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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sod (14:59:11) :
Huh? Most of whom ‘aren t the top…’? White males? Or some other group? And: ‘most of them arebm t in their own.’
‘…in their own.’…
…their own what?
You can’t call another poster dishonest, if you’re not even able to make a lucid statement. Better lay off the sauce, my friend.
Aron (14:43:01) :
The “urban heat island effect” is a bit of a red herring really. This has been addressed copiously in the scientific literature, and the historical anomaly trend is rather little affected if the entire network of urban sites is left out of the analysis.
One only needs to make a comparison of the urban centres (which can be identified very nicely from satellite night-time imagery):
e.g. http://www.ammtechnologies.com/Images/Earth2.JPG
and the distributions of temperature variation on the Earth’s surface, e.g. during the last 50 years:
e.g.: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/animations/
to see that urban heat effects can’t really be that significant. After all “urban heat” can’t be responsible for the very large warming in the Arctic, the Antarctic peninsula, Siberia and the vast northern territories of Canada, Alaska, empty Australia and North and Central Africa, and so on…..
Foinavon or Sod
Could you please tell me what you constitutes a ‘normal’ climate and which years would you select as representing that ideal?
thanks for your time.
Tonyb
What about ocean temps and acidification, Ice melt, Glacier, Species migration, Methane, etc.
As I said, if we correct the temperature record and get a proper understanding of how sensitive the climate is to GHGs, then some of these will look trivial and the prophecies (ice melt, methane, etc) look unrealistic.
I’ve looked at the claims of ocean’s becoming acidic and they are misleading. It’s something like an acidification of -0.1Ph every 250 years. Considering that oceans currently have a Ph level of 8.1 (which is alkaline) it will take almost 3000 years or so for ocean Ph to be neutral (which is Ph7, below which is it becomes acidic).
Since we have been decarbonising our energy sources for more than a century I doubt we’ll ever be harming the oceans. Sometime this century we’ll have a low carbon economy without any pressure from activists (though I am sure they will try to take credit) and the ocean’s will repair themselves soon after.
All that methane that is supposed to be trapped under permafrost in places like Siberia will remain so. I suspect we’ll see no more than 1.5C warming by 2100 (this will be evident when we do the reconstruction and see how sensitive the climate is). That amount of warming is not going to melt the tundras.
Species migration happens all the time, just like climate change. The media tends to treat other species as stupid when it suits them to do so, but just about all species are highly adaptable, especially birds, and are able to sense climate changes before humans can. Hell, when the tsunami hit Indonesia a few years ago many of the animals had moved inland long before the first of the big waves hit shore!
The “urban heat island effect” is a bit of a red herring really. This has been addressed copiously in the scientific literature, and the historical anomaly trend is rather little affected if the entire network of urban sites is left out of the analysis.
The Met Office admits that it has not accounted for the urban heat island effect prior to 1974 though I am weary of how they have accounted for it since. Elsewhere in the world the situation is worse, just ask Anthony.
The dense urban smog that was common in nearly all cities in the 19th century and only started to clear up after the 1960s would have created a dimming effect that has not been accounted for at all. In the 19th century this would have been particularly bad because as old photos, stories and fashions testify – smog was so thick that it blocked sunlight, made winters extremely cold, allowed people to dress fully in long sleeves and jackets during the summers, caused many instances of cancer and heart disease, etc.
Under such conditions you could not measure the full extent of the planet’s temperature, especially with so few surface stations. My hypothesis is that temperatures were higher than recorded, therefore the total amount of global warming when taking into account all urban factors is about half of what is currently agreed upon based on contaminated data.
foinavon says:
To be clear, the Urban Heat Island effect causes thermometers that are placed in urban areas to read higher temperatures than they would if they were located out of urban areas. Thus it is not causing the warming, it is causing biased temperature readings.
In my mind there is every reason to believe that the same is going on in Siberia and other parts of the arctic where people are manually reading thermometers.
As for the Arctic peninsula, you forgot to mention volcanic activity on the peninsula.
Here’s a challenge see if you can spot Gavin in the following tale….also present Santer, Hansen and Mann along with other notable IPCC identities.
Who funds the IPCC what is its budget ?
A number of countries are feeling the economic pressure of a major downturn this means they are looking closely at every line of budget expenditure, their contrubutions to the UN one of them.
I will forecast that the UN will get hit where it hurts them most in the next few years, reduced funding, or countries not paying up.
Which UN programmes are likely to be pruned in the coming budget rounds.
The reason for the IPCC politicising climate science and adopting such alarmist retoric, becomes a bit more obvious.
If climate realists can sow some seeds of doubt in the minds of the budget arms of governments about the value and return from current climate funding then something positive might happen.
foinavon – the tropics and the southern hemisphere haven’t warmed over the past 30 years.
check out the Zonal air temperature changes at http://www.climate4you.com/
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20UAH%
This is a purely political attack on the part of Suzanne Goldenberg. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with science.
This is a typical political smear. It is a dirty shot below the belt.
I can see it has sparked others of like political minds to jump to her aid. This only reveals their motivations for being involved in this issue–i.e., politics.
It also reveals how desperate her side is getting. They aren’t even feigning to care about science in this one. A cooling earth is working against them. So now out come the basest, and transparently political, attacks.
The gloves come off–and all we see are political fists that were hidden under them!
Well Foinavon, with Christ, Gabriel and Solomon leading the IPCC perhaps it is a religion.
pyromancer76 (12:38:35)
Once they became the majority of the faculty in a department — and well placed deans could stack those odds — all other faculty members voted in were fellow travelers. Applicants with excellent credentials were ignored; course standards declined; and the variety of viewpoints contracted severely.
I noticed in the UK during the 60s-70s that some local councils were taken over using the same technique. It has also been used in Australia. But less successfully in some case so the state governments took control of the local councils lock, stock and barrel and installed their minions to destabilise the conservative local agenda.
Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?
Richard S. Lindzen’s link to the PDF file 0809.3762.pdf, which I download on the 26th of February (from a WUWT topic), also highlights this scenario in the scientific field.
Yes, this political interference has been around for a long time. Some are beginning to see the light but they are probably older and have the worldly knowledge to understand what they are seeing.
Well, if pix of climate scientists are your thing then here are some photos of a sample of the actual IPCC authors from working group 1:-
Surabi Menon Marika Holland Claudia Tebaldi Elisabeth Holland Judith Lean Cecillia Bitz <a href=”http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/jma/” Julie Arblaster Cath Senior Veronika Eyring Helen Fricker Kathy McInnes Amy Clement Lai-yung Ruby Leung Linda Mearns Jagadish Shukla <a href=”http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~ymalhi/ym-tikal-portrait.jpg” Prof Yadvinder Malhi Joyce Pinner Inez Fung
Ann Sellers Susan Solomon (Co-chair)
Prof. Julia Slingo Prof Lynne Talley Professor Corinne Le Quéré
Prof. Ulrike Lohmann Dr. Marie-France Loutre Clara Deser Joanna House
Julia Cole Penny Whetton Bette Otto-Bliesner Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli Valérie Masson-Delmotte Natalia G Andronova Prof Joanna Haigh Sandrine Bony Amanda Lynch” Graciela inimelis de Raga Dr. Gabriele C. Hegerl Caroline Leck Inger Hanssen-Bauer Yuhong Tian Prof Zhao Zongci Claire Waelbroeck Anny Cazenave Cecilie Mauritzen Olga N. Solomina Julie Jones
et cetera, et cetera…
It would save us a lot of time and energy if we would accept that the IPCC is part of an ideology. Representatives of this ideology will use any means available to disqualify any opposition.
This article is nothing more but hard evidence that they do and I applaud the quick and to the point response to this “below the belly” attack on the ICCC.
When this ideology grows roots, using our democratic system to introduce legislation that consolidates their power base, we will be in big trouble.
We are in big trouble.
http://green-agenda.com
“Jason (08:45:36) : Pathetic really, particularly for a group that prides itself on being tolerant, diverse, and inclusive, but apparently that applies only if you believe what they want you to believe.”
This is true. There’s a funny YouTube video where a stand-up comedian makes the same point at about the 1:50 minute of the video :
Richard Jeni – Political Parties
John Philip:
Actually, they’re not my thing, John.
My thing is seeing the university degree and the c.v. of each of them.
Can you provide those? Since these are all ‘climate scientists.’
@M. Carpenter
They would concede those points. And dismiss them as irrelevant.
They would point to the temperature increase since about 1900, and the CO2 rise since 1900, and state there is not only a correlation, but causation.
They would point to the arctic summer ice extent decreasing over time. (and it has)
They would point to the sea levels rising over time, and dismiss the recent leveling off as a minor bump on the rising graph.
Then, they would point to the really apocalyptic events that are most certainly to occur as more CO2 and other horrible greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere: shores inundated, populations dislocated, water shortages, famine, heat waves, tropical diseases, all the rest.
Still, it would be fun to have one or two of them on the witness stand, and then some substantive experts to testify and discredit what they said.
Trying to find an unbiased jury might be a problem, though.
You made some typos in the title of this post, Steve.
“Who Makes Up The IPCC?” should read, “What The IPCC Makes Up.”
Ben Lawson (07:19:56) wrote :
‘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.”’
I’m not sure of your intention in posting that, but I’m glad you did. As I’m associated with the Carbon Sense Coalition I may not have actually read the Guardian article and realised that we are now world famous!
But it’s interesting how they had to bookend the video interviews of ICCC participants with their own critical comments and more ad hominem.
“Smokey (17:27:20) :My thing is seeing the university degree and the c.v. of each of them. Can you provide those? Since these are all ‘climate scientists.’ ”
Speaking of which, is James Hansen, “World’s Leading Climatologist”, a climatologist?
dearieme (08:49:11) :
No doubt Gavin made those very points before you did, and independently to boot.
hahaha.
The dearth of geometry teaching in maths is serious however, as noted.
I’m channelling those useless energies of frustration and name-calling into dreaming into being the skeptics’ wiki we need, alongside NIPCC and ICCC, to correct the record so that even bimbos like Monbiot cannot ignore it, nor his followers, and I’m encouraging others here to do the same. Now THAT is the real female contribution, as far as I’m concerned, an ongoing Internet sit-in at the gates of Greenpeace Common. Outlet for us raging activist grandmothers.
K Moore (09:00:26) :
Plenty of white males at the Copenhagen conference-is that also to be decried by the Guardian reporter? Have aatached a blog from there.
How to Talk about Global Warming with Climate Change Deniers
Green Manners: This could get ugly…
By Brian Merchant
Brooklyn, NY, USA | Mon Feb 09 07:00:00 EST 2009
I have spent an untold number of hours over the recent years, on this site and most of the others like it and many that support the AGW view and I can state, almost unequivocally, that I have never encountered a statement by anyone who supported a skeptical view of AGW that indicated in any way that they believed that the climate was not changing. Quite the contrary, most seem to support the view, as I do, that the climate is and always has been constantly changing. This has been a prime tactic of the AGW crowd from the very beginning of their crusade. If you questioned in any way that we knew exactly why things were happening as they were, you were described as denying that anything was happening at all. You really have to admire the wonderful prescience of Orwell. He may have gotten the date wrong, but he certainly foresaw the Age of the Big LIe we have come to find ourselves trapped in. Unfortunately, because of the complicity of their lackeys in the media, the AGW crowd completely control the language of the discussion, what little of it that is allowed to surface beyond the Internet.
I suppose I should be heartened that, despite the overwhelming and relentless panic spreading propagandizing of Gore, Hansen, et al, fewer people are buying into the pending catastrophe. What’s disheartening is that none of the politicians, at any level of government, who are legislating us into economic ruin and a high speed ride down Hayek’s ” Road to Serfdom” seem to be among those who have seen the light. If any have they certainly lack the required set of cajones needed stand up against the tide.
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.
Us sceptics are very much in favour of the science. What we are against is the politicized quasi-religous dogma that appears to be the sole argument of the Warming Believers.
Well Foinavon, your list of leading IPPCC people is intresting… Christ, Gabriel and Solomon, humm? perhaps it is a religion.
Roger Sowell (17:31:31) :
@M. Carpenter
Still, it would be fun to have one or two of them on the witness stand, and then some substantive experts to testify and discredit what they said.
Trying to find an unbiased jury might be a problem, though.
———————————-
Check out the comments on any Al Gore YouTube video, and you will see where a jury may stand. I think that they really do not want to go there …
…. although it is probably inevitable.
They have no idea about discovery and depositions. I’ve been there, done that, and 10 years of litigation is very, very ugly. It’s particularly ugly if your (as in their) truth system is compromised, and even worse if you (as in they) have also caused large quantifiable damages (a given).
One e-mail can do it !!!