Tuesday, November 10, 2009

"You're not a scientist, but you play one in real life." What do holistic healers and Anthony Watts have in common?

It always amazes me to see the scorn for the good folks at RealClimate left by commenters in climate denial blogs. It's bad enough that laypeople have the audacity to think they understand climate science better than the scientists who study it, but when their preferred sources are... a TV weatherman and a former fossil fuel executive?

This got me wondering, if global warming skeptics don't trust the experts on climate science, where do they go for medical advice? Trusting a TV weatherman on climate science is like trusting a holistic healer on... well, you'll get the picture (the first 13 seconds of the video are messed up):




So THOSE are Steve McIntyre's research methods for "disproving" the hockey stick. Tor the holistic healer even makes the same argument deniers make about the establishment experts' "business" motives:

Kramer tells me that you are interested in an alternative to climate science. I think we can help you. See, unfortunately the climate science establishment is a business just like any other. And business needs research grants, and they want to sell you their most expensive item, which is unnecessary alarmism. You know, I am not a businessman - I am a blog scientist.

Alternative medicine, meet alternative science:





Depending on where people get their advice on climate science from, we may end up in a worse situation than screaming "I'm an eggplant!" in the back of an ambulance.


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5 comments:

  1. When you can't challenge the directly cited peer reviewed science, you can always shamelessly attack the messenger.

    ReplyDelete
  2. McIntyre was a mining & minerals analyst before beginning a new career as internet 'wiseguy wannabe.'

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jay,

    And, does that -- ipso facto -- automatically discredit everything McIntyre has to say?

    Virtually all climate scientists make the very large majority of their income from government grants. Click here for a useful comparison.

    Does that make all your preferred scientists -- ipso facto -- in the tank for the power crazed politicians?

    Or, does it make more sense -- in both cases -- to critique the science and the evidence rather than the messenger?

    ReplyDelete
  4. SBVOR, brave Galileo-like Hero of the Scientific Method, heroically protests against the use fo ad hominems:

    "And, does that -- ipso facto -- automatically discredit everything McIntyre has to say?"

    just before turning around to say... oh wait...

    "Virtually all climate scientists make the very large majority of their income from government grants."

    Lose.

    Well, at least he didn't put the two in the same paragraph, which is quite an achievement.

    -- bi

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, and what exactly is the conspiracy anyway? Apparently we're supposed to believe that all the world's climate scientists are working in cahoots with Margaret Thatcher (!), Jacques Chirac (!!), Third World kleptocrats, the Fabians, the Freemasons, and the Phantom Soviet Empire. Oh, and the Alternative Energy Impresarios, welfare-junkie couch potatoes who don't pay taxes are also involved in the most secretive conspiracy of all time. What's more, global warming is a huge plot to kill the nuclear industry, and also simultaneously a huge plot concoted by the nuclear industry to hide their misdeeds, and a religious movement by Gaia-ist scientists to replace the theory of evolution. Go figure.

    -- bi

    ReplyDelete