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
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When I lived in Hollywood some years back, I remember during the election for California’s governor there were Democrat activists canvasing Beverly Drive. They were giving out leaflets which claimed that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Nazi who wanted to become dictator of California. That nasty bit of character assassination was paired with this photo
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/arnold-schwarzenegger.jpg
…which is a standard elongated bicep pose that was popular in bodybuilding during the 60s and 70s. But activists claimed it was a Nazi salute.
Then again, activists equated Bush with Hitler for removing Saddam and the Taleban from power.
It makes me wonder if any of these journalists and activists who evoke Godwin’s Law know just how disgusting Nazi slurs and Holocaust exploitation are or if they have any idea what was going on almost 70 years ago.
2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Niña.
According to climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia the global temperature is forecast to be more than 0.4 °C above the long-term average. This would make 2009 warmer than the year just gone and the warmest since 2005.
During La Niña, cold waters rise to the surface to cool the ocean and land surface temperatures. The 2009 forecast includes an updated decadal forecast using a Met Office climate model. This indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.
Professor Chris Folland from the Met Office Hadley Centre said: “Phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña have a significant influence on global surface temperature. Warmer conditions in 2009 are expected because the strong cooling influence of the recent powerful La Niña has given way to a weaker La Niña. Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Niño develops.”
These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends as Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, explains: “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming – the period 2001-2007, with an average of 14.44 °C, was 0.21 °C warmer than
Having followed Realclimate for a a good 2 or 3 years now, its great to see a picture of Gavin Schmidt and Raypierre. I just posted the following at Realclimate, though I can be sure they won’t post it. My comments are often censored for being undesirable anyway, even though my questions have always been legitimate and never rude.
To RC:
Believe it or not, this is a serious observation.
Gavin Scmidt, I have just seen your photo on on WUWT. You are overweight. Now, I don’t really want to have a go at you, but there are two points to mention.
(1) Being overweight means you have a larger ‘footprint’ than average. You are using more of the world’s resources than many of your peers, and more than you need to, especially when you think of the supply chain. The energy use, the water use, and the carbon footprint of all the food you consume. This isn’t fair.
(ii) You illustrate the fact that we would all like to consume less (food.., or carbon dioxide). But it is far more difficult than we would wish. I’m sure you are eating more than you would reaaly like. And we see, that despite all the scares and drama about over recent years about the need to reduce our carbon footprint, carbon emissions just continue to go up and up. What can we do??!!
The truth is, I will have much more faith in your AGW convictions when I see you slim and hunky.
Q: “Who makes up the IPCC?”
A: A small army of entirely political appointees, selected by UN member countries.
These political appointees’ jobs depend on saying what their political masters require them to say.
The carrot and stick approach is most often used: if the appointee takes the correct position, then job security, a glowing resume, advancement and a bright future are in store.
But if an appointee does not give the correct responses, or disputes the IPCC’s methodology, procedures or conclusions, they seriously risk their future prospects.
The deck is stacked. The dice are loaded. The system is gamed.
That is why the preponderance of IPCC appointees tend to be younger and more ambitious. They understand their marching orders, loud and clear. Look at Michael Mann. He was an obscure scientist in his early 30’s when he invented his hockey stick chart. It was just what the UN wanted. Now Michael Mann is showered with fame and fortune. Examples like that are not lost on other ambitious IPCC appointees.
If the IPCC was composed of respected, retired scientists, selected by the rank and file of professional scientific organizations in a secret ballot, rather than being appointed political flunkies, the IPCC’s reports would have entirely different conclusions, and they would predict the climate much more closely than the current ridiculously inaccurate assessment reports.
The UN political appointee system will never be open and transparent. Since big money is involved, the UN can not, and will not, ever allow honest climate science to be practiced or openly debated.
John Galt (11:03:35) :
That’s an odd conclusion to draw John! Obviously there isn’t “female climate science”. There is climate science…and quite a few of its participants are female…and as in all productive scientific arenas many of the participants are young/youngish. It’s usually the insightful and energetic that find stuff out… That’s pretty obvious and straightforward I think….
We could certainly agree that “science has changed”. After all there weren’t that many women doing science 50 years ago and even less 70-100 years ago. (And of course far fewer scientists have beards these days than in the past-Dr. Pierrehumbert’s splendid effort notwithstanding!).
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
Rule 12: pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
I was a skeptic regarding his influence, but now must conclude he has an enormous number of acolytes.
Too bad more people of both genders can’t be level-headed like Hansen, Gore, Chu, Ban, Mann, Kerry, ……
Richard Sharpe (10:36:55) :
“foinavon says: 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! ;-)”
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.
You left out that the trend to women and minorities in colleges in proportional amounts didn’t get rolling until the 70s and 80s. And you left out that they still don’t choose the hard sciences in proportionate numbers. That means that most of the people in most technical areas with the most experience will be “elderly” and “white” and “men”. I’ve not seen too many 30 year olds with 50 years of experience..
The “equality uber alles” folks just don’t want to treat the old white guys fairly and let the the natural demographics catch up as careers advance. They want to promote an agenda ahead of any consideration of merit advancement or career seniority. FWIW, this is embodied in the law of “equality of impact” that says you can sue an employer if they don’t have the right percentage of a group, regardless of reason. I.e. quota’s by any other name.
Part of why I left business. I could not hire enough non-male technical folks to have an “equality of impact” that was acceptable to the race/gender czars and I had to choose: Freeze my business too small to be stable or grow into a legal suit as my employee count crossed a threshold in the law. This is no joke. At a prior employer (tens of thousands) we had the annual race / gender survey we had to fill out to make sure we had the right quotas, er, impact…
So this is normal. Attack the ‘impact’ and ignore that to fix it would have required promoting a bunch of people who did not have the experience nor time in grade (and trashing the careers of every young white male for a generation too). But just think how much better they would “feel!”… except, of course, the elderly white males…
Sidebar: Over 40, IIRC, is another “protected category” (age discrimination). So our Ms. Goldenburg, were she an employee in a major company making that statement about employees would be getting a talking to from her manager and would be scheduled into the “Discrimination in the Workplace” lecture series administered by H.R. with supervision from Legal. I know. I’ve been in it (managers were required to take it very 2 years even if doing a stellar job… I had better “stats” than anyone.) and I’ve scheduled more folks to take it “for cause” than I care to remember. (“Cause” being darned near anything… including saying “Nice hair, new style?” to any gender.)
But, of course, she gets a pass on the discriminatory remark if the “elderly” happen to be white, male, and at the top of their field… and in a politically incorrect group.
We need to take a legal stand and chalenge the concencus of AGW. Before we are drowned out.
OT: Anthony, I don’t know if there is a Peak Oil topic?
Another huge oil field found off-shore Brazil, 8 billion barrels recoverable.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ayLSMCD585X8&refer=home
Moving the peak on peak oil (further into the future) is becoming a bit like the beginning of Solar Cycle 24!
@M. Carpenter (14:19:20) :
That may not be easily done. see link below:
This Link
To be honest, despite me making the odd joke here and there about the IPCC, they aren’t entirely to blame. The IPCC plays an essential role and if we can get rid of one problem then we’ll have universal support for the IPCC, scientists will stop attacking each other, journalists can go cover important stuff like contaminated rivers and all those political activists will be disarmed.
The problem is the historical temperature data. As long as the surface station data going back to the 19th century isn’t corrected to take into account all the urban factors then it doesn’t matter who works at the IPCC or who the scientists are.
Account for 19th and early 20th century dimming, and then account for late 20th century urban heat island effects. Then create a new historical temperature reconstruction.
With that done we’ll get a clearer (though still not perfect) picture of how much of the overall warming was real global climate change, not urban warming. With the warming rate cut by around half we’ll see that the climate isn’t that sensitive to greenhouse gases. And then we have to work out how much of the warming is manmade versus how much is natural. Once that is done the IPCC and all governments can formulate more realistic and affordable policies around the issue of climate change.
Our species needs climatology the way many species use their excellent sense of smell to be able to judge what is going on in their environment. We need to ensure all the associated fields of science are very well funded because in the future policy makers will be relying on scientists to understand what would happen to the climate if, for example, we decided to irrigate a desert, build a damn, eradicate a harmful specie from the chain of life, melt ice on purpose, seed clouds with rain, or any other terraforming project we wish to do on Earth or on another planet.
How many years of global cooling must occur before we can say with authority that the climate “was” warming rather than “is” warming?
PHE,
One point I was trying to make is that appearances aren’t usually a good way to to judge the quality of a person’s science, though age and experience are obviously very helpful.
Many young people I talk to believe that the climate always used to be lovely, until their parent’s generation screwed it up. They are lacking the personal experience which guides older people’s view of the world. Once that memory is buried, there is no limit to how superstitious people can and will get about the climate.
I know people who honestly think that their purchase of a hybrid car is making Polar Bears happier.
Good job, Steven. It must be psychologically exhausting to keep having to push back at the idiocy of the Warmers. But as Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
I once dated a girl who was the type of liberal some are describing here. She’d label and denigrate anyone who didn’t share her view. One day I called her on it, and pointed out how she was doing the same thing she complained others were doing, but in her case it might be worse because she was doing it intentionally.
Anyway, the breakup went okay, I got most of my stuff back intact.
Pamela Gray (13:11:39) :
David, may you be run over by a matriarchal African elephant who just so happens to not like her younger daughter’s choice of mate. Many a male wannabe has been seen peeing as he flees that charging elephant.
Pamela, I can well believe it.
But, of course, she gets a pass on the discriminatory remark if the “elderly” happen to be white, male, and at the top of their field… and in a politically incorrect group.
they aren t the top of the climate science field, most of them arebn t in their own. your claim is dishonest.
foinavon (12:49:39) :
Don’t worry about it foinaven….it’s just a personal thing.
What I cant believe is that you took a crappy article and made a discussion of it here:) Better to let that stuff die silently and badly. By reposting with a link here you have boosted that websites hits for the day. Not a really good way to send a message for them to knock it off..
Science has never been about the who… it doesnt take a petigree it takes patience and practice. Its all about how…
Dont know if any of you have seen this website here, but apparently what its saying is IF WE DONT BELEIVE THAT MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING IS HAPPENING, WE ARE THEN SIDED WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH AND HIS CRONIES (well thats what I get from it)
http://withusorwithrush.org/
Just thought it was pretty humorous and Laugh Out Loud ridiculous.
Foinavon, I noticed a lot of those names don’t have links… I assume that most or all of those without links are psychologists, sociologists & political science majors?
The IPCC has to have those professions all sewn up.
“..long as the surface station data going back to the 19th century isn’t corrected …”
What about ocean temps and acidification
Ice melt
Glacier
Species migration
Methane
etc.
@roger Sowell
M. Carpenter
Get them to prove that Global temeratures have increased in the last 11 years (which they have not)
Get them to prove that average Global sea ice extent has decreased over the same period (which it has’nt)
Get them to prove that over the last 5 years sea level has been rising, which of course again it has not.
David Corcoran (15:12:47) :
really David? Only three don’t have links out of the 15 women climate scientists I selected. I just spent 10 minutes looking through some climate science papers that I had at hand to determine whether Steven Goddard’s assessment of senior climate scientists (i.e. men…some with beards!) was correct.
Since I decided to devote only a short time to that minor task I gave up Googling for links after 12 women climate scientists! However the other three are proper scientists (I found them from their climate science publications) and if you set your Google into motion you can find links to them too!
…and many other women climate scientists if that’s what you desire….