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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Wingnut Science

Wingnut Science

by John Cole|  March 30, 201010:35 am| 44 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology, Our Failed Media Experiment, The Wingularity, We Are All Mayans Now

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It looks like the wingnut scientific method looks a lot like the underpants gnomes helped them out:

The paper begins by talking about the ENSO, better known as El Niño. It’s a periodic shift in ocean currents and surface winds associated with wide reaching changes that no climate scientist doubts. But the authors then pivot off that fact in a manner familiar to any science cartoon fans, “And then a miracle occurs”. The miracle step being they’ve extrapolated from the completely unremarkable, well known finding that El Niño governs much of the short-term oscillations from one year to the next in global temperature, to the completely bogus claim that it explains the long-term trend. If the scientific intricacies sound daunting, think of it as the Dr. Frankenstein approach: they sewed the lifeless head of an ideological claim onto the stump of a cold, hard fact, pronounced the monster alive, and now hope to parade the mangled corpse around on the media stage calling it science.

It doesn’t matter that the paper is now going to get ripped apart, and no one with any credibility will ever use it to support or advance their research. They have what they want- every climate denialist from the glibertarians at Reason to the troglodytes at NRO to James Inhofe will now point to “peer-reviewed science” that says it is a hoax. And we know how this will play in the media- John King will have renowned climatologists with reams of evidence and data discussing the issue, and they will be “balanced” by Erick Erickson and some flat-earther from the Discovery Institute who will cite this piece and then call Al Gore fat.

Mission accomplished.

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Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    March 30, 2010 at 10:40 am

    All wingnut miracles have pictures of dead presidents on them, cept for that kite flyer.

  2. 2.

    The Boramander You Know

    March 30, 2010 at 10:40 am

    This is probably not good news for anyone, including John McCain.

  3. 3.

    Svensker

    March 30, 2010 at 10:42 am

    Do you HAVE to make me want to go kill myself this early in the day?

  4. 4.

    beltane

    March 30, 2010 at 10:42 am

    I thought the deus ex machina theory of natural phenomenon went out of style in the eighteenth century. But then a miracle occurred whereby the cloak of superstition and ignorance once again darkened the face of the earth.

  5. 5.

    Face

    March 30, 2010 at 10:42 am

    And we know how this will play in the media- John King will have renowned climatologists with reams of evidence and data discussing the issue, and they will be “balanced” by Erick Erickson and some flat-earther from the Discovery Institute who will cite this piece and then call Al Gore fat.

    Look what “getting published” did for vaccines’ reputations over the past decade w/r/t the autism bullshit. This really is the coup de grace for Denialists.

  6. 6.

    someguy

    March 30, 2010 at 10:44 am

    It amazes me that there is anybody who thinks you can challenge proven science. Clearly, we aren’t dealing with post-enlightenment thinkers here.

  7. 7.

    gnomedad

    March 30, 2010 at 10:45 am

    Does touting this paper means that the denialists have conceded that there is actual data to explain which has not been fabricated in a global conspiracy?

  8. 8.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    March 30, 2010 at 10:45 am

    El Nino is just God heating up some Pacific sea water for a spot of tea.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    March 30, 2010 at 10:46 am

    Best guess as to what happened: Typically, you can suggest possible peer reviewers (which the editor is free to ignore). Here, I’ll bet the editor just picked people off that list, who were of course chosen for their friendliness toward the authors’ “alternate” point of view.

    -dms

  10. 10.

    Svensker

    March 30, 2010 at 10:47 am

    OT, but does anyone else see the irony in this Huffpo headline (and story)?:

    Trinity Students Want ‘Our Lord’ Taken Off Diplomas

  11. 11.

    Davis X. Machina

    March 30, 2010 at 10:51 am

    Mission accomplished.

    We’re too stupid to save ourselves. The human race is a drowning man who keeps throwing the rope and the life ring back up on the dock.

  12. 12.

    Short Bus Bully

    March 30, 2010 at 10:55 am

    But it’s been PUBLISHED! That means it has to be legit!

    What a way to add to the greater amount of stoopid in this country.

  13. 13.

    aimai

    March 30, 2010 at 10:58 am

    Well, maybe the trajectory will be a good one. The same thing happened with the book Time on the Cross which was a cause celebre of revisionist pro-slavery writing when I was a lass. And I believe the same thing happened with The Bell Curve. I think the important thing to remember is that even without “peer reviewed” papers on their side the anti-science crowd has done enormous damage to the politics and economics of global warming action. Pushing some of the crazy into the realm of actual peer review may be the stimulus scientists and non crazy politicians need to actually really fight back.

    aimai

  14. 14.

    ChrisB

    March 30, 2010 at 11:00 am

    And in a related story in today’s New York Times, we now have members of that noted radical group, the weathermen, weighing in against climate change:

    [The debate over global warming has] created tensions between two groups that might be expected to agree on the issue: climate scientists and meteorologists, especially those who serve as television weather forecasters. . . . Climatologists, who study weather patterns over time, almost universally endorse the view that the earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change. There is less of a consensus among meteorologists, who predict short-term weather patterns. . . . Such skepticism appears to be widespread among TV forecasters, about half of whom have a degree in meteorology. A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was “caused mostly by human activities.” . . . More than a quarter of the weathercasters in the survey agreed with the statement “Global warming is a scam,” the researchers found.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/science/earth/30warming.html?ref=us

    All you need to be a weatherman is a dapper appearance and a likeable personality. They want to be liked by their audience, and therefore often reflect what they expect to be their audience’s view.

  15. 15.

    David in NY

    March 30, 2010 at 11:02 am

    But you don’t need a weatherman …

  16. 16.

    DAmned at Random

    March 30, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Gen’l Stuck-

    Agreed. I thought the models for global warming predicted stronger and more frequent El Ninos I’ll look for a cite

  17. 17.

    Ash Can

    March 30, 2010 at 11:04 am

    @Face: Actually, I would think this would set the precedent for an otherwise/formerly respected professional journal publishing worthless crap and losing face in the process. It took way too long to debunk, and the deceit involved in the autism “study” to be exposed, but debunking it removed a significant psychological barrier to dismissing information published in a big-name journal.

    IIRC, the autism study was greeted with reactions along the lines of “gee, maybe they’re onto something” simply because it was published in The Lancet. Now the reaction to something like this is more likely to be, “hey, if even The Lancet can publish bunk, anyone can.” Sure, the deniers will call this “peer-reviewed,” but thanks to just this incident, I would think that more people will realize that “peer-reviewed” has an asterisk next to it.

  18. 18.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    March 30, 2010 at 11:04 am

    From the article the GOS piece links to:

    A barrage of criticism has forced the authors and their champions to backpedal furiously.

    Good, maybe they’ll generate some electricity that way and make up a tiny bit for polluting the discourse about this subject.

    I was reading somewhere that TV Meteorlogists included a lot of “skeptics” about climate change, putting them at odds with virtually every actual climate scientist.

    Yeah, gosh I can’t figure out which of that group I’d tend to have more faith in, the Bill Murray character lookalike wearing a plaid jacket with an AA degree in “weather and goofy happy talk with the host” from Krusty’s Klown and Weather School, or someone with a doctorate who spent ones life studying climate change for real.

  19. 19.

    DAmned at Random

    March 30, 2010 at 11:07 am

    http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter97/connection.html:

    Trenberth theorizes that an El Niño event serves a specific role in the global heat budget, which he and De-Zheng Sun (a former NCAR postdoctoral student who is now at NOAA) have described in a paper submitted to Nature. “Our view is that El Niño is a fundamental way in which the tropics get rid of heat. If you continue to pour heat into the tropics–which is what the sun is always doing–the weather systems and the ocean currents, under their normal variations within the annual cycle, are not sufficient to get rid of all the heat. Something has to happen to get the heat out of the tropics, and the something which happens is El Niño.” The authors support their theory with analyses of global oceanic and atmospheric heat budgets during an El Niño and a La Niña event in the late 1980s. If El Niño does serve as a release valve for tropical heat, then overall global warming could lead to more frequent events, as we have seen in the last two decades.

  20. 20.

    Zifnab

    March 30, 2010 at 11:08 am

    It doesn’t matter that the paper is now going to get ripped apart, and no one with any credibility will ever use it to support or advance their research. They have what they want- every climate denialist from the glibertarians at Reason to the troglodytes at NRO to James Inhofe will now point to “peer-reviewed science” that says it is a hoax. And we know how this will play in the media- John King will have renowned climatologists with reams of evidence and data discussing the issue, and they will be “balanced” by Erick Erickson and some flat-earther from the Discovery Institute who will cite this piece and then call Al Gore fat.

    Mission accomplished.

    How is this anything different than what they do now? Wingnuts trot out a Congo Line of hacks with PhDs in dentistry and economics, claiming that Newton’s Fourth Law makes Global Warming impossible. Al Gore is accused of being worse than a million Bernie Madoffs. Anyone with less than a college education gets a mouthful of talking points and bogus information. And Rush Limbaugh has something to screech at for the next week.

    Adding “peer reviewed paper” to the pile of bullshit doesn’t make it stink any less. You’re not going to rope in someone with higher education just because you’ve found one study in one journal that contradicts everything NOAA has been saying for the last 30 years. It’s a hollow victory, because the only people who still staunchly oppose global warming are the people who don’t give a flip about fancy pants scientists and their Ivory Tower elitist limo driving herdy-berdy blah blah anyway.

  21. 21.

    Ash Can

    March 30, 2010 at 11:11 am

    Such skepticism appears to be widespread among TV forecasters, about half of whom have a degree in meteorology. A study…found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring…

    Sort of begs the question of which half of the 571 that was.

  22. 22.

    ChrisZ

    March 30, 2010 at 11:12 am

    It doesn’t matter how stupid any of their arguments are. They have arguments, and that’s enough for stupid people to therefore think that the truth about AGW is something they get to decide for themselves based on their political beliefs.

  23. 23.

    flukebucket

    March 30, 2010 at 11:16 am

    think of it as the Dr. Frankenstein approach: they sewed the lifeless head of an ideological claim onto the stump of a cold, hard fact, pronounced the monster alive, and now hope to parade the mangled corpse around on the media stage calling it science.

    Selah

  24. 24.

    Zifnab

    March 30, 2010 at 11:22 am

    @ChrisZ: Right until the hammer drops. At which point, the Reagenites will be demanding that we deregulate the economy so the free market can fix global warming with maximum efficiency.

  25. 25.

    J.W. Hamner

    March 30, 2010 at 11:23 am

    I suspect reasonably intelligent ones will focus on the negative reaction as “proof” of how The System is so primed to reject contrarian views… without even touching on the embarrassing shoddiness of the analysis.

  26. 26.

    someguy

    March 30, 2010 at 11:24 am

    And I believe the same thing happened with The Bell Curve

    Yep, it took a while but it was eventually proved to the extent there is any correlation between race and IQ, it’s a result of racial bias in the test structure. The book’s premise is flawed; there’s only minimal evidence of a genetic component to intelligence, so the idea that race and intelligence would be correlated as a matter of genetic inheritance is bogus. If you set out to prove white supremacy in your study design, apparently you can prove white supremacy, kind of like how this study disproves global warming.

    Of the book’s authors, Herrenstein is dead but Murray works at… wait for it… American Enterprise Institute. Shocker.

  27. 27.

    Mike Furlan

    March 30, 2010 at 11:32 am

    race and intelligence

    Never defined their terms.

    What is race?

    One of those “I know it when I see it” type things.

    Now if they tried to correlate certain genetic markers to “intelligence” they still wouldn’t be half way there.

    What is intelligence?

    What white people do?

    But that is all “preach” “choir” etc. around here.

  28. 28.

    Brian J

    March 30, 2010 at 11:34 am

    @Zifnab:

    You know what’s so annoying about all of this? The proper response, one that is accepted by pretty much anyone who isn’t James Inhofe, is one composed largely of their ideas. I don’t want to cast off regulations entirely, but generally speaking, market-based approaches like taxes and cap-and-trade are seen as more worthwhile, at least as far as pollution is concerned. That’s what sane Republicans used to argue in support of, and now, anyone who isn’t a denialist agrees on just that. Yet, it’s like we’re fighting a battle with people who keep changing the goal posts. No matter what we try to do, no matter how much we try to work with them, they refuse to work with us.

    I am not just sure what to think.

  29. 29.

    Mike Furlan

    March 30, 2010 at 11:35 am

    Time on the Cross

    Short version: Not pro-slavery.

    A slave system that was profitable was even more horrible than what was understood because there would be no magical economic reason for it to go away all by itself.

  30. 30.

    someguy

    March 30, 2010 at 11:41 am

    A lot of what we’re talking about really just comes back to 1963 and right wing racism, doesn’t it? Once they dug in behind the barriers in front of the schools they sort of rejected rationalism and any pretense of reality in their world view.

    Now we’re just arguing crazy people who occasionally realize the insanity of one of their arguments, and shift their beliefs to a new crazy argument.

  31. 31.

    celticdragonchick

    March 30, 2010 at 11:56 am

    I am horrified that the American geophysical Union published this piece of propaganda. It seems that researchers are allowed to nominate their own reviewers, and thusly the peer review system was ‘gamed’.

    It also seems that the data “differencing” methodology used by the “researchers” (I use the term loosely here) actually destroys all climate trend tracking. It is deliberately useless because it obfuscates data.

    Not a good day for geo sciences.

    (disclosure: I am a senior in geology at Guilford College.)

  32. 32.

    Gregory

    March 30, 2010 at 11:56 am

    @ChrisZ:

    It doesn’t matter how stupid any of their arguments are. They have arguments, and that’s enough for stupid people to therefore think that the truth about AGW is something they get to decide for themselves based on their political beliefs.

    And it’s enough for the so-called “liberal media” to present both sides uncritically in the name of “balance.”

  33. 33.

    someguy

    March 30, 2010 at 12:01 pm

    James Lovelock nails it. Too Teh Stoopid for Democracy.

  34. 34.

    DBrown

    March 30, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    In defense of many meteorologist, their main certifying agency does support AGW completely. Geo-asswipes soul’s have been sold (cut rate, too) to oil companies.

  35. 35.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    March 30, 2010 at 12:17 pm

    If, as the saying goes, war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, then in the long run AGW will be the method for teaching us environmental science.

  36. 36.

    EthylEster

    March 30, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    I’m still trying to parse your first sentence….

  37. 37.

    patrick II

    March 30, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    Even if you believed that real climate scientists were split 50-50 on whether there was man caused global warming, which I don’t, it still makes absolutely no sense from a risk analysis point of view, to not do everything we can to prevent the possibility world wide calamity.
    It’s like being told you’re standing with your back to a steep cliff by a guy you believe half the time, but you’re being told by another guy who you believe about half of the time to step backwards — it will be ok. Do you take that step?

  38. 38.

    Comrade Kevin

    March 30, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    @celticdragonchick:

    It seems that researchers are allowed to nominate their own reviewers, and thusly the peer review system was ‘gamed’.

    I don’t see how that would qualify as “peer review” at all.

  39. 39.

    tc125231

    March 30, 2010 at 1:20 pm

    Yeah –ain’t “rights” grand? I am in favor of free speech, but some semblance of context among what are supposed to be information providing institutions is necessary.

    So, although I don’t like Tom Friedman any better than anybody else –he’s right, for once. The current operation of American democratic institutions leads only to disaster, unless a sharp correction is introduced to a number of activities rather quickly.

    The world will survive. American capitalism –the way things are going –will not.

  40. 40.

    Lumpenprole

    March 30, 2010 at 1:48 pm

    On Bill maher a couple weeks back one of the guests was a winger radio personality. I was struck by how many times she bellowed “GOOGLE IT” after each talking point. I’ve heard the same warcry a half dozen times since then.
    I think they’ve been focusing a huge amount of their AstroTurf resources on getting their talking points onto websites that don’t look like vintage Geocities crap. They’re trying to move up the foodchain from the ALLCAPS fowarded email.

    I think this is part of that same push. We’re going to be hearing about “peer reviewed” this and that more often now. It’s old news, of course (see “fair and balanced reporting”). It’s just that they’re moving on to compromise the next secular institution. Now that Palin is a real news commentator, it’s time to make Inhoffe a scientist.

  41. 41.

    Flugelhorn

    March 30, 2010 at 4:01 pm

    You are so disingenuous john.

    The Climate science and ALL of the climate data from EVERY organization who studies it is now under siege because the data is so flawed and corrupt. NASA, the IPCC, East Anglia… they ALL use the same data sets. Thats why they ALL come up with the same bullshit conclusions that global warming is occuring at an alarming rate and therefore must be man-made. It is bullshit.

    All the climate models (Which are bullshit, half-assed guesses to begin with) in all the world from all organizations are crap. Even if one of them just happened to have the perfect climate model, when you plug bad data into, it is less than worthless. You put garbage in, you get garbage out.

    This was a bigger scam than Y2K, and you guys just eat it up and ask for more. Global Warming is just another bullshit religion. Each time it is PROVEN that one of these groups used bad data to come up with a solution that agreed with their wishes, you guys just circle up and start hurling insults of “Neanderthal” and the like.

    In 20 years you can all kiss my ass when I remind you how gullible and nieve you were about global warming.

  42. 42.

    celticdragonchick

    March 30, 2010 at 4:47 pm

    @tc125231:

    So, although I don’t like Tom Friedman any better than anybody else—he’s right, for once. The current operation of American democratic institutions leads only to disaster, unless a sharp correction is introduced to a number of activities rather quickly.

    It has been observed that mediocrity is a natural result of democracy, unfortunately.

  43. 43.

    celticdragonchick

    March 30, 2010 at 4:49 pm

    @Flugelhorn:

    In 20 years you can all kiss my ass when I remind you how gullible and nieve you were about global warming.

    Nieve? Is that something you say to the Knights Who Say “Ni!”…?

  44. 44.

    New Yorker

    March 30, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    “peer-reviewed science”

    9/11 Truthers have their own lunatic scientist (Steven Jones) who has published a “peer-reviewed paper” showing how thermite was used to destroy the World Trade Center.

    Best not to let the wingnuts know that they’re not the only scientific frauds who cherish the cover of “peer-review” as if it offers some sort of legitimacy to their bogus ideas.

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