In the past week there have been a number of tributes to Professor Bob Carter, retired Professor of Geology and leading climate sceptic. This includes Jo Nova, James Delingpole, Steve McIntyre, Ian Pilmer at the GWPF, Joe Bast of The Heartland Institute and E. Calvin Beisner of Cornwall Alliance. In complete contrast William Connolley posted this comment in a post Science advances one funeral at a time

Actually A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it, but I’m allowed to paraphrase in titles. And anyway he said it in German, naturally. Today brings us news of another such advancement in science, with the reported death of Robert Carter.

Below is a comment I posted at Climate Scepticism

I believe Max Planck did have a point. In science people tenaciously hold onto ideas even if they have been falsified by the evidence or (as more often happens) they are supplanted by better ideas. Where the existing ideas form an institutionalized consensus, discrimination has occurred against those with the hypotheses can undermine that consensus. It can be that the new research paradigm can only gain prominence when the numbers dwindle in the old paradigm. As a result the advance of new knowledge and understanding is held back.

To combat this innate conservatism in ideas I propose four ideas.

First is to promote methods of evaluating competing theories that are independent of consensus or opinion. In pure science that is by conducting experiments that would falsify a hypothesis. In complex concepts, for which experiment is not possible and data is incomplete and of poor quality, like the AGW hypothesis or economic theories, comparative analysis needs to be applied based upon independent standards.

Second is to recognize institutional bias by promoting pluralism and innovation.

Third is to encourage better definition of concepts, more rigorous standards of data within the existing research paradigm to push the boundaries.

Fourth is to train people to separate scientific endeavours from belief systems, whether religious, political or ethical.

The problem for William Connolley is that all his efforts within climatology – such as editing Wikipedia to his narrow views, or helping set up Real Climate to save the Mannian Hockey Stick from exposure of its many flaws – are with enforcing the existing paradigm and blocking any challenges. He is part of the problem that Planck was talking about.

As an example of the narrow and dogmatic views that Connolley supports, here is the late Bob Carter on his major point about how beliefs in unprecedented human-caused warming are undermined by the long-term temperature proxies from ice core data. The video quality is poor, probably due to a lack of professional funding that Connolley and his fellow-travellers fought so hard to deny.

Kevin Marshall