Why are mainstream climate scientists so arrogant?

Question

One may argue over what all the Climategate emails show but it's pretty hard to disagree that the mainstream climate scientists have a mean streak of arrogance. One might also say it's deserved because of the skeptic fleas buzzing around bothering them and their important work. Either way, how do you think such an attitude developed.

I propose that climate science is a young science and doesn't have the elders of Nobel Laureate status to corral the delinquent children. However, there were a few climate scientists who could be seen as father figures to young climate scientists. One of the most prominent was the late Stephen Schneider. But lets look at one of his emails from Climategate:

***************************************
"Hello all. Ah ha–the latest idiot–McKitrick–reenters the scene. He and another incompetent had a book signing party at the US Capitol–Mike MacCracken went and he can tell you about it–last summer. McKitrick also had an article–oped, highly refereed of course–in the Canadian National Post on June 4 this year. Here is the URL that worked back then:

It was a scream. He argued there is no such thing as global temperature change, just local–all natural variablity mostly. To prove this he had a graph of temperature trends in Erie Pennsylvania for the past 50 years (this is from memory) which showed a cooling. THat alone proves nothing, but when reading the caption I noticed the trend was for temperature in October and November!! So one station for two months consitituted his ”refutation” of global warming–another even dumber than Lomborg economist way out of depth and polemicizing. I showed it to a class of Stanford freshman, and one of them said: “I wonder how many records for various combinations of months they had to run through to find one with a cooling trend?” THe freshman was smarter than this bozo. It is improtant to get that op-ed to simply tell all reporters how unbelievably incompetent he is, and should not even be given the time of day over climate issues, for which his one “contribution” is laughably incompetent. By the way, the Henderson/Castles stuff he mentions is also mostly absurd, but that is a longer discussion you all don’t need to get into–check it out in the UCS response to earlier Inhofe polemics with answers I gave them on Henderson/Castles if you want to know more about their bad economics on top of their bad climate science"
*******************************************

This was addressed to Annie Petsonk of the Environmental Defense Fund (!) as well as most of the Hockey Team like Michael E. Mann, Gabi Hegerl, Jonathan Overpeck, Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Mike MacCracken, Phil Jones, Ray Bradley, Ben Santer, etc.

So Schneider's "leadership" didn't include a tone of treating dissent with patience, tolerance, and humility or that science is a cooperative exercise, that knowledge evolves via skepticism, re-examination, and questioning.

No, instead he responded to challenges of his clique by hurling insults. Idiots. Incompetents. Bozos. And on top of that, as explained last year by Ross McKitrick (presumably when he first read this email), Schneider didn't even get his facts correct about that opinion piece he was trashing.

So I ask again, why are mainstream climate scientists so arrogant?

Answer 1

Ah Mike. If you aren't going to read books on science you could at least read books on logic and formal argument. This is yet another fallacy, this time it is called misleading vividness. You use one single example to conclude "mainstream climate scientists are arrogant."



This is similar to how creationists complain that Richard Dawkins is arrogant, since they can't attack his science.

Answer 2

have you a vested interest in this climate debate other than the obvious if it be real which i think it is.

if some one disagrees with you are they arrogant .

calling any scientist an astrologer is nothing more than muck racking and a sign of your frustration and is a result of your so called facts being turned around and thrown back at you by people who actually have the facts.

if your concerns be real which i think originally were then give us these concerns ,but it seems now it is more a battle of wills rather that a discussion on the facts

Answer 3

Were you raised to praise children who added 2+2 and got 5 just because they tried really hard?



After a couple of days with this, I think that what most of us are thinking here is that anyone who has interacted with you for the last year or so on climate knows exactly how frustrated Schneider was over M&M's tactics, and how it can lead to feelings of anger and irritability. There comes a point where you say "They simply aren't worth the effort to be nice to anymore since they honestly don't care what is right, they just don't like the science, whatever the truth might be." It might not be the most adult of responses, but anyone will lose their temper given enough provocation. I mean, when was the last time you actually listened to some of our science arguments and decided that maybe we were right and you would stop asking a particular question? Never? Correct. At this point, it's not clever, it's just an annoying waste of time.



Only climate skeptics think the recipient of the e-mail being the EDF is significant because only climate skeptics think there is some grand conspiracy. The rest of us think it's not particularly important and really not all that surprising that someone like Schneider, who was very involved in explaining climate science to the general public, would be interacting with a non-profit organization with that same mission. (It's sort of like discovering that Richard Lindzen sens e-mails to someone at the Marshall Institute.) And last time I checked, Stanford was a private university, so state disclosure laws are irrelevant. Schneider was a professor, and his e-mail wasn't unprofessional by any standards other than yours.

Answer 4

Anyone with the competence to assert authority on a subject appears arrogant to the ignorant, just by virtue of the inherent power differential. Compounding the problem, not everyone has the patience to suffer fools politely. Fool in this case is a polite term for insufferable hypocritical jackasses who deliberately lie about settled science and compare environmentalists to communists.

Answer 5

I believe that their arrogance around AGW is a form of superiority complex, those exhibiting the superiority complex have a self-image of supremacy. Those with superiority complexes may garner a negative image in those around them, as they are not concerned with the opinions of others about themselves.



This is responsible for the paradox in which those with an inferiority complex are the ones who present themselves in the best light possible; while those with a superiority complex may not attempt to make themselves look good. This may give off an image that others may consider inferior. This is responsible for the misconception that those with an inferiority complex are meek and mild, but the complex is not defined by the behavior of the individual but by the self-image of the individual. Not that a person with a superiority complex will not express their superiority to others, only that they do not feel the need to do so.



They may speak as if they are all-knowing and better than others. But ultimately they do not care if others think so or not, and will not care if others tell them so. They simply won't listen to, and don't care about, those who disagree. In this regard, it is much alike the cognitive bias known as Illusory superiority. This is juxtaposed to an inferiority complex where if their knowledge, accuracy, superiority or etc. is challenged, the individual will not stop in their attempts to prove such things until the dissenting party accepts their opinion (or whatever issue it may be). Again this is another reason that those with inferiority complexes are often mistaken for having superiority complexes when they must express and maintain their superiority in the eyes of others.



Many fail to recognize that this is a trait of low self-opinion who care deeply about the opinion of others, not of those who feel superior and have high-self esteem and do not care at all about the opinion of others.

Answer 6

Why don't you provide a 1,000 of your past correspondence emails so we can check whether this arrogance which you are talking about is limited to climate scientists alone or is perhaps common among people when they believe that their private emails are not going to be read by complete strangers?

Answer 7

Heres another Scientist (Climatologist) that believes environmental alarmist extremism is the real danger.



For accurate qualified current info see the works of DR. Roy W. Spencer he received NASA’s

Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites.



Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming.



Dr. Spencer’s first popular book on global warming,



Climate Confusion (Encounter Books), is now available at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warmi…





Climate change — it happens, with or without our help.



Blame the SUN





You can disregard any info from the corrupt UN they have zero credibility.

Answer 8

Is it just me or does it seem like Alarmists travel in packs?



Who was Mann? Mann was nobody. He was a baby who just got his doctorate. Then he provided what some were looking for, a smooth out historic climate. After that, Mann was the rock star of climate scientists, not because he provided good science but because he made climate science more relevant. He helped push climate science from a million plus dollar science to a billion plus dollar science that had relevance with potential to affect the economy of the world. . When McIntyre and McKittrick exposed his psuedo-science, it isn't surprising that he struck back with anger. He got caught with his pants down. He was using statistical methods that were not valid and McIntyre is an expert on statistics. Pegminer and other climate scientists can whine and say McIntyre wasn't a climate scientist. Well Mann wasn't a statistician but that didn't stop him from pretending to be. They are arrogant in part because I think they know they are defending a house of cards, particularly Mann. All of the hockey team were in on it. Even if they believed in AGW, that didn't stop them from exaggerating their evidence and trying to stifle any dissent IMO.



In my opinion, McIntyre acted in a totally professional and courteous way, at all times. He was rewarded for that by childish rants and insults from scientists, politicians, and media types.

Answer 9

The proper term for your complaint is haughty, not arrogance. The true arrogance is exhibited by people with scant understanding of science to presume that their opinions about climate science have any credibility. Calling climate scientists arrogant is the height of hypocrisy.

Answer 10

We have told you time and time again that taking to short a time period in to small a region isn't looking at the whole picture. Apparently Schneider is talking about McKitrick who took 2 months in one city of the world and found a cooling trend. Even you must have problems with that. Why don't you? I'm sure I've even seen you make the distinction between weather and climate before. I don't understand what your problem is as even you must see the problems with the cherry picking McKitrick did.

Answer 11

You would think that a group who trades so heavily on their credibility and authority would care for it better.



Instead, the UEA fought for a decade to keep from releasing their data. Then we find out they 'do not hold' the original data. It took Chris Horner 2 years and the threat of a lawsuit to pry data out of NASA. In New Zealand, they *are* in a lawsuit, trying to get the government to release climate data. Mann has never released his algorrithms for the 'hockey stick', so none of that is reproducible. We find in the Climategate emails that our 'climate scientists' have conspired behind the scenes to keep competing viewpoints out of the peer-reviewed literature, and out of the IPCC reports. They conspired to delete emails rather than release them. They conspired to have reviewers and editors removed from journals where competing views obtained publication. They conspired to thwart FOIA requests.



They do not seem to realize that they are, in the words of Dr. Happer, 'dragging science through the mud'. It has cost them; a recent poll shows that 69% of American adults think that scientists falsify their research. That number is up 10 pts since 2009.



“Smart people, because they are more intelligent and better educated, are better able to give intellectual reasons justifying their beliefs that they arrived at for nonintellectual reasons.... The intellectual attribution bias then kicks in, especially in smart people, to justify those beliefs, no matter how weird they may be.”

Answer 12

You realize that McKitrick is not a physical scientist at all don't you? Are you at all surprised that a Stanford freshman in physics would have a much better understanding of physics that McKitrick?



What you see as arrogance is in reality irritation with political tools and idiots.

Answer 13

I think scientists in general often have a certain amount of arrogance, it is bred into us by our training. Some schools, such as MIT, probably engender more of this than others. However, that does not mean that you should not treat people with honesty and respect when they act in a fair and rational manner.



What you seem to expect, though, is for people to behave in a friendly manner to those that insult them, lie about them, file countless frivolous FOIA requests that they have to deal with, file lawsuits against them, steal their private emails, etc. It is simply not in typical human nature to not lose patience with people like that.



You think climate scientists are arrogant, but I think virtually every "question" you ask on here is a veiled (or not so veiled) attack on the character of climate scientists. Why do you hate climate scientists so much?



EDIT: Of course Schneider was a climate scientist, he worked in the field for decades. So what if his original background was in mechanical engineering and plasma physics? My original background was plasma physics also, I know climate scientists with backgrounds in geology, chemical engineering, economics, physics, oceanography, etc. The problem is with people that have not studied climate science and who do not work in the field thinking they know more than people that do work in the field (e.g. Freeman Dyson, Antonino Zichichi, John Coleman, etc.)

Answer 14

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Answer 15

They only appear arrogant because you are too stupid too understand even the simplest science

Answer 16

Because it's their refuge from their own mistakes. If you notice their mistakes, they quickly point out that we're not qualified to analyze their work because we're not climate scientists.



I bet they trust their own bank registers more than the one prepared by their professional banker though.

Answer 17

You think climate scientists sound arrogant?



Go read what evolutionary biologists think about creationists. Or medical scientists think of alt medders and antivaxxers.



It's because we have nothing but disdain for science denialists. We know how you idiots work. No amount of reason or evidence will ever convince you.

Answer 18

I generally found very smart people get tired of dealing with stupidity. Politicians on the other hand love to embrace stupidity to get more votes.

Answer 19

Every major subgroup of humanity has some individuals within it that are known for their arrogance.



Scientific reality does not depend in the slightest on either (a) the psychological traits of those who practice it or (b) those who lie about it because they too embarrassed to admit that they cannot understand it, or to lazy to try to.

Answer 20

pegminer is right - it's not just climate scientists. In general, scientists do not play well with others - even their own kind. I do not know why. It's just some personality thing. And it is the reason that conspiracy claims among scientists are laughable.



You could have found a better example than McKitrick. There are plenty of examples in the climategate emails where the scientists are ragging on each other. Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre were the original anti-AGW attack dogs hired by Exxon via the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the George Marshall Institute.



McKitrick is an economist and not a climate scientist - and he deserves whatever ridicule and contempt he gets. How would you like it if a major corporation hired people for the sole purpose of attacking your job performance and hounding you (and your supervisor and co-workers, etc.) daily for and about information on everything you may have ever said or written to anyone? Try to get any work done under those conditions.



I know this from personal experience. In the early 2000s, I was a collateral target when the Bozo Twins turned their attention to a couple of papers I had co-authored with someone who had, in turn, co-authored some stuff with Michael Mann.



And as an indication of how crazy things are in the world of climate science, in the early 1990s, I was attacked by Gore's Senate Committee on research I conducted jointly with someone who is now a prominent Denier. That person was actually hauled before Gore's committee - and attacked so savagely that it became legendary. Fortunately, I received only nasty phone calls from DC. I like to think it was my surly phone manners that dissuaded them from wanting to meet me in person.



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@jim z --



>>When McIntyre and McKittrick exposed his psuedo-science<<



Say what, young Jim?



Perhaps you could inform us why an admittedly poor methodological choice by Mann in his PCA analysis equates to "psuedo-science" - especially given the robust (and replicated) nature off the data and Mann's analysis.



See:



"Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures: Examination of criticisms based on the nature and processing of proxy climate evidence"



http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf



Now, about your boy McInDork, let's have a look, shall we?



Based on his own analysis (10,000 simulations) of a variable he called the "Hockey Stick Index" (HSI), McIntyre claimed that Mann's analysis was "rigged" to produce the distinctive "Hockey Stick" shape.



Here is the code used by McInDork and McIdiot:



ftp://ftp.agu.org/apend/gl/2004GL021750/2004GL021750-script.final.txt



I have created a "Bullsh!t Index" (BI) variable of the M&M's routine - and, trust me, there's a lot of BS to be indexed.



But, let's cut to the chase. I direct your attention to these parts of their program:



Here they number the HSI variable (stored in array “stat2”) from 1 to 10,000 based on their values:



############################################

#HOCKEY STICK FIGURES CITED IN PAPER

#MANNOMATIC

#simulations are not hard-wired and results will differ slightly in each run

#the values shown here are for a run of 10,000 and results for run of 100 need to be multiplied



temp<-(stat2>1)|(stat2< -1); sum(temp) #[1] 9934

temp<-(stat2>1.5)|(stat2< -1.5); sum(temp) #[1] 7351

temp<-(stat2>1.75)|(stat2< -1.75);sum(temp) #[1] 2053

temp<-(stat2>2)|(stat2< -2); sum(temp) #[1]

############################################



Now they select their sample output:





############################################

#SAVE A SELECTION OF HOCKEY STICK SERIES IN ASCII FORMAT

order.stat<-order(stat2,decreasing=TRUE)[1:100]

order.stat<-sort(order.stat)



hockeysticks<-NULL

for (nn in 1:NN) {

load(file.path(temp.directory,paste("arfima.sim",nn,"tab",sep=".")))

index<-order.stat[!is.na(match(order.stat,(1:1000)+(nn-1)*1000))]

index<-index-(nn-1)*1000

hockeysticks<-cbind(hockeysticks,Eigen0[[3]][,index])

} #nn-iteration



dimnames(hockeysticks)[[2]]<-paste("X",order.stat,sep="")

write.table(hockeysticks,file=file.path(url.source,

"hockeysticks.txt"),sep="\t",quote=FALSE,row.names=FALSE)



############################################



Well, well, what have we here?



They ran 10,000 simulations sure enough, but did they base their conclusions on a random sample of their HSI output?



Uh-oh, Leroy, it looks like we have a little not-so-slight Tomfoolery going on. It seems your hero sorted the HSI to select only the top 100 extreme values out of the sample of 10,000 simulations.



Bad Boy!



And finally,



>>In my opinion, McIntyre acted in a totally professional and courteous way, at all times.<<



How the fcuk would you know how he acted?

Answer 21

...probably because they can't read through your bullsh*t rant.