Guest post by Steven Goddard
Suzanne Goldenberg recently
complained in the UK Guardian about the
ICCC (International Conference on Climate Change) global warming “deniers” :
The 600 attendees (by the organisers’ count) are almost entirely white males, and many, if not most, are past retirement age. Only two women and one African-American man figure on the programme of more than 70 speakers.
In the UK, profiling like that might be considered a hate crime if it were about any other group other than the one she described. But that isn’t the point. Below is a
photo of the vaunted
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change) taken at their last meeting. The spitting image of her description of the I
CCC. No doubt Ms. Goldenberg considers the adult white men in the I
PCC to be great visionaries, leading the noble fight against climate Armageddon.
Here are some other scientists active in climate change:
Jim Hansen:
Hansen at a climate conference in Denmark 2009.
Left to Right: Dr. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Dr. Paul Knappenberger (President of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), Dr. Wally Broecker (Columbia University), and Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago) pose for a photo after the first of the Global Climate Change forum. Forum I was held at the Adler Planetarium.
Is it a big surprise that most
senior scientists are adult white males? And what criteria did she use to choose the expertise of one group of prestigious scientists to the exclusion of another? Does she consider her personal climate expertise to be superior to
Dr. Richard Lindzen, to the point where she can choose to simply ignore his opinion?
Richard Siegmund Lindzen, Ph.D., (born February 8, 1940) is a Harvard trained atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his research in dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves. He has published over 200 books and scientific papers. He was the lead author of Chapter 7 (physical processes) of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC on global warming (2001). He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the political pressures surrounding climate scientists.
It is one thing to question the scientific conclusions of an organisation, and a completely different matter to make an ad hominem attack against an entire group – based on such witless criteria.
H/T to Aron for finding the article
Like this:
Like Loading...
maksimovich (09:46:46) :
No idea maksimovich. Why don’t you explore the question yourself!
I was just addressing Steven Goddard’s rather selective set of pictures. One of the things that’s apparent in modern science is that there are rather a lot of women participating in the enterprise. So it’s worth highlighting that. There tend to be more in the Biomedical sciences, less in the Physical sciences and fewer still in basic Physics/Maths. But climate-related science, while a physical science (with some biological aspects) has lots of youthful women. I just spent a few minutes looking at some of the recent papers I’d read on climate science, and came up with my snippet of a list! Quite a number of climate scientists in positions of seniority are women it seems.
In my opinion it’s a useful and interesting to point out that an astonishing number of those that are very publically and vociferously against the science on global warming are elderly men. It seems to be a basic fact of life. I’m sure we could come up with some explanations for that…..I’ve certainly got an idea or two! 😉
foinavon:
Lorraine Lisiecki:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081106153633.htm
“Our study tells us a lot about how the ocean circulation is affected by changes in climate,” she adds. “The ocean does not always follow the climate; it exerts its own impact on climate processes.”
She studies Milankovitch cycles too. I bet she comes over to the skeptic camp before long. Of course she may already be in it, in her heart. 😉
An interesting list foinavon, thanks.
[snip – none of that labeling here, please don’t do it again, Anthony]
More Holocaust exploitation in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/13/postlethwaite-age-of-stupid-climate-deniers
foinavon (08:15:25)
What is the ratio of US/UK in the AR4 say vs other countries.?
Is this an example of the “excellence ” of Bourbakian mathematics that has seen the seen these countries (and a lot of European) become also runs in the “schools of mathematical physics?
Would this be the reason that “beautiful minds” such as Dyson understand intuitively,the limiting qualities of “climate science” ie the lack of mathematical theory.
We know the causes eg Vladimir Arnold address to the ICTP.
In the middle of the twentieth century a strong mafia of left-brained mathematicians succeeded in eliminating all geometry from the mathematical education (first in France and later in most other countries), replacing the study of all content in mathematicsby the training in formal proofs and the manipulation of abstract notions. Of course,all the geometry, and, consequently, all relations with the real world and other sciences have been eliminated from the mathematics teaching.
Define the multiplication of natural numbers by the long multiplication rule. The
commutativity of the multiplication (ab = ba) becomes then a difficult theorem, which one can however deduce logically from the definition. Forcing poor students to learn such proofs, the left-brained criminals had inevitably created the present negative opinion, of society and governments, of mathematics.
One can only understand the commutativity of the multiplication counting the soldiers by the rows and by the columns, or evaluating by two ways the area of the rectangle.
All the attempts to avoid this intervention of the real world into mathematics is a sectarian approach, that will be rejected by any reasonable person and will produce an aversion to mathematics, to multiplication and to all kinds of proofs. This “abstract” description of mathematics can be used neither for the teaching, nor for any practical purpose.
But the left-brained ill people have succeeded in breeding generations of mathematicians,who understand no other approach to mathematics and are able only to continue to teach it the same way. The aversion to mathematics of the ministers who have suffered through the humiliating teaching of this type in high school is a normal and healthy reaction
Unfortunately, their aversion to mathematics is acting indiscriminately on all of it
-and can kill it completely. One of the dangerous trends is to eliminate the proofs from the high-school mathematics.The role of the proof for mathematics is similar to that for orthography or even calligraphy for poetry. A person, who had not mastered the art of the proofs in high school, is as a rule unable to distinguish correct reasoning from that which is misleading.
Such people can be easily manipulated by the irresponsible politicians.
Mass hypnosis and the disastrous social events may result. L. Tolstoy observed that the strength of a government depends on the people’s ignorance.
Moreover, he said, the government is aware of this and would therefore always
fight against the people’s education.I think however that the complete destruction of mathematics and of mathematical education would be a mistake similar to the Galileo persecution.’
It is obviously too late.eg
Chinese maths level embarrasses English system
http://www.rsc.org/aboutus/news/pressreleases/2007/chinesemaths.asp
Gary P
I’ve been urging people for months now to end their newspaper subscriptions. These news papers want people to reduce CO2?
Fine, start by eliminating their rags.
I had a climate-activist paper here in Germany call and ask if I’d subscribe. I told them no because producing and distributing their paper created earth-shattering CO2. I also told them I was thinking starting a campaign telling people to stop reading printed papers – to save the world.
They were not amused.
I would recommend Mrs.Suzanne Goldenberg to read the following with careful and attention:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html
The point has been made here repeatedly that the reason there were mostly retired scientists at the Heartland conference is because being retired, they are not in a position to lose their jobs for being seen there.
Rather than making this an age issue, those who gloat about it in this thread [and we all know who you are], they should instead be protesting the unethical threat against the job security of scientists that prevents their speaking freely without fear of retribution.
Not protesting those reprehensible tactics, and going even beyond that by being part of the alarmist monkey-piling on younger scientists, makes it clear that those turning a blind eye to this attack on freedom of speech have no ethics.
Is Dr Sallie Baliunas of Harvard’s department of astrophysics an evil old white man???? What’s up with her young oriental colleague?! Everyone knows if you’re female or young or Asian you have to be a trendy green alarmist!
foinavon says:
Why don’t you spit it out so we can see what you mean.
For my part I think it has to do with a couple of things:
1. Lots of experience in the real world.
2. No longer caring about pernicious peer pressure.
A protester at the conference (what seemed like a high school girl) said the exact same thing during a Q&A session. Nir Shaviv was taken a little off guard.
In some AGW websites if one were to subsitute the word “deniers” with any ethnic group, one would embark on a trip down memory lane, a very sad and dark trip… the violence and racism exhibited by these groups and now openly inferred by Mrs. Goldenberg in the UK Guardian is cause for much more alarm than prediction of sea level rises. It is reminiscent of pre-bolchevik revolution press in content and people for those who have been so lucky as to read the late Solzhenytsyn. Indeed, the social unrest predicted by the Copenhagen report would have nothing to do with science… i surely hope someone in the UK will take her and this newspaper to court.
Ben Lawson (07:19:56) :
Why didn’t you continue the quote you pulled? “Aside from a smattering of academics from well-known universities, they are affiliated with rightwing thinktanks, such as the Ayn Rand Institute, the Carbon Sense Coalition, or the scarily named Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, that operate far outside the mainstream of public discourse.”
Just more ad hominem smear tactics from a rabid AGW ideologue. Funny, Ben, that you think that actually helps your cause any.
[snip – none of that labeling here, please don’t do it again, Anthony]
johng (09:40:55) :
You should read the rubbish in todays’ Daily Telegraph!
Or perhaps you shouldn’t!
Where is the ‘science’ supporting this 6C increase and ‘it’s much worse than we thought’ coming from?
Exactly.
foinavon answered my question — there is such a thing as female climate science! There is also an under 40 climate science, to boot!
Funny, the laws of nature don’t change according to your age, ethnicity or sex, but science does.
The time is ripe for white males to assert that they have just as much rights to be competent, well paid and venerated as anyone else.
Not more rightful.
As rightful.
I’ve got a bit tired over the past 3 years of highlighting sexist behaviour by women. I resigned membership of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK due to overtly sexist comments by a FEMALE senior spokesperson at a winter conference.
I highlighted a sexist article in the Daily Telegraph this week.
I’ve highlighted thuggish bullying by women in the place of work.
None of it has done me much good, I have to say.
There is just as intense hatred and sexism towards decent men by sexist women now as there was by sexist men toward decent women a generation ago.
The difference is, we don’t want to turn into women, nor do we wish to wear miniskirts or burn our male-appropriate underwear. We don’t want women to be subjugated as baby-producing housewives, nor do we expect them to drink 15 pints of beer to prove they are worthy work colleagues. We don’t object to being managed by a competent woman, nor do we have any objection to career women being multi-orgasmic, as long as it isn’t on the office table between 9am and 6pm.
Keep up the good work and called feminist sexist pigs feminist sexist pigs, I say!
That doesn’t mean that we can’t also think that there are millions of decent, generous, respectful, loving women and mothers out there.
Does it??
[snip ]
foinavon (10:18:13) :
I’m sure we could come up with some explanations for that…..I’ve certainly got an idea or two! 😉
Is your amateur psychology any better than your climate science? 😉
[snip – none of that labeling here, please don’t do it again, Anthony]
The Telegraph actually tends to be fairly well balanced. A good piece from Bjorn Lomborg today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4981028/Global-warming-will-save-millions-of-lives.html
Global warming will save millions of lives
Dire predictions about climate change and health omit the cost of cold, says Bjorn Lomborg.
I’d love to hear how the representation of women and youth in climate science is an indication of the quality of the work rather than the social, political and financial appeal of the work.
How many young climate scientists would be climate scientists if not for the exponential growth in funding for the field and perceived social nobility associated with the work?
Does anyone have specific statistics on the growth and demographics of the climate science field?
foinavon (08:15:25) :
You have just proved why you lack credibility. And John Galt (11:03:35) explains very succinctly, (to use a Hansen expression), why you have been nailed.
Nice to see you back though: adds spice to the menu!!
32 out of 34 IPCC lead authors are men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:IPCC_lead_authors