Gosh! Who would think a climate scientist could get so angry about people criticizing a politician? Here is an amazing exchange seen on Prometheus. Some highlights and excerpts follow
- Gore Critics are “Palpably evil”
- Suggests critiquing Gore’s science “morally comparable to killing 1,000 people”
According to his bio, Michael Tobis of the University of Texas is a “Research Scientist Associate (in practice, mostly a software engineer) at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in the delightful city of Austin.” Tobis is also editor of the EGU journal Geoscientific Model Development.
Here’s an excerpt from the blog conversation:
“As for the scope of the ethical risk, let us consider the possibility that the behavior of the Times and the Post this year increases the chance of an extreme event with a premature mortality of a billion people by a mere part per million, a per cent of a per cent of a per cent. The expected mortality from this is a thousand people. Is that morally equivalent to actually killing a thousand people? It’s not all that obvious to me that it isn’t.” […] Tobis later asks: “I’d sure like to know how I ‘gave ammunition to my enemies’”
Pielke Jr. writes about kerfluffle:
“I am beginning to get a better understanding why some scientists react so strongly to some of the things we write here at Prometheus. For instance, one climate scientist suggests that my calling out Al Gore for misrepresenting the science of disasters and climate change (as well as Andy Revkin’s comparison of that to George Will’s misrepresentations) to be the morally comparable to killing 1,000 people. I kid you not. I wonder how many climate scientists share this perspective.”
Keith Kloor, a journalist, summarizes the exchange [Pielke Jr.] had this week with that climate scientist: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2009/03/02/climate-gutterball/
What are we to make of Michael Tobis, a University of Texas climate scientist, who on his blog recently said this about Revkin: “I don’t think his dragging Gore into Will’s muck was a minor transgression of a fine point of propriety. I think it was palpably evil.” (End excerpt of Tobis.) […]
Tobis is just getting warmed up. In the comment thread of his post, he has this exchange (which I’m excerpting) with Roger Pielke Jr (who Tobis and other bloggers blame equally for his role in the Revkin piece that equates Gore with Will). Tobis: “It is difficult for me to state how grave I think the transgression of ethics committed by Revkin and Pielke in this matter is. Consider some statistical expectation of human lives that will likely be lost as a consequence of the delay due to this confusion. I think such a number could present a very grave picture indeed.”
Pielke Jr’s response.:
“If you think that it was unethical for me to point out that Gore was misrepresenting the relationship of disasters and climate change (based on my research I should add), then I am really amazed. What kind of scientist says that misrepresentations are OK or should be ignored if politicians with the right values are making them? [And maybe I read you wrong, but are you really suggesting that Revkin and I are complicit in “statistical deaths”? Please do clarify that odd claim …]”
Tobis obliges:
“Implying an equivalence between Gore, who is constantly treading a fine line between effective politics and truthful description of risks, and George Will, who is wrong from beginning to end in conception, detail and emphasis is unacceptable because it perpetuates this dangerous skew. As for the scope of the ethical risk, let us consider the possibility that the behavior of the Times and the Post this year increases the chance of an extreme event with a premature mortality of a billion people by a mere part per million, a per cent of a per cent of a per cent. The expected mortality from this is a thousand people. Is that morally equivalent to actually killing a thousand people? It’s not all that obvious to me that it isn’t.” – Pielke is incredulous: “Wow. These sort comments give far more ammo to your political enemies than anything I could ever say or do. Eye opening stuff.” – Tobis asks later in the exchange: “I’d sure like to know how I ‘gave ammunition to my enemies’? – Pielke Jr. is now asking on his blog: “Anyone care to give him an answer?”
Read it on Prometheus
Is this based on a Washington Post article? If so, can someone link it in please. Thankyou.
With comments such as “death trains” and “deniers” (implying a connection to Holocaust-deniers), there is a clear signal of the belief in the need to ratchet up the language to invoke a more urgent response. With recent polls suggesting climate change is at the bottom of the list of worries, you can sense a bit of desperation here. This is quickly becoming science vs. (climate science) religion. And these once-scientists have strangely become the religious zealots now.
ok I found it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html
The parallels of AGW to HIV/AIDS just gets stronger. Just today on WUWT we have:
– warming being delayed for 30 years, just like the period of the progression of HIV to AIDS kept getting extended.
– claims that denying the science is equivalent to killing people
“…
As for the scope of the ethical risk, let us consider the possibility that the behavior of the Times and the Post this year increases the chance of an extreme event with a premature mortality of a billion people by a mere part per million, a per cent of a per cent of a per cent. The expected mortality from this is a thousand people. Is that morally equivalent to actually killing a thousand people? It’s not all that obvious to me that it isn’t.
…”
Pure, unadulterated sophistry.
Sorry this is off topic Anthony but can’t see an ‘unthreaded.
I’ve been following the PDO and it appears to have hit a low well below that seen for january for some years; Ie 2nd coldest since 72 and not seen before that since the 50’s. It has been consistently low, and that’s unusual, for some months
The climate kooks are desparate.
Their grand vision of a “green” society is clashing with economic reality.
Implementing the “green” dream now with the world economy in crisis would be political suicide. The green kooks are beginning to sense that the pols are getting ready to abandon them. And the current cooling is further compounding their misery.
They’re getting shriller and shriller.
Just think about how much Gore and green investors have at stake.
Is anybody really surprised by the rhetoric and vitriol? Why debate your detractors when you can silence them instead?
Calling AGW a cult is an insult to cultists everywhere.
Their comments show that these people belong in padded rooms, and not in science labs.
We should all hope Prof. Tobis can get the help he needs. Anyone who believes Al Gore is a hero is in a serious state of denial.
I’m a little uncomfortable with people drawing parallels between being a sceptic on this issue and being a sceptic on lots of other issues. In fact I would prefer it if general scepticism was excluded from the debate, because it makes us all look like nutters. Thanks. 😉
Anthony – it’s time to formalise a proper scientific challenge to AGW. I have drafted one (as “egrey”), and have tested it on Richard Dawkins’ website
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=72103&st=7&start=50#p1775962
against some AGW proponents one of whom I believe is a university professor. So far so good.
Would you be interested in picking this up, refining it, and issuing it as a formal open scientific challenge?
If so, please email me (my email address is entered with the comment).
I have some ideas on how the challenge should be conducted in order to make it properly open and accountable.
Someone should do a remix on the famous Mac 1984 ad with Al Gore’s face on the big screen.
There is no difference between those who “scientists” pushed for Collective Farms in the Soviet Union based upon “efficiency” and those who push for CO2 controls nowadays. CO2 controls are just the modern day equivalent of Farm Collectivization and will lead to the same thing if taken to their rational conclusion.
Coal and other fossil fuels supply over 80% of mankind’s energy needs and cannot be removed from the equation for at least two generations.
What Tobis and his ilk propose will lead to the extermination of much of humanity.
I can’t find where, on Roger Pielke’s blog, he is asking us for opinions, as stated on the last line of this article (above). I would be willing to offer him my support non-anonymously if I could find it.
Someone should do a remix on the famous Mac 1984 ad with Al Gore’s face on the big screen.
I know a guy who was told when he was a teenager by his very religious older sister that looking at a porn mag was no different to physically committing rape.
OK, so if printing an article is no different to killing 1000 people, then it should be OK to kill the author of the article to stop it being printed, as you have just saved 999 lives. Correct?!
These imbecilic arguments show that these people haven’t he faintest idea about complexity, balance, and the real world. They are very narrow minded and reduce things to absurd simplifications. Ironically, they are doing this whilst trying to appear “holistic” and “saving” the world. Saving the very world they are so unable to comprehend.
Sure, small actions can have large consequences–that is their little insight–but as we are all of us performing actions every day, the total outcome of all those billions of small actions have completely unpredictable consequences. I am sure I read a Buddhist teaching explaining this; every event has a vast multitude of influences and causes, so the proper attitude is to be humble about one’s ego and humble about one’s degree of control. Even if I did go do some amazing thing, there were a multitude of influences which caused me to do it and which presented the opportunity to do it. So it wasn’t really “me” that did it, so much as the whole flow of life. Which doesn’t absolve one of responsibility, but it does teach humility.
And the other problem with these silly comparisons between coal stations and “death trains” is that they belittle the real atrocities. And a whole lot of people should be upset about that.
So these greenies may really believe that their thinking about morality is indeed new and better–that comparing coal stations to death trains is an enlightened perspective. Well most of us capable of hearing what they say already know that theirs is an inferior, limited, and brain dead perspective. They took some basic ideas and went too far and got stuck down a dead end. It is patently obvious to the rest of us. We are certainly capable of thinking the way they do and understanding them–we just already know that theirs is a limited and useless point of view on things, one which leads to silly judgements. The environment is a real problem, but theirs is a silly and already outdated discourse.
More ridiculae
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/4932646/Thatched-cottages-at-risk-from-climate-change.html
This way of looking at large but low-probability calamities has interesting corollaries.
AGW is an unproven theory, and even in the most extreme cases is unlikely to kill billions. The only (doubtful) past instance of “runaway” global warming, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum had fairly limited effects.
Asteroid impacts have definitely occurred many, many times in the past and will most ceratainly occur again in the future. A large impact (like the one at the end of the Cretaceous) could definitely kill every human being on Earth.
It seems to me that according to professor Tobis reasoning, any objection to or delay of efforts to locate and deflect asteroids that might hit the Earth must be equivalent to mass-murder, and that resources used to mitigate lesser threats (like AGW) should immediately be re-allocated for asteroid defence.
QED
Pierre Gosselin (11:19:00) :
But Obama has it all figured out: http://masterresource.org/?p=1217
you just cant make this stuff up. Anything I can imagine as a spoof, turns out to be beaten by the “apparent” truth.
its poe’s law..
I hate to repeat myself, but these ecomaniacs want most of the world’s human population living in pre-industrial conditions at best, at worst, dead. For them to be claiming that they’re interested in saving lives is pure moonshine.
Aron (10:05:30) : “If he believes the seas are going to rise by up to 20 metres, why did he just buy a beachfront property in San Francisco?”
Great question, Aron. When will someone in the mainstream media ask it?
Here is how the logic goes…
1. Criticizing Al Gore is the equivalent of killing 1000 people
2. Not allowing criticism of Al saves 1000’s of people
3. Ensuring no criticism by any means necessary will save untold lives
4. Eventually…climate sceptics better learn to check under their cars in the morning before turning the key in the ignition
If it were science at all, would be my statement. What hogwash all of this climate “prediction” has become. And what hogwash in believing there are such things as “trends” from which future temperatures can be predicted. All nonsense from any mathematical or science standpoint.
As it happens, I am a professional civil engineer, and have a good deal of experience in both hydrology and hydraulic engineering. And there are such things called by the labels of year frequency storms, such as 10 year frequency storms, 25 year frequency storms, and the like.
So if I were to be so foolish as to make a prediction as to whether a 50 year frequency storm would happen this year, I would be foolish indeed. In fact, any 10 year old child could make a guess as to whether one of those would happen, and that child’s guess would be every bit as good as mine.
I might have the knowledge of the engineering terms to make it seem as though I was making a profound and knowledgeable statement, but it would be only a guess. It would be what we civil engineers used to refer to as a “Scientific Wild Ass Guess”
Oh well, there are still a good many who are attempting to write computer programs which will indicate reliably just whether the stock market will go up or down. Wasn’t it all those well educated and well experienced people who not only didn’t see the collapse of the stock market as is presently happening but lost huge amounts of their own money just now? Sure enough. Those are simply fools, who believed there was a “trend”, and bet their fortunes on it, and convinced many others to bet their fortunes on it.
There is no basis in science for a belief in “trends”, none whatsoever. Trends are only in the mind, and past performance, whether in the stock market or climate, is not any sort of even indicator as to what future performance or future climate or weather will be.
As we are in a temperate zone here in the US, there is good reason to think that summers will be warmer than winters. And that is about just how far it goes. Anything else is nothing but guesses, how ever “scientific” the language used seems.
Post I made over at Promethius :
Prof Tobias,
If you believe your agrument of “morally comparable”, couldn’t the same arguement be made in reverse? It is pretty clear in the world today that health & lifespan is a function of the energy a particular society uses. The countries that use more energy per capita are healthier & live longer because they are in a prosperous society, which is tied directly to energy use (and thus CO2 production). So, if we impliment massive curbs on energy production (the only realistic way to reduce CO2), wouldn’t we expect the overall health & lifespan of people to decrease & then YOU would be the guilty one of a “morally comparable” death of 1000’s. And this is not even considering that the CO2 – AGW hypothesis may not be valid at all. And if this were the case & unneeded energy curbs were put into place, how guilty would you be then.
Not that I think you are guilty, but I do think you need to be more careful how you choose your words. You have to consider the backlash against all environmentalism that may be coming due to a languishing economy & taxes for causes that many see as nothing more than a big govt money grab. The more extreme the envirnmental position that is made, the stronger the backlash will be (that’s human nature) and I am afraid that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater. And that ultimately will make the environment truly worse, not better.