Climate McCarthyism: “Are you now or have you ever been a climate skeptic?”.
Hans von Storch reports on an email that I also received today, but held waiting on a statement from The GWPF. Since von Storch has already published the email, breaking my self-imposed embargo, I’ll add the GWPF statement when it becomes available.
(GWPF statement Added below) Update: statement from Steve McIntyre added below.
von Storch writes:
In an e-mail to GWPF, Lennart Bengtsson has declared his resignation of the advisory board of GWPF. His letter reads :
“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.”
I am reproducing this letter with permission of Lennart Bengtsson.
Source: http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.nl/2014/05/lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board.html
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Statement from the GWPF:
Lennart Bengtsson Resigns: GWPF Voices Shock and Concern at the Extent of Intolerance within the Climate Science Community
It is with great regret, and profound shock, that we have received Professor Lennart Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from his membership of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.
The Foundation, while of course respecting Professor Bengtsson’s decision, notes with deep concern the disgraceful intolerance within the climate science community which has prompted his resignation.
Professor Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from our Academic Advisory Council was sent to its chairman, Professor David Henderson. His letter and Professor Henderson’s response are attached below.
Dr Benny Peiser, Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Resigning from the GWPF
Dear Professor Henderson,
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.
With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson
Your letter of resignation
Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation: it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.
David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council
=============================================================
Statement from Steve McIntyre:
This is more shameful conduct by the climate “community”.
As a general point, it seems to me that, if climate change is as serious a problem as the climate “community” believes, then it will require large measures that need broadly based commitment from all walks of our society. Most “skeptics” are not acolytes of the Koch brothers, but people who have not thus far been convinced that the problem is as serious as represented or that the prescribed policies (wind, solar especially) provide any form of valid insurance against the risk. These are people that the climate “community” should be trying to persuade.
Begtsson’s planned participation in GWPF seemed to me to be the sort of outreach to rational skeptics that ought to be praiseworthy within the climate “community”.
Instead, the “community” has extended the fatwa. This is precisely the sort of action and attitude that can only engender and reinforce contempt for the “community” in the broader society.
======================================================
Wikipedia says:
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means “the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
This sort of witch hunt for the imagined sin of being affiliated with a climate skeptics group is about as anti-science (to use the language of our detractors) as you can get.
I keep waiting for somebody in science to have this Joseph N. Welch moment, standing up to climate bullies:
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Nothing will change in the rarefied air of climate debate unless people are allowed to speak their minds in science without such pressure. The next time somebody tells you that “science is pure”, show them this.
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ADDED: Before this event became known I had planned this post for later today, it seems better suited and relevant to include it here – Anthony
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An early rational voice in climate skepticism, Bengtsson in 1990: ‘one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect’
Guest essay by Marcel Crok
Lennart Bengtsson recently joined the Academic Council of the GWPF. This generated quite some attention on blogs and in the media. I interviewed him, but also Hans von Storch on Klimazwiebel, Axel Bojanowski had a story in Der Spiegel (English version), and there was an article in the Basler Zeitung.
Bengtsson emphasized that he has always been a “sceptic”. In the interview with me he said:
I have always been sort of a climate sceptic. I do not consider this in any way as negative but in fact as a natural attitude for a scientist. I have never been overly worried to express my opinion and have not really changed my opinion or attitude to science.
We all know that in climate discussions climate scientists are quick to say “we are all sceptics” so such a remark says little about Bengtsson’s exact viewpoints. The renowned Dutch science writer Simon Rozendaal then sent me a copy of his interview with Bengtsson published on 27 October 1990 (!) in the Dutch weekly Elsevier (for which Rozendaal still works as a science writer).
We can now confirm that Bengtsson was pretty “sceptic” in 1990. Here is the full translated Elsevier article:
A cool blanket of clouds
Climate expert Bengtsson puts the threat of the greenhouse effect in perspective
Next week, a large conference on the global climate will be held in Geneva. The most important topic of discussion: the greenhouse effect. Many hold the opinion that our planet is warming by the increase in carbon dioxide and that a climate disaster is looming. Maybe so, says Lennart Bengtsson, Europe’s most important climate scientist. Or maybe not. Bengtsson doesn’t actually know for sure. It could go either way.
Lennart Bengtsson is so far not daunted by the looming climate disaster. He frowns when looking at the tierische Ernst with which the rest of the world embraces the prediction that the planet warms due to the increase in gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). ‘It would become serious if the atmospheric CO2 concentration would decrease. Thanks to the greenhouse effect Earth is a habitable place. Were its concentration to decrease, then mean temperatures would plummet far below freezing. That really would be a catastrophe.’
The Sweed, who appears and talks like Max von Sydow, is director of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast in Reading (United Kingdom), which supports eighteen European national weather centers like Dutch KNMI with computer models and simulations. Soon he will become director of the Max Planck institute in Hamburg and thereby will be in charge of Europe’s most important greenhouse effect computer model. ‘Until now the greenhouse effect research has concentrated in the United States, but Europe is advancing.’
There is something strange about the greenhouse effect. Many scientists babble and publish about it, but few really understand its ins and outs. Most of them treat assumptions as were they facts. Suppose that it would become two degrees warmer, how much higher would the Dutch dikes have to become? Or: suppose that we want to reduce CO2 emissions and still maintain economic growth for not so strong economies of Poland, Greece, and China, how much would the emissions of the wealthy Netherlands have to decrease? For the question whether the underlying assumptions are actually correct, one has to ask climate experts like Bengtsson.
He emphasizes that the greenhouse excitement is founded in computer simulations. And that computer generated models are not complete nonsense. ‘If for example such a model starts with a globally uniform temperature, then within a few months of simulation one would start to see the tropics warming and polar regions cooling. Remove the Amazon and after some time it reappears due to the torrential tropical rains. Such general characteristics of the global climate are part of the models.’
However, the models provide insufficient insight. ‘They are too coarse. While weather predictions nowadays have grid sizes of 100 by 100 kilometer, climate models work on a 500 by 500 km grid. In addition, models have problems with clouds. They are not able to predict what effect clouds have and they cannot distinguish between high and low clouds, yet we know that this differentiation has important consequences.’ Many other important aspects are lacking. Some of those cannot be incorporated simply because they are not well understood. ‘For a large part of the emitted carbon dioxide we do not know where it stays.’
FLUFFY TUFTS
Would there be no clouds, everything would be simple. ‘With a clear sky, increasing carbon dioxide or methane would lead to a reduction of heat radiation from the earth to the atmosphere. In addition, water vapor would amplify the so-called greenhouse effect. If temperatures increase, more water evaporates and water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.’
However, clouds do exist. It is these fluffy tufts that diminish much of the commotion surrounding the climate disaster. Clouds cool because they reflect sunlight. On the ground we notice this when we’re in a shadow. At the same time clouds warm because they prevent heat radiation from directly escaping to space: ground frost nearly always occurs under cloud free conditions. The simple question as to whether clouds cool or warm the Earth was until recently unanswered, and this says a lot about the current state of meteorology.
Among climate experts the opinion that clouds cool Earth is gaining ground, Bengtsson observes. ‘There are recent satellite observations, as reported in the scientific magazine Nature, showing that clouds reduce the greenhouse effect. In particular low level clouds are efficient cooling agents.’
Theoretically, the greenhouse effect could even cause a cooling rather than a warming of Earth. ‘The cooling effect of clouds is five times as strong as the temperature increase due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2.’ There is even an amplification of this feedback. Bengtsson: ‘If it gets warmer, clouds become whiter and thereby reflect more solar radiation.’
Such feedbacks are hardly part of the computer models that predict the warming, according to Bengtsson. ‘Almost no model is capable of dealing with the behavior of clouds. The models builders claim they do, but when we redo the calculations that turns out not to be true.’
There are other problematic issues. Were climate to really warm, snow and ice would have to melt. That would result in additional warming because white surfaces reflect more sunlight. ‘This additional warming is not present.’ Maybe the largest omission in knowledge about climate are the oceans.’ In most models it is assumed that the ocean is fifty meters deep, which is an average. But there are parts of the oceans that are several kilometers deep. Those would slow any potential warming. You could hide thousand years of warming in the ocean.’
The one small meteorological detail from the enormous amount of uncertainties, ambiguities and question marks that has become better understood is that an increase of CO2 and some other gases potentially has a warming effect. And that is what politics is focusing on right now. Bengtsson: ‘What happens in the Atlantic Ocean could have bigger consequences, but nevertheless all attention is focusing on the greenhouse effect.’
GREENHOUSE MAFIA
Bengtsson believes that climate experts should not pretend to be more knowledgeable than they really are. ‘In case of the greenhouse effect there is an interaction between media, politics and science. Every group pushes the other groups. Science is under pressure because everyone wants our advice. However, we cannot give the impression that a catastrophe is imminent. The greenhouse effect is a problem that is here to stay for hundreds of years. Climate experts should have the courage to state that we are not yet sure. What is wrong with making that statement clear and loudly?’
The excitement of the last weeks has moved everything into high gear. A United Nations committee (the IPCC) has released a report at the end of August which suggests that there is a broad scientific consensus about the existence of the greenhouse effect. This already has had political ramifications in many countries. For example, halfway October hundreds of Dutch politicians, experts, civil servants and industrialists have been discussing in Rotterdam themes from the 1960s like whether and how the Netherlands could lead the way (again). And early November there will be a global conference in Geneva about the global climate.
Bengtsson thinks that the IPCC has been particularly actuated for political reasons. ‘The IPCC prediction that with a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere the temperature on Earth would rise by two degrees should be taken with a grain of salt.’
Due to the lack of understanding a thermometer remains crucial. And it is not pointing in the direction of a doomsday. ‘The temperature over the Northern Hemisphere has decreased since about 1950. In some countries the eighties were very warm, but there are countries where this is not the case. On Greenland there is little to be seen of the greenhouse effect. It has been very cold during the last couple of years.’
‘If you talk to the greenhouse mafia about these observations, they provide some answers, but those are not real. There is no proper support for the claim that the greenhouse effect should already be visible. It is sometimes stated that the Southern Hemisphere is warming. But there are so few observational sites over there that it is very difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about the temperature in the Southern Hemisphere.’
Bengtsson is not the only climate expert who thinks that much of the excitement about the greenhouse effect is undue. Many of his colleagues have been rather uneasy about what happened after they opened Pandora’s box. They have become afraid, now that politicians, camera crews, pressure groups and environmental departments worldwide have thrown themselves at the climate disaster, to openly state that what they have declared may have been a bit premature.
Bengtsson: ‘Many of us feel rather uncomfortable with much of what has been claimed about the greenhouse effect. No one had been talking about it because temperatures had been slightly on the decline during the last 30 years. Only after Jim Hansen of NASA had put the issue back on the agenda after the warm summer of 1988 has it become part of the political agenda. In itself there is no problem with that. Looking hundreds of years ahead the greenhouse effect could become a serious problem. Some policies are obviously a clever thing to do: save energy, become less dependent on oil, those are good ideas. But one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect. There are many environmental problems that are much more urgent like that of the sulphur dioxide in Eastern Europe.’
Marcel Crok operates two websites, De staat van het klimaat (The State of the Climate), and Climate Dialog, which recently had an excellent discussion on the Transient Response of Climate Sensitivity. I recommend adding it to your bookmarks – Anthony
UPDATE2: David Rose sums it up succinctly with a reference to Monty Python –
@RogerPielkeJr No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. But in climate science and policy, its successors are thriving.
— David Rose (@DavidRoseUK) May 14, 2014
Almost more of a exaggerated shunning activity. And yet we’re expected to believe that there’s “no pressure to conform” and there’s no way that all those scientists could be coerced into bleating the same chorus.
People who like to throw around accusations of conspiracy theory often seem to ignore this dynamic. Who needs a conspiracy? How messy and dangerous would that be, in this age of FOIA and hacked emails? Much simpler to establish a climate of fear and intimidation and let nature take its course.
It’s time for scientists, journalists and politicians to start talking about the future criminal charges that will be brought against those leading the AGW hoax. It needs to be put on the table.
To stop them, witch hunters need to be named and their threats exposed to the light of day. Secret threats and shunning have a chilling effect that can only be reversed by disinfecting exposure. It has to be real evidence, though, and not just accusation. Reasonable people know bullying when they see it, but they have to see it.
This is what is so disappointing about the situation climate science finds itself in.
Lennart Bengtsson could well be completely on board with the current climate concensus, but just by associating with GWPF he’s being ostracised. Awful behaviour from supposedly enlightened people.
Bengtsson has publiced in Energy and the Environment. If you read the full article you will find that he sees climate change as a huge problem, and that he is in favor of fast breeders to solve the problem.
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/aw065m7h58071411/fulltext.pdf?page=1
He is a meber of
http://www.kva.se/en/
http://www.kva.se/en/contact/Kontakt-sida/?personId=15
The energy committee is doing heavy opinion work to get new nuclear plants in Sweden.
They use climate change (low carbon) to motivate nuclear.
He sounds just like all of the old Bolsheviks who were so shocked and disappointed when Brother Stalin turned on them.
This is what the movement he has been part of has been all about since the beginning, but he willfully blinded himself to what was happening. Well, he finally got the wake-up call.
Unbelievable!
Perhaps ultimately we will all be charged, tried and convicted for the historical crime of “denialism”. It has happened with other things that weren’t crimes when they were committed but have become so in a more “enlightened” age. The motivated liberal/left is very much on the march.
It is outrageous that he is under this pressure but I do not agree with surrendering.
Reblogged this on CraigM350 and commented:
The true concensus in climate is omerta. Imagine if skeptics had hounded someone in such a disgraceful manner.
“I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”
If I were he (and I’m not) I think I’d be inclined to stick to my guns and name’n’shame those so-called scientists that exerted the pressure by publishing their statements verbatim.
Unfortunately, this is typical of the climate-science community. Pillory those who disagree with you.
I wonder how, or even if, the MSM will report this.
When any group of people behaves like this, it is a warning sign that there is something seriously wrong with the group. It is appalling but not surprising that Prof. Bengtsson has experienced this viciousness.
“Many of his colleagues have been rather uneasy about what happened after they opened Pandora’s box.”
Yes indeed. I’m sure a lot of scientists feel that way.
gzk says:
May 14, 2014 at 6:02 am
I share your emotions; however, how would one implement criminally charging scientists? Science always had a share of charlatans and crooks in its midst. These fraudsters express their opinion and you either buy it or not, so no crime committed. However, these days “you” are represented by the science funding agencies – they make decision on your behalf to spend your moneys. And seemingly, the latest trend is that these agencies support fraudsters on overwhelmingly large scale. Perhaps there is a way to hold these agencies responsible and, particularly, the individuals who make decisions to fund fraudsters. Frequently these decisions are made in contrary to the other scientists who present clear evidences of mistake or fraud.
“will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety.”
I’ve been warning of possible violence in this increasingly lunatic atmosphere for a couple of years now. I can easily see some misguided crazy deciding to take a pot shot at a climate denier in order to “save the planet.”
It’s not just climate. The intolerance from the left, and the gradual erosion of our right to free speech becomes more shocking by the day.
Sorry. This will not end well.
Have we come to the end of the Age of Reason? In this brief talk (linked in the thread about videos for school kids) Sally Baliunas describes what happened to a physician who challenged the prevailing dogma that blamed witches and sorcerers for ‘extreme’ weather events during the Little Ice Age :
If, in our supposedly ‘enlightened’ age, an established scholar who expresses a little skepticism cannot stand up to ostracism from his colleagues, imagine how difficult it is for young graduates. When science degenerates to dogma, what is left? Welcome to the new Dark Age.
/Mr Lynn
LewSkannen:
Your post at May 14, 2014 at 6:20 am says in total
Please do not think so lightly of the effects of the “pressure”.
Bengtsson wrote of the pressure
His concerns are genuine. Maintaining objective opposition to the AGW-scare requires considerable steadfastness and does have a toll including a toll on health.
AGW-scaremongers will gloat at Bengtsson “surrendering”. We need to provide him with support and understanding.
Richard
Why am I not surprised. Any form on non-approved thinking or speaking is now seized upon and pilloried savagely. The end of the Enlightment. Welcome to the Peoples Republic of Climate Science.
Global Warming / Climate Change/ Dirty weather will be an issue that will cause more damage to science and the establishment in the long run than anything. Absolutely Anything.
The trust me i’m a scientist meme will be shot by the behavior of climate scientists. They are doing science a massive disservice and need to take a real hard look at their behavior.
That kind of behavior is the tip of the ice berg. What it is doing to real science is going on under the water, so to speak. But it is proof of the thing they say does not exist – scientific bias.
Reminds me of the early 1930’s in Germany.
Also read this 2013 article by Lennart Bengtsson
Lennart Bengtsson: Global climate change and its relevance for a global energy policy.
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.ca/2013/03/lennart-bengtsson-global-climate-change.html
motvikten says:
May 14, 2014 at 6:13 am
Bengtsson has publiced in Energy and the Environment. If you read the full article you will find that he sees climate change as a huge problem,
———————————————————————————————————————————-
From the multi-science PDF given: “The balance of the evidence suggests that the burning of these substances is having a direct effect on global temperatures and thus, in turn, in changes to the global climate, the extent of which are difficult to predict.”
This statement hardly sounds like he considers climate change a “huge” problem.
L. E. Joiner says:
May 14, 2014 at 6:38 am
Have we come to the end of the Age of Reason? In this brief talk (linked in the thread about videos for school kids) Sally Baliunas describes what happened to a physician who challenged the prevailing dogma that blamed witches and sorcerers for ‘extreme’ weather events during the Little Ice Age :
=====================================================
That video story of the Little Ice Age with the mild winters, severe winters, cold summers, summers with heat waves, floods, droughts and “unprecedented” extreme weather would be quite helpful for much needed perspective if reproduced with a little better delivery. That and it reminds me of a point that has been made on these pages before that extreme events may be more highly correlated with climate cooling.
It would be right and proper for Prof. Bengtsson to publish here all the statements made by the so called scientific community that have driven him to this decision. They need to be exposed. But if the prof. does not want to name names, he could publish without attribution, the perpetrators would then see their disgusting behaviour placed on record.
Editors must have been aware for a long time that this shunning was inline for them if they published contrarian material. This could account in part for the paucity of explicitly contrarian peer-reviewed material.
I’m with those who say ‘name and shame’ – or at least to ‘out’ the threats and the manner in which they were received/perceived. This type of treatment is intolerable and must be stopped.
PS: This pressure also partly accounts for the genuflections toward orthodoxy that implicitly contrarian authors make.
Richard Feynman said it so well–all scientists are skeptics—it is important to doubt in order to test concepts and look in new directions.
Which, in effect says, if you’re not a skeptic, you’re not a scientist.
But this is hardly McCarthyism–no governmental inquisition is involved. It’s just groupthink-plus-PC-ism.
So, we are supposed to sympathize with a coward incapable of living with the consequences of his personal choices?
In the distance I hear the tribal drums and the chant getting louder.
Andrew
“When science degenerates to dogma, what is left? Welcome to the new Dark Age.”
I respectfully disagree. Science did not degenerate and no new dark age is coming. Science, especially applied science, is progressing as it did before. What we have though is seizing of science funding and, therefore, control by the government agencies. Prior to WWII most of the best science was done by scientists funded privately or by scientists who had a “day jobs” working in patent agencies, departments of commerce, navy, etc. After WWII science became “organized” and funding was taken over by governments. The scientific “societies” became extra powerful and the peer-reviews became politicized. The higher education also grew producing more and more “scientists” for this machine. (Like talent can be mass produced in these supersized XSUs). All as predicted by Leo Szilard – see in his book “The Voice of the Dolphins” a short story “The Mark Gable Foundation”. The good news is that in this strange environment there are few real scientists, and only few are needed for scientific progress anyways.
The picture should be that of Stalin. He invented political correctness but with the Man of Steel the result was your execution. McCarthy ferreted out commies like Alger Hiss.
Told ya so! This is why even mildly sceptical Warmists keep producing Climastrological, pal reviewed garbage. There is too much money FUNDING at stake and the Great Global Warming Project is too big to fail. But it’s failing alright and the jig will be over sooner or later.
They can pressurize all they want, the truth can’t be pressured forever. It feels no pain, it does not require funding, it does not have a family, it does not care.
oh yeah…..we’re really advanced
Shaman/witchdoctors made their claim to fame by promising to control the weather….
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:07 am
But this is hardly McCarthyism–no governmental inquisition is involved. It’s just groupthink-plus-PC-ism.
Dear Roger, what do you think the chances of any skeptical (read that real) scientist is allowed to apply for grant money let alone get any from say the $1 billion Obama is offering? Do you truly think any of that money is available to those who do not toe the line? Me thinks you do not really have a grasp of the situation here. The grant money IS GOVERNMENT. But hey, they are not coming for you…….yet.
‘one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect’
This statement can be understood two contradictory ways:
a) It is possible to oversell the greenhouse effect, but one mustn’t do so. It is better to stay with the evidence.
b) Sell, Sell, Sell the greenhouse effect without limit. Caveat Emptor.
Who is Professor Lennart Bengtsson? A real ace. Michael Mann is a shrimp next to this pro. No wonder he had to be stopped.
Future generations will learn from episodes like this. This is what happens when authority takes over from genuine scientific enquiry – it becomes corrupted. It is now more akin to Lysenkoism.
It would be most interesting to have names of the McCarthyites who have gutted the principles of scientific reason. Those names belong on a Wall of Shame. And no, this suggestion is not just more of the same. It is in support of freedom and openness vs the effort to contain and manage the scope of the conversation by the neo-McCarthyites.
Come senators and congressmen please heed the call.
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled.
There’s a battle outside and it is raging.
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.
For the times they are a changing. (Bob Dylan)
The situation that has been highlighted by the Lennart Bengtsson and GWPF is similar to that encountered by any person in the UK employed by a government department, or in the private or charity sector which depends largely on government funding in the 2010s. The recruitment procedure is sure to contain something like “We expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment to Greenpeace Edict 94/42. Appointments are subject to acceptance by our HR Director, Dr J McCarthy.” Anyone who gets past this hurdle and the realises 94/42 is a fraud or inhumane will either keep quiet and handle the cognitive dissonance as best they can, or speak out and attract the wrath (real, simulated or orchestrated) of their colleagues.
UK state education is a particularly problematic area at the moment, because their are still some hardline warmists in a position of power in schools who will do their utmost to harass sceptics, despite the attempts by Gove to stop the bullying of sceptics. http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/08/Teachers-Acting-Illegally-Over-Climate-Change
If temperatures increase, more water evaporates and water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.’
would the desert be hotter or colder with more moisture in the daytime?
I predict a film will be made c2070 ‘Professor Bengtsson’s list’
I wonder how much of the hostility will die down just because he has resigned from the GWPF. He has not yet publicly recanted the stated views on climate which led him to affiliate with the GWPF. So it could turn out that most of the bad things will continue to happen to him, but he will not have the satisfaction of having been true to his principles. In other words, much of the hostility may not have been directed at affiliation with GWPF per se, but with heretical views evidenced by affiliation with GWPF, and now the true believers have been alerted to these heretical views, they may not ease up on him (without a public recantation, confession of his appalling thoughtcrimes, and display of abasement before the high priests of “science”).
To describe this as “McCarthyism” is a bit unfair to Tail Gunner Joe. McCarthy had lists of names of people who were security risks because they were suspected of being controlled by Soviet espionage, and yet were allowed to remain in their sensitive government jobs. McCarthy didn’t go after people because of political opinions they had expressed; he went after authorities who had failed to investigate or prosecute in cases where government employees had been identified as security risks.
I would not compare this to McCarthy, it turns out that when the USSR collapsed and KGB records became public, he was right in many respects.
This behavior is much more like Mao’s Red Guards.
From: Three Days of the Condor
This is a very ugly episode in science politics Lennart Bengtsson finds himself in. As much as he wants to turn back the clock and return to his past relationships, I think he will find he has not much future there.
Greenhouse Inquisition at work… too much money & interests invested in the new religion to let naive scientific skepticism free…
Stephen Rasey says: May 14, 2014 at 7:25 am But one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect.
I wondered if in translation a sense of ‘should not’ became “cannot’.
Here is an imaginary letter (adjusted slightly from the resignation letter) from someone who studies butterflies. Imagine if all scientific research was subjected to such abuse? Would humans progress much for the rest of this century? Soon we will be believing in witches, voodoo and the pink flying elephant. Sad.
Climate obsessed people are corrupted by their obsession.
Ward, Romm, Mann, Gore, Jones, Briffa, Lewandowsky, are members of a shameful and long list of examples of this.
Climategate Email 4872.txt
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4872.txt
I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. We don’t have a lot of proxies that come right up to date and those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies ) some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter.
For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming is so clear in the summer responsive data. believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.
Where did the pressure come from? Here’s a hint.
Climategate Email 0700.txt
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0700.txt
Communications between scientists and politicians are becoming more and more important and the scientific population must be large enough to be visible. D Raynaud commented that the work by Stocker in 1997 on the gross rate of emissions and the change in thermo circulation is important to conferences such as Kyoto. K Hutter added that politicians accused scientists of a high signal to noise ratio; scientists must make sure that they come up with stronger signals. The time-frame for science and politics is very different; politicians need instant information, but scientific results take a long time
A Ghazi pointed out that the funding is set once the politicians want the research to be done. We need to make them understand that we do not understand the climate system.
Here’s Climate McCarthy in color:
http://s6.postimg.org/kdr0qt181/Climate_Mc_Carthyism.jpg
Here is a link to the full article by Bengtsson in Energy & Environment.
http://www.issibern.ch/~bengtsson/pdf/global_energy_problem.pdf
In 7:
“This combined with the need to raise energy production is expected to increase the concentration of carbon dioxide to approach a value twice that of the pre-industrial time towards the middle of the century. Such a high value is likely to give rise to irreversible changes in the climate of the Earth.
It seems that two major actions are needed and should be implemented with highest priority. These are carbon dioxide sequestration and increased investment in nuclear power, preferably using fast breeder reactors”
The GWPF must now vet candidates more carefully. Only those with the moral courage to resist the attacks should be considered.
As for Dr Bengtsson, he needs our support. Richard Courtney said it very well:
AGW-scaremongers will gloat at Bengtsson “surrendering”. We need to provide him with support and understanding.
I feel very sorry for Professor Bengtsson. Sorry for what he has had to endure from his so-called ‘colleagues’ in the scientific community and sorry that the entire CAGW phenomenon continues to count individuals such as himself as ‘heretics’ worthy only of the most severe social and scientific ostracisation. This is a pitiful state of affairs. Shame on the scientific community. How was this situation permitted to arise? Just when did we all decide that climate science was henceforth to exist only in a state of absolute, abject fear? Fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of going ‘off-message’, fear of any expression of simple scientific dissent?
This is a truly depressing incident. I extend my sympathy to Professor Bengtsson. Nobody should have to face such despicable, politically motivated behaviour from their professional peers.
Joe McCarthy undoubtedly abused his power for selfish purposes but he was also right regarding the insidious nature of leftist propaganda. The results are what we are seeing today. The left has seen to it that even conservatives help remind everyone how attacking the left can result in a tag such as “McCarthyism” being placed upon them. McCarthyism is a leftist term to its core. Calling someone a communist is, 60 years later, still something feared by all, even when it is 100% accurate.
hunter says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:54 am
Climate obsessed people are corrupted by their obsession.
Ward, Romm, Mann, Gore, Joones, Briffa, Lewandowsky, are members of a shameful and long list of examples of this.
————–
And all the colleagues, universities, journalists, academic societies and politicians who stayed silent while it happened. That I should live to see such colassal waste in my time.
All cults must expunge anyone who does not Truly Believe… He is now a Climate Heretic for having associated with harlots and “evil doers”… He will not be accepted back to be ‘one with the body’ until such time as he publicly states fealty to The One True Faith…
Sadly, none of this has anything to do with science… but it does point up that science is now just another political wing of government to be used and abused for power. And that the belief in Global Warming has more to do with religion and power politics than anything real.
It will be very interesting to see which respectable Journals pick up on this story and run an expose on the bastards who have intimidated the Professor .It really is about time that some decent coverage was done on the slimy bastards who control the entire CAGW fraud.
Lennart Bengtsson undoubtedly has tenure at his University post and we shall see how that goes. I would not be surprised that he resigns there too.
I feel a “J’accuse” moment coming on , in no way should this be allowed to disappear in to the annals of tribal climate conflict, this man could and should be a flag bearer for rationality and good science.
Let every leader know that this has happened, how it has happened and why it has happened. Let every single alarmist hang his head in shame . This is beyond belief.
Posted at Bishop Hill:
Here’s a paper I’d like to see:
“Suppression of contrary views in climate science – an analysis of current practices, perpetrators and persistence.”
Curry, Bengtsson, Lindzen, Spencer, Pielke Jr., et al.
Crowd sourcing of funding should not be a problem.
I am in no doubt at all that MOST climate scientists are closet sceptics. The above resignation explains why.
I’ll disagree w/the Title. “McCarthyism” is a history-revised socialist construct, repeated so often that most just accept it. Now, after ~50 yrs, what he was pointing out has come to fruition — socialism/marxism infiltrated in academia, Hollywood, the media, unions, NGOs and finally the presidency. A Manchurian Candidate indeed.
McCarthy was right despite the fabricated history.
An explicit early warning of it all was given in THE GREENING-The Environmentalists’ Drive for Global Power, by Larry Abraham with Franklin Sanders, Double A Publications Inc, Phoenix, Arizona, 1994. !!. Meanwhile Eco-cracy has long become just one of many Meme-ocracies that need serious weeding – more at http://t.co/YPiqS40xaL
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win…”
The CAGW leftist loonies are in their final death throes. Kleptocrats and climate alchemist can only obfuscate and twist reality for so long before the overwhelming empirical evidence against this silly and disconfirmed hypothesis becomes so compelling, the entire scandal collapses under the weight of the bloody obvious and giggles of laughter.
I feel deep regret for the men of scientific integrity that are being sacrificed on the alter of political agendas, as lesser men’s quest for grant funding and notoriety supersedes the search for scientific truth.
This CAGW scam has become a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing….
beng says: McCarthy was right despite the fabricated history.
With respect, other people who paid more attention to detail were effective anti-Communists. McCarthy was a late-arriving ignoramus who was never correct in his allegations.
Classic example of “Shoot the Messenger”.
Welcome to another era of Fascism in Science.
It Is Worse than we thought!
“world-wide pressure”
Live by “Global”, die by “Global”.
Andrew
As much as I respect Steve Mc, I’m shocked that he would make a crack about the Kochs. The Kochs are the victims of an extraordinary campaign of lies, slander and character assassination by the Left in the US. Just as Steve Mc has been the victim of the same kind of campaign — by the same people and for the same reasons.
Global warming is all about left-wing politics. Period. All politics, all the time. And as with all political issues, anyone and everyone who looks to be in a position to harm the left and its favored policies must be silenced and by whatever means it takes. Steve is a victim. The Kochs are victims. Same left wing activists using the same tactics for the same purposes. That Steve, a victim himself, would allow the campaign against the Kochs to influence his own thinking shows just how effective these vile campaigns are.
Note — I posted to this effect at Climate Audit, but my comments are now in moderation purgatory
The face of modern day climate science. If you were young would you enter this field? Don’t even think about it. It is corrupted and corrosive and will corrupt you.
Skeptical books have been burned
A baby was shot in the chest due to fear of global warming
The death penalty has been suggested for sceptics
More nastiness proposed for sceptics
***
I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
***
And how ironic is it that the socialist culture of academia has done the “transforming” and that was exactly what McCarthy was warning about.
Dear Anthony, you have snipped me a number of times for my insulting remarks about certain global warmists. Well, you were right. No insult I could conjure up, however profane, equals the self insult the warmist fanatics have done to themselves with this disgraceful episode
A commenter above is correct, Professor Bengtsson’s recantation will not stop the pressure. Fanatics and zealots are never satisfied. No, even public, recantation will suffice. How sad.
Now that he has resigned, why should anyone expect things to return to the way they were before he signed on? Is he now back on the team with no hard feelings and no repercussions? Maybe he will just retire and go play golf.
He should post any e-mails he has received and whatever else he can remember from phone calls and so on; remove the names for now but save for historic purposes.
__________
Just read David Ramsay Steele’s comment at 7:35 – 1st part; I paused in my reading just before this thinking this would be noted by many, but no one did up to then.
You would think an overwhelming consensus like 97% would yearn for skepticism. I can imagine a scientist thinking highly of himself and publicly challenging Newton to a debate on his ideas of gravity and motion. Would Newton engage in backroom politics to discredit such a person, or would he let the skeptic speak and then grind him into the ground with his own words? I can’t imagine Mann debating Bengtsson on the role of clouds in climate computer models.
I guess there is no place for a “rational skeptic” in this debate anymore.
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:07 am
But this is hardly McCarthyism–no governmental inquisition is involved. It’s just groupthink-plus-PC-ism.
==========================================================
/pedant, you forgot to add. You seem to ignore the crap that governments various have also thrown at skeptics. James Gordon Brown, Crasher of Economies, Thrower of Nokias, pronounced us to be Flat Earthers.
Just the term HUAC sets me off. The name was (and is) The House Committee on Un-American Activities – HUAC was a vastly successful rewrite of the name by the media – done I am sure out of concern for our liberties.
Now that we have avowedly marxist members of the various cabinet posts in the Federal Government, how many of you still stick to the belief that more is truly better where the Government is concerned?
Expose yourself.
He said he was worried for his own health and safety. That’s good enough reason to resign. It’s his choice not yours.
A good day for the Climate Inquisition, but a bad one for science.
Just another instance of why no one should confuse climate science with real science.
beng – McCarthy was indeed right. McCarthy may have been the greatest American ever. We must pray hard for more McCarthys.
Steve from Rockwood:
Historical revisionism seems to be popular in this thread. Mostly, it consists of people trying to pretend McCarthyism was somehow right and/or justifiable. But at May 14, 2014 at 8:52 am you make a point about a British historical character when you ask
Newton would have resorted to nefarious behaviour, and he did.
He was the successor to Hooke as President of the Royal Society (RS). Upon taking office Newton destroyed all Hooke’s papers which were stored with the RS. And Newton’s comment that his scientific advances were because he “stood on the shoulders of giants” was aimed at the short-stature Hooke.
Denigration of colleagues by scientists is not new.
Richard
The intellectual fascism that is happening is the biggest threat to freedom I have witnessed in my 61 years. It is a well conceived plan that is being directed at the highest levels of the global elite.
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
– David Rockefeller
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991
What has happened to Bengtsson is sad and quite frightening. I’d like to believe it triggers a wave of revulsion in the wider populace but I think instead it is proof that the “fix is in.” Such a rapid and apparently widespread application of intolerable pressure points toward a coordinated response, directed by a decisionmaking entity with a command-and-control infrastructure that resulted in a significant number (dozens?) of peers, funding sources, customers (journal editors, boards) not just giving him a fishy look at the faculty tea, but aggressively threatening him. That’s not a flash mob; that’s enemy action.
When an adversary reveals its intention and capability so openly, it suggests either confidence or desperation. I am afraid I have to favor the former interpretation.
Please disabuse me of this pessimism.
When you sleep with wolves expect to be bitten.
The GWPF could have rejected his letter of resignation and posted a very strong message to its members. It apparently doesn’t stand for much and is emblematic of the Problem.
GWPF members and their board should be ashamed of their current stance.
I think some of the witch hunters have convinced themselves that “thermal runaway of the circuit” is actually possible if not probable in the case of Gaia. It drives them to madness and thence into bullying and persecution of those who are not like minded.
Ivan says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:13 am
What a despicable comment.
Ivan, you made the personal choice of posting that comment. I don’t see why anyone would sympathize with you if the general WUWT population elected to crucify you on this thread for making it. You might be lucky, I’m not at all sure most of the commenters have a taste for that sort of thing.
Ego needs to drive truth underground. There is nothing so dangerous as an underground. The gulags were full of the best artists and scientists.
I guess this story was “unexpected”, because I don’t see a lot of Warmer Trolls yet. 😉
Andrew
I am sure a great many of the objections to Lennart Bengtsson were emailed from [star] dot edu addresses. I can equally state that every single one of those organizations have codes of professional conduct and that in the vast majority those codes have been violated by this behavior.
Im not surprised. He isn’t the first to be pressured and ostracized for daring to question the new religion
“Kev-in-Uk on May 14, 2014 at 7:03 am
I’m with those who say ‘name and shame’ – or at least to ‘out’ the threats and the manner in which they were received/perceived. This type of treatment is intolerable and must be stopped.”
Totally agree. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Indeed, these creatures cannot abide exposure. And since I believe (do read Eric Hoffer’s classic “The True Believer”!) that Bengtsson will not be readmitted to the fold of the faithful sheep, he has little to lose by exposing those who pressured him to resign. At a minimum, he should post verbatim the threats and opprobrium he received, with a “non-attribution” that may allow others to expose these thugs and cowards.
History, like science, must reflect the truth.
The McCarthyism meme is a good example of our brains on propaganda.
(my bold)
http://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-Americas/dp/1400081068
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/mainstream-media-try-to-burn-a-book/
I haven’t read “Blacklisted by History,” but I have read From Major Jordan’s Diaries
Wherein we learn that Harry Hopkins, and others, conspired to give the Soviets not only our nuclear secrets, but even treasury plates for U.S. currency.
As I’ve said here before: Read it, and weep.
–sp
Idiot. If all the skeptics surrender, we won’t have anyone in their ranks to restrain them from ludicrousity. If they no one stands to oppose them, their views will dominate. We’ll be the laughing stock of future generations who practice science. They’ll say we practiced climate science with the the equivalent of “rolling the bones” but with incomplete digital models.
In the United States, it is a federal crime to oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person that impacts his Constitutional rights, such as Freedom of Association.
See Title 18, US Code Section 241, which states in pertinent part:
“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same. . .”
Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment for up to 10 years, or both.
dbstealey says:
May 14, 2014 at 8:09 am
The GWPF must now vet candidates more carefully. Only those with the moral courage to resist the attacks should be considered.
As for Dr Bengtsson, he needs our support. Richard Courtney said it very well:
AGW-scaremongers will gloat at Bengtsson “surrendering”. We need to provide him with support and understanding.
_____________________
Worth repeating.
If you do not understand the language of the vikings, use Google translate.
The link below is the first time I noticed Bengtsson in Swedish opinion.
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2011/12/17/moren-har-gjort-sin-plikt-moren-kan-ga/
Since then I have kept an eye on him and the people and organisations he mingle with.
Read what I quoted above from his article in Energy & Environment. (2006)
First, before 2000 his was “skeptic”
Then, for 10 years he was “alarmist” (He is responsible for Sweden’s aggressive official view)
Now he is said to be “skeptic”
To me he as an opportunist and propagandist (nuclear is low carbon), and I have no sympathy for him.
John Daly, McIntyre, McKitrick, Pielke Sr are the heroes. Bengtsson does not fit into there team!
Bad Andrew says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:09 am
I guess this story was “unexpected”, because I don’t see a lot of Warmer Trolls yet. 😉
Andrew
______________________
Dollar to a donut that they are watching, but silent. They know full well that this behavior is reprehensible, yet it furthers their cause, so they let it slip past without comment.
Oldseadog wrote: “I wonder how, or even if, the MSM will report this.”
They will say that Bengtsson is a racist. That is all.
and I wish I was joking – I’m not.
Why do I keep thinking about a:
Klimat Konsensus Komunity ?
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:03 am
Steve from Rockwood:
Historical revisionism seems to be popular in this thread. Mostly, it consists of people trying to pretend McCarthyism was somehow right and/or justifiable.
________________________
I’m sure you must be right, Richard. After all, McCarthyism is a purely leftist propaganda description which ignores the work of Sen. McCarthy as he unmasked some number of Communists working in secret within the US government.
~sigh~
Does it matter what the truth was about Sen. McCarthy, does it have some relevance to the matter at hand?
What was the last time popular Dr. Mann has been forced to resign? Shame on the Big Oil.
I was drawing an important distinction. Bengtsson isn’t being hauled before a governmental star chamber because of his associations. That is what “McCarthyism” implies. The term used in the headline should have been “heresy-hounding”–these are spontaneous, social, bottom-up events. Actually, he is probably seen by his critics as worse than a heretic–as an apostate from the peer-reviewed club, for having gone over to the non-peer-reviewed demonic-d*n*alist GWPF.
Of course I am aware that the prevailing orthodoxy affects the governmental funding of research, as I have occasionally commented here. And it affects what editors and authors say too. Just a few comments above that one I had posted these:
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:01 am
Editors must have been aware for a long time that this shunning was inline for them if they published contrarian material. This could account in part for the paucity of explicitly contrarian peer-reviewed material.
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:04 am
PS: This pressure also partly accounts for the genuflections toward orthodoxy that implicitly contrarian authors make.
And so did Obama recently, in effect. But those were just words addressed against an entire bloc of political enemies. No governmental bigshot has been harassing Bengtsson by name, in the way that political leaders in the Fifties, and for decades earlier (and later) had been berating domestic communists as a group and individually of aiding communism or being communists–even though in many cases these guilt-by-association charges were flimsy (unlike the association Bengtsson has made with the GWPF). And even THAT was a lesser amount of pressure than being issued a congressional demand to appear and be grilled. (What’s the term for such demands? It’s not subpoena, but something similar.) I.e., “no governmental inquisition is involved.” Let’s save the McCarthyism accusation for later, when it might really be needed, and not dilute its effectiveness by crying wolf now.
Professor Lennart Bengtsson – perhaps the first victim of the true Climate Holocaust.
Now let THEM deny it.
Dear Friends in Skepticism,
To add to Mark Bofill’s comment, I would point out that the truth of what happened during Sen. McCarthy’s time is not relevant to the fact that the term “McCarthyism” has come to mean something in our culture. There was nothing wrong with our host using it in the post title to emphasize his point. The term is not just a propaganda tool of the so-called left in America today, but is used (or misused) by most people to mean something.
Let us keep our eye on the ball here. The scientist in question was given the full hate treatment that can only be summed up by very few terms … and “McCarthyism” is one of them.
Disclaimer: as a full on libertarian (Rothbardian type) I can see misuse of politics and political terms on both sides of the political division in modern America.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:03 am
You’re right about Newton, but wrong about “McCarthyism”. McCarthy himself was wrong to go after the Army (although it did include in its ranks Communist traitors) in the manner he did, but pro-Communists tried to tar all anti-Communists with the brush of McCarthy, who was actually rather late to the fight. The fact is that the FDR Administration was riddled with Communists (most but not all of whom were traitors), many of whom he brought with him from New York, including his wife’s young boyfriends & girlfriends. Truman himself said that if he could, he’d hang the traitor Alger Hiss, but didn’t because he didn’t want to give the Republicans more ammo.
A conservative foundation should get on this case and work their way along FOI requests to determine who, if anyone, organized this outrage. Start with Bengtsson himself (so he can turn over the emails without violating any misguided expectations of confidentiality) and then follow the message trail. The timeframe is very narrow so quick results should be possible.
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:55 am
======
I agree, this is more about “Crazy-Town Villagers” than crazy political beliefs.
Religious extremists do not like apostates…
From Wikipedia: “Certain churches may in certain circumstances excommunicate the apostate, while some religious scriptures demand the death penalty for apostates.”
I bet Judith Curry (motto: “What, me curry?”) has some interesting tales she could tell about pressure and its effects on relationships and careers. I’m looking forward to what she’ll say about this event.
If she went over to an explicitly contrarian organization, she’d surely draw worse effects, similar to the brickbats hurled at Bengttson. Perhaps this explains her lukewarmer stance.
Likely this pressure explains why few climatologists have rallied to her standard.
Bengtsson is a conflicted individual and I am sorry to see him knuckle under to mass hysteria. What he needs is to contemplate the basics and realize that these “colleagues” of his do not deserve the name of scientists but are just technicians working on their assigned part of the greenhouse warming fallacy. And a fallacy it is because no one, not even Hansen, has experimentally observed the greenhouse effect. He announced the detection of the greenhouse effect to the Senate in 1988 but he was wrong. What he showed to them was a rising temperature curve, from a low in 1880 to a high in 1988. That high peak, he told them, was the warmest temperature within the last 100 years. There was only a one percent chance that this could happen by accident. Hence, there was a 99 percent probability that this warming was greenhouse warming, thus proving that the greenhouse effect is real. But if you check the Congressional Record you find that he includes a manifestly non-greenhouse warming, from 1910 to 1940, as part of his 100 year greenhouse warming. Radiation laws of physics dictate that in order to start an enhanced greenhouse warming you must simultaneously increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This did not happen in 1910, ruling out greenhouse warming as its cause. The same conclusion follows from its sudden cessation in 1940 because greenhouse warming cannot be stopped without removing the absorbing molecules from the air. It follows that this particular warming period must be subtracted from Hansen’s claimed 100 year greenhouse warming. And more than half of the total warming for the entire twentieth century goes out with it. What is left of his warming after this amputation is a see-saw temperature curve of 25 years of cooling that is followed by 23 years of warming. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this will never prove the existence of the greenhouse effect. It follows that Hansen’s claim of having observed the greenhouse effect is simply false. But nobody has checked his science and he has been able to get away with this fiction for the last 24 years. As a result we now have the IPCC built up upon the belief that anthropogenic greenhouse warming caused by carbon dioxide from humans is warming up the world. But since Hansen did not observe the greenhouse effect, and no one else did either, this belief must now be considered pseudo-science. They rely upon the Arrhenius hypothesis that adding carbon dioxide to air warms the atmosphere by absorbing outgoing longwave radiation. But now we find that even this is not true because we have not had any warming for 17 years while carbon dioxide keeps increasing. This by itself is enough to prove Arrhenius wrong. But more direct evidence is available from Ferenc Miskolczi. He used NOAA weather balloon database going back to 1948 to observe the absorption of IR over time. And found that absorption was constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time went up by 21.6 percent. This is sufficient to prove the absence of the greenhouse effect and take the feet right out from under the anthropogenic global warming theory. And that makes the AGW into a pseudo-scientific fantasy. But how do we then reconcile all this with the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and absorbs energy? The answer comes from the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT). It differs from the Arrhenius version in that it applies to the more general case where several greenhouse gases simultaneously absorb in the infrared. In such a case an optimum absorption window exists that the gases present jointly maintain. In the earth atmosphere the gases that count are carbon dioxide and water vapor. Their joint optimum absorption window has an optical thickness of 1.87, calculated from first principles by Miskolczi. It corresponds to a transmittance of 15 percent or absorbance of 85 percent in the IR. When you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it starts to absorb, just as the Arrhenius theory says. But this will,increase the optical thickness and as soon as it happens, water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. This, and not the missing heat hiding in the ocean bottom, is why we have the warming pause today. It is completely parallel to the absence of warming for 61 years that Miskolczi found in the NOAA historic database. Note the contrast with IPCC. Their calculated temperature rise from carbon dioxide alone was not threatening enough so they added positive water vapor feedback to make it more dangerous. As a result, more than half, and possibly two-thirds, of the “greenhouse” warming they report is caused by nothing more exotic than water vapor. For Miskolczi on the other hand water vapor feedback is negative and its condensation prevents rather than increases greenhouse warming. This explains the current lack of warming but there was warming before the pause started. We have to conclude that any and all previous warming claimed to have been greenhouse warming is simply natural warming, misidentified by over-eager “scientists” anxious to prove the existence of the greenhouse effect. And these are the basics that Bengtsson should consider instead of yielding to a McCarthyist mob. There is still much detail to add to this and he might find it stimulating to get involved with that.
GOOD — FOR — YOU, Dr. Bengtsson. You did not resign because you wanted to — you were FORCED into resigning. A choice between either: ruining one’s health OR continuing in a largely impotent role on a board is no real choice at all.
Dr. Bengtsson has NOT GIVEN UP THE FIGHT FOR TRUTH, folks.
He has chosen to live to fight another day (and way). This is called “wisdom.”
***********************************************************************
Re: Stephen Rasey says: May 14, 2014 at 7:25 am
“‘one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect'”
Reading the document as a whole and
given Dr. Bengtsson’s clearly expressed position on the issue,
the logical conclusion is that he meant to say:
“One {must not} oversell the {conjectured} greenhouse effect {of CO2}.”
***************************************************
Finally….
Dear Dr. Bengtsson,
Pay no heed to those whose callousness and small mindedness allowed them to harshly criticize you above. You just walked away from one of your highest hopes and dreams. The anguish in your voice has not gone unnoticed. In the days to come, you will be in the hearts and prayers of many. You are not alone.
With admiration and prayers,
Janice
…. and a song:
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” — Frank Sinatra
Wipe away those tears and look up, dear Dr. Bengtsson. Pull back those shoulders, lift that chin, and, if you can, smile (like Frankie boy above).
TRUTH HAS WON!
The enemy is fighting a battle of attrition — they are on the run! And we will keep them there, on the farthest frontiers, screaming their nonsense for no one to listen to.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa!
#(:))
I’m not surprised.
“AGW Climate Alarmism”, and, from a broader viewpoint “leftist morality norms of all kinds of Political Correctness items”, have become the status of officially approved and more and more totalitarian ideologies in western societies; quite similar to “Communism” and “Fascism” in the 20th Century in some regions of the world…
Of course, there are no concentration camps or gulag systems for climate skeptics yet, but the atmosphere of intolerance and furious hate against dissidents of the official doctrine is pretty comparable already.
For instance: in Germany or Switzerland it is quite impossible to get a job as a science teacher in public schools, or as research scientist in public funded institutions if you are an openly declared climate skeptic, no matter how well skilled you are otherwise; and I know this by personal experience. Whatever next?
Well, in about 20 years, when climate reality will have proved the present “climate fascism” to be wrong, all these intolerant witch-hunters and storm troopers of today will just say “sorry, but we had only good intentions”…
A few more years of global cooling and the militant attitude of the AGW crowd will change dramatically. There will be much back peddling, but there are so many articles built on the foundation of bad science that it will damage the credibility of many of those individuals, perhaps for the remainder of their career. Especially if a cooling world causes food shortages in the near future.
William Connolley seems to think it’s funny. His response is amazing even though I’ve been aware of him for years.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/05/14/ha-ha-lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board-of-gwpf/
Gentle Tramp-
The problem is the deliberate mind arson via K-12 education ‘reforms’ coupled to higher ed shifts mandated by the UN’s Social Dimensions language in the Bologna Process. In order not to be caught out on the deceit surrounding AGW, we are extinguishing needed resources all these politicians, NGO and public sector bureaucrats simply assume will still exist to pay their pensions.
I have been working in recent days back in the 70s when what is now AGW was still known as the “global fairness revolution” and the only mention of climate was to call weather the world’s first indisputedly global phenomenon. Yes, that is going to be the ticket of a much better PR campaign for global redistribution than “Gimme.” It is interesting though that even back then everyone agreed that the key was to shift away from factual knowledge and the Newton-Cartesian view of science and to make new value and belief systems the point of all ed.
They have succeeded well even if few recognize the source. Must not then have respected dissenters effectively blowing the whistle on the scam when this “Fifth Try” at a a New International World Order believes it finally has the metaphorical wind behind its back. Whatever the actual weather.
LT says:
May 14, 2014 at 10:14 am
IMO impinging reality alone won’t end the madness. CACA advocates will make yet more excuses.
Only cutting off funding & redirecting it toward valid science will. You get what you pay for. Right now regimes are financing & promoting fraud on a global scale. Australia & Canada are leading the push back. If the US elects a GOP senate this year & president in 2016, there might be hope for a return to real science, but it will depend upon who be elected, even from among Republicans. They’re not all skeptics.
Mark Bofill:
At May 14, 2014 at 9:49 am you ask the important rhetorical question
Of course you are right: the history of McCarthyism is a distraction from “the matter at hand”.
My comment was intended to use Newton as example to show that the mistreatment of colleagues by scientists is not a new phenomenon. And I made the error of using the discussion of McCarthy as a link to that: obviously, I should have recognised that the link could not work here.
Richard
The real Witch Hunts occurred during the LIA, when 1000s of innocents were burnt at the stake.
Before jumping on board, I’d like to see some actual evidence supporting Lennart Bengtsson’s various claims. You know… the way one might demand supporting evidence if someone from the “other side” made similar allegations, before coming to any conclusions.
Like this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/04/journal-takes-lewandowsky-and-his-supporters-to-task-over-threats-over-retracted-recursive-fury-paper/
or this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/breaking-death-threats-against-australian-climate-scientists-turn-out-to-be-nothing-but-hype-and-hot-air/
Failure to apply the same degree of skepticism to claims from one’s own “side” is the hallmark of confirmation bias.
From these quotes it would appear that Prof. Bengtsson accepts the premise that anthropogenic CO2 is liable to cause catastrophic global warming. That’s the ‘consensus’ view, not that of a skeptic.
Prof. Bengtsson’s erstwhile colleagues should have welcomed his addition to the GWPF board, as a way of getting a fox into the hen house. But apparently they are so terrified that one of theirs would even go near a den of heretics that they reflexively ostracized him. Too bad Prof. Bengtsson doesn’t realize he’s now seeing his colleagues’ true colors. But then, maybe he does.
/Mr Lynn
Interesting. These people who reject Richard Feynman’s honest and objective approach to science, refer to those of us who are sceptical of theories that are not supported by data as ‘deniers’ (with the obvious read-across to Hypocaust deniers).
But now we know who the climate Nasties really are.
Latitude says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:23 am
oh yeah…..we’re really advanced
Shaman/witchdoctors made their claim to fame by promising to control the weather….
Best comment yet.
Sorry folks. Had to use hypocaust and nasties just to get through moderation.
Did Dr. Bengtsson receive actual threats of physical violence?
I feel very sorry for Prof. Bengtsson bullied by smaller men.
However, viewed politically, this is a huge win for the skeptic cause.
First, Bengtsson has not recanted, he has been bullied into resigning.
Second, the warmist fascist mask has slipped. We always knew they did this sort of thing but it was hard to prove. Now there is proof.
Third, next time some warmist moron – or POTUS – mentions the 97% the quick answer is “How many were coerced like Prof. Bengtsson?”
Fourth, this is a real scandal which can be dropped at the feet of the “consensus”. It was clack handed of them to apply the pressure simply because it reveals them for what they are. MSM can hang its hat on identifying the “Climate Bullies” and there is no particular reason why Bengtsson should not name names.
Finally, regardless of his resignation, Bengtsson is on record as a skeptic joining the honoured ranks of Curry, Lindzen, Tol, Singer and so on. Gradually a counter consensus is emerging.
” If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety.”
There have been many persecutions of individuals and particularly of scientists by religion, even secular ones such as Marxist Leninism, but can anybody not say that since the persecution of Galileo, and many others by the Catholic church, or the abomination of Eugenics, and Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union have we seen the like. We have even had attempts by so called academics to label those who dissent from the AGW/Man-made climate change line as having some sort of mental disorder. Those of us old enough to remember the persecution of dissidents in the Soviet Union in the 1970’s look at this in horror.
For many who have kept quiet and hidden in the scientific community while this has been going on it is time to stand up and be counted.
“claims from one’s own “side”
Russ,
I don’t think he’s on “our side”. Looks like he’s as much Warmer, as a Skeptic.
“Begtsson’s planned participation in GWPF seemed to me to be the sort of outreach to rational skeptics that ought to be praiseworthy within the climate “community”.
Skeptics do no perform outreach to skeptics.
Andrew
It’s not just Bengttson’s skeptical views that his warmist colleagues are pressuring him about. It’s “politically” motivated too. They don’t want the GWPF to gain credibility by having relatively mainstream climatologists like him associated with it. (Bengtsson wasn’t a 3-percenter.) So they are “sending a warning message” to others who might contemplate such an association.
Hmm—I wonder if a few 3-percenters might be prompted by this affair to volunteer to sign up with the GWPF, just to “give the finger” to conformist climatologists.
Global ocean warming tied to anthropogenic forcing
Bernhard K. Reichert1,2,
Reiner Schnur and
Lennart Bengtsson
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2001GL013954/abstract
Andrew
I’m a bit confused…. are we talking about community of climate scientists or Jehova’s Witnesses here?
“If a baptized Witness teaches contrary to Witness doctrines, it is considered apostasy and grounds for disfellowshipping. A 1981 letter to overseers—reproduced in a book by former Governing Body member Raymond Franz—directed that a member who “persists in believing other doctrine”, even without promoting such beliefs, may also be subject to disfellowshipping.[64] Elders usually try to reason with the individual before such action is taken.[65] If a person believes that a teaching should be adjusted or changed, he is encouraged “to be patient and wait on Jehovah for change”.[66]
All members are encouraged to have a detailed understanding of what is expected and the consequences of wrongdoing.[67] The stated purpose of congregation discipline is to help erring ones be restored to spiritual health, to help uphold the organization’s reputation, and to keep the congregation clean from wrong conduct.[68]
The Watchtower states that “apostates are “mentally diseased,” and they seek to infect others with their disloyal teachings. (1 Timothy 6:3, 4 [NWT]).”;[78][79] some have stated that this applies to all individuals who leave the organization.[80][81]
Failure to adhere to the directions on shunning is itself considered a serious offense. Members who continue to speak to or associate with a disfellowshipped or disassociated person are said to be sharing in their “wicked works”[82] and may themselves be punished by disfellowshipping.[83] Exceptions are made in some cases such as business relations and immediate family household situations.[69] If a disfellowshipped person is living in the same home with other baptized family members, religious matters are not discussed, with the exception of minors, for whose training parents are still responsible.[84][85] Disfellowshipped family members outside the home are shunned.[86]”
Name names and reproduce emails – otherwise the resignation is pointless.
Robin says:
May 14, 2014 at 10:19 am
Gentle Tramp-
The problem is the deliberate mind arson via K-12 education ‘reforms’ coupled to higher ed shifts mandated by the UN’s Social Dimensions language in the Bologna Process.
=======
Robin,
The common core is intended to simplify textbook publishing. The problem relates to State standards which are essentially the same but managed differently by each State. This drives up the cost of textbook design — makes textbooks State specific.
States will still have the K-12 adoption process and can choose to reject a Common Core product if they choose to. The Fed can’t impose educational standards on States due to the adoption process.
So, if some loon decides to turn Common Core standards into propaganda delivery, States can and likely will reject the product. Also, Authors and Editors are responsible for the content not politicians.
Regarding Higher Ed. product (13-28). A majority of this product is unique to course study not generic. Professors frequently design textbooks for their classes are not driven by UN diatribe unless they choose to be.
I hope, that even after resigning from GWPF, Dr. Bengtsson continues the fight.
Could we please stop demonizing the late Sen. Andrew McCarthy? If you are not familiar with the Venona decrypts that were unclassified in 1995, or you have not read M. Stanton Evans’ book “Blacklisted by History,” then I doubt you really have any idea what the controversy surrounding the McCarthy hearings was all about.
The Venona wires were communications going back and forth between Moscow and their operatives in the United States. The Venona decrypts revealed that the level of infiltration by communists extended to the highest levels of our government–mainly, the State Department.
Who has been the primary entity pushing the global warming scam? The United Nations! Who wrote the UN Charter? Alger Hiss, a Soviet spy. Although Hiss was never convicted of espionage, he was sent to prison on perjury charges for lying about it. The United Nations was created by communists, not Americans. Hiss also was president of the Carnegie Institute, which has a long history of pushing a global, collectivist agenda, particularly in education (see Common Core State Standards Initiative).
Almost all the charges against McCarthy were dropped. McCarthy received a lot of heat for his grilling of Gen. Zwicker. But remember, Zwicker had written on his loyalty oath, “FIFTH.” That’s right! A general in the U.S. military plead the fifth on his loyalty oath! Does that bother you? It sure does me. Obviously, it angered Sen. Andrew McCarthya and he grilled Zwicker on the matter, which angered and enraged the left.
Do you see the gross irony here? The people who are pushing the whole Agenda 21/sustainability/climate change agenda are mostly communists, socialists, globalists, communitarians and their fellow travelers–the very people McCarthy was trying to root out of our government. And yet, we accuse those who ran off Lennart Bengtsson of engaging in “McCarthyism.” It’s just wrong, and the record needs to be set straight. The late Dr. Bella Dodd (a staunch communist who later became a vocal anti-communist) referred to the McCarthy debacle as the “worst smear job in history.” Hell, we’ve even stuck “ism” on the man’s name.
All I ask is people do come research on the matter, in light of the new information available. Don’t take my word for it. Research it yourself. Maybe if we had listened to McCarthy at the time, we would not be in the global, collectivist hell we now find ourselves embroiled in.
Roger Sowell says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:25 am
In the United States, it is a federal crime to oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person that impacts his Constitutional rights, such as Freedom of Association.
See Title 18, US Code Section 241, which states in pertinent part:
“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same. . .”
Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment for up to 10 years, or both.”
Yes, but enforcing the law has come under scrutiny lately, hasn’t it:
From Drudge totday:
Feds released hundreds of immigrant murderers, drunk drivers, sex-crimes convicts…
REP: Obama supports ‘worst prison break in American history’…
Impeachable?
36,000 criminals freed while awaiting deportation…
Obama: Amnesty Push Coming in Next ‘Two to Three Months’…
Hopefully Operation Spring help:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/14/operation-american-spring-hitting-dc-to-oust-obama/
Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting during the Little Ice Age
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 10:25 am
The difference between the example of Newton & Hooke on one hand & current enforcement of CACA orthodoxy is that Newton’s was a personal vendetta (which Sir Isaac also perpetrated against others), while the CACA Inquisition is institutional, with billions to trillions in treasure & thousands to billions of lives & livelihoods at stake, along with the expansion of already dangerously overweening state power.
Besides which, Hooke was himself also something of a jerk.
There are not words strong enough to describe how despicable this is. However, is it surprising? These tactics pervade our uncivil society. Look at the recent actions resulting in commencement speakers withdrawing due to petitions & demonstrations. I understand why students do this. But where are the adults. Are the faculty at colleges and the warmists in the climate science establishment so unsure of their position that they have resort to tactics reminiscent of decades ago. I won’t use the names of leaders of yesteryear who engaged in this kind of overt intimidation,but we all know who they are. Shame, shame.
Walt The Physicist says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:15 am
This is the very first historical account I have seen. I have always been aware that after World War II, science changed. My Dad, as the top Electrical Engineer in his undergraduate class of 1943, was offered a scholarship by industry to attend Cal Tech for his Masters degree, which he did after three years in the Army Signal Corps. He would have fit nicely into mathematics, physics or chemistry, but decided on engineering.
Walt (since you are physicist), Dad was very excited after signing up for a Carl Anderson (positron, Nobel Prize) physics course. The 42 year old Anderson walked in, introduced a junior faculty member to the class, and walked out. It was Dad’s biggest disappointment.
I would never have been invited to join a chemistry department in 1940, but 30 years later was welcomed with open arms while knowing very little chemistry or math. I would have been the perfect candidate for the PhD in chemistry or the other great “sciences” like environmental, nutrition or climate.
In the unlikely event that I was accepted into a university in 1940, I, along with most of today’s “scientists”, would have been majoring in theology, political science, sociology, psychology, philosophy or business. I fully expect very loud disagreement from the current chemistry, nutrition, environment and climate communities, but sadly, it is true.
[SNIP – off topic for this story, and mostly smear, as is your M.O. – bug off -mod]
milodonharlani:
re your post at May 14, 2014 at 11:33 am.
Yes, Newton’s vendetta against Hooke was “personal”, but when as RS President Newton had Hooke’s papers destroyed then that was an act of the RS (i.e. an institution). And, yes, Hooke was a “jerk”, but so what?
The point I tried to make – and am still trying to make – is that there is nothing new in improper behaviour of scientists against colleagues. Scientists tend to form alliances to ideas and have often seen adherents to different ideas as ‘enemies’ to be destroyed.
In the last century the idea of eugenics was the scientific and political (n.b. across the entire political spectrum) consensus which was enforced almost world-wide.
Now the idea of AGW is the scientific and political (n.b. across the entire political spectrum) consensus which is enforced almost world-wide.
We need to learn the warnings from the past and not deny them.
Richard
Continuing from my earlier post-
“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
Let there be no confusion as to what this is really about.
{all bold emphasis mine – JW}
and
and
– – – – – – – – –
To: Anyone associated with the GWPF reading this thread
Your organization has my intellectual respect and has my endorsement of almost all of your efforts.
With that in mind, I express my lack of understanding of several points regarding the situation surrounding Professor Lennart Bengtsson becoming a member of the GWPF then resigning.
First, the element of surprise expressed by GWPF leadership at Bengtsson’s resignation concerns me. I presume that other academics who have long since joined the GWPF must have faced the same kind of intolerant response from: the academic science community; the science institution community and the community of science societies / associations. Yet, they have not resigned so suddenly. My question to GWPF is, was there an ongoing dialog by the other academics who are members of GWPF with Bengtsson about how they dealt with the same situation that Bengtsson experienced?
Second, Bengtsson expressed strongly his concern over his safety from the intolerant who are in the sphere of the worldwide climate science activities. My question to GWPF is, how have you dealt with the safety of the other scientific members of the GWPF who must be exposed to such intolerance as Bengtsson apparently faced and what do you think can be done to reduce concern for the health and safety in the future of members of the GWPF?
Finally, has the GWPF considered asking its member scientists of long standing to volunteer in expressing to us their personal experiences of intolerance from within the sphere of climate science (after or before becoming a GWPF member)? I think that would help us put into perspective what Bengtsson has just gone through and what he will likely continue to face even with his resignation.
Thank you GWPF for your considerable long standing efforts in the sphere of climate science dialog. And I particularly thank Richard Lindzen for his irrepressibly calm and incomparably rational contribution to the GWPF.
John
Walter says:
May 14, 2014 at 11:44 am
Yes, the Great War changed science dramatically and created funding distribution machine.
“””””……L. E. Joiner says:
May 14, 2014 at 6:38 am
Have we come to the end of the Age of Reason? In this brief talk (linked in the thread about videos for school kids) Sally Baliunas describes what happened to a physician who challenged the prevailing dogma that blamed witches and sorcerers for ‘extreme’ weather events during the Little Ice Age :…….”””””””
Well Dr. Sally Baliunas herself, along with Dr. (Willie) Wei Hok Soon, has endured her own experience of “shunning” for her work on climate issues, which tend to support a “skeptical” position.
She and Dr. Willie Soon did an intensive review of dozens of peer reviewed climate papers relating to the mediaeval warm period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA), that made a rather convincing argument, that both the MWP, and the LIA, were indeed GLOBAL world wide phenomena, and not LOCAL phenomena, as claimed and depicted by Dr. Michael E. Mann in his original “Hockey Stick” graph for the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE as publicized in the first IPCC report.
Subsequent editing and refreshing of Mann’s graph resulted in the “Northern Hemisphere” restriction, being “disappeared” from the hockey stick effect, along with the LIA and MWP.
Drs. Sallie, and Willie have been carrying the more realistic message, with their work, for many years, and have also been dragged over the coals for it.
As for Dr. Bengtsson and his views; I’m not familiar with his work; but deplore the apparent vendetta.
I do wish he and others would stop saying that clouds get whiter and reflect more solar radiation..
For starters; the Elsevier article, evidently from Bengtsson, contains a whole host of rubbish, amid what may be true.
“””””…..Were its concentration to decrease, then mean temperatures would plummet far below freezing. …..”””””
Poppycock! According to the logarithmecists, if it dropped in half from its present 400 ppm to 200 ppm, (not bloody likely), the mean global temperature would drop by from 1.5 to 4.5 deg C. That gets down from 288 K to 286.5 K or a disastrous 283.5 K. And I don’t even believe those numbers. And if GHG water vapor AMPLIFIES the CO2 effect, as he claims (among others), then a decrease in CO2 would be accompanied by an AMPLIFIED decrease in GHG water vapor.
That would make it HOTTER, NOT COLDER. Water vapor absorbs a lot of incoming solar energy.
If the earth had NO CLOUDS, the global surface insolation would be something of the order of 20-25% higher than it is now, and we would have global warming you wouldn’t believe.
Well NO ! we wouldn’t. WE WOULD HAVE CLOUDS !
Well I don’t have time or patience to address all of the mis-information in that statement above.
Clouds regulate the earth’s Temperature to keep us in THE GOLDILOCKS CLIMATE ZONE.
The don’t warm anything; they might slow down some night time cooling, but the can’t stop it.
Besides that is WEATHER and not CLIMATE.
ANY increase in clouds ANYWHERE, for climate like (30 year) periods of time, ALWAYS results in COOLING, not warming.
And clouds do not REFLECT solar energy, they REFRACTIVELY SCATTER it. Well for the pedants out there, the water droplet reflectance is about 2-3%.
I think I will set up a ZEMAX model of a water droplet, and have it calculate the total Fresnel hemispherical reflectance for at least the peak solar wavelength. Maybe I can take a cut at the polychromatic reflection.
Charles Chaplin – er I mean Gentle Tramp, above says:
“Well, in about 20 years, when climate reality will have proved the present “climate fascism” to be wrong, all these intolerant witch-hunters and storm troopers of today will just say “sorry, but we had only good intentions”…”
They won’t say “sorry” – ever . People who are waiting for that will wait forever. They will either 1) continue to claim they are correct, using that year’s trendy scientific (sarc) excuse for why CAGW warming hasn’t shown up yet – but it’s COMING! (see what people like Ehrlich are claiming after 40+ years of absurdly false predictions), or
2) claim that while CAGW hasn’t shown up yet, the social changes they are implementing are what is best for humanity (the good intentions referred toby Tramp above) or
3) Claim that the societal changes they have forced into being in the last 20 years are actually RESPONSIBLE for averting a CAGW disaster, and they are all heroes!
Yes, worldwide CO2 emissions will continue to rise no matter what the western powers do, but if temps are stable over the next 20 years, they will revise all their models and insist that the measures taken by the west are responsible for averting GW, even if that assertion is completely laughable. So what, their current assertions are completely laughable. It does not matter. See the entry above about Kerry/France – 500 days to avert disaster! They know they have to get some more real laws implemented – fast – so they are subsequently covered no matter what the climate looks like in 20 years. The only thing that really matters is that the societal changes they want get implemented – CAGW is just one of many possible excuses, and it really does not matter if it is real or not.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 11:53 am
IMO Hooke’s personality is relevant because it highlights the personal nature of his feud with Newton. BTW, Newton didn’t destroy Hooke’s RS papers (although he wanted to). They have recently been discovered & are now available on line. Newton did however apparently get rid of the only portrait of Hooke (if it existed; IIRC only one viewer reported seeing it), but this was a private act on his part as President of the RS against the memory of his predecessor, not an action by the whole body.
I can’t say that the enforcement of CACA orthodoxy is “unprecedented” in the West (while indeed comparable to Lysenkoism). IMO, outside Nazi Germany, eugenics orthodoxy was not as rigorously defended by powerful scientists, associations, media & governments as CACA has been. Prominent opponents of the movement (including anthropologist Boaz, the novelist daughter of whose student Kroeber was my neighbor in Portland, OR) were not subjected to the same sort of inquisition & exclusion, & they included powerful forces as well, such as the Catholic Church. Maybe the only reason they weren’t is because government played a smaller role then in funding “scientific” research in the West.
conscious1 says:
May 14, 2014 at 11:56 am
I’m no fan of Kissinger’s but in the interest of accuracy, that purported quotation is probably bogus. It was allegedly recorded by a Swiss diplomat, but no such recording has ever surfaced, unless you know otherwise.
milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm
I might add that the proof is in the pudding. In the Western democracies (if such they were), eugenicists prescriptions were not generally acted upon, although Sanger’s advocacy of birth control eventually proved triumphant, after her eugenics campaigning faded.
By sad contrast, CACA advocates have managed to sabotage Western economies with windmills & solar panels bought from China while refusing to burn coal, or even export it to China. CACA has so far succeeded where eugenics failed.
Walt The Physicist says:
…the Great War changed science dramatically and created funding distribution machine.
WWI changed a lot of things. Following the war, it made clear that American soldiers would be willing to fire on peacefully demonstrating citizens.
That’s a hell of a precedent. More to come, I’m afraid.
Desperation has led to the nastiness…CAGW has fallen apart so they get more and more angry as ridicule and legal action is just over the horizon if the public wakes up. I have to say sceptical sites even this one do not feature enough empirical data from this and other Holocene’s to show how absurd the warmers are. Our Climatic Optimum as 10,000 years ago so cooling for a long time. If you then add a lack of warming in the Tropical Troposphere and no allowance of natural variability the whole thing becomes easy for the public to understand. Politicians like Kerry may be well meaning but he is in effect a “patsy”,
The debacle of the failed expedition to Antarctica that got stuck in the sea ice was laughable…..however they got away with it protected by blatant lies stating the increased ice was a sudden and recent event. We have even had more claims regarding that area this week. Both are easily dealt with by the empirical data from the satellites……it goes on and on.
Hit them hard and often and ridicule politicians and journalists……the climate will not be an issue at any election as the public have a shrewd idea what is going on. When Kerry states there are 500 days to save the planet he will be ignored.
For one thing Kerry, Hansen, Gore et al will continue to jet around the world…live in multiple houses and take their children or grandchildren in SUV’s….and Pachuari and Debden will do all they can to protect their “green” investments.
milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:20 pm
The quote comes from a transcription of the tape. Just because the tape never surfaced doesn’t prove he didn’t say this. Given his history it is in character.
The point is that climate change is a power grab and a redistribution of wealth scheme.
“milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm
I might add that the proof is in the pudding. In the Western democracies (if such they were), eugenicists prescriptions were not generally acted upon, although Sanger’s advocacy of birth control eventually proved triumphant, after her eugenics campaigning faded.”
Not sure what you mean by that. It “faded”, but it certainly took a long time ,and did some real damage, before it did. And I’d argue that mass, selective abortion of completely innocent human life is a repugnant successor – especially given that abortion “clinics” are often concentrated in poor, urban, minority areas. Eugenist Sanger would be proud.
A few nuggets the wiki link below…
“…Today eugenics in the United States is still officially permitted. Between 2006 and 2010 close to 150 women were sterilized in Californian prisons without state approval. Between 1997 and 2010, the state paid $147,460 to doctors for tubal ligations…”
“…The state of California was at the vanguard of the American eugenics movement, performing about 20,000 sterilizations or one third of the 60,000 nationwide from 1909 up until the 1960s…”
“…Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community.[6] By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States’ leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum..”
.. Public acceptance in the U.S. was the reason eugenic legislation was passed…
IIRC over 30 states eventually passed eugenics legislation – that’s fairly successful to me.
You are correct that Sanger’s birth control advocacy was more “successful” and, inevitably led to advocacy of widespread abortion – a logical consequence, as Griswold vs Connecticut immediately led to Roe v Wade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States
milodonharlani:
I am answering your posts at May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm and May 14, 2014 at 12:23 pm.
Thankyou for your information that
I did not know that.
But you support my substantive point when you write
True, and actions and statements about AGW from scientific institutions (including the RS) are also “not an action by the whole body”. How ‘green’ activists have usurped the institutions is related by Richard Lindzen in his paper which can be downloaded from here.
I again state that we need to understand there is nothing new in improper behaviour of scientists against colleagues. Scientists tend to form alliances to ideas and have often seen adherents to different ideas as ‘enemies’ to be destroyed.
And I stand by my assertions saying
You have replied
Yes, eugenics failed. But no, it is NOT true that “eugenicists prescriptions were not generally acted upon”: they were. For example, eugenic practices were not abandoned in Sweden until the 1970s.
This is a brief explanation of eugenics, its foundation, and its originator.
http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/whatisf.html
and this is one proposal for updated eugenic polices in the USA which was published in 1968
http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/primarydocs/orfofhh000068.xml
There is no agreed number for the children aborted by eugenic policies which were adopted throughout the Western world in the first half of the last century.
AGW policies (e.g. restricted or high-price energy supplies) have inadvertently killed many people (including here in the UK). Eugenic policies deliberately killed many people.
I repeat my opinion that we need to learn the warnings from the past and not deny them.
Richard
Growing up I idolized science and the age of reason. I was sorely disapointed when I realized Man had not progressed in thousands of years. Thanks to written language our ability to predict simple future out comes has increased but, unfortunately we are still the same beings that were burning witches and intellectuals on the same pole. Individuals can achieve greatness, but not much hope for mankind. There is a greater difference between one man and another than between most men and dogs.
Frodo says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:04 pm
The advocacy of Progressive Era eugenics & its power in the scientific world faded even before WWII exposed its logical conclusion.
But, yes, part of its program, ie abortion, has succeeded, but no longer advocated openly as control of people seen as unfit, whatever may be the effect in practice. Given the prevalence of abortion among the educated classes as well as the poor, however, Progressive Era advocates might regard its practice in the 21st century as dysgenic.
conscious1 says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:02 pm
Whether you or I consider the quotation in Kissinger’s character or not isn’t IMO the issue. Until a genuine source for the alleged quotation emerges, it must be considered fake. Of course I agree with you as to the nefarious purpose of CACA, but there is plenty of genuine support for that conclusion without resorting to fraudulent until shown valid “quotations”. I encounter phony supposed quotations all the time in historical research.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:07 pm
I don’t deny grievous errors by scientific establishments of the past. Nor do I deny that socialist Sweden & Nazi Germany perpetrated eugenics programs, but eugenics was not endorsed by the League of Nations, as CACA has been by the UN, nor adopted by most of the Western democracies until parts of its program were repackaged as abortion advocacy in the 1960s, helped along by advances in birth control.
The issue IMO is the extent to which CACA promotion by supposedly popular governments in the West may be unprecedented. I feel that it is, being akin to Stalinist Lysenkoism & Nazi racial “theories”. I say this despite knowing that the founding president of my undergrad university, Stanford, David Starr Jordan, was a prominent eugenicist.
channeling Alarmist Fantasyland “All scientist support the IPCC, only those mad deniers disagree. Their bonkers opinion is that there plenty of scientists who who are skeptical of alarmist catastrophe dogma, but that many are scared to speak up.
..Doh nutters, What evidence do they have for such a wacky conspiracy theory ?”
To: anyone with a sense of scientific independence and skepticism who has a long term relationship with Bengtsson; perhaps such as Hans von Storch, Marcel Crok, Axel Bojanowski, Simon Rozendaal, etc.
Please try to explain to Professor Lennart Bengtsson that, even though he has resigned his membership in GWPF due to “worry about my health and safety” from “an enormous group pressure” applied by the “world wide” “community” of climate science, there is a crucially important contribution he can still make to openly independent and objectively balanced science.
The important contribution he can make is to disclose the full details and exact context of the pressure exerted on him and full circumstances as to why he was concerned for health and safety.
Of course it must be stressed to Professor Lennart Bengtsson that that same world wide group pressure will likely still be applied to him to not reveal complete detail and full context of the pressure applied to him to resign under fear of health and safety.
Please discuss with Professor Lennart Bengtsson that intellectually each person has to draw a line somewhere in the spirit of the scientific process if one cherishes that spirit. It may sometimes be prudent to succumb to group pressure (?intimidation?), everyone has to make their own decisions based on their own set of circumstances, But it is something else not to tell the story of the group pressure (?intimidation?) . . . . that story is crucially important.
Thank you in advance to anyone with a long term professional and personal relationship with Professor Lennart Bengtsson who is willing to discuss this with him.
John
I’m fascinated by all these plugs for Joseph McCarthy. Boy does this give the whole controversy a Tweedledee/Tweedledum air!
Substantial members of the Right like Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham despised McCarthy. (See for example Burnham’s account in The Suicide of the West.) And serious (not flak) historians of a rightward bent like Harvey Klehr have pretty thoroughly debunked the claims of the McCarthy sect. (I think it’s Klehr who has posted the several versions of McCarthy’s lists on the Web along with the actual status of the persons named.)
For me, the most incisive observation was made by Stewart Alsop in his book The Center. Alsop was in the Senate visitors’ gallery when McCarthy made his maiden communists-in-government speech. Paraphrasing from memory: At one point an old white-haired senator heard a name that he recognized, a man he knew was not a communist. He walked up to the lectern and asked McCarthy for evidence on this point. McCarthy looked at him for a moment, then (more or less quoting Alsop) gave his nervous giggle and said, “Sit down, old man.” I think that incident tells you all you need to know about Senator McCarthy.
(But if you need more, check out the movie Point of Order.)
Coach Springer says:
May 14, 2014 at 6:42 am
That kind of behavior is the tip of the ice berg. What it is doing to real science is going on under the water, so to speak.
You mean like water polo? Anyone who has played it or watched it knows all the kicking and cheap shots to the crotch are below the surface.
milodonharlani:
Thankyou for your reply to me at May 14, 2014 at 1:22 pm. I provide this link to it in hope the link will encourage people to read it.
It seems that we agree in principle but differ in our opinions of which disaster is greatest; eugenics or AGW.
You think AGW is the greater disaster and I think eugenics was because it deliberately killed people. My point is that we need to recognise the threat of such ‘science-based’ ideas: they can be used as excuse to kill people and eugenics was used as that excuse in very many countries having a variety of governments.
As I have repeatedly tried to say, scientists are people with all the failings of people and they cannot be assumed to be saints. An idea is not divorced from moral and philosophical responsibilities merely because it is ‘science-based’. And it is immoral to impose ideas by force.
Richard
Ivan says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:13 am
So, we are supposed to sympathize with a coward incapable of living with the consequences of his personal choices?
Ahh… so doth complaineth Ivan The Anonymous. Like I said in another thread, comment boards bring out the puffed out chests among many that stand far behind the front lines.
It’s tough enough in a foreign language and culture – let alone having peers turning their backs. But, there is nothing to it, health comes first. At your service in this more welcoming, relaxed and inclusive environment favoring recovery.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:37 pm
We are in agreement about the perversion of science, even when genuinely well intentioned. The extent to which Progressive Era eugenics was well intentioned by the great & good is of course itself debatable. Socialist icon Jack London favored the extermination of Asians & Africans to help advance the cause of the white working man, for instance.
However IMO the deaths of most of the millions killed in abortions since the 1960s were not (publicly) justified based upon eugenics principles. To the extent that Nazi mass murders were, then you’d be right, but IMO that was plain, ancient tribalism dressed up in shiny new pseudo-scientific clothes, although the earliest Nazi “exterminations” of the biologically “unfit” were based upon eugenics. Even since the 1970s, I have heard US liberals argue for euthanasia of the sick & old drags on society. (Of course to end suffering, hospitals & hospices do practice euthanasia by morphine OD of the terminally ill, which is different, IMO.)
PS: You’re also right that personal animosity, petty jealousy & other unattractive human traits have been evident among scientists for centuries.
rw says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:31 pm
For whatever Joseph McCarthy’s flaws were the reason his name has iconic pejorative status, in particular left-wing circles, is because he was essentially correct regarding communist infiltration of of government and society. Many can dwell on his excess and personal flaws but that doesn’t explain the narrative hatred the term “McCarthyism” is suppose to invoke and the hypocrisy is stunning. There is no other culture in America today that is prone to jack-boot conformity, totalitarian inclinations as is found in left-wing culture and the AGW debate is a poster child of that culture.
So the first thing you hear when “McCarthyism” is gross historical hypocrisy. Consider how things were run in general during the dark ages of the 30’s and 40’s and try to differentiate Senator McCarthy and his tactics from many other wartime and New Deal conformity episodes. Consider FDR’s tactics in say the attempted personal destruction of Andrew Mellon through all manner of government corruption and abuse. McCarthy conformed to the times he existed. Where is the term “FDRism”? Again, it’s about selective and political use of terms and history.
I am old enough to remember watching the Army-McCarthy hearings (the subject of “Point of Order”) with my parents on our little black-and-white television. Joseph McCarthy may have been right about Communist and particularly Soviet infiltration into the American government, but if the Left had wanted a bogeyman, they could not have picked a creepier and more sinister bunch than Senator McCarthy and his assistants.
McCarthy (and his comperes in the House) were experts in the tactics of intimidation, to the point where anyone who might have had a taint of ‘Red’ in his past had to fear for his job—not just high-level State Department people but ordinary working stiffs, in and out of government. It was the tactics that gave ‘McCarthyism’ the foul odor it has today, the broad brush of accusation (“Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”), and the encouragement of reporting on your neighbor or co-worker, which ironically were close to the tactics of the secret police in real Communist states.
So Anth•ny is not wrong in comparing the tactics of intimidation applied by the Climatists against apostates from Global Warming dogma with ‘McCarthyism’. And that is why you’ll find faculty and students in major universities in the United States afraid to admit that they might have doubts about CAGW.
With John Whitman, I hope Prof. Bengtsson and those who know and value him will bring the miscreants to light who would shun and perhaps even threaten him. Nothing scares cockroaches faster than a bright light.
/Mr Lynn
I googled GWPF and on the first page is that piece of worthless human slime, Connelly, having a say. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/05/14/ha-ha-lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board-of-gwpf/
What an irksome, slimy, disgusting, piece of [self-snip] he is.!
“milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:56 pm
PS: You’re also right that personal animosity, petty jealousy & other unattractive human traits have been evident among scientists for centuries.”
Happens in other fields too, e.g. music – Hanslick, Scalieri, others ..castigated Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and others….there often were riots at premieres…
I guess that’s why “leading edge” is often termed “bleeding edge”…
When I was in Uni, there were some music students who would go to other students’ recitals or concerts just to hear them fail…sad….
In my book it’s better to win over a strong competitor than to “back in” or win by default….
I wonder if the GWPF position included a salary. If so, that is a taunt Bengttson’s accusers might have thrown at him. If so, it might have been a reason he resigned. (Future joiners might want to forgo getting paid.)
The targets of “McCarthyism” were often accused because they were members of what were later revealed to be communist front groups. But those targets had plausible deniability: they could say they were unwitting. So they shouldn’t have been accused–it was a smear. (Although if they were members of a dozen such groups, or an officer in them, that excuse be less plausible.)
I saw a few minutes of the Army/McCarthy hearings on TV at a friend’s home as a kid. His mom said, “He’s so rude.”
Jeff says:
May 14, 2014 at 2:25 pm
Being a genius or just gifted doesn’t make you any less human. Sometimes it makes you worse than you otherwise might be. Newton was probably doomed by his childhood to crankiness even if he had been an unhappy farmer rather than a lonely scientist, secret theologian & alchemist, biblical historian, bad teacher, good Mint chief & vengeful RS President.
This is terrible, terrible news. Like Connelly, many alarmists will find this funny or encouraging. Instead, it signals quite clearly their utter determination to stifle open scientific debate. There are plenty of people who believe in the dangers of AGW out there who could demonstrate very clearly that they have yet to jettison their principles by offering sympathy to Bengtsson, even if they disagree with him. Experience tells me that few, if any, will.
John, re: your point that we need to know the specifics of the pressure applied to Dr. Bengtsson
No, we don’t need to know the details. He is the detail. He already said that the pressure came from pretty much everyone and in all ways: withdrawn co-authorship, etc. His entire professional life is in jeopardy with the association. What else do you need to know, because you won’t shame these people or get them to back off.
We know all we need to know the extent of the rot and the root of the problem. Ultimately, government funded science of such politicized topics IS the problem. We long ago left science behind, we can all agree. Politics is a vicious and indiscriminate beast and having been harassed by the IRS for the past 4 years because of my political affiliations, I will defend Bengtsson’s inclination to alert us to the problem but gracefully decline the role of sacrificial lamb.
Though it is somewhat off-topic I am glad to see people taking McCarthyism as a term to task.
“Joseph McCarthy may have been right about Communist and particularly Soviet infiltration into the American government, but if the Left had wanted a bogeyman, they could not have picked a creepier and more sinister bunch than Senator McCarthy and his assistants.”
Whittaker Chambers book “Witness” is one the greatest books of the 20th century, not only because of the tale it tells, and its utterly insightful analysis but also because Chambers was a damn good writer. And this review …
http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/969/Witness.htm
… is the best I’ve seen, summing up its prowess as a great book on all levels, as well as laying the blame for “McCarthyism” exactly where it should rest:
“What was truly unfortunate about McCarthyism was not the fact of the Red Hunt itself, but that it was left to such an incompetent as Joe McCarthy. If, instead of circling the wagons to protect their own, responsible members of the Left had joined with the Right to root out men and women in government, academia, and the media who were actively trying to subvert democracy, the entire process might have been salutary, rather than turning into one of the more divisive episodes in our domestic political history. But the Left, as a general rule, which had been untroubled by FDR’s decision to imprison every American of Japanese descent on the West Coast during WWII, reacted viscerally to the idea of exposing and removing genuine agents of an enemy government from positions of power.
To a great, and unacknowledged, degree, this reaction was dictated by class animosity. For the bitter truth is that Communism, particularly in America, was an ethos of the upper classes and the intelligentsia. The middle classes, for obvious reasons, and the lower classes, for more complex reasons, never subscribed to the ideals of Communism. And so, when the time came to destroy the Fifth Column, the destruction was led by men like McCarthy and Nixon, men with the stink of the common on them, and opposed by those who, like Hiss, had gone to the best Eastern schools and moved in the best social circles …
Those seeking to understand the passions stirred up by the Hiss Case need look no farther than the condescending aside of Hiss to Nixon : “My college was Harvard, I understand yours was Whittier.” There, in a sentence, is expressed the contempt and animosity between classes which would soon turn a simple espionage case into the cause which separated a generation of Americans. So while it was common to blame Chambers and his supporters for McCarthyism, most of the blame should really fall upon the Anti-Anti-Communists, those who, though they did oppose communism, could not bear to see their peers brought down by commoners, no matter what crimes those peers may have committed in the putative name of those very commoners.”
/off-topic
thegriss, May 14 @ 2:19pm;
….and hot on Connolley’s heals is none other than Sou from Botswana;
REPLY: “Sou” aka Miriam O’Brien of Mt. Beauty, VIC AU, my Internet stalker, can’t help herself. IMHO with her fixations about me and WUWT, she’s mentally off the rails, much like the new Godzilla movie. She’s a sad figure, who makes blog posts only for the purpose of denigration. – Anthony
rw says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:31 pm
I’m fascinated by all these plugs for Joseph McCarthy. Boy does this give the whole controversy a Tweedledee/Tweedledum air!
Substantial members of the Right like Whittaker Chambers..”
Whittaker Chambers was hardly “right”. He had been a member of the Communist Party himself.
As was pointed out earlier on this thread, “McCarthyism” gives an unfair rap to Senator Joe McCarthy. There’s a major difference between trying to root people out of federal employment- working for the government is not a “right”, and HUAC’s attack on communists in the private sector.
Looks like my comment ended up in the spam-bin, possibly due to link supplied. Never mind.
In reply to thegriss @ 2:19pm; “I googled GWPF and on the first page is that piece of worthless human slime, Connelly”, Sou from Botswana (or where ever she’s from) is close on his heels.
– – – – – – – –
L. E. Joiner ,
Do we have a case where there are ~1% creators / leaders and ~99% supporters/ followers? It is a possible theory to consider.
What you call “miscreants” may be two groups. The first group may be the ~1% who are the intellectual leaders creating the observationally challenged theory of significant AGW from fossil fuel and the other group is the ~99% who support (for whatever reason) those leaders. Identify and publish the story about the ~1% leadership advocating the use “group pressure” by the ~99% and you will disperse the ~99% who are implementing the “world wide” “group pressure” in the climate science “community” on skeptical (aka independent) scientists like Bengtsson.
N’est ce pas?
John
Yet another false religion restricting freedom of speech.
What’s the modern equivalent of “Burn him! burn him! burn the Witch!”?
Devolution is accelerating, and technology seems to be adding thrust.
milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 2:42 pm
PS: From the annals of science rather than music, consider case in point Sir Richard Owen, who coined the term “dinosaur”. Great anatomist; rotten human being.
Thanks for clearing that up AW. Her fixation for you may be a ‘secret admiration’ towards you. Have you ever received a Valentines Day card from her?
/sarc.
Whether this saves Lennart Bengtsson the grief he fears is not clear. Winston Churchill’s words come to mind:
“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”
– – – – – – – – – –
Alex,
Now, perhaps the climate science group supporting the observationally challenged theory of significant AGW from fossil fuels may put pressure on people like Bengtsson to accept that “Resistence is futile. You will be assimilated.***” But, some scientists do defiantly resist.
I still maintain that the excruciatingly detailed and fully contextual story of group pressure that explains how and why Bengtsson (and any other scientists) prima fascia did not resist is important for devising tactics, strategy and safeguards for scientists who may choose to begin resisting or to continue to resist.
I once again strongly encourage Bengtsson’s long time professional and personal associates to discuss with him my idea of disclosing the detailed and fully contextual story of the group pressure (world wide) that motivated his GWPF resignation and his concern for safety. I think it is crucial info.
So, Alex, we disagree in principle.
*** apologies to Gene Roddenberry’s brainchild ST-TNG.
John
Ivan whines: May 14, 2014 at 7:13 am. “So, we are supposed to sympathize with a coward incapable of living with the consequences of his personal choices?”
There is no WE. You are free to do as you like, and I am free to do as I like. While I have no idea who you are talking about, I sympathize entirely with this man described above whose employment is subject to political winds and now faces an ethical dilemma.
Let’s see YOUR courage.
So basically in 24 years nothing has changed.
One of the skeptical arguments that has been difficult to hold for a lack of evidence was the professional risk in taking a skeptical position publicly. Now the evidence is irrefutable, though it will be refuted in all manners of ways.
This should hit pretty hard as it truly uncovers the “hoax”, the collusion and the professional intolerance that is obviously far more common that people had ever suspected.
I can honestly say that I am surprised how candid his withdrawal was and I am sure he will continue to pay a professional price in the future. His accusers and so called colleagues should look long and hard in their mirrors and feel shame.
Alex has a point, that Dr. Bengtsson “is the detail.” More particularly, Dr. B gave us a pretty good hint where the pressure was coming from. However, I agree with John that the more sordid details the better. Let’s see the emails and phone transcripts from the defenders of the Climatist faith, and then let’s have an article in a major news magazine: “The Climate Inquisition: No Heretics Allowed.”
As for John’s hypothesis about leaders and followers (May 14, 2014 at 3:57 pm), I don’t know enough about the social structure of The Team and its acolytes to say. But it sounds plausible.
/Mr Lynn
I’m with those who say ‘name and shame’ – or at least to ‘out’ the threats and the manner in which they were received/perceived. This type of treatment is intolerable and must be stopped.”
I’m so sad AND disgusted by this. ‘WE’ bring knives to ‘their’ gunfight. ‘WE’ let ‘them’ pick the time of day and location, so the “sunlight” is in our eyes !
‘WE’ must beg, borrow, steal every penny possible and begin a national 60 second media campaign to promote concise current science and the FRAUD of the left of liberals. ‘WE’ must become militant NOW ! !
The best thing that Dr. Bengtsson could do right now, is release all the critical emails he has received
Say what you want about McCarthy’s methods but he was right about the communist infestation within our government. Its all in the NSA’s VENONA files.
By the way, how did the NSA manage to keep all of those people who worked on the VENONA files from talking? Seems like at least *one* worker would have said something.
David Ramsay: “I wonder how much of the hostility will die down just because he has resigned from the GWPF.
Without reiterating what I said at Bishop HIll and Climate etc., the key thing here is to realise this a boundary issue. Science is a community. That community draws (almost arbitrary) lines itself demarcating the legitimate “them” for the “us” … who are therefore deemed illegitimate. That boundary then means that no matter how qualified or experienced you are (e.g. a meteorologist running world’s most read blog) – the fact you are not part of the “in crowd”, means anything and everything you say is illegitimate.
What Lennart Bengtsson did, was to show that boundary can be crossed, that it is a glass boundary which only exists because people believe it exists. That not only legitimises groups like the GWPF, but by breaking down that barrier, it suggests that there is nothing intrinsically special about those in academia and that they don’t have any god given right to pontificate about climate and expect to be listened to.
So, academics need to re-enforce that boundary and show it still exists. Hence the vicious and vitriolic attacks.
What will happen now Like any gang member who “defects” to the other side, he has to be made an example of. I suspect he will continue to be metaphorically “beaten up”, made to publicly admit his “crime”, pushed down to the bottom of the social ranking and generally treated so appallingly that no other member of the “climate science gang” will dare consider doing the same.
@David Ramsay Steele
“…and now the true believers have been alerted to these heretical views, they may not ease up on him (without a public recantation, confession of his appalling thoughtcrimes, and display of abasement before the high priests of “science”).”
This gives me an idea: If a well worded thoughtcrime confession was presented to the press and TV, carefully written, it would have an interesting effect. Should the devoted warmists accept a confession of thoughtcrime articulately and publicly made? By using the appropriate words, one could generate a completely compliant recantation of current and past thoughtcrimes that is a stinging rebuke of Big Brother. It doesn’t have to be facetious, it has to be cast in the correct mould.
It could conclude with, “The global temperature is rising. The thermometers are lying and those reading them should be charged with treason.”
It is ultimately a rational response and appeals to the sanity of the ordinary person. The alarmist harassers are proxies for the priests of the days of yore. Unfortunately for them, people are now capable of the independent investigation of truth.
People with power wield it. If they behave badly, take it away.
The irony is that this resignation will do so much more damage to the alarmists than if he’d stayed on the board. Climate scientists are already rallying around him.
http://www.thegwpf.org/dear-lennart-a-letter-in-support-of-professor-bengtsson/
This L’affaire Bengtsson reminds me of Matt Ridley’s lecture on “Science Heresy (October 31, 2011), at the Royal Society of Arts in Edinburgh. (In print at Bishop Hill, and via podcast at rsa.org, long excerpt at Jonova.)
His point: good science that does not fall prey to pseudoscience NEEDS its heretics to keep it honest, and not succumb to very human foible of confirmation bias.
L’affaire Bengtsson reminds us all of the enormous power of institutionalized science Orthodoxy, as well as the great courage required to oppose it.
If I don’t hear howls of protest from climate scientists I will hold ALL climate scientists in contempt. In fact any scientist who hears about this and is not disgusted deserves contempt, derision and rejection. Since when does the title climate scientist mean you implicitly are convinced of CAGW? With any luck, the decent climate scientists who are alarmed about GW will now be motivated to come forward and acknowledge the limits of their “PROFESSION”.
It took a man with guts to call out this new Religion, or should I say old worship of the Mother goddess.
With all the cons making this much money from carbon credits to fantastical views of Weather, supposedly from man made climate change. From bird blenders that don’t work to forcing people in an oil glut to pay mad prices for an abundance of power. Alberta lone without Saskatchewan has enough oil at present rates of use, to last at least 1000 years. Let alone the finds in the last few years World wide.
The world climate has changed many times, long before mankind arrived. What utter arrogance these would be little godlings of pseudo-science, pretending they can forecast weather into the future centuries. When even with satellites we can’t do more than 2 days at a time. Even than we get it wrong.
This type of Inquisition is not new in scientific circles. The two scientists who stated the continental drift theory where persecuted by there peer’s. There are many more tales of gifted people thrown over the cliff of conventionality, or fads. Lennart Bengtsson. Your doing us all a favour.
The hounding of Lennart Bengtsson that resulted in him resigning from the board of the GWPF reminds me of a historical parallel – The Battle of the Bulge. This is the last desperate act of the AGW folks before the inevitable defeat that is at hand – and the Global Warming / Climate Change meme will finally be put to death and hopefully all the faithful will be taken to task for all of the indirect deaths that have resulted worldwide from this fake science.
However, this may only be the end of Act 6 of a 10, or 15 Act march to Agenda 21.
These communists / socialists / progressives have a way of morphing into something else as they march relentlessly to their objective.
There is of course the knee-jerk reaction of many of a certain kind of skeptic to make Dr. Bengtsson into some kind of counter consensus hero, similar to the Dr. Curry treatment. A little critical thinking for a moment. He hasn’t revealed much, doesn’t discuss what the AGW movement is directly linked to as an agenda and speaks in the same sniveling terms of the events at hand.
Rudolf Hess flies to England.
He’s born in 1935 and he sights concern over his career? He’s 79 years old and is known worldwide in part for his conformity to AGW advocacy as weaseling and vague as that may have been over the years. He “regrets” politicization? He’s seen and actual been part of the consensus crime spree of the later 20th century to date and this is all he wants to fess up to? Everyone is now in a hurry to forget he’s a perpetrator with a long history of looking the other way (at best), of false equivocation of who was the bully and thug in science and most importantly the underlying political agenda that is a 200 kilo anvil around his neck. An underlying global statist control agenda he likely sympathizes with to this moment. None of that is renounced or even acknowledged to exist. Shouldn’t he apologize for general political thuggery of the “consensus” as far as he has contributed support in the past? Shouldn’t the Greenshirt global agenda of AGW be acknowledged in direct terms as he has only witnessed the growth and machinations over what 50+ years??
His resignation is of course gutless, he’s still a member of the same mob even if he left the consensus bunker for what….two weeks? He doesn’t want the noise so other people are standing up to Soviet science standards brought globally to try to protect his freedom as well as anyone Else’s. They told him to resign and of course he did, another AGW advocate point scored.
If they were real defectors the would renounce the whole AGW, globalist, central planning agenda beyond the mere tactics that are causing his trepidations of the moment. Their conformity is intact, they never directly acknowledge the underlying political purpose of the AGW meme from inception so it’s really more a case of dropping the burdens of forced servitude of being expected to be green activists rather then contrition for what the AGW movement truly represents. Oh, it’s a crack in orthodox. It’s a positive but this sort of skepticism is miles from the actual truth that as it turns out many skeptics and warmers right here on this board will be upset to be reminded of.
Maybe more will come but somehow I doubt it, he’ll have green advocacy expectations for his contribution muted. His peer perpetrators told him to jump and he asked how high. Exhausted and burned out Greens aren’t exactly the same as repentant and ultimately somewhat reformed ones. If they are still obfuscating the central political purpose of climate agenda science through abstraction they are still serving a purpose to that agenda.
I’m only up to 6:30AM in the comments, but here are two more:
1. The reported behavior of some CAGW fanatics is certainly believable, even likely, but we can not be sure until we see the details of the pressure.
2. He will not be forgiven. He will still be isolated. The warmers will use his surrender as a sign that another denier has seen the light.
Maybe I’m just too old and too beaten up by life to be worried about threats from alarmist fanatics, or about ostracism by anyone. You reach a point in life where there’s nothing left to be afraid of. I could care less if the climate nut cases shun me, and if they come after me they’ll find themselves staring down the barrel of a Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun, laced with five rounds of double-ought buck.
Too bad Bengtsson couldn’t look at it with this sort of objectivity.
Compared to those CAGW fanatics and their fellow travellers, McCarthy was a benevolent, philantropic free spirit.
It’s the intolerance, hate and stupidity of the CAGW fanatics that poisons our world, not CO²!
Steyn has a good summary of the Bengtsson Affair thus far:
http://www.steynonline.com/6339/bengtsson-burners
A news story on apostasy from the BBC today.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27424064
dbstealey says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Thank you for this link. This story and many others, including the current climate craze clearly demonstrate that the power must be limited.
The human condition, life’s allegory:
Many paths lay before a young person at the beginning of his life’s journey.
One of the many paths was the one with most resistance to the young person’s thoughts and ideas about reality.
The young person read on a blog about GWPF and Bengtsson.
Will the young person choose a path wisely? What internal guidance system will help the young person?
John
dp says: May 14, 2014 at 7:31 am
“Those names belong on a Wall of Shame”
Most of the names will be in here:
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/hall_of_shame.htm#List_of_institutions
A legal perspective: conspirators can be prosecuted for intimidating a person to resign from an association.
See http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/prosecuting-those-who-force-scientist.html
I have an issue comparing this to McCarthyism. Mainly because McCarthy was correct in his assertions that there were communist in the government (Verona Papers released proves this). But it is the standard playbook of the Leftist/Marxist from any generation. Never debate the facts, always go for the slander/libel. How else can we explain how there are never main stream debates about climate change? It’s always about “big oil money” or the “Koch Brothers”.
Roger Sowell says:
May 15, 2014 at 8:16 am
In case my comment on use of RICO Act against the CACA Mafia was lost in cyberspace rather than moderated, I’ll try again. IMO CACA is a criminal conspiracy, actionable under RICO statutes.
Curtis Mears says:
May 15, 2014 at 8:55 am
Leading CACA advocates refuse to debate. Gavin learned his lesson appearing on same show at same time as Christy. Never again.
Curtis Mears says:
May 15, 2014 at 8:55 am
Precisely.
It is a sad commentary on the primitive nature of our species that name-calling trumps the truth.
Strange. Why resign now? It makes me wonder if Mr. Bengtsson has been following the inflamed climate debate at all? In the eyes of the alarmists, he must already be a lost case, and for them he may seem to have lost all credibility. Isn’t it way too late to rescind now? Will they trust him in the future?
IMO, it would have been wiser for him to have stuck to the GWPF post, now he may have lost prestige in both camps. Did he think he could bridge the gap between them?
Presumably (?) Hoover would have been in the know at the time. Hoover often socialized with and fed inside information to his allies in congress, according to A. Summers’ biography. He might have tipped off McCarthy, on a “deep background” basis, but warned him that it was not to be used as ammo in public. That info might have encouraged McCarthy’s recklessness.
Apparently such widely known secrets can be kept more often than seems reasonable. The Ultra Secret–about the breaking of Germany’s Enigma encryption machine–was kept for 30 years after the war.
The space time continuum has been healed, all is well, as the 97% number has been restored.
@Curtis Mears –
The irony is that Big OIl, by and large, supports alarmism, not skeptics, because Big Oil expects to make money from the carbon credits advocated by alarmists. Shell, BP, ExxonMobil are all big funders of alarmist propaganda. Conversely, while the Koch brothers do contribute to various conservative causes, they aren’t financing global warming skeptics. Typical alarmist mendacity, if not outright libel. Bloody Mess and Harry Greed blaming the Koch brothers for climate change? The worst part of this is that there are way too many suckers who believe this shit.
I am no scholar on McCarthy, but it amused me last Christmas to find out that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was flagged as potential Communist messaging. The villain is a rich capitalist after all. (: Superman also, being both “Superman” and “Man of Steel,” won DC Comics a bit of suspicion domestically as well.
Of course, Jimmy and Donna really show the importance of small competitors in a free and open market, and I think they are a picture of the power of conjugial love and domestic happiness in bringing stability to a community. I do not think it is his life that is wonderful, but both of their lives together that make the title, “It’s a Wonderful Life” so fitting.
Anyway, I think it was not easy for the American mind to even analyze or recognize the Communist mindset. We understand it much better now. But it was extremely foreign to the American mindset, once upon a time. The intelligence gathering institutions were looking for the most obvious, two dimensional clues because of it’s unfamiliarity.
For me it is encapsulated in a Don Knotts movie, which featured a group of old women who were ESP enthusiasts; trying to get entrance into a haunted house, one of them said, “We are dedicated to reaching the other side.” To which the Sheriff resonds, “Communists?”
Curtis Mears says:
May 15, 2014 at 8:55 am
I’m glad to seen many taking the leftist “McCarthyism” code messaging to task, I’m disappointed in the usual luke-warm, somewhat left-wing skeptics pandering. Steve McIntyre’s constant “rational skeptic” meme is on my nerves as well, where exactly are the rational warmists over the past 40 years while in the fiasco of “carbon policy” has misallocated billions to the point of forcing the poor into starvation choices due to inflated green cost push policy?
Dr. Bengtsson comes with baggage it seems, it’s no surprise.