s mouth without making it clear that they are YOUR words and not theirs.
Tonyb
Perhaps a climate blog is not the best place to pursue a progressivist political correctness agenda.
THE doesn’t appear interested in addressing the substance of Stein’s remarks. Attacking a straw man constructed from mischaracterization Stein’s remarks is less impressive and persuasive than addressing the factual content of his remarks.
There is a niche progressive group that has a hyper-intolerance of other people’s language based on conflict with progressives self-invented psuedo-sins. Committing one of these psuedo-sins in an article or post is supposed to completely invalidate the article or post.
Considering that the people in this niche group tend not to be kind and gentle in their speech this would seem to be a tactic instead of a legitimate viewpoint.
Actually, I’m not completely up on “gay” slang, but if I understand correctly, he was putting Laden down for being a (gay) “tramp”. Not only that, but it’s an excellent metaphor for Laden’s behavior WRT alarmist “scientists” such as Mann and Gleick. Sort of like jackal to lions, except that Mann and Gleick are more hyenas than lions.
Mark
This Mann/steyn thing has been going on somewhat intermittently For a long time and every time I have dipped my toe in the water i find that you get all this extreme and confusing reaction from both sides. Hence I try to keep my toes dry.
When it actually comes to court no doubt I will read the proceedings with interest. At present my sympathies are not with steyn as I do not like his style but I suppose I will have to buy the ebook at some point and see what all the fuss is about.
Tonyb
Exactly. Google “scare quotes”. I don’t know why they’re called that, but they are. Very common in writing in the US.
==> “He is sharp, clever, a good writer, edgy, non PC.”
Right. That’s why he’s in this “Aunt Judy” jaunt…because he’s “non-PC.”
Funny how the definition of PC changes depending on who’s grinding their axe.
tonyb, ” It may well be that his interpretation may or may not be right, but you shouldn’t put words into someone else’s mouth without making it clear that they are YOUR words and not theirs.”
You may have noticed that making things “clear” might require a bit of effort on the receiving side of things. Michael, the one whose cheese slipped on his cracker, wilbert and others like to run with their interpretation of what they think they read instead putting a little effort in actually understanding the point. I do it myself from time to time, it is a human nature thing that writer’s like Steyn and all 16 year old kids like to exploit.
Brandon said “If that’s true, then that supports Mann’s claim that Steyn was acting with reckless disregard for the truth with his article.”
I have to disagree with you on this point.
What Steyn does after the filing of the lawsuit has no real relevance to the issues in the case.
He could libel 10 other people and it would not be relevant to the issues in the Mann case.
Just as a person charged with murder would not be found guilty because while they were out on bail they killed someone else, and were found guilty of it – these facts and actions would not even be admitted into court on the first accusation of murder.
I am sure other lawyers will chime in on this issue – but that is my take on it. Not really my area of law (I am a patent lawyer) but still I don’t think you are correct on the law here.
Mark Silbert:
Well, one thing to remember is Mark Steyn isn’t the only defendant, so he could lose even if the other defendants did not.
But on your point, I think they, like me, saw this case as a simple case of a person writing a distasteful article and getting sued for it. That’s wrong. That’s why I spoke up in his defense, and I imagine that’s why they did the same. But there’s always that crazy possibility Steyn sent an e-mail to someone which said:
If something like that came out, they’d stop supporting him in the lawsuit. My view is this book, and his behavior in his recent article, is evidence of a similar nature. It’s nowhere near as obvious or compelling, but it goes to the same issue – does Steyn act with reckless disregard for the truth when publishing things harmful to people’s reputation.
Richard Arrett:
Patterns of behavior are often relevant in court. Even if they aren’t admitted in the actual trial (I don’t know what can be admitted in a libel trial), they can be relevant to the proceedings prior to the trial. If Mann can convince judges Steyn has a tendency to libel other people, Steyn will find it much harder to get the lawsuit dismissed.
climatereason:
Aye. There is nothing wrong with using quotation marks to indicate non-standard usage of words or phrases (scare quotes), but you have to make it clear that’s what you’re doing. If you’re going to make it look like you’re quoting a person, you need to use their actual words. If you want to paraphrase them, clearly label it a paraphrase and then that’s okay too.
Basically, just don’t present something as something it’s not. If words weren’t the words somebody said, don’t act like they were.
tony –
Don’t know if you’ll find this in the thread….
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think I accused you of being disingenuous. I said that your statements of a lack of familiarity with the (IMO, junior high school) bickering between Steyn and Mann seemed disingenuous to me…as I don’t see how anyone could spend so much time in the “climate-o-sphere,” in particular here and at WUWT, and describe himself in that way. Now that I think about it, though, I should walk back the “disingenuous” part. In fact, I am in no position to judge the genuineness of your self-assessment. I should only say that your statement seems implausible to me. “Disingenuous” has a connotation that really is unsupportable – and excusing my use of the term by hiding behind “seemed,” would lack integrity. It isn’t lost on me that Steyn uses such rhetorical tricks, and that some folks here apparently think that it is witty and “clever” and “sharp” to do so.
Again, I don’t see how you could say that you knew “nothing of the spat…,” (unless you specifically made it a point to not read any of the many, many, many threads in the “climate-o-sphere” where this spat has been discussed), but more meaningfully, I do acknowledge your willingness to criticize Steyn, and to point out the absurdity of saying that his juvenile name-calling is “witty” or “sharp,” or in any other way deserving of support.
I think that you are pretty unusual in that regard among the “skeptics” that I’ve seen weigh-in on this issue. As I said before, it seems to me that he has received more or less uniform and enthusiastic support from Judith, her denizens, and “skeptics” more generally.
Brandon said “If Mann can convince judges Steyn has a tendency to libel other people, Steyn will find it much harder to get the lawsuit dismissed.”
Well Steyn is not trying to get the lawsuit dismissed.
He didn’t join in the motion to dismiss or the appeal of its denial.
He is just champing at the bit to take Mann’s deposition or have his day in court.
So even if your point were correct (which I don’t agree with) – it is not relevant.
The little publicity hound brandoon doesn’t know defamation law from a hole in the ground:
“If Mann’s lawyers can argue that effectively, I think they can win the lawsuit. It doesn’t matter that Mann’s work is fraudulent. If you can convince a jury Steyn will say whatever he wants to make people he dislikes look bad, without any concern for whether or not what he says is true, they won’t find in his favor. That’s because Steyn isn’t fighting for free speech. He’s fighting for his freedom to smear anyone with whatever baseless accusations he wants. It just happens that this time, when he got called out on it, his accusations were right.”
So, if brandoon were mann’s lawyer he would presumably bring in all the other cases where Steyn has been sued for defamation, to prove some sort of pattern of behavior. Simpleton.
Hey brandoon, can you explain the logic of your claiming Steyn’s accusations are baseless, then in your next sentence you state the accusations are right? Simpleton.
Richard Arrett:
I did sort misspeak because I was just reading the document Steyn posted for the current motion to dismiss that’s being considered for the other defendants, and that’s what was on my mind. But that doesn’t make it irrelevant. Steyn didn’t join his co-defendants in their motion, but he hasn’t been able to sever himself either. If they get their case dismissed, his case may get dismissed as well. And yes, Steyn’s actions can affect how judge’s rule on his co-defendants.
But you’re right in that I should have referred to a different procedural issues as my example instead. As I’m sure you’ll agree, judges have a lot of influence on how cases play out. Convincing a judge the defendant has been guilty of what you accuse him of on many other instances can certainly influence how the judge handles the case. But still, arguing over the example I give of a point rather than the point itself seems silly.
And again, similar acts can often be admitted into cases to show a pattern of behavior. I don’t know if that would be the case here, but I’d wager at least the book would be allowed in as it directly deals with Michael Mann. I think continuing to libel a person after being sued could reasonably constitute evidence of one’s motives in writing the piece which triggered the lawsuit.
Josh@a
I saw your comment. I have other interests, for example tracing natural climate Variability back to the 12th century, than to try to keep abreast of all the shouting and unpleasantness coming from both sides on this topic.
It’s impossible to follow all this stuff unless you took an interest from the start and have kept up with all the ‘ he said, they said’ rhetoric. It’s very tiresome and further complicated by the simple fact that I don’t enjoy reading steyns material. I do appreciate the claimed free speech aspect but I really don’t want to get mired in this quagmire of confusion.
Tonyb
jo$h, ” As I said before, it seems to me that he has received more or less uniform and enthusiastic support from Judith, her denizens, and “skeptics” more generally.”
Pretty much. “Because the climate-change debate is one of the most important and lively public policy debates of our time, stifling that debate with lawsuits will not only diminish our ability to have an open and honest discussion about climate change, it will hurt future discussions about anything controversial. Whatever you believe about climate change, you should hope that the D.C. Court of Appeals dismisses the case as soon as possible.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorburrus/2014/08/14/hopefully-dr-michael-e-mann-doesnt-sue-me-for-this-column/
“A broad array of civil liberties groups from the right and the left, along with two dozen media companies and journalism organizations, has turned out to back National Review and CEI, arguing that free speech will be endangered if defendants can’t dispose of libel suits via anti-SLAPP motions. They also argue that the National Review and CEI attacks on Mann were opinions about matters of public importance – precisely the speech that anti-SLAPP laws are intended to protect. The list of amici, whose briefs are all available at CEI’s website, includes such unlikely bedfellows as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Goldwater Institute; the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Individual Rights Foundation; the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom.”
http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-frankel/2014/08/13/climate-scientist-faces-broad-array-of-foes-in-suit-vs-national-review/
It’s one of those freedom of expression thingys
==> “…stifling that debate with lawsuits will not only diminish our ability to have an open and honest discussion about climate change,… ”
Indeed. Just think of how far back the discussion of the science will be set back if political polemicists like Steyn can’t use rhetorical tricks to score points in the climate wars by insulting people!
Oh. The humanity!
Jo$h, “Oh. The humanity!”
Pretty much. Mann sued Tim Ball basically over an old State Pen versus Penn State joke. Not having a sense of humor isn’t grounds for legal action. When the ACLU and the Goldwater Institute are on the same side, it is pretty fundamental.
J@shua
“Right. That’s why he’s in this “Aunt Judy” jaunt…because he’s “non-PC.”
Funny how the definition of PC changes depending on who’s grinding their axe.”
By non pc I’m refering to his use of terms like pansy.
Kinda from the get go I’ve criticized his use of the fraud word.
My attitude toward Steyn is pretty simple. I admire his style.
you might like vanilla. I dont.
Brandon
“But it’s certainly not blatant. Every time I see Steyn make comments like these, I always wind up wondering, “Is he trying to put down gay people, or am I reading too much into this?” I wouldn’t read anything into the word “pansy” myself because social crowds I’m around don’t even realize it has anything to do with homosexuality, and the other cases are always just… eh?”
+100.
Steyn is pretty good about walking the boundary. which means you are going to get all sorts of people with their panties all twisted up in a knot.
Little brandoon expands on his ersatz legal commentary:
” I think continuing to libel a person after being sued could reasonably constitute evidence of one’s motives in writing the piece which triggered the lawsuit.”
More illogical BS. First, you have unequivocally stated that the accusations Steyn made were right. So what’s the problem? That’s not libel. Repeating the same right accusations is not libel. There can be no “actual malice” in making and repeating accusations that are correct. What has happened to your freaking case against Steyn, brandoon? Simpleton.
(He can’t answer me. He has painted himself into a corner by pretending to ignore my comments. What a putz. This is fun.)
PS: This is just total BS.
“Patterns of behavior are often relevant in court. Even if they aren’t admitted in the actual trial (I don’t know what can be admitted in a libel trial), they can be relevant to the proceedings prior to the trial. If Mann can convince judges Steyn has a tendency to libel other people, Steyn will find it much harder to get the lawsuit dismissed.”
It would be pretty hard to convince anyone that Steyn has a tendency to libel other people, since in his long career as a caustic commentarian he has never been sued for libel. So this is more uninformed simplistic nonsense.
tonyb
sharp and clever.
A sharp style is one that cuts and I think without question Steyn is sharp
Clever
“You might want to re-think your business model. Assuming people are as stupid as you wish they were doesn’t usually work out well.
Alternatively, if you want to continue playing Duck Season/Wabbit Season over every page in my book, then go ahead. Shoot me now! Shoot me now!”
On the whole its not one of his better pieces but that says nothing really.
stylistically Steyn is one of those writers who produces just enough gems to keep readers coming back. I’m not one of them but I’d even give props to you joshu@ or brandon if any one of you could pull off some prose that wasnt DOA.
Just read it and its great. The jihad against Judith is truly a sad commentary on how nasty partisan warfare has become. Leading scientists who join in are doing science a disservice and harming themselves.
When I saw that I decided I had to come and read what you had to say. When the only attack is misogyny you know the woman is on to something.
And people wonder what motivates skeptics. Derogatory comments by Appel, et al., in these venues by That Mentality are exactly what Kirsten Powers’ book “The Silencing:How the Left Is Killing Free Speech” is focused on. Everywhere I look, That Mentality shows up. The Left uses That Mentality as a crutch when it is out of arguments with a little more intellectual substance. Is it any wonder the side that embraces That Mentality also is filled with Socialists, Adolescents, Adults with Adolescent Brains and Seniors who somehow forgot what the legitimate Liberal causes accomplished in the 1960s?
BTW, the “Silencing” is a terrific read. Anyone on the Left who decides to read this work by someone who is, (or was?) on the Left, should do so with a mirror in the other hand. If not ambidextrous, then a full length mirror should work perfectly well.
I googled “aunt Judy”, and you definitely get porn sites. I googled ‘aunt judy curry’ and the phrase ‘aunt judy’ is used in comments at RealClimate, ATTP, Rabett Run, Daily Kos, HotWhopper (somehow the tamino one didn’t show up).
Sorry to see you having to go through this, Judith.
I used Judy, Judy, Judy for a time, which was inspired by the Cary Grant – whether he actually ever said it I do not know. I thought it was getting out of hand, so I stopped.
I do not think porn was behind Aunt Judy.
As for women’s careers being encouraged or thwarted in climate science by the old guard, a glance at the author list on Hansen 2015 should put that to rest.
I think Goober inspired your “Judy Judy Judy”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blQrIySidOA
Porn never, corn forever.
I don’t think I have ever seen the Cary Grant movie. I watched a ton of Mayberry as a kid. But really, it was Johnny Carson. Grant was an occasional guest and Carson would always say it with his eyes sort and face in a goofy contortion, so whoever Judy was, she came off as crazed, which is how I took them to mean when the first used “Aunt Judy”. I think Grant even told Carson once that he never said it in the movie.
Steven –
==> “His behavior
indicates that he found his own behavior unacceptable.
What of ATTP? look at his behavior. he has scrubbed his site of these references. he finds these references to be unacceptable.
I didn’t need Steyn’s help to make it clear that Anders and Tamino have different approaches to engaging in discussion about climate change…
And while I have more respect for one of those approaches than the other, in the end, what you’re focusing on is personality politics. It has nothing to do with the science, and focusing on it only protracts the polarization in the public discussion about the science. It’s identity-aggression and identity-defense.
In fact, it tells us little, per se, about Tamino’s science w/r/t Anders’ science. Sometimes, a polemic approach can indicate a propensity towards failure to control for ideological biases But trying to reverse engineer from the existence of polemics to evaluating science is fallacious.” The existence of tribalism may inform probabilities, but the science still needs to be evaluated on its own merits. (It’s like funding in that sense). And what we see, is that polemicists try to leverage situations like this to score scientific points. What does it really matter whether Tamino used the expression “Aunt Judy,” or whether he new about it’s “provenance,” or whether he scrubs his site of the reference? IMO, it would change nothing at all about his science. If you want to spend your time judging the character of someone that you’ve never met on the basis of such flimsy information, have at it.
This is all about self-victimization for the purpose of advancing an ideological agenda.
Sameosameo.
FWIW I think “Aunt Judy” is rather condescending, verging on misogynistic. Tamino in the comments on the post linked above said he wouldn’t use it in future, and i’d agree with that. I very much doubt there was any intent in the p)rn sense, I’d certainly never heard of it, obviously if so that would be awful.
I’ve no idea who first used it, but ironically, the phrase reminded me of a famous piece of feminist literary criticism – perhaps you’re familiar?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madwoman_in_the_Attic
My guess would be RL, a commenter at RC.
“I’ve no idea who first used it…”
http://judithcurry.com/2015/08/18/industry-funding-witch-hunts/#comment-725956
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Aunt+Judy
Michael, I can see how “..crazy aunt..” could have morphed into something else, but JulesandJames empty blog doesn’t seem to have ever used the term in question.
As for me being there, the Italian flag concept is similar to the Monte Hall statistical problem. Since most problems are not binary, I don’t have a problem with her Italian flag analogy, in fact I am a bit amazed some do.
According Michael, it a started in 2010. The Urban Dictionary is dated 2013.
What an incredibly silly statement. Do you think dictionaries start such terms?
They report them. After the fact.
You are not an inquisitive person. I already knew that. I have never heard of term used in that way, and I doubt that most people have. When did it start? There is a porn website called Aunt Judy’s that started in 1997. Does it predate that? There was an English magazine for children called Aunt Judy’s Magazine.
I once ate at a restaurant named Aunt Judy’s something something. I think it might have been Bed and Breakfast. It was near where some of my family lived, and I ate there when visiting them one time.
I think I also have an Aunt Judy. I know I’ve met a Judith I’m related to, but I have a lot of family members I’ve never met, so I might be wrong as to the actual relationship.
But yeah, other than things like those and seeing people call our hostess Aunt Judy, I’ve never heard the phrase before. I’d wager nobody in the climate blogosphere had. If they did, they sure did keep it a good secret. Before I tweeted about it, nobody had said a word about it.
That’s why we need peope like Steyn……knowledge of obscure porno terms is so enlightening.
“Judge Judy” has been approved years ago:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/08/lisbon-workshop-on-reconciliation-part-x-alarmists-vs-deniers/
Michael –
==> “That’s why we need peope like Steyn……knowledge of obscure porno terms is so enlightening.”
Indeed. Think of how science will be impoverished if Steyn feels constrained in his ability to research the p0rn provenance of blog comments?
Think of the children! The poor, starving children!
I think that I read a reference to James Hansen as a “crazy old uncle”, so the aunt/uncle comparison might not be as one-sided as Steyn wrote. However, the pr0n use of “aunt” does imply an ugly transitive verb (or a brutal desire) that is not implied by “crazy old uncle”.
I learn stuff here all the time.
Just never imagined one of those things being what an Aunt Judy is.
You know you have them worried when they have to stoop that low.
The men in climate science who have used that pejorative term WRT Dr. Curry are low-life pigs.
timg56:
Tamino stopped using the phrase “Aunt Judy” over a year ago because he felt it was sexist and believed that was inappropriate (hardly what you’d expect if what Steyn argues were true). Up to that point, nobody in the climate blogosphere had said a word about the phrase having any hidden meaning. Not a single one of Tamino’s readers or critics even hinted at it.
Now, more than a year after Tamino stopped using it, Steyn stumbles upon the fact some site(s) apparently used the word that way, probably due to a surprise when doing a internet search, and suddenly a bunch of people just accept it as gospel truth that that is how Tamino meant it. It’s absurd. There is no connection between the two uses of the phrase other than, “Steyn says so.”
Brandon,
I wasn’t referring to Tamino or anything else. If fact as I was reading from the bottom up, I didn’t even see the references to him or the Steyn piece until later.
The little I’ve delved into, it certainly appears to be a purposefully derogatory term and I strongly suspect that those using it in reference to Dr Curry know exactly what they are doing. They are not lacking in intelligence. Just decency and good manners. I’m rather surprised you are putting so much effort on this.
timg56:
Ah, sorry. You said you learned what “an Aunt Judy is” then said “they have to stoop that low,” so it seemed natural to assume you were making the same leap a number of other people have made.
I initially wrote a couple tweets laughing about it because it is so absurd. There was absolutely no connection between Steyn’s claim and anything Tamino ever said. In all the time Tamino used the phrase, nobody ever suggested he was using it that way. It was such a completely random thing to read in Steyn’s book it was hilarious.
What makes it especially hilarious is is Tamino has an incredibly strong view when it comes to sexism, one I’ve mocked because it’s ridiculous. It’s to the point where he says all men should be ashamed, just for being men, because of the rape culture they’ve created. He says all men are responsible for the victimization of women and berates anyone who disagrees.
Naturally, I thought it was funny anyone would suggest Tamino would intentionally use sexualized remarks to demean Judith Curry. I said so on Twitter. I spent maybe five minutes talking about it there. I then spent maybe another five minutes writing about it on my blog since I was reviewing the book there. That would have been the grand sum of my effort.
But then Steyn turned around and wrote an article publicly smearing me, baselessly claiming I defended Tamino’s sexist insults. That’s borderline libel. Actually, it’s straight up libel. Of course I’m going to put some effort into discussing that. A guy I was supporting because he is the victim of a libel lawsuit libeled me!
Brandon,
I was referring to this comment by Dr Curry:
I googled “aunt Judy”, and you definitely get porn sites. I googled ‘aunt judy curry’ and the phrase ‘aunt judy’ is used in comments at RealClimate, ATTP, Rabett Run, Daily Kos, HotWhopper (somehow the tamino one didn’t show up)
The “they” I am referring to are whomever were using the term at the sites mentioned. Miriam O’Brien is a particularly nasty individual. Not sure who pissed in her corn flakes, but they certainly brought out a totally disagreeable person.
First and foremost, an Aunt Judy is somebody’s Aunt who is named Judy.
timg56:
Just to be clear, are we in agreement that nobody was using the phrase in the way Mark Steyn discovered it could be used? Because as far as anyone’s shown, nobody was. I’ve focused on Tamino because that’s who Steyn referred to, but I haven’t seen any evidence anyone else used it that way either.
I’d get criticizing people if they continued to use the phrase after it’s been brought to light that it is used that way (by some unspecified number of people?), but if nobody involved in any of these discussions was aware of that usage until a few weeks ago, I don’t see how this could possibly be an issue.
Brandon
“Just to be clear, are we in agreement that nobody was using the phrase in the way Mark Steyn discovered it could be used? Because as far as anyone’s shown, nobody was. I’ve focused on Tamino because that’s who Steyn referred to, but I haven’t seen any evidence anyone else used it that way either.”
It’s not that simple. if you have an inside joke it only works if you
keep it as an inside joke. So you have to figure out whether it was an inside joke or not. And that’s pretty much impossible. I suppose for example if you came across some private mail where someone said
“lets call her aunt judy, nobody will ever get that” you’d have evidence
that it was an inside joke. But asserting that it wasnt or could not be an inside joke is much harder.
do I think it was an inside joke? na. but showing that it was not is hard.
suggesting that it was an inside joke… is some dirty pool. par for the climate wars.
Yeah… I think I’m just going to go ahead and ignore you for a while Steven Mosher. Your bad attempts at semantic parsing are just wasting everyone’s time. You say:
Of course it’s going to be “pretty much impossible” to prove whether or not anyone used “Aunt Judy” as a sexualized slur against our hostess. I didn’t say anything about proving it. I asked timg56 if he and I were in agreement that it wasn’t done since we don’t have any evidence for it. As in, do we both agree to choose not to believe something given we have no evidence for it.
If you want to keep arguing semantic nitpicks, please stop sucking at it.
Both angech and Appell took immediate offense to the term at Tamino’s site. So, I would not say that only Steyn was familiar with that usage.
its still not that simple.
you have no evidence.
the best approach is to suspend judgement.
its not semantic nit picking. I’m not arguing about the meanings of words.
I’m saying it’s not as simple as you and whoever agreeing.
Jim D:
Say what? angech and David Appell both took immediate offense to the phrase because they felt it was sexist and offensive, which it was. They never once even hinted it might have any sexual connotation.
I myself have called the phrase sexist in the past for the same reason they did. That doesn’t mean I knew about this crazy idea of Steyn’s.
Poor brandoon with more dim and ridiculous self-contradiction:
“Tamino stopped using the phrase “Aunt Judy” over a year ago because he felt it was sexist and believed that was inappropriate (hardly what you’d expect if what Steyn argues were true).”
” In all the time Tamino used the phrase, nobody ever suggested he was using it that way.”
So tamandingo was using the phrase apparently frequently for some time, but he eventually stopped. No, that can’t be true, cause tamandingo has an INCREDIBLY STRONG view when it comes to that sexist stuff:
“What makes it especially hilarious is is Tamino has an incredibly strong view when it comes to sexism, one I’ve mocked because it’s ridiculous. It’s to the point where he says all men should be ashamed, just for being men, because of the rape culture they’ve created. He says all men are responsible for the victimization of women and berates anyone who disagrees.”
Keep it up, junior.
I don’t see any reason to give tamandingo the benefit of the doubt. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume the worst of that little creep. Even yimmy gets it.
Brandon, you may be right as I can’t read their minds, but they referred to phrases from a particular commenter at Tamino’s who was in the habit of also using Aunt Judy. They called the comments misogynous when they could have just called them ad homs. Tamino viewed them as harsh, but more as ad homs and not misogynous at all. These different interpretations probably come from the different way they saw the name used by the commenter.
Jim D:
If they thought the phrase was a sexual slur, why didn’t they just say so? Why would they make vague comments that could maybe, possibly indicate what they were saying rather than just saying it? And did they just decide to never talk about it more clearly, anywhere? Did they decide, “Nah, this isn’t something we should tell anyone about”?
I suppose there are possible answers to all those questions, but the reality is plenty of people read all those comments in the year and more since they were made. None of them said a word about this strange notion before Mark Steyn did. And even there, all Steyn did is do a search for the phrase “Aunt Judy,” find it brings up smut and run off with his mouth.
If Michael Mann did something like this, every skeptic on this site would laugh at him. Watts Up With This would write a post mocking him for it and continue to make jokes referencing it for the next five years. But Steyn does it, and somehow, people just accept it as true because…
More brandoon logic:
“If they thought the phrase was a sexual slur, why didn’t they just say so?”
Because they would have gotten condemned for it, you simpleton. Webby was right about you.
Brandon, I’ll give you that they stopped at assuming it was misogynous, and Steyn felt compelled to take it to the next level in a very explicit and public way. Steyn certainly has a way of contributing his own mental processing to the public discussion, in this case blaming Tamino who was seemingly just caught in the crossfire.
You had it right there for a while yimmy, but brandoon’s faulty arguments got you to back off. Sexual objectification of women is misogynous, yimmy. Sexual slurs against women is misogyny. That is what Steyn is talking about. It’s not on another level. It’s misogyny. Look it up. Do a search for “Aunt Judy”. Do a search with Aunt and other female names.
It’s a short record. Bring in Thomas Keith to review it and make a judgement. Camille Paglia would probably have none of it.
Jim D:
If they knew it was meant as a sexualized remark like Mark Steyn suggests, they wouldn’t need to assume it was misogynous :P
I think if he hadn’t chosen Tamino of all people to target with this, it wouldn’t have seemed so silly to me. Tamino is probably the person I’d least expect to use a sexualized label in that way in the climate blogosphere, just because his position on feminism in general is so extreme. I have no problem believing he’d say sexist things by somehow convincing himself they weren’t sexist, but knowingly trying to make sexual remarks about Judith? No way, no how.
I’d sooner expect to see Steve McIntyre doing it. That should tell you something. McIntyre is the only reason I ever even started following any of this, and I’d wager most of what I know I couldn’t have learned without his efforts. And I’d still sooner expect to see him do it than Tamino, a person I don’t respect at all.
That’s how strong a character trait this is in Tamino.
> I’d sooner expect to see [the Auditor] doing it.
Here you go:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/30/return-to-almora/
Note that the title is not the same as the URL.
You’re welcome.
It may not rise to a level of a libel, but what Steyn published about Tamino rises to a level of an unfounded slur on his character, and that is what this should be about.
Nice work, brandoon. Dragging your hero McIntyre into it. You would expect McIntyre to do it, before uber-feminist tamino, whose character you know so intimately from reading a freaking blog. Have you ever heard of hypocrisy, junior? When tamino and his pals were using the “Aunt Judy” was it a term of endearment? Or as it like the gay crowd calling the Tea Party folks “teabaggers”? That sexual slur was an inside joke, until somebody googled it. Now who would have expected the sensitive PC gay crowd to do something like that?
Have you ever apologized to your hero McIntyre for your dumb nitpicking attack on the CA Weaver thread, junior?
Yeah, willy is back with his trademark irrelevant nonsense. It’s good to see that you are still functioning on some level, willy. I was worried about you.
You should know by now that going all in in ad hom mode is suboptimal, Don Don. In that case, you’re just helping me pay more due diligence:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/14/lasaga-yale-and-penn-state/
Please do continue, it will help come full circle with the figure of speech that started this Steyn saga. When we’ll get there, Denizens might have a hard time parsing their way out of the meaning of the word “rape.” It doesn’t even implicate women to boot.
Go team!
I am sure that must be related to the “Aunt Judy” discussion in some way, willy. Keep up the good work.
Come on, Don Don. You don’t play dumb very well. From Judge Judy’s mouth:
In that editorial, Steyn argues that “Aunt Judy” was intended as a pornographic double entendre because, well, elsewhere he used the word “whoring”. The only problem is that blog whoring is Internet vernacular. When all you have is Shub’s conspirational evidence, reality’s usually against you.
On the other hand, Steyn’s editorial indicate some keenness regarding tendencious framing. The same keenness can be traced back to the Auditor’s. Incidentally, this is where Steyn got the figure of speech that got him sued.
Please tell me you don’t get that, Don Don. I’ll have to make myself clearer and clearer. You’ll be able to follow up full ad hom mode. It’s a win-win.
Go Team Denizens!
Brandumb.
Did it ever occur to you that tamino views on feminism might be an over compensation
Like those right wing Christians with strong views about the sanctity of marriage who happen to have Ashley Madison accounts
See – this is why I love the “extended peer review” of blogs so much.
Think of how impoverished we’d be without long threads of debate about whether or not Tamino was making a p0rn reference when he used a particular phrase.
Think how our ability to understand the science of climate change would be diminished w/o such important work done by such smart and knowledgeable people so dedicated to establishing scientific truth.
Because after all, what could be more important to assessing the risks posed by ACO2 than knowing whether or not Tamino is a misogynist, and what better way could we possibly make that determination than by arguing about why he used the term “Aunt Judy?”
The starvation of tens of millions of poor children hangs in the balance!
The fact that some Christians were found on the A-M web site is thoroughly unremarkable. Their Bible tells them they are and will remain sinners. It never says a belief in Jesus with make them otherwise. So, no logical disconnect here.
We really missed your elaborately contrived BS, willy. Here, we toss some virtual coins at you. Work it, willy!
Joshu@
‘Because after all, what could be more important to assessing the risks posed by ACO2 than knowing whether or not Tamino is a misogynist, and what better way could we possibly make that determination than by arguing about why he used the term “Aunt Judy?”
two separate issues. Looking at one doesnt mean we cant look at the other. For example, the risks associated with Aco2 are well known.
I accept them. no problem. Now, did tamino himself find his reference to Aunt Judy acceptable? what does his behavior indicate? His behavior
indicates that he found his own behavior unacceptable.
What of ATTP? look at his behavior. he has scrubbed his site of these references. he finds these references to be unacceptable.
Here is what is funny.
I call somebody a denier and they complain about the connotations.
the connotations are real.
I call somebody Aunt Judy and they complain about the porno connotations. the connotations are real.
In both cases people argue that they did not intend the connotation.
fair enough.
In one case people go back and cleanse their sites.
What does that tell you?
This goes to whether Steyn can go around disparaging people on the warmist side in his public statements, and then hide behind free speech even when in error.
Brandon,
Are we in agreement?
I don’t know. I can’t devine the intentions of people. However based on my experiences at Real Climate, SkS and a few other sites (I refuse to go to Hotwhopper, as O’Brien is so thoroughly disagreeable), it would not surprise me if the individuals using the term were aware of it’s meaning and intended to mock her.
Then there are some of the other comments Steyn uses as examples. Saying Dr Curry whores and prostitutes herself sure gives credence to the Aunt Judy theme. It is rather disgusting. It is a credit to Judith that she ignores it and keeps on hitting them where it hurts – on the science.
Steven –
misthreaded:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/08/18/industry-funding-witch-hunts/#comment-726410
I went through my comments and found 4 with that phrase and have moderated them. If you find any more, feel free to let me know.
Good show, aTTP.
Good job, kenny. However, that’s a surprisingly high percentage of your comments. How did that slip through your stringent moderation? Speaking of slipping through, I am concerned about willy. Is he OK? Seriously. His absence is pleasant, but only if it’s voluntary.
google “crazy aunt”.
What has “crazy aunt” go to do with “Aunt Judy”, prof. rabbetticus halpernicus? Google “Aunt Judy”, you goofey rabbette. That is what they were calling her.
I just received this email from a lurking denizen, anyone have any comments? Is this a new form of witch hunts perhaps?
Hello
It seems your blog is being blocked by my ISP.
Checking on http://www.senderbase.org/lookup/?search_string=judithcurry.com it says that your site has “Poor Web Reputation” and is thus being blocked by some ISP’s and organisations.
You might want to check if your site has been compromised or if people are reporting the site as inappropriate etc.
If I were investigating this problem at my site, I’d fill out the form here:
https://www.senderbase.org/support/#problem=11
and see what happens. My guess is that some (single) malicious managed to crack their security and set a flag for your site, but it could just be due to the number of unpleasant comments the blog accumulates.
Hope this helps.
Kaspersky says it’s safe, so it’s probably not a malicious software problem.
I submitted a compliant that Dr. Curry’s site was rated poor. I used bob.com as the domain name. Cisco is being reckless with this and does not commit people to monitor this automaton. They have no business censoring any web site.
Go to http://www.senderbase.org/support/#problem=8 and submit a complaint.
Oops, looks like there IS a bob.com. Use jack.com, there is no such web site.
Actually, I guess you could use judithcurry.com. A domain is required to submit a request.
If unpleasant comments were the criterion, then every website that accepts comments would have a less than poor rating.
Actually, when I pinged Judithcurry.com, I got an IP address shared by 91 other web sites:
http://whois.domaintools.com/192.0.78.25
That probably explains it. Shared IP addresses are potluck, so to speak.
Your ping experiment may be valid, AK. (I’m assuming it is.) But that puts the onus on Cisco to know what the hell it is they are doing. If they can’t put enough resources into censorship to do it “right”, whatever that could possibly mean, then they shouldn’t be doing this at all. Personally, I feel they shouldn’t be doing it no matter what.
Well, I suppose they assume anybody with a public site will either get their own IP address, or use one like WordPress.com, which has the resources to make everybody do their filter by something besides IP. (I use Blogspot.com).
Anyway, it isn’t Cisco who’s responsible, but the ISP that is mis-using Cisco’s product. There are valid reasons for doing some filters by IP (e.g. spoofing), and many ISP’s are just too lazy or ign0rant to make sure they use the tools right.
==> “My guess is that some (single) malicious managed to crack their security and set a flag for your site, but it could just be due to the number of unpleasant comments the blog accumulates.”
No way. Clearly, this is a situation where the “consensus police” are trying to silence Judith.
a pingback currently at the top of the board on climateetc is this;
‘Judith Curry’s Endorsement of the Mark Steyn’s Ugly Homophobic Attack on Michael Mann and Greg Laden | Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard), Exposed ‘
would imagine that might trigger a few sites to block you.
tonyb
tonyb, that boy’s cheese done slipped on his cracker.
A bit of paranoia is justified when something goes wrong with something you don’t understand. Especially when you already have avowed enemies.
Look how many CAGW alarmists have this paranoid idea that anybody who disagrees with them must be getting paid off by “Big Oil”. Or is it “Big Carbon” these days?
The left uses tactics to cause difficulties for those it oppose. Ob’s tech czar:
“”people’s beliefs are a product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire.”
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/cass_sunsteins_despicable_idea.html#ixzz3jVOX5lFq
Would cost much $ to send a few cyber-merchs over…..
There was a picture up above which might have lead to blocking. Not family blog friendly.
The web reputation comes up as Neutral now.
Nice to see your enemies are so tolerant of freedom to assemble Judy.
They even try to shut down web assembly to read and comment on science and other subjects.
“The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.” – Saul Alinsky
A name in the likely suspects springers to mind.
whoa nelly
Pingback: Judith Curry’s Endorsement of the Mark Steyn’s Ugly Homophobic Attack on Michael Mann and Greg Laden | Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard), Exposed
From the article:
…
Earth just keeps getting hotter. July was the planet’s warmest month on record, smashing old marks, U.S. weather officials said.
And it’s almost a dead certain lock that this year will beat last year as the warmest year on record, they said.
…
“It just reaffirms what we already know: that the Earth is warming,” said NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch. “The warming is accelerating and we’re really seeing it this year.”
NOAA records go back to 1880. Separate calculations by NASA and the Japanese weather agency also found July 2015 to be a record. (AP)
…
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/july-was-the-hottest-month-ever-slideshow/july-was-the-hottest-month-ever-photo-1440166366978.html
July was not the hottest ever month according to Nick Stokes
http://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/
tonyb
Nick Stokes just can’t figure out why NOAA is behaving this way: ” It just makes the NOAA look dumb.”
For posterity’s sake, here is a permanent link to the post in question:
http://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/noaa-says-july-hottest-month-ever.html
The one climatereason posted is to Nick Stokes’s main page. It’ll work fine for now, but once Stokes uploads a new post, you won’t see the right one at the top when you click on his link.
JC – Appell finally issued a “correction” to his original post accusing Steyn and yourself of dishonesty. It’s pretty weaselly, a simple link to the later post titled “Mark Steyn Says He Quoted the Phil Jones Email Correctly” and which still maintains you “doctored” a quote.
I hope you don’t mind that I posted this comment to his lame mea culpa:
“SUGGESTION: You should at least add this to the original:
“CORRECTION – I wrote this post relying on bad info from a suspect source without checking any of the (what I felt were) “shocking” and “obvious” facts used to accuse Steyn and Curry of being “dishonest”. I also never read the book or blog posts I was attempting to quote and critique and this is inexcusable.
I offer a heartfelt apology to both Steyn and Curry. I would certainly not blame anyone reading my posts in the future to apply a grain of doubt to my statements until I build a future record of diligence and competence, something a writer who advocates that “you can never ask too many questions” should apply to himself first and foremost.”
Judy,
How do you get the top banner off the site Climate Etc, The twitter comment is causing problems.
Scott
not sure what is going on, don’t see it?
Seems like the sender base issue will be resolved:
On Fri, 2015-08-21 at 17:36 +0000, SenderBase Support wrote:
> After re-evaluation of http://judithcurry.com/, the url is safe to access at this time. We have taken steps to improve the reputation for the url. Please allow up to 4-8 hours for this to be reflected.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Greg Johnston
> SenderBase Support
>
>
> ————— Original Message —————
> From: XXXX
> Sent: 8/21/2015 8:27 AM
> To: support@senderbase.org
> Cc: curryja@eas.gatech.edu
> Subject: Re: Senderbase.org support request 01045509
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
> The domain you have incorrectly rated as “poor” is
> http://judithcurry.com/
>
> Either your automaton is flawed or someone, somehow has misrepresented
> the site. You really need humans to monitor these sorts of distortions
> and fix them.
>
> She is the former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
> at the Georgia Institute of Technology, member of the National Research
> Council’s Climate Research Committee and the NASA Advisory Council Earth
> Science Committee, recipient of the Henry G Houghton Research Award from
> the American Meteorological Society, and co-editor of The Encyclopedia
> of Atmospheric Sciences. Her web site is a crucial web site for
> discussion of climate related issues.
>
> I have CC’ed her on this.
>
>
> Regards,
Something weird is going on. Someone noticed on another site my domain name has expired. TODAY is the 5th anniversary of setting up the blog! But I renewed the domain name last May. So not sure what is going on
WHOIS LOOKUP
judithcurry.com is already registered*
No Suggestions Offered
‡ Please Read:
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Domain Name: JUDITHCURRY.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 146
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
Name Server: NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
Name Server: NS3.WORDPRESS.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 07-sep-2010
Creation Date: 13-aug-2010
Expiration Date: 13-aug-2015
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 19:08:00 GMT <<<
This WhoIs record has expiration in 2020, and the WhoIs record was updated today by someone/something (see entry close to the bottom of listing.). You can create an account to see the history of the domain name.
Whois Record for JudithCurry.com
How does this work?
Whois & Quick Stats
Registrant Org Judith Curry is associated with ~1 other domains
Registrar GODADDY.COM, LLC
Registrar Status clientDeleteProhibited, clientRenewProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited
Dates Created on 2010-08-13 – Expires on 2020-08-13 – Updated on 2015-05-15
Name Server(s) NS1.WORDPRESS.COM (has 745,159 domains)
NS2.WORDPRESS.COM (has 745,159 domains)
NS3.WORDPRESS.COM (has 745,159 domains)
IP Address 192.0.78.24 – 794,735 other sites hosted on this server
IP Location United States – California – San Francisco – Automattic Inc
ASN United States AS2635 AUTOMATTIC – Automattic, Inc (registered Oct 01, 2012)
Domain Status Registered And Active Website
Whois History 36 records have been archived since 2010-08-15
IP History 6 changes on 6 unique IP addresses over 5 years
Registrar History 1 registrar
Hosting History 2 changes on 3 unique name servers over 5 years Hosting History
Whois Server whois.godaddy.com
Website
Website Title Climate Etc.
Response Code 200
SEO Score 79%
Terms 773 (Unique: 288, Linked: 368)
Images 1 (Alt tags missing: 1)
Links 122 (Internal: 82, Outbound: 39)
Whois Record ( last updated on 2015-08-22 )
Domain Name: JUDITHCURRY.COM
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Registrant Name: Judith Curry
Registrant Organization:
Name Server: NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
Name Server: NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
Name Server: NS3.WORDPRESS.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
You must Register or Log in to view the Whois record for this domain name
I don’t believe this is a problem. Domains can share an IP address, so this person may be viewing information related to a different web site.
Hi Tonyb, I can see how you find Steyn distasteful, but I’m confused how it is that you find Mann basically likable (I seem to recall you saying that). He strikes me as a bit repellent himself. Can you expound a little bit upon Mann’s likability? I believe in Duarte’s idea of “nimble skepticism” and I always like reading your posts, so I’m genuinely curious.
jorgietom
I have never at any time said I find basically likeable. I find him to be a braggart and a blowhard but that doesn’t make him the evil character many sceptics characterise him as.
tonyb
OK. I see. I’ve certainly tended toward the “evil” characterization. I’ll be interested to see if your opinion changes at all if you do move ahead with a deeper study of the controversy. Thanks
Tony, you are imbued with the inherent decentness and courtesy of the Brit. Perhaps, re Mann, a bit more than I am. Although I do try to see that those with failings are the first to suffer from them. Faustino
(Don’t mention the cricket, Mr Fawlty!)
Faustino
You mentioned cricket. Mosomoso was quite right that it is off topic. Obviously we would like to talk about it but rules are rules.
tonyb
Cricket is an ok topic for week in review
Harumph. Excuse me. Just clearing my throat.
Cricket? Not bein’ in favour of constraints
on free speech I’ll mention it…
Oh it’s grand ol’ Duke of York stuff,
when you were down yer were down
‘n then you are up!
moderator
please ban beth for being wildly off topic. And fine her.
tonyb
Beth? Fine, her.
Thx faustino, cannot say likewise ter tony, fft!
PS, tony, cannot get blood out of a
serf.
Cricket off-topic ???
curryja | August 22, 2015 at 10:49 am |
Cricket is an ok topic for week in review
How long though before global warming is linked to sporting results ?
Well Roger Pielke Jr is now focused on sports . . . Climate wars pushed him into another area of research
Roger is a about as penetrating analyst of sports as he is of climate science, and no, that is not the urban dictionary version
Steve McIntyre too has gone to sports, deflategate. Is there an exodus of skeptics?
THE DEMEANED VIEWPOINT by John W Campbell, editor of Analog Magazine from “late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the Golden Age of Science Fiction.” (May 1955)
I’ve followed Dr. Folta for a while now, since even before the FOIA requests. He’s an excellent science communicator, and by all reports, an excellent scientist. I’ve really enjoyed reading what Dr. Folta has to say about GMO’s. The attacks on Dr. Folta definitely remind me of the types of attacks on some of the more vocal climate scientists who are labeled deniers. You have people out there like “The Food Babe” who is actively spreading lies and misinformation about the GMO industry. Dr. Folta has a great story about how Vani Hari came to his school and was paid to stand on stage and talk to the students at the school. Google it. It’s a great read. These FOIA requests are used as a bludgeon to bully people into silence, or to make people get in line. We need scientists with backbone AND integrity to stand up against people like Vani Hari or the 97% consensus people in climate.
Thankfully, people like Dr. Folta and Dr. Curry exist in this world. We are absolutely enriched by their willingness to provide voices which run counter to people like Hari or Mann. Thanks Dr. Curry!
FOIA requests can be helpful as well. Steve McIntre used them to access data on many climate publications on the hockey stick where the tribe used the excuse of no time and the requester just want to find something wrong with the conclusions.
So I don’t think they are bludgeons as much as information. The problems are when the activists use the information to attack, like the congressman G? to one sided identify sponsors to isolate and silence. That is so impressive of Dr Curry and those who stand for free information flow.
Free speech is always difficult. Even during the revolutionary war period it carried risks and brave individuals faced attacks to not be silenced. It is a shame that so many scientists participate in attacking colleagues. Schmidt should be ashamed of his collusion with the tribe and debate openly with data about GISS changes.
Scott
We dearly need FOIA to remain healthy and in force. Yes, it can be a pain for the organization to comply, but OTOH sometimes FOIA is the only mechanism for taxpayers to determine how their money is being used.
Scientists, especially tax-payer funded ones, shouldn’t have to be FOIA’ed because they should have already published all raw, processed, and mangled data, code, and anything else necessary to reproduce and/or understand the work.
jim2, You are right but taxpayer funded scientists feel very entitled to hide their data and make unsupported pronouncements. Look at the adjustments and homoginazation in Australia.
Others were the NOAA adjustments. Just make them publish the observations and then track the changes.
Scott
This pingback is full of therapeutic slurs, which is the classic attack from the left when their opinion is violated.
https://tonyhellerakastevengoddardisnotasociopath.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/judith-currys-endorsement-of-the-mark-steyns-ugly-homophobic-attack-on-michael-mann-and-greg-laden/
One would wonder, is their an arithmetic of guilt applied. So, for instance since climateetc was a link out does she get only a half guilt? If this sum of association were to diverge it would suggest a totalitarian tendancy.
So perhaps at this level of therapeutic indiscretion a certain number of public humilities would suffice….
Anybody recognizing this regime? Gottfried calls it the secular theocracy.
Ha ha, I see the left has annhiliate secular theocracy so I offer https://mises.org/library/multiculturalism-and-politics-guilt-toward-secular-theocracy-paul-edward-gottfried
Just spotted this old article from Bishop Hill: clarifies the linkage between mikes nature trick and hide the decline (based on SkS emails with Mann):
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/9/7/michael-mann-and-skepticalscience-well-orchestrated.html
Update on the Kevin Folta saga:
.@PLOS removes @thackerpd piece supporting FOIA inquiry into @kevinfolta. Not consistent with “spirit & intent.” http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2015/08/13/the-fight-over-transparency-round-two/# …
In case anybody wants to read the original hit-piece, it’s archived here. (For the moment.)
As long as we are tone trolling Bill Gray sends greetings
Bill Gray and I are now buddies. We talked at the the Texas policy foundation event earlier this year. He likes what I am writing about climate change, but still thinks Webster et al. 2005 is incorrect. I don’t hold a grudge.
He’s a vicious little rabbette, Judith. No need to spare his feelings.
WRT this post,direction Eli refers all to
and
highyl instructive episide in the mind of Judith.
Just like inpolitics, you see people switch from rabid Marxists to ‘neo-cons’ – they have a pnchant for extreme positions, and make switches which are apprarently polar opposites, but are just different sides of the same coin.
Judith went from publicly abusing anti-consensus types, to publicy abusing consensus types.
Same approach, same underlying vlaues, same outcome.
Leopard. Spots.
Thanks for the insight into la-la land, Michael.
Inded it is “la-la lnd” jm.
That any one could take Steyn’s little foray indicates a serious lack of scepticism amongst the ‘skeptics’.
Here you have a guy who has poistioned himself as a free-speech crusader, often in a battle against the ‘PC’ types, coming out clutching his pearls about “aunt judy” .
It was pure cant, as evidenced by his return to normal programming with the gay slurs.
Any comment on the new and improved surface station findings. (I also had a crazy aunt, come to think of it.)
Professor Curry is a scientist and by her achievements, recognised as a good scientist. I am retired from a career as a scientist.
The language used by scientists in communicating at a professional level is somewhat abrupt, usually devoid of humour and crafted to be accurate. One aim of science is to seek greater understanding of a topic.
When a topic is floated on Climate Etc., there is a plausible expectation that some science will be advanced by the responses. Mostly, this is not happening.
I have read the 509 comments to date on this blog. In summary, they appear as light banter or gossip, with a large sprinkling of statements made by others in times gone by. I was unable to see an advance of the science of the theme, which asked why there is ” …a remarkable and disturbing story playing out in the biotechnology academic community over industry funding related to genetically modified food.”
The said biotechnology academic community appears to me to be suffering a response similar to that I have just described about the responses to this blog. Serious matters of science are not being discussed in the right proportion to their scientific weight; instead, the voices are about personalities, imagined motivations, invented courses of action about players and so on. There is more talk about the people of science than about the science.
Can we work towards a better balance in future, please? As an occasional reader, I am not bothered about the people of science (and their companions in media and universities). I am bothered to restore honesty in science. There has been too much dishonesty in climate science and this detrimental tendency appears to be spreading to GM science.
One might hope that contributors to Climate Etc. will write not to see their names in print time after time but will write relevant words in the proper spirit of advancement of the science.
Geoff
I commented on this subject a couple of days ago.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/08/18/industry-funding-witch-hunts/#comment-726352
I have nothing against good natured banter, which normally happens when the thread is well advanced, nor even some of the often funny but pertinent caustic comments.
It is the general air of merely continuing past feuds and tribalism and extreme parsing that then prevents a thorough examination of the issues at hand. A discussion that could usefully be aided by guest scientists who might feel more inclined to comment here if there wasn’t so much noise.
tonyb
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