Note: Watts Up With That, one of the web’s most anti-scientific blogs, is a finalist for the Weblog award “Best Science Blog.” Even more farcically, early voting suggests Watts has a chance of winning (see here). Since the fine science blog Pharyngula is doing well in the voting, I’d now suggest voting for it.
In this post I’m going to present the general diagnosis for “anti-science syndrome” (ASS). Like most syndromes, ASS is a collection of symptoms that individually may not be serious, but taken together can be quite dangerous—at least it can be dangerous to the health and well-being of humanity if enough people actually believe the victims.
One tell-tale symptom of ASS is that a website or a writer focuses their climate attacks on non-scientists. If that non-scientist is Al Gore, this symptom alone may be definitive.
The other key symptoms involve the repetition of long-debunked denier talking points, commonly without links to supporting material. Such repetition, which can border on the pathological, is a clear warning sign.
Scientists who kept restating and republishing things that had been widely debunked in the scientific literature for many, many years would quickly be diagnosed with ASS. Such people on the web are apparently heroes—at least to the right wing and/or easily duped.
If you suspect someone of ASS, look for the repeated use of the following phrases:
- Medieval Warm Period
- Hockey Stick
- Michael Mann
- The climate is always changing
- Alarmist
- Hoax
- Temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide
- Pacific Decadal Oscillation
- Water vapor
- Sunspots
- Cosmic rays
- Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark
- Ice Age was predicted in the 1970s
- Global cooling
Individually, some of these words and phrases are quite useful and indeed are commonly used by both scientists and non-scientists who are not anti-science. But the use of more than half of these in a single speech or article is pretty much a definitive diagnosis of ASS.
When someone repeats virtually all of those phrases, along with multiple references to Al Gore, they are wholly a victim of ASS—in scientific circles they are referred to as ASS-wholes.
A newly prominent ASS-whole is Harold Ambler, who managed to get this article past a HuffingtonPost intern over the weekend: “Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted.” I was not originally planning to post on this (unsourced) collection of long debunked denier talking points since, as regular readers know, my policy is not to waste time on the umpteenth debunking. Anyone who might be persuaded by Ambler’s tripe can do a simple search for each myth on RealClimate or on this blog.
For more detailed debunking (with links and citations) of every single myth that Ambler raises (without bothering to present links and citations) go to Skeptical Science. Also see “HuffPost scores a 100 on the Inhofe Scale.”
As deniers or ASS-wholes go, Ambler is quite lame. Separate from his long list of long-debunked denier talking points, who could possibly take seriously somebody who wrote the following:
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that “the science is in.” Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.
Such a statement is anti-scientific and anti-science in the most extreme sense. It accuses the scientific community, broadly defined, of deliberate fraud —and not just the community of climate scientists, but the leading National Academies of Science around the world (including ours) and the American Geophysical Union, an organization of geophysicists that consists of more than 45,000 members and the American Meteorological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Such a statement accuses all of the member governments of the IPCC, including ours, of participating in that fraud, since they all sign-off on the Assessment Reports word for word. And, of course, Ambler’s statement accuses all of the leading scientific journals of being in on this fraud, since the IPCC reports are primarily a review and synthesis of the published scientific literature.
So who could possibly take Ambler seriously? None other than “Best Science Blog” finalist Watts Up With That? Yes, Watts reprints Ambler’s entire post—and does so approvingly:
Shocker: Huffington Post carries climate realist essay
Congratulations to Harold Ambler, who frequents here in comments, for breaking the climate “glass ceiling” at HuffPo. This essay is something I thought I’d never see there. Next stop: Daily Kos?—Anthony
To reprint Ambler’s post and call it a “climate realist essay” makes Watts as anti-scientific as Ambler himself.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
View as Flat
Delay And Deny Posted 3:13 pm
06 Jan 2009
By the way, I'm reading a fascinating book (The Future of Everything) on the history and science of prediction, from the Temple at Delphi onward. And it includes some comments on climate forecasting.
I ask that you consider reading it, before opening mouth any wider:
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Everything-Science-Predictio ...
...if there are self made Purgatories, then we all have to live in them. --"This Side of Paradise", TOS
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anotherID Posted 2:31 am
07 Jan 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 2:54 am
07 Jan 2009
However, this is a whole virtual village of ASSes, defined by their talking points, as Joe collates. Google the list, hehey. What a mess.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Black Wallaby Posted 2:08 pm
12 Jan 2009
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The author is; PZ Myers [a] biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
The origin of the site-name is, in part;
Ballard (1981) coined the term "pharyngula" to refer to the embryo that has developed to the phyolotypic stage, when it possesses the classic vertebrate bauplan...
Myers is an excellent writer and humorist, elaborating some weird things in biology, but also politics, religion, and a host of wacky things in this world, such as this; his current lead article:
Who has the weird eyes?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/bad_science_be ...
After reviewing the site, I'm not surprised that pharyngula is very popular, and I've added it to my list of favourites, for those days when I might feel down, and want some entertainment.
Thanks again Joe for the introduction, but let`s see how the voting goes eh!
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Black Wallaby Posted 2:08 pm
13 Jan 2009
Winner: Watt's Up with That: 37.6%
Second: Pharyngula (See my post above): 32.5%
Third: Climate Audit (A rather "serious" scientific site): 10.9%
Oh dear!: Real Climate: 3.8%
Hey Joe, I notice that your own Weblog, (Climate Progress, is it?), did not make it into the ten science blogs voted on. I wondered if you may have been placed into a different category, so went to The 2008 Weblog Award Poll Navigation Page. Amongst the 50 odd categories listed, there did not seem to be one that fits your weblog, so maybe you should contact Weblog Awards, and mention that you seem to have been overlooked.
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Black Wallaby Posted 7:43 pm
18 Jan 2009
Maybe this is a measure of your lack of credible scientific comment?
More a recognition of your SPIN?
Why don't you take early retirement?
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Bob Wallace Posted 7:58 pm
18 Jan 2009
He'll answer you there. I doubt that he regularly reads the comments on this one.
As for that popularity vote, I wouldn't get your panties in a bunch over it. If you at have even a slight understanding of scientific methods you have to recognize that those sorts of polls are generally meaningless.
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Black Wallaby Posted 6:36 am
19 Jan 2009
I prefer this weblog because it is an excellent broader ranging site including a far more lenient editorial policy that allows criticism of the leads, unlike Climate Progress, (and real Climate) Experience related by Max and Brute over at Harmless Sky is that some of their posts "evaporate" or remain unanswered, and they are reluctant to bless those sites with hits, as I am.
I doubt that he regularly reads the comments on this one.
That could be true, but I hope it is not
As for that popularity vote... ... those sorts of polls are generally meaningless.
Joe does not seem to think so; he opened his lead with a plea for us to vote for Pharyngula!
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:54 am
19 Jan 2009
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Black Wallaby Posted 3:04 pm
19 Jan 2009
NO, definitely not: I gave my reasons for not posting at Climate Progress above. It is not terribly complicated really. Perhaps you could try reading it again. (Additionally, I might add that there is higher traffic here). However, if you remain upset, and somehow believe that Joe, whom is not famous for modesty, does not read responses to his own rather vain lead posts here, then why don't you take it up with him? Just let him know at his CP that in your opinion I have misrepresented him, listing the threads here that are so affected.
As we say in Australia; "Dobb me in", please do; it could be fun if he is brave enough to respond.
Similar remarks apply to Andrew Dessler, another master spinner. (although he has responded admirably in the past)
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