From Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog on Nye’s Quadrant (as in Bill Nye the ‘Science’ guy) and her thoughts on recent perversions in the name of climate science:
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The scary emergence of Nye’s Quadrant in dominating the public discourse on climate change.
If you are unfamiliar with Pasteur’s Quadrant, read my previous post [link]. The focus of my previous post was on use-inspired basic research. I struggled with the 4th quadrant (lower left), which is sometimes referred to as ‘taxonomy’.
In the context of climate science, I interpreted this as climate model taxonomy, which analyzed the results of climate model simulations to identify alarming future possibilities.
Nye’s Quadrant
In response to my previous post on the Science March, which mentioned Pasteur’s Quadrant, Peter Deeble tweeted this version of the Quadrant diagram:
Besides being hysterically funny, the more I thought about it, I realized how profound this is.
Apart from the twitter aspect, here are other attributes of this quadrant:
- Second order belief – allegiance to consensus. Individual has not done primary research on the relevant topic or has not conducted an independent assessment of the evidence and research.
- Shutting down scientific debate; science as dogma
- Alarmism as a tactic to influence the public debate
- Political activism and advocacy for particular policy solutions
- Scientism: a demand that science dictate public policy
- Advocacy research
Some recent articles on Bill Nye’s pernicious influence on the scientific debate:
- Bill Nye not the right guy to lead the climate fight
- Bill Nye: perfect talking head for the March for Science
And then there is Neil DeGrasse Tyson (sorry Neil, you don’t get a Quadrant named after you)
The scariest thing about this quadrant is that this is the quadrant of science that is driving the media and public debate.
Within the field of climate research itself, the quickest litmus test for the Nye Quadrant is twitter addiction (~100 tweets per day)
The group of scientists operating in the Nye Quadrant is getting really political. Unfortunately (or fortunately), they are lousy at politics.
Blair King has a very good post on this: The climate crew: alienating allies and fighting the wrong fights.
See also: Climate change activists are the real science deniers.
It all has to do with money and the political rantings of the various eco-wackos from Racheal Carson to Bill Nye the unending amount of green nuts never stop falling from the green nut tree
Boom! Dr. Curry just dissed NdGT with a resounding slap. That’s gonna leave a mark.