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<DIV>Those who argue that anthropogenic global warming is not a
primary source of problems in our world seem to downplay that if someone
takes certain rather incredible yet common popular
science beliefs seriously, and acts upon them, vandalism, war,
bigotry, etc., (withholding/destroying data, intimidation of journal editors,
etc.) become reasonable. The aggressive tactics
of environmentalists (sometimes not calling themselves "environmentalists"
explicitly) have been and still are defended given the logic that if unbelievers
are not converted, their world view is lost; extreme measures are
reasonable given this logic. What is the importance of one
human academic career compared to the future life of an world
outlook?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>How does it feel to be the functional equivalent of
the American Humanist Organization stepping all over Mr. Moffett's
fervently held religious beliefs?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>"Millions are not evil energy company shills
without a belief in AGW"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>g</FONT></DIV></DIV>
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style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=godshatter@yahoo.com href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, November 27, 2009 10:54
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] How to Forge a
Consensus</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Just to show that I, too, can cut & paste - I bring to you,
that one mythical reader that is actually following this stuff, the following
opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal:<BR><BR><A
class=moz-txt-link-freetext
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook</A><BR><BR>
<H1>How to Forge a Consensus </H1>
<H2 class=subhead>The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the
global warming game has been rigged from the start. </H2>
<DIV id=article_pagination_top class=articlePagination></DIV>
<P>The climatologists at the center of last week's leaked-email and document
scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the
wording of the some of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in
no way undermines the underlying science, which is as certain as ever.</P>
<P>"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential
between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often
foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters
Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into
something nefarious."</P>
<P>Phil Jones, Director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research
Unit, from which the emails were lifted, is singing from the same climate
hymnal. "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not
read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were
clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms
frequently used between close colleagues," he said this week.</P>
<P>We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if
he expected them to end up in the newspaper. His May 2008 email to Mr. Mann
regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report: "Mike, Can you delete any
emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" does not "read well," it's true.
(Mr. Mann has said he didn't delete any such emails.)</P>
<P>But the furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or
even whether climatologists are nice people in private. The real issue is what
the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on
global warming was arrived at in the first place, and how even now a single
view is being enforced. In short, the impression left by the correspondence
among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has
been rigged from the start. </P>
<P>According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been
published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the
"peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure
enough, any challenges that critics have lobbed at climatologists from outside
this clique are routinely dismissed and disparaged. </P>
<P>This past September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the
leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost
entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a
retired Canadian businessman who fact-checks the findings of climate
scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds—including some in Mr.
Mann's work—on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction
of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more-famous
papers.</P>
<P>As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co.
had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as
they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted to several colleagues in an email from
March 2003, when the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr.
Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics
for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a
solution to that—take over a journal!"</P>The scare quotes around
"peer-reviewed literature," by the way, are Mr. Mann's. He went on in the
email to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: "Perhaps we should
encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit
to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we
tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the
editorial board." In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals.
When that fails, re-define what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any
that publish inconvenient views. It's easy to manufacture a scientific
consensus when you get to decide what counts as science. <A
name=U10298036121FXC></A>
<P>The response to this among the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has
been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of
view, theirs is still the best climate science we've got. The proof for this
is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and
most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature.</P>
<P>Even so, by rigging the rules, they've made it impossible to know how good
it really is. And then, one is left to wonder why they felt the need to rig
the game in the first place, if their science is as robust as they claim. If
there's an innocent explanation for that, we'd love to hear it.</P><BR>
<P>
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