Eric Raymond: Eight Warning Signs of Junk Science

The next time you hear some claim about science, say something like carbon dioxide generated by human activity is causing the climate to change, you might want to refer back to this handy list of ways to spot when you are being presented with junk science put together by Eric Raymond:

• Science by press release.
• Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of eschatological panic.
• Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of moral panic.
• Consignment of failed predictions to the memory hole.
• Over-reliance on computer models replete with bugger factors that aren’t causally justified.
• If a ‘scientific’ theory seems tailor-made for the needs of politicians or advocacy organizations, it probably has been.
• Past purveyers of junk science do not change their spots.
• Refusal to make primary data sets available for inspection.

These are good points to rmember, especially in the wake of the latest data-dump of emails among the pedlars of the great AGW/climate change scare, dubbed Climategate 2.0.

Detailed version of the list at the link. Read the whole thing.

(via Samizdata)

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James Inhofe Calls for Investigation of Al Gore In Wake of Climategate

PJTV has posted an interview with Senator James Inhofe. Twelve minutes well spent.

The Climategate Scandal So Far

I haven't posted much on the Climategate/Climaquiddick AGW scandal lateley, mainly because absorbing all the revelations is sort of like trying to drink from a firehose. There's just so much of it and other people are doing a great job of exposing the facts. Charlie Martin is one of them and he has a great summary of the still unfolding scandal over at Pajamas Media, so I'll point you over there for the latest summation of the Great Global Warming Meltdown. One point I want to draw out though is this one:

It is, of course, purely a coincidence that this market, which simply doesn’t exist without the legal requirement that companies reduce carbon emissions, is closely connected with the politically connected people who are pushing for carbon restrictions by law and treaty.

Read it all.

More Evidence of Fraudulent "Science" in the AGW Debate

Powerline has some fairly lengthy excerpts from an editorial by Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. The man-made climate change fraud didn't start with Climategate. That just finally exposed it for all the world to see.  It's an interesting read but what it all boils down to is this:

So the Kyoto protocol was based on fictitious science, exaggerated or fabricated outright for political purposes. The same Professor Santer who hijacked the Second Assessment Report figures prominently in Climategate. Many of his emails were disclosed by the East Anglia whistleblower; among other things, they show Santer resisting all efforts by independent scientists to obtain information, through Freedom of Information Act requests, about the statistical manipulations that Santer applies to raw climate data to "prove" the existence of anthropogenic global warming

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Fraud: it is the one constant in the history of the global warming hysteria movement.

Caught Green-Handed: More on Climategate/Climaquiddick by Viscount Monckton

Lee Gerhard gave us the Cliffnotes version of the Climategate/ Climaquiddick scandal, now Lord Christopher Monckton gives us the long version, and it is an absolutely devastating indictment of all those involved. There is more than one person who ought to go to prison over this.

This is a coincidence but in the interests of disclosure, I took a course in Climatology as part of my degree program back around 1980 or 1981 (IIRC) and my professor for the course was none other than Raymond Bradley, co-author of the "hockey stick" paper with Michael Mann and Malcolm Hughes. Back then we were being warned of the soon-to-be-here Ice Age. This is a fact that only came to my attention recently as Mann tends to be the one that gets all the press whenever the hockey stick comes up.

(h/t to Frank)