http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100211704/apologise-to-michael-mann-anthony-id-rather-eat-worms/
Maybe the greatest victory of all we climate sceptical bloggers have won in the aftermath of Climategate is this: we have established that "authority" be it the Royal Society or NASA Giss or the Climatic Research Unit or the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change does not have a monopoly on "truth." Of course, the concept of *argumentum ad verecundiam* the "appeal to authority" was acknowledged as a rhetorical fallacy long before the invention of the internet. But what the sceptical blogosphere has achieved in the last five or ten years has been to re-emphasise this point in a lively, thrilling, intellectually exciting, accessible way for a new generation of open-minded thinkers. The first skirmish, as we know, was won long before Climategate by a "mere" mining engineer who had never once had a single lesson in climatology from the experts at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit but who yet demonstrated a better grasp of palaeoclimatology and statistical analysis than the entire official climate establishment. Before the internet, this almost certainly wouldn't have been possible. The climate establishment would have closed ranks as it tried to do to shut out the unwelcome attentions of Steve McIntyre and McIntyre would never have had the audience for his findings which he did with ClimateAudit. Then, of course, there is the great Anthony Watts founder of the most widely read and important sceptical website of the lot, Watts Up With That? I owe Wattsy an enormous amount, not least because it was on his website that I first spotted the Climategate story for which I later became globally semi-infamous. The only bit I take any credit for is spinning the story in my own particular way, throwing in the rhetorical flourishes to make it more interesting and accessible which is what you do if you're a professional journalist, rather than a meteorologist or a physicist or whatever. We all bring different specialist skills to this conflict but we're all, or should be, fighting the same war. Ultimately, it seems to me, that the war we're fighting concerns the battle between openness, honesty, truth, liberty and freedom of expression on the one hand, and corrupt, dishonest, bullying authoritarianism on the other. There is no moral equivalence between the two sides and well-meaning attempts from anyone on our side to pretend that there is any such moral equivalence are not the act of a wise peacemaker but a naive appeaser. What's particularly valuable about Watts Up With That? is the role it plays as a crucible for clear thinking on any number of scientific issues from species extinction to solar radiation. Anyone is welcome to contribute to the debate, whether they're the world's greatest atmospheric physicist like Dick Lindzen or a graphic artist like Russell Cook. It's not about credentialism for credentialism as we saw clearly exposed in Climategate is part of the problem. Rather it's about the quality of the ideas expressed. If the logic is sound and the data so far as can be established reliable, then the argument stands. If it is flawed then there will be dozens of eager contributors ready to shoot it down in flames (politely, of course: WUWT is robust but not rude). This process is what is known as "peer-to-peer" review. It is probably more useful than "peer-review" because it is less open to the kind of corruption we saw in the Climategate emails. Now let's suppose I were tempted to engage in an argument at WUWT with Anthony Watts on the topic he has made his own weather stations; the correct siting thereof; the distortions of the climate record. I would be free to do so, certainly, but I would have to be very careful of my ground. It would not simply be enough for me to declare airily "Anthony's stuff on weather stations. I'm not buying it. It's inflammatory. It makes out that all those expert bodies which rely on them, like NOAA and NASA Giss, that they're just a bunch of cheats. And that really isn't helpful to the debate." No, I would have to behave like all really good scientists and mathematicians do. I would have to show my workings. Venturing an ex cathedra opinion based on gut feeling just wouldn't be enough. It would, indeed, represent a rejection of precisely those virtues accuracy, rigour, and fearlessness in the face of cantish, spurious, emotion-based non-arguments which make Watts Up With That? so justly successful and important. You see where I'm going with this? I want to say it in the nicest possible way for I'm a great respecter of Anthony Watts and when all this blows over I want us to remain friends. But if you're going to criticise someone's rhetoric<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/07/the-battle-of-the-pointless-nuremberg-insults-romm-vs-delingpole/> the rules are no different from if you're attacking their science: first be absolutely sure of your ground.<http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/james-delingpole/8885551/no-i-wont-say-sorry-even-to-a-friend/> . On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Vivec <[email protected]> wrote: > > > http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-climate-change-science-psychology.html > > "But, over all, the trends were clear. The more people believed in > free-market ideology, the less they believed in climate science; the more > they accepted science in general, the more they accepted the conclusions of > climate science; and the more likely they were to be conspiracy theorists, > the less likely they were to believe in climate science. > > These results fit in with a longer literature on what has come to be known > as motivated reasoning. Other things being equal, people tend to believe > what they want to believe, and to disbelieve new information that might > challenge them. 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