After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.
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Do you ever find the structure of a situation in the news fascinating in its own right, as you would the plot of a novel, almost irrespective of how it pans out in the real world? Some documents were tricked or leaked out of an anti global warming thinktank, the Heartland Institute. Most of these documents have been admitted to be genuine, and while opinions differ as to how shocking they are, they were certainly not stuff that the Heartland Institute had wished to share with the world. So far the tables are turned on the the Climategate affair. Only… The juiciest document, the one that had the really damning quotes (it spoke of “dissuading teachers from teaching science”) is different from all the others. Megan McArdle, not herself in the sceptic camp, says it is looking faker by the minute. If it does turn out that it is a fake, then the tables are turned on the table turners. But… but… why would anyone be so daft? Having pulled off the trick, got the goods, why put your gains at risk for such a trivial advantage as that of providing a quotable summary? One of the reasons for the veracity of this particular document being in doubt is that it is sloppy. It contains errors of fact and is written in an unprofessional style. Still, that happens sometimes. “Organisation Contains Sloppy Writer” is not exactly a headline to make them hold the front page. Maybe the sloppiness is a reason to suppose it genuine. But let us run with it being fake for a while – was the faker in a hurry for some reason? It reminds me (and a lot of people) of the Rathergate memos. What a daft error it was to publish them in the default Microsoft Word font of 2004 when they were meant to have originated in the 1970s. I thought then and still think now that they were a first draft released too soon. Could something similar have happened here? The Guardian pulls in its horns a little. Its story now carries a rather grudging little update saying that the Heartland Institute now claims one document is a fake. The Guardian does not make it as clear as it ought in my opinion that the doubtful document is the very one that had all the good quotes. At this point, like all good detective stories, a whole new sub plot bubbles up. The climate sceptic blogs have a suspect and name him with what seems to me ridiculous confidence given that the stated evidence against him is vague; mostly a matter of similarities of style. Now who’s risking all they have gained for a trivial advantage? If their suspect turns out to be wrongly accused, the story, which they had snatched back and made into one about fakers rather than leakers, will be forfeit again. And so it goes – and so it stalls, last time I looked. The person named has not responded to emails; he appears to be offline. But why shouldn’t he be offline? Do you spend your Saturdays checking your email to see if you have been accused of any career-ending shenanigans in the last few hours? Meanwhile other strange portents are seen; open letters are published then retracted and both sides go about with an air of knowing more than they are letting on. Agatha Christie would put in the second murder about now. UPDATE, 21 FEBRUARY: The second body duly falls. That “person named” to whom I alluded so delicately was Peter Gleick. He has now admitted obtaining the documents by deception. I note that the very thing that led to his name being mentioned as a suspect were similarities of writing style between Gleick’s published writing and the “different” email. Nonetheless he claims that he did not alter any of the emails he obtained. As to that, here is a page listing 100 interjections of the sort that express emotion without actually pinning one down to having said anything. Choose as appropriate. I quite like “hmm” and “ahem” myself, but my favourite must be “uh-huh” (affirmation) differing by only a breath from “uh-uh” (negation). Hat tip to Douglas2 in the comments. February 18th, 2012 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 We already have a ‘Samizdata quote of the day’ for today, but, yes, here are seven more. I wrote them down over last Christmas, and then forgot about them. Ant then today, I encountered them again. They still make me smile, so here they all are for you good people. First, a couple of things said by Patsy Stone, the amazing fashion monstress played by Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous. Over Christmas there were two new episodes. So much for my “complete” box set that I found in a charity shop last year. On the terribleness of the recent riots in London:
On the drugs issue:
Also on a fashion theme, from one of those Father Christmas in a New York Shopping Store movies, said by the Lady Boss:
That’s the spirit. And depending on how the project turns out:
Which has to be a very old joke, but like I say, it made me smile. Next, this from the Headmistress of St Trinian’s (played by Rupert Everett), about her (I think) brother (also Rupert Everett), to her brother’s daughter:
Finally a couple of overhearings from BBC Radio 3. Here’s something from the recently deceased Gustav Leonhardt, about and with whom they did a commemorative Music Matters show, featuring a recorded interview with him. Leonhardt is explaining why the biographical details of the lives of the great composers don’t interest him that much, only their music.
Finally, here is Professor Robert Winston, ruminating on science, in between introducing some of his classical favourites with Rob Cowan:
The phrase “climate science” was never uttered, but you got the distinct feeling that this particular Public Voice is thinking that CAGW is a band-waggon that it now makes more sense to get off rather than to shout from. I must remember to email the Bishop about that. Something tells me that the CAGW-ists will, any year now, start having short memories masquerading as clear consciences. February 17th, 2012 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Someone who well deserves to be high up on the climate usual-suspects list is Bill McGuire, who is Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College, London. He’s giving a lecture at the Royal Institution, Albemarle Street, on 21 February. The blurb for this on the RI website reads as follows:
…Seeing this prompted me to send an email to Prof. McGuire:
I suppose this could be classified as a troll, if person-to-person emails can be trolls. Certainly, it was meant to be provocative. And it was a tiny bit deceptive in that I was pretending to believe that BM wasn’t personally responsible for his own publicity, whereas I don’t doubt for a moment that he drafted it himself, judging by his past output (for example, “ ‘Tiny’ climate changes may trigger quakes“.) But one man’s troll is another man’s well-aimed rapier thrust – and I had one, small, precisely defined target for my challenge: “bracketing a serious scientific account of the effects of a sea rise of the order of 100 metres with the effects of the rise projected by the IPCC for the lifetimes of our grandchildren.” Anyway, Prof. McGuire didn’t rise to the bait, and didn’t reply. His self-publicizing climate-alarmist hype on the RI site is unchanged. I don’t know whether I can bear to be at the event. February 10th, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
With a whoop and a holler the Guardian reports that Bjorn Lomborg’s climate sceptic think tank is to close. Before anyone tells me, yes I know that “climate sceptic” is not a good description of Lomborg’s opinions. The article itself is more accurate. It seems the Danish government cut off funding:
Good news for the Danish taxpayer, one might think, but I suspect that the stream of kroner diverted away from Lomborg’s think tank is unlikely to be returning their way. The Guardian commenters, mostly warmists in a much stronger sense than Lomborg, assume that this closure (if it happens) is a benefit for their cause. I doubt that is entirely true. They are living in the world before the internet. In that world, the major weapon in the battle of ideas was the catapult. The difficult bit was throwing your ideas hard enough and far enough. These days, though the loss of a big catapult is still a blow, anyone who cares to fight can find a little catapult and, er, my military metaphor has gone the way of the mangonel, but the new difficult bit is not projection but acceptance. Getting believed. If your problem is that the people are already half inclined to think that your opinion has a little too much of the pravda, the official line about it, the last thing you want to do is have it known that the opposition were silenced by anything other than argument. January 23rd, 2012 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Newcastle did not beat Manchester United today, because the long term trend is for Manchester United to beat Newcastle. – Bishop Hill’s quote of the day today. He found it here. This is the game being referred to. January 5th, 2012 | Comments are closed
Commenting on this reaction from Bishop Hill to a not-all-that-biased-by-their-standards BBC show about windfarms, regular BH commenter Philip Bratby says:
Bratby then mentions a website about a campaign called “Slay The Array”. Slay The Array seems to be an alliance between those who oppose these giant propellers on aesthetic grounds, and those who oppose them on economic grounds, and they have set their particular sites on a vast clutch of propellers (the “Atlantic Array”) which some gang of well-connected thieves and/or lunatics intend to build in the spot where the Severn Estuary turns into the Bristol Channel. Personally I quite like the look of these giant propellers. But then, I like pylons, and skyscrapers, even scaffolding. As for wildlife, some of it will suffer if they build all these propellers, but other life forms will benefit, just as with every other human impact upon the environment. However, I am entirely persuaded that, economically, these erections are ridiculous, in fact utterly fraudulent. So, for me, the biggest objection to them by far is this one:
If Artists Against Windfarms (who get a mention at the Slay The Array website where it says “our friends”) oppose these stupid, larcenous but to me rather handsome propellers on artistic grounds, that’s fine by me. January 2nd, 2012 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 22nd, 2011 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
In Ecuador in 2003 a trial began against Texaco who were accused of dumping toxic material in the Amazon. They were ordered to pay $18bn in damages. Chevron bought Texaco, and they are fighting back. Their evidence includes out-takes from the documentary movie Crude. Wizbang links to some of the video (via Small dead animals, via Counting Cats). One of the video’s protagonists talks of using smoke and mirrors and bullshit in the Ecuadorian court to explain away the fact that the scientific reports only showed localised contamination. Chevron have some web pages with the background and more videos. I like it when companies bluntly defend themselves so publicly. None of this is to do with fracking, but it does shed some light on the opponents of oil exploration. Meanwhile, an Investors Business Daily piece (via Junk Science) suggests that as of May, the Environmental Protection Agency was not aware of a proven case of water being affected by fracking, and that recent concerns about this may be due to contamination from the chemicals the EPA used when drilling its own wells. Update: Now Instapundit is saying that the EPA struck gas! All of which suggests we need to be on our toes when faced with evidence of the dangers of fracking. December 14th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Incoming email from newly signed up Samizdatista Rob Fisher (who can only do emails right now) about how Oxfam is proposing a global shipping tax. Watts Up With That? has the story. Says Rob:
Says Anthony Watts:
Says Bishop Hill commenter ScientistForTruth:
I do enjoy those Bishop’s Gaff Bishop’s Rules bits in his comments section. Perhaps “what a bunch of total snips” will catch on as an insult. December 7th, 2011 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Leo Hickman of the Guardian is apparently angry (as Bishop Hill mentions here) that the Spectator published an article by sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner, an article I recycled the concluding paragraphs of as a(n) SQotD here on Thursday, and Leo Hickman isn’t the only one. The general mood in the CAGW camp is: get Mörner! To this end a commenter (“schoolswot” – today 11:10am) at Delingpole said this of Mörner:
To which commenter “rastech” (circa 1pm) replied:
So, it’s now officially official. Dowsing, like cold weather, is now right wing. All this in a comment thread attached to a Delingpole piece about Jeremy Clarkson, and about how all the shouting about Jeremy Clarkson is really about diverting attention from the fact that the recent public sector strike, some time last week, was a failure. Although, Guido reckons Clarkson is now laughing all the way to the bank. They haven’t so much diverted attention from the failure of their strike as given a ton of free publicity to someone who said, admittedly in his characteristically OTT manner, that the strikers were idiots. Please try to keep your comments on topic. The topics being: Leo Hickman, the Guardian, Nils-Axel Mörner, dowsing, whether tea really does taste better if made with water filtered through sandstone, James Delingpole, the BBC, public sector strikes, Jeremy Clarkson, whether it’s okay for Jeremy Clarkson to joke about people being taken out and shot without really meaning it, Guido Fawkes, how to get tabloid publicity by the ton, paper money collapse … well, I didn’t mention paper money collapse until now, but I thought I ought to. December 3rd, 2011 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
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