Some born-again denier called Caleb Rossiter was rabbiting on to the slack-jawed mob at WUWT about how he decided to reject climate science after all. He wrote how he reduced his students to tears (I wonder can he tell the difference between tears of laughter and tears of whatever):
I have had students who are very strongly pro-the global warming movement in my classes, of course, because most young people have heard this already,” he said. “And when I have them actually do the study, and take apart an IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] claim, sometimes they break into tears, and they say ‘I can’t believe this is the only class I’ve ever been in in which anyone has ever told me there is even an issue.’”
No. That's not the comment of the day, this one is:
kowalk says:
June 20, 2014 at 1:33 am
IPCC is the ‘Intergovernmental’ not ‘International’ Panel for Climate Control.
I wonder if Rossiter's "students" noticed how clued in he is to the I?
ReplyDeleteRossiter appears to be a real person:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/rossiter.cfm
He was also, recently mentioned at WUWT for being "dismissed' from a Think Tank.
He's certainly real and obviously makes his "students" emotional.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=368927
Very useful link.
DeleteReading it explains a lot about the man. If he's actually keen on NASCAR (The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) it explains his urge to rubbish climate science. Descriptions about him being opinionated and contrarian (from students who both detest him and hold him in high regard are very informative.
His complaint about climate scientists' bias is a perfect example of psychological 'projection'!
More on his 'firing' from IPS here.
ReplyDeleteHe hasn't published anything in Mathis since 2000 and certainly is not a statistician.
ReplyDeleteI would give Caleb Rossiter a break. After reading his remarks on sea level rise a couple weeks ago I emailed him and asked how/why he would use Nils Axel Morner's data. I don't think Mr Rossiter will be upset if I quote from his reply:
ReplyDeleteI hope I did not give the impression that I understood or endorsed Morner. What I was trying to say in that piece, apparently poorly, was that each area of climate modeling of causes of warming and testing of effects of warming that I HAD studied in depth kept revealing bias in data and analysis to such a degree that the policy analysis is confounded. In that piece I was trying to say that I had lost the energy needed to parse yet another area (sea level: what is it, hw much is due to sinking land mass, how much to greater ocean volume, etc.)
From the point of view of a non-expert I can understand the frustration in trying to determine what is and isn't actually known. I consider him to be a casualty of the FUD thrown up by the merchants of doubt.
He's an academic and has connections in Washington. A few minutes with a climate scientist would pay dividends if he was seriously interested in climate science. He'd have less trouble than most people in finding one or two people to help him out. And many climate scientists make themselves very accessible to the general public.
DeleteI'd say he's a born contrarian who likes to search for stuff to show that he knows it all and is better than the experts in whatever field. His climate scientists "don't know nuffin'" is one field in which he can be assured of getting some notoriety even if it's only at WUWT.
Sorry, Kevin, but his reliance on Mörner shows he is deliberately *looking* for anyone and anything that suggests there is bias in the data. In my opinion he is not a victim of FUD, but actively looking for FUD to spread. It shows in his comment that "each area of climate modeling of causes of warming and testing of effects of warming that I HAD studied in depth kept revealing bias in data and analysis to such a degree that the policy analysis is confounded."
DeleteMarco writes: "...his reliance on Mörner shows he is deliberately *looking* for anyone and anything that suggests there is bias in the data."
DeleteCR writes:"I hope I did not give the impression that I understood or endorsed Morner.
Morner's CV would suggest to a non-expert that Morner *is* a sea level expert. If he was looking to spread FUD he wouldn't be exiting the climate area. Unless you have asked CR which areas he *has* studied in depth, and can show that he is misleading on these topics, your logic fails.
Sou writes: "A few minutes with a climate scientist would pay dividends .... I don't know if CR met with Morner, but isn't Morner a climate scientist? Are Christy and Spencer? Is Pat Michaels? Isn't that exactly the problem that CR found frustrating?
Caleb Rossiter is an academic. He knows (or should know) how to check the literature. He'd soon discover that none of the people you've mentioned, Kevin, have anything much to offer. My suggestion was that he speak with a respected climate scientist or two. Or read the literature. It's not hard.
DeleteIf he's so dumb as to not be able to tell the difference then he's no business mouthing off, either. (Or holding an academic post.) And when he does mouth off, there's no reason for anyone to take any notice. That is, unless you're a denier grabbing hold of any other denier they can find to say, "see - there's another science denier who thinks like me". Meaningless and worthless.
Kevin, Rossiter claims he has been looking into climate change for a decade, assigning his students articles on the topic to read. If you are so involved, and still not know Mörner is an outlier, even amongst the outliers, you're blind.
DeleteIn his article in which he claims to exit the climate area, he adds further falsehoods, claiming for example "That record started in 1860, when a 150-year warming began that even the IPCC concedes had nothing to do with industrial emissions in its first 75 years. "
Or take:
"Actually, the IPCC’s models, which are fundamentally mathematical data-fitting exercises with little real-life scientific basis,"
Other parts of interest are Rossiter's repetition of the false claim that Rachel Carson's book about DDT caused millions of deaths in Africa, and this claim: "The late Stephen Schneider, a leading warming alarmist who in the 1970’s was a cooling alarmist, as was the first director of the data and modeling pinnacle of warming alarmism today, the CRU."
In the comments over at ATTP's, DumbScientist makes the same point I'm trying to make: "Look, Pekka, I understand that Dr. Spencer has been spreading misinformation about the definitions used in the Cook et al. survey. You carelessly repeated his misinformation, which is unfortunate. But really that’s just one more reason to take anything Dr. Spencer says with a grain of salt. We’ve all been caught taking a contrarian at their word, because we all like to believe that people can be trusted. That is being used against us."
DeleteIt's very likely that CR was influenced by the likes of the George C. Marshall Institute. Frederick Seitz (former President of the United States National Academy of Sciences), Robert Jastrow (founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies), and/or William Nierenberg (former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography) were the founders of the George C. Marshall institute. They had a huge impact on DC Republicans in the 1980's and 90's.
Kevin, I take your point, but still maintain that he should know better. He's got no excuse given how he claims to have been reading about the science for so long.
DeleteRe the Republican influence, Caleb was a Democrat candidate back in 1998. I'm surprised the WUWT-ers aren't boasting about that, like they do with the supposed ex-Greenpeace denier.
http://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/rossiter.cfm
Sou - given the think tank he was working for I suspect CR is a very liberal Democrat. That alone set off my BS detector. When a liberal holds the views that CR espoused my default reaction is, 'Boy, has he been misled.'
DeleteYou do realise that the comment that's got you all a-flutter is in square brackets ie was added by an editor somewhere along the line.
ReplyDeleteStill, the error, whoever made it, does allow us to feel vindicated in ignoring the substance of the article and that's what this blog is all about. So job well done
Lighten up, hazym. I was poking fun at kowalk's comment more than anything else.
DeleteThe fact that Anthony Watts (or Caleb or whoever) doesn't know what IPCC stands for, simply provided the context.
As for the substance of the article itself, there was none. It was just some born again denier saying "it's all uncertain" because "statistics". Nothing more. There was nothing specific about climate or science or oceans or global warming or melting ice or the atmosphere or the sun or volcanoes or aerosols or paleoclimatology. Vague hand-waving from someone who is not a climate scientist but thinks that he's an instant expert and that "climate scientists don't know nuffin'".
Par for the course at WUWT.
Hmm.... a Caleb at WUWT. There was something at the back of my mind bugging me. I wonder how many Calebs play at WUWT, because a Caleb left a remark so diverting it provoked admiration at Denial Depot:
ReplyDeletehttp://denialdepot.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/satellite-temperature-for-july-looks.html
News just In.
ReplyDeletehttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/29/antarctica-sets-new-record-for-sea-ice-area/