Debunked: Ian Simpson's Presentation at the 2015 Cambridge SRM Conference

Belfrey said:
Not to mention that he brought a presentation with 51 slides (plus video) to give a 15 minute talk. Rookie mistake!

Seriously, the complete lack of organization or preparation for this much-heralded presentation is almost insulting by itself... besides the fact that he's effectively telling an audience of scientists that they're either ignorant, incompetent, or complicit in a vast criminal conspiracy.
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That's why one of the questioners asked Ian if he believed that the questioner was a shill.
 
I think at this point Ian has produce so much obvious bunk that it's pointless trying to take him seriously. Unless he's prepared to retract the bunk already discussed in this thread, I think it would be a mistake for people to engage him directly - it's just a Gish Gallop, and when called on anything he says he does not understand.

If any of his claims get traction, then I'd consider addressing them - but he's just wasting time now.
 
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Trailblazer said:
So that actually is a "three-pipe aerosol delivery system"? :)
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Damn, you beat me to that one! The red arrows do displays all over the world and they actually DO admit to spraying diesel (Unlike all those YouTube vids that claim someone admits something or was caught doing something). Do you think Ian is looking in the wrong place?
 
I think it is noteworthy what was not in the presentation. That includes the "secret island" at the coordinates 0° W 0° N of whose existence Ian was so convinced about for a while.

Either the choir of people calling that nonsense became too large (probably even including fellow believers), or he just dropped the issue because he thinks his other arguments are more relevant.

That said, I can't imagine that many believers are following him on the "fake cloud names invention" road either.
 
JFDee said:
I think it is noteworthy what was not in the presentation. That includes the "secret island" at the coordinates 0° W 0° N of whose existence Ian was so convinced about for a while.

Either the choir of people calling that nonsense became too large (probably even including fellow believers), or he just dropped the issue because he thinks his other arguments are more relevant.

That said, I can't imagine that many believers are following him on the "fake cloud names invention" road either.
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It's still on his website.
 
External Quote:
On days of high moisture, they will form cloud, and basically the pattern with which these clouds emerge shows that they're not really forming naturally, they're not coming in in great big banks of cloud. What you will see is a particularly hazy sky in the morning, 10 in the morning, by lunchtime you'll see tiny little wispy bits appearing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and suddenly uniformly all over vast areas we have these little fluffy clouds


There was a time in chemland when the "little fluffy clouds" (known to us unbelievers "fair weather cumulus") were a thing of the halcyon pre-chemtrail days. The fluffy clouds were the normal clouds that chemtrails had destroyed. Now Ian is telling us that the fluffy clouds aren't natural.

This claim by Ian is out there even for chemtrail believers. Gnarly Carly is the only other person that I have seem claim that diurnal cumulus cloud formation is unnatural.
 
TWCobra said:
I didn't see any hypersonic A320s, required for the maintenance of the secret island hypothesis, either.
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When you're trying to get somebody to come in for an e-reader audit, you don't tell them about Xenu or the intergalactic psychic prisoners in their brain. You tell them the DSM is abnormalizing normality and doctors are overmedicating people. Statements some people might call misinformed, but which most won't call bat**** insane.

To continue my creationist comparison: They often agree to debate terms or limit presentations in ways that might appear to be hamstringing themselves, but are actually designed to get a foot in the door without setting off the crazy alarms.


The entry level here is a bit farther up the scale than either of those examples, but you can see the limitations, omissions, and skipovers not just in larger claims like the 000 island base or hypersonic planes but in minor points of evidence related to what he *did* cover. Everything's weak, flimsy, repeated claims of ignorance or misunderstanding. Nothing that he can too be easily attacked on, even by the "shills."

The only questioner who really seems to be able to pin him down is number 3 and you can see how unprepared he was for that level of assured aggression. He basically didn't answer questions 1 and 4, claiming ignorance of "facts" he's asserted as true to friendlier venues (if he'd tried that here, he would have been torn apart). Number 2 had a good try, but he BS'ed around until the chair took another question.
 
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yes, you have to admire his bravado in talking "techno babble" to such an audience in such a city - self confidence or maybe simple delusion of the highest order

my interest in this thread was precisely because it had Cambridge in the title - and I thought surely no bunk there (if indeed it was the Cambridge - and to my surprise it was)

why - well because I live in Cambridge - and moved my family (all 5 children!!!) here from London, precisely because education, learning and rational thought are in the very DNA of the place

to illustrate, a few years ago during a public holiday (over a Royal wedding or something) I was involved in a Street Party and part of the days amusement was a semi organised "Tug o War" between two teams (odds and evens house numbers)

when sheer physicality failed to settle the contest - in true Cambridge style it was left to the "brain"

each side was asked to provide the academic qualifications of the teams - obviously it went way past simple degrees and phd's

in the end it was settled - the odds won - two nobel prise winners to one
 
upload_2015-3-23_0-11-0.png


https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1613841978846538&id=1410029482561123

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What exactly is the Cambridge SRM conference? Is this a legitimate academic conference, or is it a pseudoscience thing?
 
Trailblazer said:
Another odd thing about Ian's claims: he claims that "diesel... or some form of fossil fuel", or alternatively smoke, is being pumped into the atmosphere in order to raise carbon dioxide levels:

[bunk]Why on Earth would they do that? Simple: 400 parts per million. Fear. It's what they're trying to do, they're trying to raise CO2​, they're pumping loads of smoke into the atmosphere.[/bunk]

This shows a complete lack of understanding of the chemistry of combustion. Carbon dioxide (CO2​) is what you get when carbon-based fuel is burnt in oxygen. The more complete the combustion, the more carbon is turned into carbon dioxide.

And carbon dioxide is INVISIBLE.

If you see black smoke, that is a sure sign of incomplete combustion. Black soot consists of unburnt carbon, and other incomplete combustion products, representing carbon that has not been turned into CO2​.

Therefore, pumping unburnt fuel or smoke into the air would be a much less efficient method of increasing carbon dioxide levels than simply burning the fuel as normal in jet engines, producing relatively pure carbon dioxide and water vapour.

It simply makes no sense, even within the parameters of his own theory.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the point of the whole thing is to pump carbon into the atmosphere wouldn't 'they' be able to more effectively, efficiently and easily accomplish this with giant furnaces on the ground?

(Though, come to think of it, that could mean the industrial revolution is part of the conspiracy! Who knew?)
 
deirdre said:
for some reason someone let Ian do a 15 minute 'lunch talk'... how this came about I don't know.
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One possibility is that the geo-engineering researchers - or at least the conference organizers - are well aware of the chemtrail 'movement' and decided to go for transparency, to avoid the impression of a closed discussion. It started at the last conference in Berlin IIRC.

It may also be that they hope that some of the assembled competence at these conferences will somehow rub off on any CT proponents in presence ...
 
JFDee said:
One possibility is that the geo-engineering researchers - or at least the conference organizers - are well aware of the chemtrail 'movement' and decided to go for transparency, to avoid the impression of a closed discussion. It started at the last conference in Berlin IIRC.

It may also be that they hope that some of the assembled competence at these conferences will somehow rub off on any CT proponents in presence ...
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I think you're on the money there. I do remember them retweeting a couple of CT'ers on the official Twitter feed, one of them was something like "Lizards will be unmasked at the Cambridge SRM conference".

I notice that another comment explaining why "black smoke" wouldn't increase CO2 has again been deleted, while at the same time Ian is complaining of his comments to some Alaskan FB page receiving the same treatment.

Ray Von
 
Santa's sidekick said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the point of the whole thing is to pump carbon into the atmosphere wouldn't 'they' be able to more effectively, efficiently and easily accomplish this with giant furnaces on the ground?

(Though, come to think of it, that could mean the industrial revolution is part of the conspiracy! Who knew?)
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The most efficient way to dump a lot of carbon into the air at once would be just to find as many large untapped coal veins as possible and light them on fire in the ground.

It's not entirely fast, those fires can burn for centuries, but it's more effective than wasting time digging all that carbon out of the ground first. It would take a few days to dig a starter shaft to the coal, after which the whole site could be abandoned. Unlike burning oil wells, burning coal mines are almost impossible to extinguish. Entire lakes have been emptied trying, and in many places it's easier to just abandon the area (examples: Centralia Pennsylvania and the Hole to Hell in Kazakhstan).
 
A little TV piece about conspiracy theorists at Cambridge will be broadcast today.

German
http://info.arte.tv/de/bittere-wahrheit-oder-volliger-blodsinn-europas-verschworungstheorien

French
http://info.arte.tv/fr/theories-du-complot-absurdite-ou-realite

There are excerpts from the program on this page, including the one about the chemtrail conspiracy theory.

Direct linkt to the Cambridge video (may go away soon), comment is in German:
http://artestras.vo.llnwd.net/v2/am...00-A_SQ_0_VOA_01772197_MP4-2200_AMM-PTWEB.mp4

Ah, and it doesn't even mention Ian Simpson and his theories ...
 
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Trailspotter said:
Ian Simpson released his short film, "well 30 minutes actually", called "Cambridge SRM Science Symposium Reportage".
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External Quote:
sadly we were not adequately prepared prior to this event.
External Quote:
People like David Keith can no longer say they have seen no hard evidence of current aerial spraying because he has now seen our smokers video. He offered no explanation.
External Quote:
Indeed many scientists say they can explain things we show them and we accept their invitation to do so, but they never follow it up, preferring to dismiss casually rather than disprove scientifically.
 
I expect the scientists think they HAVE explained things to Ian, and he's choosing to shift the goalposts - an "explaination" is not necessarily "disprove(d) scientifically".

Of course there's also no reason to do serious studies based on someone's opinoin for which a complete explaination is available.

But then I'm biased - I believe he's not interested in any actual explaination.
 
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[...]

Just because you can ask a question, does not mean it has, or indeed warrants an answer

Let my try

What colour is Tuesday?

What does a spoon feel?

Is water "happy"?
 
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Hama Neggs said:
External Quote:
People like David Keith can no longer say they have seen no hard evidence of current aerial spraying because he has now seen our smokers video. He offered no explanation.
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Is David Keith aware of the debunking of Ian's Smokers video? Anyone in contact to provide him with the details/link? Max and the like are on record claiming that David has claimed that such videos can be photo shopped. For example the various videos of aerodynamic contrails that they are claiming as evidence of "spraying". He is being ambushed by these videos without the debunking facts to challenge them. For example Ian is still claiming that these aircraft are not appearing on Flight Radar 24. It is a common theme and he is still doing it with his recent claims of "London hit by the most obvious spraying this year".
 
In Ian's video he appears to be claiming that the climate scientists, by insisting on scientific data to backup assertions, make it impossible for Ian (the royal "we") to prove their case and are dismissed because of this inability. I take that as a slam-dunk self-debunk.
 
tadaaa said:
Yep, a simple but toxic mix of self importance and delusion

Just because you can ask a question, does not mean it has, or indeed warrants an answer

Let my try

What colour is Tuesday?

What does a spoon feel?

Is water "happy"?
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"Are we being sprayed by planes?" isn't a question like that, though. It has an answer, and even deserves one. For that matter, that answer was given.

This isn't a case of the scientists deciding not to give an answer, it's a case of the asker deciding not to listen. As I said above, when facing questions, he evaded most of them, claimed ignorance of the basic claims of his own theory that he asserts as true on a daily basis. Only one questioner actually managed to pin him down, and he spent the entire time evading and trying to get another question instead. He didn't invite answers, he simply refused to engage after his stage show was finished.
 
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Hevach said:
"Are we being sprayed by planes?" isn't a question like that, though. It has an answer, and even deserves one. For that matter, that answer was given.

This isn't a case of the scientists deciding not to give an answer, it's a case of the asker deciding not to listen. As I said above, when facing questions, he evaded most of them, claimed ignorance of the basic claims of his own theory that he asserts as true on a daily basis. Only one questioner actually managed to pin him down, and he spent the entire time evading and trying to get another question instead. He didn't invite answers, he simply refused to engage after his stage show was finished.
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This is exactly why I would love to have the chance to debate one-to-one with him (or many of the other chemtrail believers). In person, where you cannot copy-and-paste YouTube links or delete the other person's comments. :)
 
TEEJ said:
Is David Keith aware of the debunking of Ian's Smokers video? Anyone in contact to provide him with the details/link? Max and the like are on record claiming that David has claimed that such videos can be photo shopped. For example the various videos of aerodynamic contrails that they are claiming as evidence of "spraying". He is being ambushed by these videos without the debunking facts to challenge them. For example Ian is still claiming that these aircraft are not appearing on Flight Radar 24. It is a common theme and he is still doing it with his recent claims of "London hit by the most obvious spraying this year".
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It would be great to supply those who, like Keith, are on the firing line, with debunking resources.
 
Hama Neggs said:
It would be great to supply those who, like Keith, are on the firing line, with debunking resources.
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I personally think it looks better if he doesn't know. Once scientists become professional debunkers we'll have even more people not believing the scientists. I think his 'innocence' makes him sound more authentic.
 
deirdre said:
I personally think it looks better if he doesn't know. Once scientists become professional debunkers we'll have even more people not believing the scientists. I think his 'innocence' makes him sound more authentic.
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That's possible, but what is wrong with having an analysis of what the "smoker" videos really show?
 
Hama Neggs said:
That's possible, but what is wrong with having an analysis of what the "smoker" videos really show?
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I just think it looks more fishy if he gets too involved. I think the only reason he is bothering to be approachable is because he has been physically threatened and he's probably worried about his family. Looking like a shill will be counter-productive to that.

my opinion anyway. from what little info on the topic I have.
 
deirdre said:
I just think it looks more fishy if he gets too involved. I think the only reason he is bothering to be approachable is because he has been physically threatened and he's probably worried about his family. Looking like a shill will be counter-productive to that.

my opinion anyway. from what little info on the topic I have.
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When it comes to "looking like a shill," I don't think anyone but the committed conspiracists would interpret it like that, and I don't think that convincing or appeasing them is a reasonable goal. But particularly when you have non-scientists showing up at events looking to have a verbal debate, I think it's vital for the scientists to be aware of the arguments they're likely to use, and be ready with explanations - not for the benefit of the "true believers," but for those observers who are undecided.

I say this having been involved in evolution vs. creationism discussions for many years before "chemtrails." Sometimes the creationist points are strange or esoteric enough that most scientists won't even know how to approach them offhand, and in a verbal debate that can make the scientists - the "authorities" - look like they haven't previously considered (or aren't even aware of) the arguments/evidence supposedly supporting the other side.
 
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