It is reasonable for the proponents of climate change to point out that unethical practices don't invalidate the theory itself. Some of the world's greatest scientists have been gits of the highest order yet their work remains valuable, the feud between Isaac Newton and Gottifried Liebnitz doesn't show either man in a positive light even though they were both incredible polymaths. The Piltdown man hoax does not disprove evolution
AGW advocates George Monbiot in the Guardian and Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post have both robustly defended the theory of manmade warming without soft peddling the serious issues raised by the emails, Robinson writes:
From my reading, the most damning e-mails are those in which scientists seem to be trying to squelch dissent from climate change orthodoxy -- threatening to withhold papers from journals if they publish the work of naysayers, vowing to keep skeptical research out of the official U.N.-sponsored report on climate change.
Which is exactly right. Unfortunately most of the AGW advocates have twisted themselves in knots to defend, contextualise and explain away the behaviour of the CRU scientists.
8 comments:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8383713.stm
Woah!
You refer, probably correctly, to 'leaked' emails, but the BBC article to which Banned links refers to 'stolen' emails. So they're still spinning like crazy.
Can emails be "stolen", if the original owner still has them?
I could see why it might be a breach of copywrite or privacy but I don't see how it can be theft unless the original recipient is denied them.
Gosh, this story is still going.
This offer by McIntyre and refusal by Wigley speaks volumes about the warmist attitude to sceptics and scepticism and, indeed, to science.
I don't think Mcintyre has ever claimed that AGW as a theory is wrong in principle. What his blog is devoted to is pointing out the unwillingness of the warmist scientists to do science. Also, where he can (and he is, after all, by training a statistician) he uses the warmist data to refute many warmist conclusions and/or highlights weaknesses in the warmist analysis of the data. In other words, he is doing what "proper" scientists should be doing but aren't. The BBC and others in the MSM (eg Geoffrey Lean at the Telegraph) deliberately ignore the importance of the leak in illustrating how scientists at the CRU - and elsewhere - are not doing science, and concentrate on tut-tutting about "stolen" emails instead.
'In other words, he is doing what "proper" scientists should be doing but aren't.'
Many of the shills for AGW aren't 'proper' scientists at all. One of Phil Jones' defenders at UEA is a guy called Rupert Read. He is a Philosophy lecturer (and PPE grad), one of his specialisms being the philosophy of science. In other words, he is as much a 'hard scientist' as , say, Roger Scruton is at the other end of the political spectrum. Read thus has absolutely no right to pontificate about the validity of McIntyre's critical stance re AGW.
Is Rupert Read a Green Party candidate?
Skip all the BS and ask----What effect will a fairytale 50% reduction in CO2 have???----- To much speculation and very little science equals BIG MONEY.
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