Are we predisposed to deceive or be deceived? This little blog will take you through some twists and turns. The question you need to ask is whether or not we are being deceived about climate change data.
What if, just what if, we live in a deceptive universe and human deception is just a consequence of our physical makeup. Just about every contemporary scientist follows the dictum of Karl Popper, the principle that the only way to the truth is to attempt a falsification. That’s why scientists are of a mind to test and retest, to experiment and re-experiment, to model and re-model, and to check and recheck. On the most basic level of the universe, the quantum level, falsification is incredibly difficult. People use expensive equipment and clever experiments to arrive at “the truth.” The discovery of the Higgs boson is an example. The truth of the universe is still hidden, however, because we haven’t identified whether or not other entities fundamental to our makeup exist—strings, for example. And when did you last see a graviton? What we do in the context of knowing a fundamental part of the universe is somewhat hidden is to accept what seems to work for us until we falsify it. But we can never finish the task because one truth always leads to another mystery, and even though we often seem to know how, when, and where, we seem to rarely know why. Why, for example, do quanta entangle? Why do photons reflect off glass? Magic? And why does climate change? Is the very nature of our universe deceptive?
We do like tangible reminders of significant people and events. Thus, we keep mementos and visit museums. In mid-nineteenth century P. T. Barnum, following his instinct to collect whatever he might be able to exhibit to paying customers, went to the “field of Waterloo,” one of the sites anyone visiting Brussels at the time was advised to see.
With an intimate knowledge of gullibility, Barnum went to the house where Lord Uxbridge, Marquis of Anglesey, had a leg amputated. Inside the house Barnum bought a piece of Uxbridge’s boot. It wasn’t the leg, but it was, nevertheless, a relic. In making the purchase, P. T. remarked that if the lady in charge of the relic “was as liberal to all visitors, that boot had held out wonderfully since 1815.”* In the vicinity of Waterloo, Barnum also encountered a number of young guides who claimed to know the spots where each of the combatants had stood, and although it was mid-century and some thirty years after the battle, the guides even claimed they participated in the fight, hoping to impress gullible travelers. Barnum, of course, wasn’t born a sucker.
“After having the location of Napoleon's Guard, the Duke of Wellington, the portion of the field where Blucher entered with the Prussian army, pointed out to them, and the spots where fell Sir Alexander Gordon and other celebrities, they asked the guide if he knew where Captain Tippitiwichet, of Connecticut, was killed? ‘Oh, oui, Monsieur,’ replied the guide confidently. After pointing out the precise spots where fictitious friends from Coney Island, New Jersey, Cape Cod and Saratoga had received their death-wounds, they paid the old humbug and dismissed him.
“Upon leaving the field they were met by another crowd of peasants with relics of the battle for sale. Barnum bought a large number of pistols, bullets, brass French eagles, buttons, etc., for the Museum, and the others were equally liberal in their purchases. They bought also maps, guide-books and pictures, until Mr. Stratton expressed his belief that the ‘darned old battle of Waterloo’ had cost more since it was fought than it ever did before.
“Some months afterwards, while they were in Birmingham, they made the acquaintance of a firm who manufactured and sent to Waterloo barrels of these ‘relics’ every year.”*
Apparently, Barnum didn’t mind the ruse. He intended to do the same to his own customers—and probably for a larger profit. His understanding of humanity’s underbelly of deceit had made him financially successful, and his name and circus lasted long after his death.
It’s relatively easy for cons to con. And Barnum was the icon of cons. Human gullibility is one of our weaknesses.
We become skeptics by experience. Born innocent and open, many people become hard-edged and closed off for what we believe are good reasons. Purposeful deceit is ubiquitous, and deceivers are numerous. Bernie Madoff, the guy sentenced to 150 years in prison for the largest fraud in U.S. history, demonstrated that there will always be people selling barrels of relics and pointing out the sites where fictitious heroes fought.
It takes one to know one. Barnum recognized the falsity of the guides’ claims at Waterloo, but instead of succumbing to their ruse, he used what they had to establish greater wealth and fame for himself. He put the “relics” he acquired in both stationary and traveling “museums,” drawing crowds of gullible onlookers.
What is it in us that enables the Barnums, Waterloo guides, and Madoffs to deceive? And how is it that those who purposefully deceive find the wherewithal to continue their deceptions without compunction? And what of those who bought the relics thinking that they were real and returned home to show relatives and friends “historical objects”? Surely, they don’t deceive on purpose. They merely carry the relics with unquestioning surety.
So, every once in a while someone shows up with a barrel of relics, and we are supposed to take them as the actual objects. NOW, we have barrels of climate data, and we’re supposed to take them as genuine. (I know, I’m a long way from P. T. Barnum and Waterloo relics here) In fact, we’re supposed to take them as so genuine that we don’t need them. Here is what Michael Mann, an expert in climate science said:
“What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see climate change, the impacts of climate change, now, playing out in real time, on our television screens, in the 24-hour news cycle.”*
Wouldn’t it be nice to reach into that barrel of data anyway? What if, just what if, someone slipped an artificial relic into it? And what do we do with the Popper principle of falsification, that if something is accepted, we need to verify its “truth” by constant attempts to falsify it, to re-examine it scientifically.
Can we see the impacts of climate change? Of course. Did the people who occupied the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter 16,000 years ago see the impacts of climate change? They inhabited that western Pennsylvania site at a time when the edge of a giant glacier lay just 100 miles to their north. Maybe they didn’t recognize the impacts—too busy finding food and warding off bears and wolves—but over the course of centuries their descendants lived in increasingly warmer times with a time of particularly fast warming that wasted away all the ice. The glaciers are gone now, gone long before the Industrial Revolution.
Back to deception. Let’s follow some guys who reached into that barrel of data relics. The barrel is called GAST, short for Global Average Surface Temperature data. The peer-reviewed data by Drs. James P. Wallace, III, Joseph S. D’Aleo, and Craig D. Idso were released in a June 2017 report entitled “On the Validity of NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU Global Averagge Surface Temperature Data & The Validity of EPA’s CO2 Engangerment Finding Abridged Research Report.”***
They explain the study’s purpose thus:
“The objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) data, produced by NOAA, NASA, and HADLEY, are sufficiently credible estimates of global average temperatures such that they can be relied upon for climate modeling and policy analysis purposes. The relevance of this research is that the validity of all three of the so- called Lines of Evidence in EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding require GAST data to be a valid representation of reality.”***
Now reach into the barrel and pick out some relics. That’s what they did, but not with just a few, rather with all the “best available and relevant data.” Okay, sit down for this one:
“The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality” (Italics mine).
Whoa! P. T., say it ain’t so. Isn’t that really a piece of the actual boot that covered the foot on the amputated leg of the Marquis? Maybe it’s time to barrel away from this barrel. But, following the advice of Popper, I guess I’ll keep looking through the relics in the barrel.
* Benton, Joel, A Unique Story of a Marvelous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum, Chapter XIII, In Belgium, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1576/pg1576-images.html
** http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/27/michael-mann-climate-scientist-data-increasingly-u/
*** https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf
What if, just what if, we live in a deceptive universe and human deception is just a consequence of our physical makeup. Just about every contemporary scientist follows the dictum of Karl Popper, the principle that the only way to the truth is to attempt a falsification. That’s why scientists are of a mind to test and retest, to experiment and re-experiment, to model and re-model, and to check and recheck. On the most basic level of the universe, the quantum level, falsification is incredibly difficult. People use expensive equipment and clever experiments to arrive at “the truth.” The discovery of the Higgs boson is an example. The truth of the universe is still hidden, however, because we haven’t identified whether or not other entities fundamental to our makeup exist—strings, for example. And when did you last see a graviton? What we do in the context of knowing a fundamental part of the universe is somewhat hidden is to accept what seems to work for us until we falsify it. But we can never finish the task because one truth always leads to another mystery, and even though we often seem to know how, when, and where, we seem to rarely know why. Why, for example, do quanta entangle? Why do photons reflect off glass? Magic? And why does climate change? Is the very nature of our universe deceptive?
We do like tangible reminders of significant people and events. Thus, we keep mementos and visit museums. In mid-nineteenth century P. T. Barnum, following his instinct to collect whatever he might be able to exhibit to paying customers, went to the “field of Waterloo,” one of the sites anyone visiting Brussels at the time was advised to see.
With an intimate knowledge of gullibility, Barnum went to the house where Lord Uxbridge, Marquis of Anglesey, had a leg amputated. Inside the house Barnum bought a piece of Uxbridge’s boot. It wasn’t the leg, but it was, nevertheless, a relic. In making the purchase, P. T. remarked that if the lady in charge of the relic “was as liberal to all visitors, that boot had held out wonderfully since 1815.”* In the vicinity of Waterloo, Barnum also encountered a number of young guides who claimed to know the spots where each of the combatants had stood, and although it was mid-century and some thirty years after the battle, the guides even claimed they participated in the fight, hoping to impress gullible travelers. Barnum, of course, wasn’t born a sucker.
“After having the location of Napoleon's Guard, the Duke of Wellington, the portion of the field where Blucher entered with the Prussian army, pointed out to them, and the spots where fell Sir Alexander Gordon and other celebrities, they asked the guide if he knew where Captain Tippitiwichet, of Connecticut, was killed? ‘Oh, oui, Monsieur,’ replied the guide confidently. After pointing out the precise spots where fictitious friends from Coney Island, New Jersey, Cape Cod and Saratoga had received their death-wounds, they paid the old humbug and dismissed him.
“Upon leaving the field they were met by another crowd of peasants with relics of the battle for sale. Barnum bought a large number of pistols, bullets, brass French eagles, buttons, etc., for the Museum, and the others were equally liberal in their purchases. They bought also maps, guide-books and pictures, until Mr. Stratton expressed his belief that the ‘darned old battle of Waterloo’ had cost more since it was fought than it ever did before.
“Some months afterwards, while they were in Birmingham, they made the acquaintance of a firm who manufactured and sent to Waterloo barrels of these ‘relics’ every year.”*
Apparently, Barnum didn’t mind the ruse. He intended to do the same to his own customers—and probably for a larger profit. His understanding of humanity’s underbelly of deceit had made him financially successful, and his name and circus lasted long after his death.
It’s relatively easy for cons to con. And Barnum was the icon of cons. Human gullibility is one of our weaknesses.
We become skeptics by experience. Born innocent and open, many people become hard-edged and closed off for what we believe are good reasons. Purposeful deceit is ubiquitous, and deceivers are numerous. Bernie Madoff, the guy sentenced to 150 years in prison for the largest fraud in U.S. history, demonstrated that there will always be people selling barrels of relics and pointing out the sites where fictitious heroes fought.
It takes one to know one. Barnum recognized the falsity of the guides’ claims at Waterloo, but instead of succumbing to their ruse, he used what they had to establish greater wealth and fame for himself. He put the “relics” he acquired in both stationary and traveling “museums,” drawing crowds of gullible onlookers.
What is it in us that enables the Barnums, Waterloo guides, and Madoffs to deceive? And how is it that those who purposefully deceive find the wherewithal to continue their deceptions without compunction? And what of those who bought the relics thinking that they were real and returned home to show relatives and friends “historical objects”? Surely, they don’t deceive on purpose. They merely carry the relics with unquestioning surety.
So, every once in a while someone shows up with a barrel of relics, and we are supposed to take them as the actual objects. NOW, we have barrels of climate data, and we’re supposed to take them as genuine. (I know, I’m a long way from P. T. Barnum and Waterloo relics here) In fact, we’re supposed to take them as so genuine that we don’t need them. Here is what Michael Mann, an expert in climate science said:
“What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see climate change, the impacts of climate change, now, playing out in real time, on our television screens, in the 24-hour news cycle.”*
Wouldn’t it be nice to reach into that barrel of data anyway? What if, just what if, someone slipped an artificial relic into it? And what do we do with the Popper principle of falsification, that if something is accepted, we need to verify its “truth” by constant attempts to falsify it, to re-examine it scientifically.
Can we see the impacts of climate change? Of course. Did the people who occupied the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter 16,000 years ago see the impacts of climate change? They inhabited that western Pennsylvania site at a time when the edge of a giant glacier lay just 100 miles to their north. Maybe they didn’t recognize the impacts—too busy finding food and warding off bears and wolves—but over the course of centuries their descendants lived in increasingly warmer times with a time of particularly fast warming that wasted away all the ice. The glaciers are gone now, gone long before the Industrial Revolution.
Back to deception. Let’s follow some guys who reached into that barrel of data relics. The barrel is called GAST, short for Global Average Surface Temperature data. The peer-reviewed data by Drs. James P. Wallace, III, Joseph S. D’Aleo, and Craig D. Idso were released in a June 2017 report entitled “On the Validity of NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU Global Averagge Surface Temperature Data & The Validity of EPA’s CO2 Engangerment Finding Abridged Research Report.”***
They explain the study’s purpose thus:
“The objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) data, produced by NOAA, NASA, and HADLEY, are sufficiently credible estimates of global average temperatures such that they can be relied upon for climate modeling and policy analysis purposes. The relevance of this research is that the validity of all three of the so- called Lines of Evidence in EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding require GAST data to be a valid representation of reality.”***
Now reach into the barrel and pick out some relics. That’s what they did, but not with just a few, rather with all the “best available and relevant data.” Okay, sit down for this one:
“The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality” (Italics mine).
Whoa! P. T., say it ain’t so. Isn’t that really a piece of the actual boot that covered the foot on the amputated leg of the Marquis? Maybe it’s time to barrel away from this barrel. But, following the advice of Popper, I guess I’ll keep looking through the relics in the barrel.
* Benton, Joel, A Unique Story of a Marvelous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum, Chapter XIII, In Belgium, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1576/pg1576-images.html
** http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/27/michael-mann-climate-scientist-data-increasingly-u/
*** https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf
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