proving a negative is a logical conundrum

But it's mainly the lack of a suitable control that makes the whole climate thing tricky scientifically. I'd rather not get it wrong for the sake of feeling temporary smug warmth like someone who's just pissed their pants.

That tends towards taking the…

And as we know from Bjorn Lomberg, many environemntal indicators are improving, not spinning out of control.

Ladies and gentleman, because Russell has already linked to me in this thread on citing appropriate authorities, I'll just say that adding "as we know from Bjorn…

Newsweek magazine
Life magazine
Look magazine
Mademoiselle magazine

and ten, carefully chosen quotes taken out of context and without links, does after represent the sum total of all global scientific study and understanding of the climate at the time.

I guess, in the…

Amen to that. Anyone wondering why people are skeptical about AGW need read no…

Guardian man interesting too. It would be good to hear from Brian Deer, the Sunday Times journalist whose long campaign, determined investigative…

I don't want to seem churlish about what Professor Gluckman was saying. I get that there isn't much spare money and also that the Government might be reluctant to put more money into CRIs when they don't believe CRIs are working how they would like them to work.

I do…

The role of the Families Commission has been to research areas related to NZ families, for which we have very little research at all. So using mixed methods, including…

someone should submit an Op Ed to the Herald about the benefits of smoking and especially second hand smoke. Could quote the Heartland Institute, Fred Singer, etc. Be interesting to see what they'd say.

surely the editors there must be looking at the string of outright inventions in the column and wondering about the paper's reputation.

I'm sure there's some law-type point about libel or somesuch to be made here. Something about having a reputation to trash in the frst place?

What the hell are they doing in Togo?

Voodoo economics?

No, wait, I found it.
Projects in Togo.
I suspect the high percentage might come from the low GDP. Just a guess but.

I realise there is a market for the blathering of foolish old men

Talkback

God set it all in motion, and He's not going to let humans wreck His planet.

Unless of course this is the control planet and he is only going to intervene in the other Earth.

Which is, it must be said, a work of the most surpassing and extravagant ignorance.

I realise there is a market for the blathering of foolish old men, which is why they Herald keeps him on, but…

What the hell are they doing in Togo?

Voodoo economics?

OECD?

Actually, I was being facetious. No, really. But it is a more interesting question than I intended, and in looking into it I was reminded of the Human Development Index. New Zealand rates pretty highly in that. Higher than the UK for example.

Not so high on this [[http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_res_and_dev_spe-economy-research-and-development-spending|R…

Isn't that bog standard across the developed world?

Define 'developed world'.

Most enterprises in New Zealand are small and medium-sized enterprises. As at February 2005:

• 96.3% of enterprises employ 19 or fewer people
• 86.5% of enterprises employ 5 or fewer people
• 63.2% of enterprises have no employees…

Hi Ben, you mean solutions such as this one?

Precisely. I went to that mill a number of times – my brother worked there. Went I asked why they didn't use the rail he shrugged. "I know. It's RIGHT THERE".

The governments of New Zealand have for the last 20 years or more chosen to stop spending money in RS&T. That is something we are paying for now with reduced productivity and lower GDP. Blaming the private sector is cheap politics.

You'll note I asked "how" to increase private sector investment.…

You could kill both those birds with one stone through a R&D tax credit. Both govt and the private sector would be contributing.

Looked into it. Not worth the paper it was written on. If anyone successfully benefited from the scheme, or even signed up, I'd like to hear about it,…

http://blog.greens.org.nz/2010/03/02/smart-money-backing-rail/

http://preview.tinyurl.com/22p2xej

Can't remember where, but I'm sure I heard recently that it had already paid for itself.

And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?

But this is part of the problem, not the solution. Independent research requires funding without the vested interest and conflict of interest that now controls the budgets of most university…

Professor Gluckman made that point as well. We need to stop demanding every project succeed. Failure should be expected and accepted if you are doing high risk work. If you never fail you probably aren't trying hard enough.

the pool of money for science needs to get bigger

And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?

Yeah that's what the government has been saying for about 20 years.

And yes our private sector RS&T investment is low.…

This is the kind of logic that led FRST to where it is today, they stopped assessing quality of science (mostly) and tried instead to pick projects that would succeed in increasing NZs wealth. Which is laudable. But it hasn't worked.

I didn't say anything about wealth, I said 'likely…

That's why I would shy away from trying to pick success. Instead I would focus on picking quality of science. All the while being aware that high quality science is also high risk and hence will often fail.

Totally. It's high risk, high return stuff. So long as there's investment…

the pool of money for science needs to get bigger

And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?

Iz on the Twitterz

Yay. Followd

that means projects have to prove their value before they get funded (which if you think about it is daft)

Sounds all too familiar from other fields: you are expected to provide the business case…

And yes, the losers from the change are probably the universities.

And Lucy said

More specifically: those who are research-only staff at universities, whose livelihoods are dependent year-to-year on the grants they can get. Less money floating around, more people dropping out of research altogether – and there's…

ta for the link – needed it for work today and wasn't sure if the official website would have the notes up so soon

Iz on the Twitterz:

http://twitter.com/ChiefSciAdvisor

There isn't a lot of money going around so most of what there is has to go towards stuff that looks likely to work.

Kyle I find this kind of statement scary. This is the kind of logic that led FRST to where it is today, they stopped assessing quality…

And after all that, Prof Gluckman's official speech notes.

ta for the link – needed it for work today and wasn't sure if the official website would have the notes up so soon.

BTW @Kyle, Prof Gluckman is definately trying to say the right things – his talks etc, and…

Marsden funds are the exception, they go towards blue sky research which may or may not produce something valuable at the end.

I liked Martin Rees's comment that there are two kinds of research – 'applied' and 'not yet applied'.

Studies by the OECD show a remarkable relationship between a nation’s investment in science and innovation and productivity: nations that invest more in knowledge generation and…

that means projects have to prove their value before they get funded (which if you think about it is daft)

Well not necessarily. Research is often multi-staged over time, so a researcher might get a small grant or some time to explore something, and then once it looks promising might…

but the commissioning of the CRI review and the speedy adoption of its conclusions is something for which the current government deserves praise.

Yup I agree. Labour basically abandoned RS&T to the bureaucrats in FRST. National are paying attention and Professor Gluckman does seem to be trying to do the right…

Gluckman does seem to know what he's on about. As said earlier, would be nice if people were listening.

They might, if they had something to listen to.

Amount of coverage in today's Herald on the Gluckman speech: zero.

Amount of coverage on Stuff: zero. In fact, front page story…

Does he mean that the big companies will bring in big new trucks and squeeze out all the current independent operators?

It is…

Strangely enough he's not making similar noises about truckers paying for their fair share of road damage (ie: nearly all of it).

while increasing the max. tonnage again.

alignment of mission

Without reading his speech, the overall shift seems to be towards CRIs acting in the national interest rather than their own individual one. I guess we need to see the Budget next month to know if that's more than hot air.

What would be nice is if the Govt would make the call on whether the CRIs are primarily working for the national good, or primarily making money to hand back to their shareholder (ie, the Govt).

From Gluckman's speech notes:

The major purpose of the reforms presaged in the CRI…

(And the thing is: it's *sensible* to give the CRIs more long-term funding. It just sucks for everyone else.)

There's a difference between more long-term funding and more funding. They're not talking about giving more money to the CRIs, just giving them the same amount of money in bigger lumps…

The CRI review is about backing out of the accursed contestible model and returning to long-term funding of science, and losing the idea that CRIs are somehow supposed to compete with each other as businesses. Their role will now be to support their sectors, rather than compete with them.

It's…

Mentioned hereabouts recently that it's working a treat in Health with DHBs slashing home-based disability/aged support hours because they are not part of the Minister's performance targets.

The CRI review is about backing out of the accursed contestible model and returning to long-term funding of science, and losing the idea…

Instead we will get more productivity out of CRIs by changing their performance indicators. It will be interesting to see if this is a successful approach.

Mentioned hereabouts recently that it's working a treat in Health with DHBs slashing…

CRI review and the speedy adoption of its conclusions is something for which the current government deserves praise.

Cough.

Gluckman does seem to know what he's on about. As said earlier, would be nice if people were listening.

Hopefully people won't start thinking the ash cloud is going to solve…

--Instead we will get more productivity out of CRIs by changing their performance indicators.
It will be interesting to see if this is a successful approach.__

I'm not sure if interesting is the right word there....

I don't doubt Bart's practical concerns, but the commissioning of the CRI review and…

Instead we will get more productivity out of CRIs by changing their performance indicators.

It will be interesting to see if this is a successful approach.

I'm not sure if interesting is the right word there....

Instead we will get more productivity out of CRIs by changing their performance indicators.

It will be interesting to see if this is a successful approach.

Personally I think that unless the Government increases RS&T funding by about…

The lecture today by the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman was bracing.

I've only seen him on TV a couple of times, and quoted in the media a few more, but he seems like a good appointment, saying the right things, and I hope he has…

He had some very interesting things to say about the changes heralded by the recent CRI review, but I'll just dump my notes on the climate change part of the speech here for the…

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.

Hmmm. I assumed that I just had trapped wind.

when faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept the subject rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

Cognitive dissonance

Then there's issue of people always looking for agendas behind questions.

Always a problem if you are playing by the rules and the other guys are not.

The unthinking public respect for science mid last century seems a long way from today's attitudes. US politics have not helped, with decades…

Scientists are only human, they are subject to vainty and corruption like anyone else, and there is more money on the AGW gravy train for scientists, politicians and business people than any gravy train around.

I love this scientific conspiracy theory. You only have to meet two scientists holding a…

The "withholding belief" position means that people practically act as if they "believe the opposite", because that is what they were doing before. Being unaware of a problem has the same practical outcome as ignoring the problem.

Well, the gut feeling I get from various casual conversations with 'the man…

But I do think even ascertaining a general public position…

As your link notes, the uncorrected data were thrown away — more than 20 years ago, it seems worth noting, and before Phil Jones was even there — because the university didn't give the CRU a big enough building to hold its stuff.

Again, the touching yet misguided devotion to…

confidence in a scientist's predictions after he has admitted throwing away his raw data?

While I was working in Davis California we had to move the lab to the new biology building. Of course in the process we went through all the drawers and cupboards in the lab. Amongst all…

there is more money on the AGW gravy train for scientists, politicians and business people than any gravy train around

Really? Someone should tell all those pharma, oil, gun, tobacco, banking, mining, airline and car lobbyists that they're in the wrong business.

After all, as noted upthread, science institutions clearly…

Having made the choice to remain mostly disinterested, and thus ignorant, skepticism is a fairly natural position to take. It's a "withholding of belief", rather than a "belief in the opposite".

@Ben

I don't find much to disagree with in your analysis, but I do disagree slightly with this conclusion.…

(& Rich, the Manhattan Project consisted of the scientific Establishment of two continents. & it wasn't a particularly isolated occurrence either:`I aim at the stars (but sometimes I hit London'?)

I'll take one lazy swipe at that with the straight razor of deconstruction, and point out that the original post didn't mention…

In my mind, the greatest challenge facing scientists is the mammoth task of somehow making the general public grasp that while nothing is certain, and nothing is as simple as it seems, that doesn't make it all totally garbage.

False certainty and faux simplicity............and the general public.
Well, when the…

not necessarily deep understanding – just the sipping, the sweet hints…

As a scientist who is also wont to put words on the page as verse I know what you mean. Many of my poems are just musings aloud and may never be read by another, that is not their purpose. Not to mention that I have never been brave…

You have peers who are capable of assessing your work, recognising through physical trial/processes and intellectual judgement whether or not your hypothosis is a goer- poets can only send words into the dark-

Send it on, won't bother me. Without turning this into too much of a love-fest, I think…

Is that like agnostic not atheist?

I guess so. I think you can still hold an agnostic position, even after having examined all the evidence quite deeply though. But yes, agnosticism is quite a common choice if you haven't found the time or reason to go into the guts of…

I come into a scientific perspective because I love & know & respect insects/arachnida, history, fish, archaeology,…

Having made the choice to remain mostly disinterested, and thus ignorant, skepticism is a fairly natural position to take. It's a "withholding of belief", rather than a "belief in the opposite".

Is that like agnostic not atheist?

nothing is certain, and nothing is as simple as it seems

Untenable positions…

Your blithe assertions that 'someone' should have seen the CRU's plight and given them the resources to accede to the flood of vexatious FOI requests ignores a major problem: using what monies exactly? Universities here are not flush with cash, press offices often have as much as two whole…

I can also see what happened at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. A small group that has been making climate measurements and conducting research for two decades increasingly found itself at the sharp end of a big argument and frankly did not cope.

A lot of it…

Daylight saving doesn't fade your curtains.

While the act of moving the clocks doesn't do…

Gareth and Bryan are pretty good at staying on topic and not feeding the trolls but one of the really difficult things about trolls is that they say such annoyingly inane and plainly…

I think, given the climate they operate in, turning things up to 10 most of the time is understandable. Not always *helpful*, but very understandable.

I started reading both Real Climate and Hot Topic from the beginning, and I'm pretty sure they both stated that they were going to engage…

Really you are no more than 2-3 degrees of separation from a genuine expert,

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. – Niels Bohr

A field guide to them: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1460

I think, given the climate they operate in, turning things up to 10 most of the time is understandable. Not always *helpful*, but very understandable.

Yes.

Learn Your Motherf#@kin' Science: A Textbook for Juggalos

So are fucking magnets miracles?
Fucking, of course not. Of course not.

But the Guardian didn't correct the vast majority of Pearce's pieces which both Gavin Schmidt and Ben Santer tore to shreds.

I think The Guardian did pretty well, and the inline annotations experiment — see here — was a brilliant idea.

To be honest, I sometimes don't know what to…

Recently the musical abomination that is the Insane Clown Posse has been rightly mocked by a meme, "Fucking magnets, how do they work?" (a direct quote from one of their "songs") and explicitly linked with the proud ignorance of public figures like Sarah Palin.

Fucking rainbows!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs

This is a really important point for journalists, who can be remarkably bad at getting it right.

They're not the only ones. All non-specialists have exactly the same problem. Unless you put in the miles to really look at all of the evidence, really get stuck into the debate, you…

Wow, you're so clever.

Look, it's the way Russell phrases it, so yeah. The point is that you can explain data in many different ways: the world is underdetermined by experience. The privileging of data like that isn't particularly useful, and isn't how science works.

Myself included. It is a very very hard thing to do. Also it is very hard to realise what you were sure was right, isn't.

Absolutely. I think it's something we all suffer from from time to time but some of us are better at working out when our own…

therefore Emma has been corrupted by corporate overlords to try and deceive me that the sky is blue"

I would totally do this, but just for LOLs.

Here's the gullible journalist problem again. The requests were denied for legitimate reasons. But because one side's focussing on PR while the other side is busy doing science, you're tricked into propagating denialist misinformation.

Well, I did read and think about this, but if you say I'm "gullible" I'm not…

Look! my ideology trumps your data!

Um no. You used more data (identification of a flaw in the detection device) to determine the original interpretation of the data was incorrect. The original data however was still valid data.

A better analogy would have been
"Emma says the sky is blue…

If you're not a scientist, how do you know which people who claim to be scientists to trust? You certainly can't apply the "scientific method" to this decision, because you don't even know what that is.

This is a really important point for journalists, who can be remarkably bad at…

I have come across an awful lot of people who really struggle to separate scientific facts/theories from personal criticism of the choices they make

Myself included. It is a very very hard thing to do. Also it is very hard to realise what you were sure was right, isn't.

You claim that the world is yellow; however I can see it isn't, so you have jaundice, so your data is wrong. Look! my ideology trumps your data!

Wow, you're so clever. Or, in a discussion about science, when I say "data" I mean "properly-gathered scientific data subject to peer…

I think it's evident that the CRU needed better communications resources from the University of East Anglia. It's just sensible.

Obviously better communications resources would have helped the CRU deal with incompetent media coverage! My point is that competent media coverage would have made this unnecessary. If you're going to…

"Your data conflicts with my ideology, therefore your data must be wrong."

You claim that the world is yellow; however I can see it isn't, so you have jaundice, so your data is wrong. Look! my ideology trumps your data!

(& Rich, the Manhattan Project consisted of the scientific Establishment of…

When you have Oppenheimer saying things like 'I am become Death, destroyer of worlds', it's not hard to see why people don't trust scientists.

I once read in the paper that, like, this medical doctor guy was a serial killer.

That's why I don't trust any medical doctors any more.…

FOI/OIA. Those laws don't say you can frustrate requests because you think the people making them are idiots.

I have warbled on in the past about the limitations of OIA legislation – it is easy to fall into the problem of not knowing how to frame the question to get…

so passionately hold onto incorrect beliefs that allow them to remain in their comfort zone

This is where I have a problem with pretty much any ideology (and where I think I differentiate 'ideology' from belief or opinion): at the point where someone's response…

The CRU wouldn't have needed to be "equipped to deal" with that if journalists were doing their job properly.

I think it's evident that the CRU needed better communications resources from the University of East Anglia. It's just sensible.

You're holding different groups to different standards. Denialists are allowed to…

Ask a scientist.

There's a circularity problem here. How do I know someone is a scientist? You'd have to be a scientist not to see it.

As laypeople, who do you believe, and why would you believe them?

Ask a scientist. Really you are no more than 2-3 degrees of separation from a genuine expert, who is a real friend of someone you really trust. Most scientists will absolutely answer genuine questions.

It's not something to…

I was trying to explain to my daughter why the Earth has magnetic poles and the Moon doesn't.

Oh FFS. You can't put that here and not answer it. I had to go use google and everything!

(Apparently the moon does have a magnetic field, it's just very very small)

I have this rant some of you may have been subjected to about the importance of scientific literacy. I know it's no longer a "core competancy"

I have a very similar rant – to the extent it has turned into a policy. I very rarely recruit people now who cannot…

That…

I don't have the link with me right now, but someone analysed the highlighted emails and worked out the search strings used to find them. Whoever did it knew what they were looking for.

I think it was The Guardian. The selection of emails also appears to have been done…

the public now think science isn't anything important.

I have this rant some of you may have been subjected to about the importance of scientific literacy. I know it's no longer a "core competancy", but understanding the very basics of science is really important to, y'know, living. Daylight saving doesn't…

The FOI requests were vexatious..

they certainly were. 40 submitted over one weekend.

I liked the way the economist summed up the different sides of this "debate":

In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps, misperceptions and mistakes. Whether your impression is dominated by the whole…

I'm not disagreeing with you. But the reality is that someone should have realised the CRU was not equipped to deal with what was going on. The FOI requests were vexatious, but that doesn't mean the solution was to actively frustrate them.

"What was going on" was a media climate…

the loss of trust in science

grrrr

I used to believe it was our fault (I'm a scientist). People told me it was our lack of skill in communicating/arrogance/whatever.

I now don't believe that anymore at all. There is a strong vested interest from those who would like to control…

Note that McIntyre coordinated the campaign of FOI requests that caused Phil Jones so much bother, and that the selection of emails to release from the huge number stolen must have been made by someone very familiar with the themes McIntyre promotes assiduously at his blog.

Yes. I don't have…

An uncritical media is hoodwinked by denialist PR, and of course blames the scientists for having poor communication. What about the role of gullible journalists in putting scientists in the position where every insignificant error is magnified into the collapse of climate science?

I'm not disagreeing with you. But the…

Remember the recent Close Up where Sainsbury (or was it Hosking) interviewed both Gareth Morgan and Ian Wishart. At the end the online poll declared that the majority went along with Wishart

Yes, Sainsbury. Here it is. Now, look, I mean... what rubbish.

When…

Here, the customary styles are reversed. The RealClimate writers aren't shy of invective, and are frequently accused of quashing awkward comments. McIntyre is, on the other hand, quite measured and specifically forbids ad-hominen argument on his site.

I take it you haven't read much of McIntyre's site. If you know…

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” — William James