Nope. “Certainly wrong” is exactly how you describe someone who is trying to deny decades of careful measurement and scientific analysis.
No quarter for charlatans and stooges my friend
If you look at Dennis Rancourt’s material, he doesn’t come across as either a charlatan or a stooge. Obdurate certainty about this matter is simply a misjudgement. In fact, it probably is about anything. Castaneda wrote that he and a fellow apprentice leapt off a mesa and didn’t die. Supremely easy to say that he just must be making that up; it’s a certainty.
And yet… I’ve actually witnessed levitations for myself, so I’m not so sure that he was writing fiction about that…
Obdurate certainty about anything is a mistake.
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Though they say death and taxes come pretty near…
How many professional papers has this guy submitted for peer review? How many published? He’s a former professor of physics, surely he knows his way around peer review?
How many papers has he submitted for publication that were rejected by the establishment? How many research studies has he led? How much experimentation? He is an experimental physicist after all (at least I think he was). Has he done any measurements the disprove the current consensus?
How many studies has he rebutted? How many scientists have reviewed and agreed or disagree with his work? I’ve looked around but not seen that much so far
What actual science has he done on this subject that rebutted the work of tens of thousands of scientists over the last 100 years? As a professor of physics he knows what standards he should work to.
If the answers to these questions are that he has not done anything like this, then he’s full of shit and he knows it. He wouldn’t accept someone muscling into his branch of physics without doing his homework.
What do you call a physics professor who’s full of shit and who knows it?
I call him a charlatan or a stooge. Which is exactly what Rancourt would call sometime who tried to argue with him about nanoparticles (or whatever his speciality was) who hadn’t had a single published article on the subject.
If he has a rich history of peer reviewed academic articles among the more than 100 articles he has published then I’ll revise my opinion.
I’ve looked through several pages of Google scholar and so far I can’t find one.
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He has a thing or two to say about the current state of peer review. In a nutshell, he’s highly critical of the current state of bought-science; carrot’n’sticked-science perhaps I should say: mortgage/career/marriage-protecting, goodthinker complier-science. Lot of it about, he reckons; like - a lot!
I have to say that I have similar comprehensive reservations about the whole scientific process, as currently funded and managed. We have plenty of glaring examples of that right now, haven’t we, as the truth begins to seep out about the covid thing?
Try scanning some of Dennis’s stuff, and listening to his vids. They give pause.
Come on P, old friend: cool it; don’t get overwrought at the prospect of facing absolute uncertainty. It can be lived with. And absolute certainty, about climate outcomes or indeed anything at all, is simply not on the table. 
Cheers bro!
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How much credibility would you give to someone who told you that Ukraine’s army would be marching in Moscow by next weekend?
Why?
That’s the amount of credibility someone like Rancourt has.
He hasn’t done the work. He hasn’t made the measurements. He hasn’t engaged the scientists. He hasn’t done the science.
The rising temperatures of the planet are a measured fact. The role of CO2 is not uncertain, it’s been known for more than a century.
Opinionated ignorance is not a rebuttal of careful study of the facts, the measurements and the data.
Rancourt should know better. He used to be a credible academic. Now he’s a charlatan, and that’s being charitable.
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Hi there. Not going to get involved in the minutiae, that would take me several yeariae 
On the more accessible question of whether a dissident academic is a charlatan or not…
The first thing I would say is that that’s not the ‘alternative hypothesis’. They could be wrong, and even have a significant contribution to boot.
From Covid, I know of very few dissident academics that are charlatans. A charlatan wouldn’t be able to engage with the scientists with the orthodox view. They would have to be facing the other way, addressing a fringe audience perhaps. Even then you couldn’t be sure from that as there are big holes in the official narrrative.
I encountered Rancourt early on in Covid, he had some original ideas on virus mortality being driven by humidity. After adjusting for humidity in various settings, this led to him concluding there was no real excess mortality at all. This was done in substantial papers; there seems no real way of evaluating this niche, without getting heavily involved. He had some collaborators though. I didn’t get the impression he wasn’t genuine. Like @PatB I found him smart. I did think he wasn’t the kind of guy who would always cross the t’s and dot the i’s for you. He’d make his point, and move on to the next one.
He also had a position on masks (against). Again this was based on detailed computational papers, probably ideal for a physicist. And against the orthodoxy.
I watched a debate on mask effectiveness between Rancourt and another Professor, a Prof David Kyle Johnson, whose MO or body language I would characterize as ‘fussy’.
Nothing wrong with that. But they couldn’t be more opposite, and when they clashed there was a bit of an explosion of hostile body language. Take a peek at about 1m 08.
Both accused each other of misleading. I couldn’t say who was right though Johnson came across as aggressive in the way he was making his points. But Rancourt seemed willing to consider what were serious accusations about his work. He clearly believed they were mistaken or he wouldn’t have been there.
My example doesn’t really prove anything, but I think caution is advisable before writing people off. They had genuine technical disagreements which they did try to discuss, but the ‘lying’ accusation needed to have been resolved first. The audience was none the wiser, and a great opportunity (and effort, especially by the heroic moderator) was lost. FWIW I think the hostility came from Johnson who had decided, and written, that Rancourt’s paper contained lies, and also had a tendency to shout. The impression I got was that Rancourt was fascinated by new areas of research and was one to think outside the box. I wish Johnson had joined him on the outside rather than pulling Rancourt inside into his own world of rigid logic. But I thought it a fascinating clash.
Cheers
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Thanks ED, I’ll have a look at the video. I saw that Rancourt had a position on masking, but I’ve not looked into that.
My only point with regard to his view in climate change is that I see no reason to view him as credible. He has a strong anti opinion, but (afaics) has done no actual work on the subject.
This feels immediately suspicious to me, as over the last 20 or so years that I’ve been following this subject, I’ve seen several other people who fall into exactly this category.
It’s possible that Rancourt is simply “certainly wrong” and is not a stooge or a charlatan. As i have said, I’ll happily change my harsh view of it turns out that he has done the work and written the articles that show how all the climate scientists (or even some of them) are wrong.
Experiments, data, theory, analysis is what challenges a consensus. If Rancourt has done this then I take back my judgement.
If he hasn’t, then I’m afraid my opinions of him remain
Cheers
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Hi PP. Glad the mushy mushrooms project seems to be coming to ‘fruition’
As you must be putting a lot of things into containers, I’m in no position to question your framing…so let me do it anyway 
“has done no actual work on the subject.”
“…the work…”
I think Rancourt would reply that he has done relevant work. This includes using relevant work of others, assuming he’s carefully digested and contextualised it.
I just looked at Everyman’s link, and there’s quite a lot there:
Doesn’t your (apparent) definition of what constitutes ‘the work’ automatically narrow the field down so as to exclude anyone outside the preferred fold?
If it’s a specialist field I’d be more inclined to agree this an important consideration. But for multidisciplinary fields (as climate science must be!?) most people have only one of the fields as a specialism, ie where they did ‘the work’.
So if someone else comes along and points out something important that is absent from ‘the work’ and starts analysing that and then joins the fray, who is to say that this person is less credible than the others?
As far as I can tell the only way to decide is to examine the work of the new guy and evaluate it, just as you say they need to do. He would surely say he hes done that and observed important omissions.
This is why I’ve not got much involved in climate change science - I’ve not done ‘the work’ to form my own view, or evaluate the contrary view, and it would be a big commitment to reach that stage - and I might never reach it!
Covid has only reinforced this long-held view. Trying to decide who to take seriously on Covid topics based on ‘in house’ markers of credibility (official status, specialisms, randomised controlled trials (‘the work’), peer review, ‘scientific consensus’ etc) would, in my view, have led to one being completely deceived by mainstream narratives on Covid!
I’d be interested to know if there there any big debates ( especially written ones) featuring credible naysayers like Rancourt and accomplished/respected scientists on the mainstream.
Cheers!
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Try this
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Hello everybody, this guy is apparently a ‘real’ climate scientist (as opposed to Denis Rencourt who some say is playing baseball on a cricket field).
Professor Harde’s research leads him to state that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change overestimates by five times the thermal effect of doubling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In Professor Hande’s opinion, modern climate science has developed more as an ideology and world view, rather than a serious science. Scientists who question or point to serious inconsistencies about human-caused or anthropogenic global warming, are “publicly discredited” and excluded from research funds. In addition, research contributions in journals are supressed, and in a reference to the recent Professor Peter Ridd case in Australia, placed on leave or dismissed from their university.
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I’ve been an income tax refusenik since the early 70s, Pat. But I’ve still been hit by some of the other sneaky taxes around. Impossible to dodge them all, always.
Anyway, odd as it may sound, I do believe in taxes; but only honestly applied - which is to say, progressive - taxes; and only when agreed to by the taxees in large majority; and then only when they have constant oversight and ultimate control of how the money’s spent. Conditions which, of course, don’t remotely apply in this wretched pretend democracy that we suffer in Britain.
Accordingly I tithe (just about to spend out some more tithes tomorrow - for the suffering bears), since I can’t/won’t pay unjust taxes according to the racket-riddled ukstate system. I think we should, though, given an honest democratic control, since taxes are a necessary part of a decent, civilised country, I have to admit. One way or another, all the essential expenses of such a state have to be covered.
Hi folks, thanks for all the links I found Denis Rancourt fascinating - his CV is impressive imo :
https://denisrancourt.ca/page.php?id=3&name=cv
I’ve spent quite some time over a couple of weeks looking at just a corner of this subject, you may recall the hockeystick disagreement based on the link posted by @PatB .
I had made reference to a National Academies report on Mann versus McIntyre, at the time I had no idea that Gerald North, who was on the NA panel and represented their report at the Congressional inquiry, was a friend of Mann.
It might explain his “nuanced” reply under oath to a question on whether he agreed with Wegman that Mann had been wrong in his 98 paper. North ultimately admitted that McIntyre and McKitrick had done a good job in their paper and that he had no problem with it.
The 98 paper from Mann which created the iconic hockeystick was described by North and the NA as “Plausible” a term upon which @PontiusPrimate and I could not agree. It transpires, according to questions from Whitfield to John R Christy that the NA used the term "plausible " because they did not want to suggest any level of certainty for the paper because it was unquantifiable in view of the high level of uncertainties in the data.
Wegman’s report to Congress on this issue was wholly supportive of McIntyre not just on the substantive errors made by Mann so as to fail to justify the hockeystick graph but also on Mann’s reluctance to share data and code. Wegman then proceeded to cast serious doubt on the impartiality of the peer review process of Mann’s papers.
Proceedings under oath can be very revealing!
I may have been too harsh on scientists - the real problem could be the political and social pressures of academia as well as a “gatekeeper” modus operandi of the peer review process. (Rancourt has much to say on this!).
I’ll add the links when I get back to my computer.
Cheers
PS I had no idea that terms of reference for the IPCC restricted their reports to "man-made " global climate change only thereby ignoring all other elements! See Tim Ball’s statement here:
and under Role:
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Hi ED
I watched a few minutes of the video you linked to and I have to say that Kyle Johnson just made the whole thing unwatchable. What a pompous arse. Not sure I’m going back to that. I’ll have a look at the arguments on masks some other way.
Maybe he would. That doesn’t mean he has. I looked at the list of links above but I don’t see any serious study of the subject. I see one unreviewed preprint and then a bunch of interviews, conjectures, blog posts and what other physicists would certainly call hand-waving waffle.
The real test would be to see if Rancourt would accept an outsider challenging all his scientific papers (100s of em apparently) using the same level of rigour that he brings to the climate debate. I would bet heavily that Rancourt wouldn’t even take the time to disagree with someone who tried to argue the technical points of nanoparticles without having done a single experiment or punished a single paper on the subject. That’s exactly why I call him a charlatan. He knows what rigorous looks like but seemingly doesn’t want to make the effort
I don’t think so. I think the intellectual barrier to entry in this field necessarily requires a certain amount of work to understand, rebut, or otherwise progress the field. If one wants to challenge a scientific consensus in a meaningful way, one engages the scientific process to do so. That takes painstaking and careful work.
Look at Tess Lawrie and the really excellent work by the FLCCC. They are textbook examples of how to challenge a consensus. They had to work very hard to get the credibility they have. They got published, they got reviewed, they held and engaged in conferences with other scientists. Etc etc etc. Rancourt did… None of that.
But - Rancourt knows how to do research. He knows how to write and publish academic papers. He had been to, and no doubt organised conferences. He would be far from the only academic physicist to publish papers on climate change. Why doesn’t he do any of these things?
I’m very suspicious.
When he does the work, gets his work reviewed and hopefully published, engages other actual scientists whose work he things is wrong, then he builds credibility. Until that point he’s an armchair general spouting off. Much like the armchair generals spouting off about Ukraine.
He’s entitled to his opinion. If he wants more than that he needs to do some actual science.
Me too. My feeling is, however, that the credible naysayers would have had to work a lot harder than Rancourt seems to have, to be considered credible. Even by Rancourt himself if the tables were turned.
Cheers bwana
PP
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Fascinating. Almost exactly what I argued above.
Incidentally, I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on this one study from decades ago. There are many more recent studies with much more accurate data which come to exactly the same conclusion… Are you ever going to actually look at them or simply continue to cherry -pick this one and ignore all the actual evidence in front of you?
Curious
PP
P, this uncharacteristically vituperative language of yours, particularly against DR, looks like a clue: Are you feeling a blind-spot/hot-button flare-up here? As one watching mainly from the sidelines, I do get a sense of that. (No offence intended in saying this - seriously. We all have them, after all. Apols. for my incorrigible tactlessness! 
)
I keep looking through Denis Rancourt’s material, and I just don’t recognise the image you paint. He strikes me, the more I look, as having some cogent points of argument. Still going through his stuff.
I note too that he has an equally cogent argument about the untrustworthiness of so much of what we take as reliably-established science; and about the compelling globalist-gangster-realpolitik reasons why it would be in this ramshackle state. These arguments resonate with my own sense of the universal, all-encumbering corruption which now drowns the Western empire. Not to mention our - hom-sap’s - perennially over-inflated idea of our own brilliance in chasing down absolute certainties…
I really have no idea where to come down in this whole ‘imminent-desperate-climate emergency/NO-climate-emergency-at-all’ row. But I do get a strong sense that something is seriously wrong with our complete credulity towards the currently-orthodox narrative, and that this - just non-predictably complex - question is very far from being settled. Nettled assertion isn’t really an appropriate stance, I don’t think.
Sorry if I sound chiding. Salaam bro!
Thanks PP. You probably called it right on the Big Masks Showdown - it was unenlightening on its own subject matter, if good theatre. In posting it I wasn’t trying to resolve the masks debate, but I thought a look at Rancourt’s work and the surroundings established that he has credibility as a scientist. In general, I think credible scientists don’t morph into charlatans when they stray into other subjects.
" The real test would be to see if Rancourt would accept an outsider challenging all his scientific papers (100s of em apparently) using the same level of rigour that he brings to the climate debate."
Related to which…it was Rancourt’s paper that was under very hostile attack, both prior to and during the debate. Rancourt gave the guy time and a bit of respect for a while (before Johnson blew it completely). He took his complaints and answered in the context. I would say he passed that test, at least.
Whether he has done serious study - that’s not necessarily indicated by churning out papers, what if his criticisms are valid. His thesis or argument seems to be that the science as presented is full of holes, is not sound. He has investigated these areas, the holes - how much work is his own I’m not sure. But if it’s not his own work, and assuming he’s not misrepresenting it, then he’s not a charlatan - he’s just giving his view and summarising the evidence. In fact that was the basis of Everyman’s reference to him - as an initial source. So it would then be pointless to call him a charlatan as even if he was, the work he points to is still there.
If it is based on his own work, I’m not sure what constitutes ‘the work’ but I don’t think that dismissing the person because you think he’s not done ‘the right work’ is as relevant as examining his claims and references (or perhaps any criticisms of his work) and showing what he is ignoring or where they are short of the mark, or where they are irrelevant. Rancourt has done this much for his opponents - or at least tried to.
The FLCCC have done very well indeed, but they are dissident within a field in which they probably more expert than those whose ‘consensus’ they are challenging, and I would say they are motivated by their medical duty to patients, as opposed to career and politics…
Rancourt I believe has expertise in some of the methods (well according to him, anyway), and as I said before, when it’s a diverse, interdisciplinary topic few have expertise in many of the contributing fields. I don’t think it’s a strong argument to try and rank the folk along lines of perceived relevance.
Yes there is a chance he’s just firing shots, I think he’s clever enough to do that - but I would need to see some ‘shit’ demonstrated before I would think about dismissing him.
I could be wrong and you’re closer to the science than I am. I’m not denying there is a certain weight of opinion behind man made climate change - but that’s true of a few areas where I think the majority are hopelessly tied by their profession to a conforming position and are almost certainly wrong.
Like Rhis I’d think the consensus is probably approximately true but there is room for doubt and mistrust, and more so after Covid.
We don’t seem very close on this so I’ll leave it there.
Cheers
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My reading of your statements tell me something different:
This was your exact statement.
- Mann’s analysis is plausible : adopting the wording of the NRC as a panel member John R. Christy explained - this means the data on which this analysis was based was as he put it “too meagre and uncertain” to even quantify any level of confidence.
-
it seems likely than Mann et Al were correct : in the link I posted Christy was asked a third point:
" (3) When considering the panel’s findings that it is "plausible"that recent decades were the warmest in a millennium, is it correct to interpret that to mean the panel’s consensus view was that plausible means roughly 2/3rds probability of being correct, as was suggested in the news reports following the press conference releasing the report?
(3) Answer
I was disturbed when reading the press reports that implied the panel had endorsed with “likely” confidence statements about the pre-1600 temperatures. The panel did not conclude that there was a 2/3rds probability that late 20th century warmth was greater than at anytime prior to 1600. As noted above, there are indications that such is the case, but the data do not allow statements of quantifiable confidence to be made at this point."
You were concluding that it seems Mann et Al were correct and yet the expert panels set up to examine Mann’s 98 hockeystick paper specifically state that the statements Mann made could not be justified with any level of quantifiable confidence - in other words Mann et Al definitely could not be said to be correct.
Further, let us not forget the work of McIntyre and McKitrick. Both the NRC panel representative, Gerald North and the Wegman report representative, Dr Wegman state clearly that they regard McIntyre and McKitrick’s critique of Mann’s paper as sound work with which they had no problem. Both panels accept McIntyre and McKitrick were correct and that Mann’s paper contained flaws completely undermining Mann’s claims in his 98 paper.
As I am sure you are aware the revelations in the Climategate papers point to Michael Mann’s “trick” of hiding data that cast doubt on his data by careful manipulation of graph images, a trick that another of his colleagues said he would use. I haven’t delved too deeply into this one but it seems this area of science has a very unsavory history. The Wegman report to Congress also cast aspersions on the peer reviewed system in this area of science. The 98 Mann paper produced a flawed iconic graph which was used and abused by the political and bureaucratic wings of the US administration and the IPCC for years. The hockeystick featured in several IPCC reports and Al Gore’s book and film which he apparently spread across the schoolrooms of the world, this was not just a tiny study sitting in a dusty top shelf of a specialist library.
For these reasons I feel justified in, prima facie, regarding the whole subject of man-made global warming as a house built on sand. Thousands of scientists, politicians, Institutional administrators and their funders are pushing one point of view - which is the only one visible in the MSM - why should we keep falling for their tricks?
cheers
Thanks ED
Your careful approach does you credit.
My only point is that I find it hard to take seriously someone who claims to have found serious holes in climate science but hasn’t bothered to rigorously write them up and publish them, or engage with the actual climate scientists whose work they believe is wrong. Perhaps you’re right, and it’s because he is quoting others work and not his own. Still, to cherry pick a small handful and ignore the vast field of study seems unlikely to give a balanced view. And that brings me back to the first point I made which is that if, based on the work of a few others, he’s saying that the main thrust of climate change is false then he’s certainly wrong.
As I’ve also said, even if I’m being too harsh with Rancourt, his technique is one that is definitely being used today by actual paid shills and other stooges. These people tend to avoid actually engaging with the science in a serious way and write more for public consumption where it is much easier to mislead folks who know nothing of the subject and are unable to see the claims for what they are. These days I find that approach suspicious immediately.
I guess we disagree on what is an appropriate way to move the subject of climate science forward. Personally, I think that any trained academic physicist would be quite capable to write academic papers or find other ways to engage with the scientific community about their concerns. The reason for doing so would be to bring his concerns to the people working in the field in a way that can be challenged and explored, thus moving the field forward. Even old McIntyre who I was discussing above, got his ideas published, generated a scientific debate and had been cited in correcting some of the data record. He’s not an academic and I don’t know if had ever written a single paper before. Rancourt should have a far easier time. Lawrie, the FLCCC and even Brett Weinstein (out of academia for a long time now) can do this. Why not Rancourt?
I ask again, why did a man with his intelligence and academic credentials and background in writing scientific papers choose to not do that on this subject?
Perhaps, as you say, he doesn’t feel as strongly about the subject as the FLCCC do about theirs. Perhaps he’s not as expert on the subject as the FLCCC are in theirs.
Neither of those two reasons incline me to give this guy any more credibility. If he’s not as expert then that’s more reason to submit his ideas to people who are experts and discuss the merits. If he didn’t feel strongly about the subject then he’s not taking seriously the question of what are the implications of he’s wrong… There is literally no more important subject facing us today.
@RhisiartGwilym - perhaps I’m being too harsh on Rancourt, but I’ve had more than enough of people doing their best to ignore the danger right in front of us as we face certain civilisation collapse. Naysayers who, despite the huge weight of evidence, continue to blather on about how climate science is more a religion than a science have zero credibility in my eyes. The folks who grab at anything to try and discredit the careful work done on climate studies and downplay the awful seriousness of what’s happening are acting as enablers and lapdogs to the psychos in charge.
As my comrades in Cuba might say
¡Ya Basta!
PS - I take your point that this is most likely a hot button topic for me. The certain collapse of civilisation with the attendant deaths of millions (or more likely, billions) is something that I take very seriously. I have spent enough time over the last twenty years or so trying to carefully and in good faith go through argument after argument from deniers, only to find that they are not at all interested in the answers or the facts and simply shift the goalposts to whatever the new argument du jour is, so that can continue in their ignorance. This very thread is a pretty good example of that, actually. Once you realise that the other side is not arguing in good faith, but simply to maintain an ideology, then it’s hard to continue to engage with them. It’s even more frustrating when the old arguments that you’ve already spent hours going over cycle back round in a new generation.