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All the Objectivity That's Fit to Reject

4/8/2013

6 Comments

 
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Last month, Dr. Donald Easterbrook, professor emeritus from Western Washington University testified at The Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee in Olympia, criticizing the anthropogenic climate chaos hypothesis. A few days later, he was publicly attacked by members of his own Department of Geology, in a letter which the Bellingham Herald obligingly published on Easter Sunday.

Several people came to Easterbrook's defense, including Lord Monckton, who posted a reply to the article in the Herald's online edition.

Today, WE discovered an interesting twist at the popular blog, Watts Up With That, by meteorologist and anthropogenic climate chaos sceptic, Anthony Watts. It is an article entitled, Rebuttal to the attack on Dr. Don Easterbrook. The note by author Dr. David Deming really caught our eye:


[author's note: this article was originally submitted as a "letter to the editor" to the Bellingham Herald, a newspaper that published an attack on Dr. Don Easterbrook. The Herald refused to publish my rebuttal. The executive editor, July Shirley ([email protected]) explained "We only print letters from residents of Whatcom County. We are not publishing your letter."]
Well, you just know WE had to do something about that! If they won't print it, WE will. It concerns news of local interest, after all. So here's the rejected letter to the editor of The Bellingham Herald, exactly as it appears on the WUWT blog:

Letter to the Editor by Dr. David Deming

I write in rebuttal to the March 31 letter by WWU geology faculty criticizing Dr. Don Easterbrook. I have a Ph.D in geophysics and have published research papers on climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In 2006 I testified before the US Senate on global warming. Additionally, I am the author of a three-volume history of science.

I have never met Don Easterbrook. I write not so much to defend him as to expose the ignorance exhibited in the letter authored by WWU geology faculty. Their attack on Dr. Easterbrook is the most egregious example of pedantic buffoonery since the Pigeon League conspired against Galileo in the seventeenth century. Skepticism is essential to science. But the goal of the geology faculty at WWU seems to be to suppress critical inquiry and insist on dogmatic adherence to ideology.

The WWU faculty never defined the term “global warming” but described it as “very real,” as if it were possible for something to be more real than real. They claimed that the evidence in support of this “very real” global warming was “overwhelming.” Yet they could not find space in their letter to cite a single specific fact that supports their thesis.

There is significant evidence that would tend to falsify global warming. The mean global air temperature has not risen for the last fifteen years. At the end of March the global extent of sea ice was above the long-term average and higher than it was in March of 1980. Last December, snow cover in the northern hemisphere was at the highest level since record keeping began in 1966. The UK just experienced the coldest March of the last fifty years. There has been no increase in droughts or wildfires. Worldwide hurricane and cyclone activity is near a forty-year low.

One might think that the foregoing facts would raise doubts in scientists interested in pursuing objective truth. But global warming is not so much a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification as it is a political ideology that must be fiercely defended in defiance of every fact to the contrary. In the past few years we have been told that not only hot weather but cold weather is caused by global warming. The blizzards that struck the east coast of the US in 2010 were attributed to global warming. Every weather event–hot, cold, wet or dry–is said to be caused by global warming. The theory that explains everything explains nothing.

Among the gems in the endless litany of nonsense we are subjected to are claims that global warming causes earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Last year we were warned that global warming would turn us all into hobbits, the mythical creatures from J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels. I am not aware of any member of the WWU geology faculty criticizing these ridiculous claims. Their vehemence seems to be reserved for honest skeptics like Dr. Easterbrook who advance science by asking hard questions.

At the heart of the WWU geology faculty criticisms was the claim that peer review creates objective and reliable knowledge. Nonsense. Peer review produces opinions. Scientists, like other people, have political beliefs, ideological orientations, and personal views that strain their scientific objectivity. One of the most disgusting things to emerge from the 2009 Climategate emails was the revelation of an attempt to subvert the peer-review process by suppressing the publication of work that was scientifically sound but contrary to the reviewer’s personal views.

The infamous phrase “hide the decline” refers to an instance where a global warming alarmist omitted data that contradicted his personal belief that the world was warming. This sort of bias is not limited but pervasive. Neither is science a foolproof method for producing absolute truth. Scientific knowledge is always tentative and subject to revision. The entire history of science is littered with discarded theories once thought to be incontrovertible truths.

The WWU geology faculty letter asserted that technological advances arise from application of the scientific method. They claimed that airplanes were invented by scientists. But the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics–not scientists. The modern age of personal computing began in a suburban California garage in 1976. The most significant technological advance in human history was the Industrial Revolution in Britain that occurred from 1760 through 1830. When Adam Smith toured factories and inquired as to who had invented the new machinery, the answer was always the same: the common workman. Antibiotics were not discovered through the rigorous application of scientific methodology but serendipitously when Fleming noticed in 1928 that mold suppressed bacterial growth.

Dr. Easterbrook’s contributions have furthered the advance of scientific knowledge and the progress of the human race. It matters not if a multitude of professors oppose him. As Galileo explained, it is “certain that the number of those who reason well in difficult matters is much smaller than the number of those who reason badly….reasoning is like running and not like carrying, and one Arab steed will outrun a hundred jackasses.”

David Deming

Professor of Arts & Sciences

University of Oklahoma

email: ddeming [at] ou.edu

====================================================

A list of Dr. Easterbrook’s credentials are listed here:

http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/dje_cv.html

(See the entire article in its original setting at WUWT, along with the reader comments...). 

Dr. Deming is quite a lightning rod in his own right; WE're a bit surprised that The Bellingham Herald would choose to spike his letter. 
6 Comments
Gary Hagland
4/8/2013 05:09:49 pm

Thanks for printing Dr. Deming's letter. Compare Deming's lucid defense of Dr. Easterbrook with the agenda driven pseudo-scientific talking points babble that the WWU Geology Department used in their attempt to discredit him; ad hominems and appeals to authority. However, there's little else you can do when the evidence increasingly negates your theory.

Reply
Letter To The Editor
4/8/2013 07:10:50 pm

Apr 6 2013, Skagit Valley Herald

Contain the boogeyman

In the seventh decade of life, I’ve lived long enough to be cognizant when a boogeyman is conjured in order to frighten a low-information populace into accepting a life of subservience, if only the boogeyman can be corralled and contained. Such is the boogeyman called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

In 1990, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its first dire warnings: The earth is overheating. Oceans are warming uncontrollably, causing icebergs to melt and polar bears to become extinct within a few years. Islands will disappear as oceans rise. Coastlines will recede. Birds, reptiles and mammals will all suffer horribly. The predictions were so apocalyptic that even fish would not be able to survive in their expanding environment because the waters will be like a hot tub, suitable only for a GSA executive seeking a moment’s relaxation from the hectic activities of a staff retreat.

Once the smoke cleared, it was obvious that the real goal was to even the economic playing fields existent in first-, second- and third-world economies, by taxing the richer nations into world serfdom.
It almost worked. By the turn of the century, everyone was jumping aboard the AGW bandwagon, until someone noticed that temperatures were cooling and the polar bear population was soaring. It was a moment as foretelling as when the child finally exclaimed, “The king isn’t wearing anything at all!”

Since then, the “science” claimed by AGW acolytes has failed every test, so proponents have shifted to ad hominem attacks against anyone who questions why we should agree to destroy our economy and forsake our national birthrights, in pursuit of a pipe dream? Witness the shameful attacks by political hacks and pundits against WWU Emeritus Professor of Geology Dr. Don Easterbrook.
For shame.

Jack Arrington, Anacortes

Reply
Tina Champeaux-Wolner
4/9/2013 01:31:34 am


Thank you for printing Dr. Deming's letter in the defense of Dr.
Easterbrook....and thank God for these voices of reason. When
a specific ideology and a political agenda are at stake, desperation
to maintain the status quo uses any weapon including character
assassination. Those who are trying to marginalize and discredit
Dr. Easterbrook are in abject fear because if he is correct, their entire
world view may crumble before their very eyes.

Reply
Vince Henley
4/9/2013 06:42:33 am

Thanks to the WE for printing this letter that the local newsrag wouldn't.

As I continue to reflect on the actions of WWU in this matter, I have thought about whether or not I would ever patronize this university to take a course of study or encourage any of my friends and relatives to do so. I've decided that I would not do so. Any institution that permits its faculty to viciously, and without foundation, attack one of its former professors without any sign of retribution is not an institution I could recommend. Actions should have consequences. In my opinion, these so-called faculty should offer a public apology, and be summarily fired if they refuse. What they have done is beyond civilized discourse and should be treated as such. It is possible to disagree by citing different facts and expressing well thought-out opinions based on an analysis of those facts, but these people have chosen to mount an unsupported attack and to smear someone who has indeed cited different data and expressed a different opinion.

Oh, I forgot. Universities espouse freedom of expression - so long as they agree with it. This makes such behavior okay.

Perhaps we should bring this matter to the attention of our elected officials to see if it is possible to ensure that future grant money for this institution is severely curtailed. There must be other, peer-reviewed recipients who are more worthy of the taxpayer's largess in this competitive arena. We might suggest an audit and an investigation of the institution's overhead practices and expenditures. The possibilities are endlessly delicious.

Reply
Dr. No
4/9/2013 09:59:44 am

Perhaps WWU needs a much larger rug.

In my opinion Western Washington University (WWU) has real problems. They have pseudoscientists educating young men and women, students who may never know what real science is either by instruction or by example. Masquerading as science faulty, they have zealous hypochondriacs of pseudoscience who still can’t admit that anthropogenic global warming was Mann-made, not man made. To them, non-believers must be ridiculed, marginalized, and personally attacked, just as the WWU Geology Department did to Dr. Easterbrook. By the way, word has it that the Geology Department may become part of the Political Science department.

Led by Department Chair, Bernie Housen, WWU Geology Department’s personal attacks on Dr. Easterbrook, an expert, internationally renown, real scientist, are appalling, unconscionable, and the antithesis of honest science. Real scientists, honest scientists, can, and frequently do, disagree on the merits and meanings of real data but they do not attack each other personally. Real scientists rely on the scientific method, not on predetermined outcomes. I know this from over fifty years experience as a real scientist.

I believe WWU also has a public relations problem. Those responsible for the unnecessary and unprofessional attacks on Dr. Easterbrook appear to be largely unpunished or even reprimanded. Has WWU President Shepard met with Dr. Easterbrook to discuss the ad hominem attacks, let alone apologize or equitably resolve the situation? We don’t know. Perhaps President Shepard, Provost Riordan, College of Sciences Dean Wright, Geology Chair Housen, and WWU Foundation Director Bowers are content to just sweep the incident under the rug. Perhaps WWU needs a much larger rug.

Reply
Skagit Razzberry
4/10/2013 06:22:22 pm

What a great letter! I am extremely disappointed in WWU for its closed-mindedness. The Bellingham Herald is also keeping heads in the sand by not following up on this story. Thumbs up to the Excavator!

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