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
squidly (13:53:38) :
“And Ethanol production by the United States killed a REAL estimated 30 million people this past year.”
I have only heard that food costs had gone up. Can you provide some proof of this claim? My general set point is skepticism to anything that sounds incredible because it usually is (not credible).
Tobis and a useful percentage of the AGW true believers clearly are in the grip of the sort of religious psychosis which requires self flagellation to make them feel righteous. Their connection with the real world in which the planet has been cooling for 5 years and in which 2008 was cooler than 1997 while CO2 rose 6% and in which the delay of Solar Cycle 24 suggests a sporting chance of a Dalton minimum is clearly tenuous.
Anyone who questions their faith is seen as heretical and evil and subject to destruction. It’s is not an unusual position in human history – indeed has been rather common – but has no place in science.
Isn’t it a bit of a diservice to your readers to not acknowledge this post as a cut and paste from marc morano’s email blast? Surely you would have no objection to the clear acknowledgement of sources?
REPLY: what’s your email? Fghyt@bvcxz.com that you put in doesn’t seem to be real. “Fred”
Oh looking at the IP that WordPress provides, I see it’s from Columbia University. That explains it.
The post is combination of two sources and my own writing. I’ll be happy to reveal those sources if you reveal your true name and email address. Seems like a fair trade.
– Anthony
Jari,
I’m sure you don’t see the irony in you first stating your ideals of “creating a more humane environment”, “treat each other as unique individuals” and “cultivate a humane community”, then immediately follow this with a demand that those who don’t agree with you to “shut up”.
Those who talk about their own high ethics are usually the ones that don’t have any…so excuse me if I don’t yield the moral high ground to you just because you say so.
stephen richards (11:17:16) :
The Southern Oscillation Index is arguably much the same thing. I only trace the index back to 1979 because if you go back too far you end up with a lot of noise and anyway I prefer satellite confirmation. This graph is current up to Feb 2009. Yes it is still in the cold phase.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/SOI.jpg
gaoxing (12:43:23) :
Sorry, Svalgaard (10:57:26)
What are you so sorry about?
Oh looking at the IP that WordPress provides, I see it’s from Columbia University. That explains it.LOL! I remember this… ahem. 🙂
Mark
My proposition that Climate Science has evolved from incompetence to dishonesty now needs two additions: there may be evidence of an orthogonal dimension in Climate Science, towards moon-howling insanity, and a third dimension, with witch-hunting as its metric.
Illustrates my point that Global Warming is a religion. Believers have seen the revealed TRUTH. The likes of Gore are prophets. And the Climate models are the oracles.
Sceptics are of course heretics.
It’s a good job burning at the stake has gone out of fashion.
Gripegut/Ryan Welch,
Agreed, innovation trumps. I have written this before, and do so again. ALL the horrors predicted by the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth book never came to pass, due to innovation. Their horrible predictions included humans’ near-extinction due to running out of: Energy, raw materials, financial capital, fresh water, food, and having an excess of waste materials, plus a couple of others I cannot now remember.
As George Will recently pointed out, the price of raw materials dropped due to over-supply, far from running out!. Energy not only did not run out, it is cheaper in real terms today than in 1980 (roughly $40 for oil then and now…29 years and lots of inflation later). Plus, there are supertankers of the stuff parked off coastlines because of over-supply. Natural gas prices are around $4 per millon BTU because of an over-supply. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
An interesting website I follow to keep up on innovations is
http://www.sciencedaily.com
A lot of things on there are hopelessly un-economic, but some of them will actually make sense.
Of course, the AGW proponents will tell us that they DO believe in innovation, and they are pressing for that innovation to be mankind emitting less CO2. Oops, make that Western civilization burning less fossil fuels. That ONE innovation is supposed to prevent all manner of horrors.
To which I have but two words in reply, taken from some favorite sorority girls in the 1970’s: “AS IF.”
And regarding innovations: if it ever comes down to it, we can absorb CO2 from the ambient air using wind-generated electricity to power electrolyzers for salt-and-water splitting; the resulting caustic product reacts with CO2 in the air. Geeks and engineers have used this technology for decades (at least since the 1970’s when I first saw it). This is not rocket science!
I bet the school children never heard about that one; now they can sleep better at night.
William,
sorry if I was not very clear with my post. I was quoting Dr. Tobis’ Ethical Society of Austin “Eight Commitments of Ethical Culture”. I was trying to be too clever and forgot the tags. I have nothing to do with his religious group.
I do apologize for the confusion.
Personally, I would not put too much weight on what Dr. Tobis says or does. He is not really at the sharp end of the climate science (or any science). According to his own website, he has a total of three (3) peer reviewed published papers and only one of these is about climate science, this published 9 years ago. The rest of the stuff is conference proceedings.
Al Gore is a ‘D’ student posing as a member of the intelligensia. His ideas hold as much water as a tea bag.
There, now can I choose the 1000 people?
That would be Hansen’s kind of scientist:
@Gripegut/Ryan Welch (14:21:15) :
That “30 million dead” does seem a “bit” high. (I’ve seen estimates of expectations of 10-20 million expected to die prematurely as a result, but they are projections, not real #’s) But there have been food riots, and some people have died. Also, food prices have become very high in places where people already had trouble affording it.
And if even the UN is having second thoughts about the food to fuel boondoggle, maybe there really is something to it…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/05/biofuels.food
Even seeming believers in AGW are having second thoughts…
http://www.ausbuy.com.au/ausbuy-press/biofuels-and-the-world-food-markets
In any case, such an apparently ridiculous claim as 30 million only serves to discredit not only the author, but the group opposed to wasting food by turning it into a lousy substitute for fuel. And that detracts from our credibility, while distracting attention from how they are nearly always wrong…
http://www.freemarketproject.org/articles/2008/20080411174526.aspx
OT (sorry, its just so interesting…!)
No change in ocean level around Denmark in 115 years…
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/ebovandstand1.gif
This reminds me of the Monty Python skit about the Spanish Inquisition.
Confess!…confess your sins!
Who left the nuthouse door open?
I have some more friends of Al Gore who love an interview:
[snip – inappropriate description]
* Jacques-Yves Cousteau, environmentalist and documentary maker: “It’s terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized, and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.”
* John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal: “I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
* Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University population biologist: “We’re at 6 billion people on the Earth, and that’s roughly three times what the planet should have. About 2 billion is optimal.”
* David Foreman, founder of Earth First!: “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
* David M. Graber, research biologist for the National Park Service: “It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
* Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome: “My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”
* Merton Lambert, former spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation: “The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man.”
* John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club: “Honorable representatives of the great saurians of older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be blessed now and then with a mouthful of terror-stricken man by way of a dainty!”
* Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund: “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
* Maurice Strong, U.N. environmental leader: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
* Ted Turner, CNN founder, UN supporter, and environmentalist: “A total population of 250–300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
* Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace: “I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds.”
“I have only heard that food costs had gone up. Can you provide some proof of this claim? My general set point is skepticism to anything that sounds incredible because it usually is (not credible).”
Have you visited the inside of a grocery store in the last 3 years?
@ur momisugly Ron de Haan (15:30:43) :
“* Maurice Strong, U.N. environmental leader: ‘Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about’?”
Details of that tactic, and how it has been implemented in actuality in the USA…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
Kyoto would accomplish that on a global scale. And there’s no way anyone could know it’s a fake, because…
(a) – Temps go down = “We reversed AGW”
(b) – Temps stay same = “We stopped AGW in it’s tracks”
(c) – Temps go up = “We’re lucky we took action when we did, or it would have been worse.”
It’s a ‘no lose’ proposition for them. The only way they can be shown to be wrong is if they are prevented from imposing their control of our behavior, and nothing happens, which is why they are so desperate to “take action now!”
The warmers have made it a moral issue, and they are on the wrong side of it.
Squidly – quote please on the 30 million… Thanks.
“critiquing Gore’s science “morally comparable to killing 1,000 people”
Tobis,
You just called me a mass murderer. Me, a fellow Longhorn and Geophysicist of over 30 years experience. Perhaps you would care to humbly beg my pardon?
No? Don’t come ’round me looking for a job when UT cans you, pal.
People like Tobis and Hansen lose credibility with me simply by the “immature” way they state their opinions.
It is a measure of the “immaturity” of society as a whole that such “immature” people are held in high regard by so many.
Ralph Waldo Emerson got it right: “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.”
OT – Is there a list of taking points in laymens terms on the subject of AGW for the skeptic? These would be points we could use in conversation with friends, associates, family that would explain the key points of the issue and how fundamentally there. I, like most, am not a scientist, but I do know when the media and our gov’t is playing its usual games and would like some ammo to use when I can bring the subject up.
Food prices and ethanol: An update for non farmers
The futures market for March soybeans closed at 8.63 today down from a july 2008high of 16.50 a buschel. The March futures corn contract closed at 3.43 a buschel down froma July 2008 of 8.00.
The prices farmer recieve for grains have fallen tremendously since the summer of 2008. No argument from me that Agricultural commoditied we too high last summer but the prices has corrected(fallen) as they always do. To summarize yes a high percentage of the USA corn crop goes to ethanol production but the price of cron is lower today less of a contributing factor to high food prices