This is so disappointing: James Randi joins the ranks of the climate change denialists, and he does so on the basis of an extremely poor argument. I know, he’s a professional skeptic about everything, but skeptics must have some standard for evidence … a standard which the climatologists have reached, while the denialists have not. Here’s the core of Randi’s dissent from the scientific consensus.
I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may be valid. I base this on my admittedly rudimentary knowledge of the facts about planet Earth. This ball of hot rock and salt water spins on its axis and rotates about the Sun with the expected regularity, though we’re aware that lunar tides, solar wind, galactic space dust and geomagnetic storms have cooled the planet by about one centigrade degree in the past 150 years. The myriad of influences that act upon Earth are so many and so variable — though not capricious — that I believe we simply cannot formulate an equation into which we enter variables and come up with an answer. A living planet will continually belch, vibrate, fracture, and crumble a bit, and thus defeat an accurate equation. Please note that this my amateur opinion, based on probably insufficient data.
At least he’s self-aware enoughto realize that he has come to this conclusion on the basis of his personal ignorance. He has two main reasons otherwise to disagree with the idea of anthropogenic global warming.
One is the idea that climate is such a complex product of multiple phenomena that we should expect significant variation, and that no one could possibly have a single equation that describes it all. This is entirely true, but irrelevant. Climate scientists have collected a huge amount of data, and the confounding fact that none of them would ever deny is that it’s variable, messy, noisy stuff, with loads of daily/monthly/yearly variation, and it has to be analyzed to find long term trends. The consensus was not reached because somebody had a magic formula that predicts a result. It was reached because a body of observation has shown long term change is going on. They are aware of possible causes, and they know that phenomena like volcanic eruptions and cyclic changes in solar activity effect climate…and our situation is not sufficiently explained by those kinds of natural events. One consistent change is a rise in CO2 levels, and we know that we are digging up huge reservoirs of sequestered carbon and dumping it into the atmosphere.
The other source of his skepticism is one that Randi should have been more skeptical about: the Petition Project. This is a project by the denialists to gather enough signatures to show a strong pattern of dissent in the scientific community (Sound familiar? The Discovery Institute has done exactly the same thing with their “Dissent from Darwin” list). They’ve got over 30,000 signatures so far! However, as with the Discovery Institute’s list, only a tiny proportion of the signatories are actually qualified, and their procedure for gathering signatures is incredibly sloppy and prone to accumulate fake names. This is what you’d expect: they don’t want quality control, for the propaganda purposes of this list, all you need is quantity.
The source for this list is also rather dubious. It comes from a tiny team of crank scientists operating out of a ‘think tank’ in a small town in Oregon.
I would expect Randi to have given his denialist sources the same degree of critical analysis that he gave to the conclusions of the IPCC. Maybe he did, since he has shown no understanding of the IPCC determinations at all, but I think it was a gross mistake on his part to therefore charge in and decide on the basis of his rudimentary knowledge that maybe the fringe cranks were right.
Just one final comment, then I promise I will let it go.
#492 – My aggression was a largely a reaction to the aggression I received and frustration with what I perceived as attempts to misrepresent my position. I don’t think my initial post was in the slightest bit aggressive.
#496, #497 – I am not a science denier. I am willing to concede that the experts in this area agree that the causes of global warming are anthropogenic and am prepared to default to their expertise, since I have none in this area. But this doesn’t change the fact that my mind has not reached the point of being convinced. You don’t get to choose your beliefs. Likewise, I could *say* that I believe in god, but I would be lying.
Would you prefer that I lie and say that I am convinced, for the sake of being a “good skeptic”?
hello, it IS journalism as PZ is posting here not as some hobbyist but as a legitimate representative of the skeptic movement.
As such certain considerations and standards are expected. If PZ were just some “average Joe” that would be different. He isn’t. He knows he isn’t. Blogger is NOT anything more than a different word for “columnist” in this context. It’s a new word, but it means the same thing.
PZ should be happy though…
WWJDT (what would Jesus do today) a local fundie group has members twittering in a fashion that should give PZ the interwebs high he enjoys so much.
“PZ Mayers (sic) proves atheist are truly animals and not human by attacking and eating one of their own sick and wounded…”
“Mayers (sic again) atheist proves he needs the moral compass that is GOD by turning on a man sick with cancer…”
Actually pissing off WWJDT is something rather GOOD (though trust me, it doesn’t take much, they’ve been after me for years).
Hard to believe no one on either extreme can engage in the kind of professionalism needed in a debate of this importance.
Then you are a denier. Either wear those shoes properly, or shut the fuck up. Equivocators get eviscerated around here, as they should be. True adults make up their MF minds and live with the consequences…
damfino:
The difference between personal blogging and reporting isn’t a matter of how important you are or how serious you are about it; it’s a difference in mode of discourse. There are no “standards” that require anyone (even a newspaper opinion columnist, BTW, but blogging isn’t even equivalent to that) to get anyone’s comment before posting a personal reaction to something.
And for the third time (and last time; I got shit to do today), what’s important here is what Randi published, not how he might justify it in a private conversation.
I’m tired of you now.
I thought it was very sweet. Still I’m glad it was your joke that got a reaction this time, instead of the usual “strange gods is being mean to Walton.”
I share SC and Paul’s disappointment with your next comment, though.
Might as well say only time will tell whether evolution is true, because we’ll have to wait for an event of human speciation after 1859 to be sure.
wrong!
Dumbfuck,
You’re lying again, you toad. Your hostility began at #387, when no one had been hostile to you. No one in the entire conversation ever misrepresented you — you lied about that as well, as explained at #442 — but at the time of #387 there was nothing that you could have even misunderstood as hostility.
Note: I’m not complaining about your hostility. I’m complaining about your dishonesty.
I guess it was silly of me to defend someone else, as I knew Walton was having some friendly fun referring to your guys’ checkered past encounters. But I found it irritating the way he said what he did, instead of something like:
Ha. Don’t be fooled by strange gods’ abrasive debating style and penchant for profanity. Underneath it all,
he’s got a heart of gold.his logic is ripping yours to shreds :-)It was pure tone appeal, instead of pointing out that his fellow L-person was off his rocker.
I am not a science denier. I am willing to concede that the experts in this area agree that the changes in the fossil record are caused by natural selection and am prepared to default to their expertise, since I have none in this area. But this doesn’t change the fact that my mind has not reached the point of being convinced. You don’t get to choose your beliefs.
Ah, but perhaps that’s the best he could muster. We don’t know whether Walton has read the wager either. I went to university where they still value a well-rounded education, whereas Oxford these days is little more than a fancy vocational school.
Bill Bill Bill
so so sorry you are “tired of me”
While PZ is allowed to “blog” (oh wow, blogging is the new interwebs word with it’s own rules and standards…which you are saying is “none”) I would think that as a highly visible representative of the skeptic movement he would apply the same personal ethics he uses in other cases to this “blog”. A “blog” is his writings, his inner musings, his whatever. But it is reflective of him and his personality which is not as far as I can tell ever unfair and is usually unbiased. He’s always hard hitting but I find he is usually totally honest. In this case the honestly came with limited information and with the same sort of bias that Fox news specializes in.
So, Randi writes something (dare we say it’s his “blog”?) and PZ disagrees (hise “blog”). While Randi wrote without what I feel was enough information, which he later ammended and will probably ammend again as he’s OPEN MINDED, PZ also was guilty of writing without all the information, and not going to the minor trouble of confirming his suspicions. Would he have changed it, I don’t know. This isn’t just a journalistic judgement call, it’s a call of character.
The point is when you write anything, no matter what you call it, that writing is a reflection of you and the people your represent. PZ was correct to write on his feelings about Randi, though Randi was very much of the opinion “I could be wrong about this”. Too bad PZ didn’t write or say “well I could be wrong about this” or simply his blind rush to judgement was overdone.
There is ‘he didn’t NEED to contact Randi as this is the internet’ is absurd. Excuses for just plain rudeness and being lazy do not include “it’s just a blog”
If you read most op-ed pages, they don’t print a letter without contacting and giving editorial space to those effected. I know Smithsonian magazine and National Geographic operate this way. Good examples of good journalism. Let’s keep the skeptic standards high also.
PZ was not wrong about his response to Randi. Again:
Randi published something stupid. It was PZ’s duty to respond to what Randi published. It was not PZ’s duty to make excuses for Randi or go easy on him.
(/There is no typeface large enough in which to set the ‘spoing’.)
damfino, I want you to know that I, at least, have noted your concern.
Enough with the whining that I need to call Randi. I’ve met Randi several times, have read his books, and think he’s a fine and interesting person; I am not on such intimate terms with him that I would call him up and berate him for what he got wrong in the article he wrote.
I wrote about what Randi wrote. I was not discussing his character, his record, his off-camera remarks, his associates, or any of the other more complex ephemera that surround him. I was addressing one very specific piece.
Besides, I knew it would get back to him. He’s not blind or stupid. This was part of an ongoing conversation on the web.
I, for one, welcome our new concern troll overlords.
Seriouisly, damfino, what do you expect would have come of such a phone conversation? Because it probably would have gone something like this (abridged):
PZ: Dude, what was that essay all about? That was pretty fucked up.
Randi: Oh, yeah, didn’t quite mean it that way.
PZ: Yeah, but you wrote it that way. And published it that way. And that’s how everyone is going to read it.
Randi: I did, didn’t I? Shit.
And PZ’s post wouldn’t have had to change a bit. The points still stand based on what Randi wrote.
PZ:
Yah, this is the bit that many people don’t seem to understand (damfino in this instance, but s/he’s far from alone): Blogging, and blog commenting, is more like conversation than it is like journalism (or, for that matter, than it is like academic writing).
Yeah, but PZ packs a cyberpistol.
The alarming thought arises: how many people share the idea which Randi apparently has, or had, that global warming is something to do with the heat released when we burn fossil fuels? I’ve never met that one before but it implies that lots of people could be thinking that they understand AGW when in fact they’ve got rather dangerously the wrong end of the stick.
one should pick a side and stay on it, shouldn’t they? unless their efforts are geared toward confusing people. way to go, Randi.
Professor Myers lets himself be disappointed because he is a Climate Change believer
1. How sad to see scientists adopt the label ‘denialist’ to make their point.
James Randi, of course, is only sceptical about the soft subjects, especially when it comes to beliefs .
2. But when it gets down to political ideologies, such as ‘Holocaust-Shoah’ , Randi knows better and swims with the stream and becomes a Holocaust believer because he does not wish to be known as a Holocaust denier.
3. The whole Climate Change debate has shown how believing scientists are about natural phenomena. The current debate is almost infantile because by blustering and huffing and fear-mongering it hinders the scientific aim, which is to help new information to emerge as unhindered as possible. Such behaviour may win an argument on the stage of life through suppression/censorship of contrary opinions, but it does not contribute to gaining new knowledge.
4. During the 1980s it was the specific Greenhouse Effect, which proved to be a natural phenomenon as the ozone layer waxed and waned – and a new refrigeration gas was successfully marketed because the earlier one’s patent ran out; then it was the more general Global Warming, which proved to be easily refutable when one pointed out that, eg., during the 1800s the River Thames had frozen over, and offered more such examples, i.e. the phenomenon was cyclical and normal; and now it is the non-specific Climate Change, and we all agree that we have seasonal changes, even specific localised weather conditions.
5. That world politics rides on the back of this scientific controversy is obvious to those in academia who are secure in their chairs, while the younger generation is snapping at them with this fear-mongering ideology of Climate Change.
6. By bringing the climate change skeptics into the realm of Holocaust deniers is a desperate attempt by individuals to clinch an immediate political victory, which often is tied up with lucrative funding.
7. We are fortunate, however, that truth will out in the long run – perhaps not within someone’s lifetime but out it will. Hence the value of this debate for the sake of posterity where sceptics are in good company with Galileo and Giordano Bruno, Socrates, et al. James Randi has already disqualified himself by being a Holocaust believer but like some scientists, he is trying to remain non-absolutist about climate change. After all, as C S Peirce said, there is nothing absolute about the physical world and only that which we create in our mind is absolute. The stock of knowledge about the physical world forever grows, and only a questioning mind can comprehend that – and even then this knowledge is not absolute because only God is absolute.
Fredrick Toben,
Well, yes, but not only. Did you read the post? (my emphasis)
PZ: This is so disappointing: James Randi joins the ranks of the climate change denialists, and he does so on the basis of an extremely poor argument.
What do you call it when evidence is denied?
What? Historical evidence is not a political ideology!
Um, that’s called methodological naturalism; denying natural phenomena is anti-science.
[I’ll leave some nuggets for others to sweep up]
Well, at least we agree that this “God” thing is only something created in our minds… ;)
Wait. What?
John Morales, thanks for this:
1. Even if you put the ‘poor argument’ aside there are problems. In Australia we have Ian Plimer who has been thoroughly refuted by some ‘experts’- see the work of the fellow who makes this claim: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/
2. For me doubt still exists because what emerged at the Copenhagen conference was the snipped of news that tipped it for me: The IMF (or even the World Bank) was going to administer the fund set up to finance global warming programs. This is internationalism asserting itself, again, over nationalism, and climate change believers are mostly former Marxist/feminists/hedonists/Holocaust believers/atheists who are looking for a worldview that excludes such values as nationalism/autarky, only to mention a few. The major one, of of course, is that humans have a non-materialistic/spiritual dimension that such ideologies cannot cope with, and which gives the freedom concept its meaning and deep value.
3. Still, I yield to your implicit conclusion in your question/statement:
What! Historical evidence is not a political ideology!
4. Of course it is, and we then must admit that even in our free and democratic western world everything is politics and everything is religion – with the atheists valiantly trying to bring us back into the sterility that was the Soviet/Marxist/Darwinian mindset where a belief in God was shunned, but where it was a death sentence that awaited you if you were labelled an antisemite. Get the message?
5. Now I’ve got to get back to work and write my book ARBEIT MACHT FREI wherein I detail my three months prison for refusing to believe in the Holocaust.
6. I shall then continue to participate in the pulsations of the universe, to love the creations of our minds, not all of them, of course, but with dissent thrown in.
7. Wish we could have such a robust discussion about the Holocaust-Shoah, as you have had here about Randi’s alleged transgression of dissenting from an upcoming orthodoxy. Revisionists – so-called Holocaust deniers – have had that kind of treatment for decades. Nice to see Randi copping it – Shermer must be next, or is he submitting to the orthodoxy? It was good years ago to see Peter Duesberg not submitting to the orthodoxy of that HIV=AIDS hypothesis.
Cheers
Yawn FT, if you wish to show us that there is a scientific controversy with AGW, then you must cite the peer reviewed scientific literature to back up your claims. Otherwise, all you have is non-scientific opinion. Web sites and other non-peered reviewed “evidence” are not scientific. That is why AGW denialism is considered a manufactured controversy by most scientists who don’t have political problems with AGW. Your mention of Duesberg shows you are nothing but a crank, and no real science will ever be presented by you.
The poster with the ID of ‘Fredrick Toben’ may or may not be Fredrick Toben.
Ah, a wholesale denialist.
Might be time for Randi to abdicate and PZ take the throne