I don’ t know what sort of world NYT reporters live in, but I am now convinced that some like Paul Krugman have no clue about the real world people live in elsewhere.
‘This Week” with George Stephanopoulos debates ClimateGate – more here
Noel Sheppard over at Newsbusters provides some video and transcript of a debate between Paul Krugman of the NYT and Washington Post columnist George Will.
When I read what Paul Krugman said, I laughed out loud. He’s truly clueless.
Here’s the context:
WILL: Speaking of the marketplace, the biggest industry in the world right now may be fighting climate change. There are billions, trillions of dollars on the table, and when you say, well, they are academics and they are scientists and they talk in funny ways — academics are human beings, and the enormous incentive to get on the bandwagon on global warming, the financial incentive, the market driving this, is huge.
KRUGMAN: There is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.
WILL: Hardly.
KRUGMAN: It’s so much easier, come on. You got the energy industry’s behind it. There are 20 times as many believers as there are skeptics in the scientific community. They get almost equal time in the media.
(CROSSTALK)
WILL: Is there a larger venture capital firm in this country than the Energy Department of this government, which right now is sending out billions and billions of dollars in speculation on green energy?
Noel Sheppard writes:
Skeptics get almost equal time in the media? Yeah, that’s why this appears to be the first time ABC addressed this ClimateGate issue.
As for there being more money in being a skeptic than there is in supporting this myth, the facts say otherwise.
The Science and Public Policy Institute issued a report on the money involved in funding the global warming debate in August concluding, “Over the last two decades, US taxpayers have subsidized the American climate change industry to the tune of $79 billion.”
By contrast, the same study found that the media bogeyman “Exxon Mobil gave a mere $23 million, spread over ten years, to climate sceptics.”
See the video and transcript at Newsbusters
UPDATE: Professor Don Easterbrook left this comment on the ABC news site:
I’ve spent 4 decades studying global climate change and as a scientist I am appalled at Krugman’s cavalier shrugging off the Hadley email scandal as ‘just the way scientists talk among themselves.’ That’s like saying it’s alright for politicians to be corrupt because that’s the way they are. Legitimate scientists do not doctor data, delete data they don’t like, hide data they don’t want seen, hijack the peer review process, personally attack other scientists whose views differ from theirs, send fraudulent data to the IPCC that is used to perpetuate the greatest hoax in the history science, provide false data to further legislation on climate change that will result in huge profits for corrupt lobbyists and politicians, and tell outright lies about scientific data.
Posted by: Don Easterbrook | Nov 29, 2009 1:57:05 PM
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When I look at scared, weak faces of habitual liars for hire — Krugman’s Bernanke’s, Geithner’s — the following two quotes from two great Americans come to my mind:
If the study of human interactions could become a science, I suspect that an inviolate axiom might be discovered to this effect: Every social disposition creates a disparity of advantages. Further: Every innovation designed to correct the disparities, no matter how altruistic in concept, works only to create a new and different set of disparities.
— Jack Vance
I’ve often said that the only people who have real, honest to God freedom of speech are tenured professors on the verge of retirement or who have already retired and have an independent income like myself. But I think one of the most precious things in life is to be able to say what you believe freely and openly without having to worry too much about the consequences–I say too much. I don’t believe that it ought to cost less. If you’re going to say unpopular things and you’re going to become unpopular as a result, that’s going to impose a cost. And sometimes maybe you won’t be willing to bear it. But, there ought to be no so-to-speak artificial costs, artificial limitations on you. But yet, there are on most people. I can give one example after another of the same kind of thing. Right now you have this terrible situation that’s happening in college after college in this country of a complete intolerance for speech which is not quote, “politically correct.” It’s come to be a new term that’s used, “politically correct speech.” It’s a terrible term. It’s a disgraceful term. Correct speech ought to be speech which expresses what a person believes, what he thinks to be the truth. And it’s a disgrace that in universities of all places there should be the kind of censorship that is in fact being imposed.
— Milton Friedman
Perhaps Krugman missed the email from Mick Kelly discussing research funding from Shell Oil for CRU. Krugman seems to have much in common with Jones and Mann, et al. When faced with a lack of facts, make it up!
Blaming has started ree previous
“Though he says he was asked to delete selected e-mails by Jones, Mann said he did not comply with the request. He does not believe any of his colleagues went through with the deletion either”.
Paul’s eyes do not move like those of a normal person.
KRUGMAN: There is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.
Don’t know if anybody’s commented on this yet, but the guy can’t even construct a sentence. Add to that the fact that it’s one of the most specious arguments yet heard on the subject, and the word “desperation” leaps to mind.
I don’t want to personally attack Mr. Krugman, but he comes off sounding like an idiot. He said something to the effect of “there is no explanation for why 1998 was so hot”. Really? I thought that was pretty well understood and agreed upon. And then he uses the illustration of a hot day in April doesn’t mean that if May is cooler that there is no trend. But in that case, it is a known fact that the trend will go back up because summer is coming. It’s a foregone conclusion, but I guess so is global warming in his mind.
The funniest part about it, to me though, was when he first started talking you could literally hear the quiver in his voice. And the longer he talked, you could see the sweat beads forming. Hilarious!!!
I suspect there is infinitely more money in being Paul Krugman lying than in being Stephen McIntyre telling the truth.
Once again Paul Krugman opens his mouth and removes all doubt that he is absolutely clueless.
UN digs in its heels on climate change: click
The comments below the article are interesting too.
>>Stop…..please STOP turning into a left/right thing.
>>It ain’t.
>>Its about truth.
Sorry, that’s dead wrong. The history of this whole sordid affair goes back to Maurice Strong, a self-proclaimed socialist, and his insistence that the world was running out of natural resources and that humans needed to adopt a “sustainable lifestyle”. He’s been on this kick since the founding of the Club of Rome and the first UN climate conference in Stockholm.
Climate change for this group has never been an end but a means to an end. It started in the 70’s with disaster predictions about global cooling and when that didn’t come to pass it morphed into global warming and now into global climate change.
At the core, this has never been about climate or even people. This is about a small group of international socialists who have been trying for decades to enforce their control over the planet by scaring and bullying. Think not? Take a good hard look at the IPCC (which is mostly bureaucrats not scientists) proposals for international taxes, the transfer of power from wealthy country to poor, the role of international organizations like the UN and the World Bank in overseeing this process.
I welcome those on the left of good faith who are waking up to what some of us have been saying for years and look forward to them helping to fight back on this junk. But make no mistake, this has always been about politics. Always.
Jim,
“Then why not? (Common sense would say that thee BEST opportunity was when half (or so) of the world was under dictatorial command not when LESS was under dictatorial command as is the case NOW!!!)”
Well Jim, the mistake you are making is to believe that the people who had half the world under dictatorial command during the cold war, are the same people who seek a global government today. Obviously, if they are the same, then your argument is perfectly correct.
But they are not the same. While the former Soviet empire has morphed into the modern gangster economy, the organisations and groups that are trying to shove global governance through the back door are a motley alliance of environmentallists, old Europe statists and the left leaning UN. Ironically, it is the escapees from the former Soviet empire – the “new” Europeans of the East, that are the ones most likely to oppose any such attempt move.
Krugman: “And what the deleting really meant, deleting would be meant that, you know, we don’t know when this thing [the MWP] started, because we don’t have very good data back then.”
So, the references to deleting data requested under FOIA *actually* mean, “We’re unsure of the precise timeline for the era.”
Right. Got it.
Would anyone take seriously the words of a man who thinks Gordon Brown is great?
UPDATE ON COPENHAGEN
Walkout Threatens Obama Presence at Copenhagen
From the Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Copenhagen-conference-India-China-plan-joint-exit/articleshow/5279771.cms
Obama is considering not attending Copenhagen because of a joint threatened walkout by India, China, Brazil and South Africa, if developed nations don’t accept their “non-negotiable” demands.
“The four countries, which include Brazil and South Africa, agreed to a strategy that involves jointly walking out of the conference if the developed nations try to force their own terms on the developing world, Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister for environment and forests (independent charge), said.
“We will not exit in isolation. We will co-ordinate our exit if any of our non-negotiable terms is violated. Our entry and exit will be collective,” Ramesh told reporters in Beijing.”
…The four nations issued a joint press release, which made it clear the developed nations should be ready to contribute funds and share green technology if they expected the developing and poor nations to take major actions on environmental protection.”
ralph: “You might think that something like climate would be non-political partisan, but it isn’t. It is rapidly becoming a left/right issue, and future elections may well intensify that divide.”
All I am saying if we are going to defeat this AGW disease, it is going to take people who would not necessarily be in the same room in any other circumstance perhaps.
You band together to fight a common enemy.
And your classifications of left/right are too plastic anyways.
People, just like they come in all shapes and sizes, come in highly varied political convictions, too.
So, rather than focusing on our differences, we focus on what we have in common to get this job done.
I think the true divide is smart/stupid.
Stupid people are sheeple….and they go with groupthink. And they are like Krugman.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Equal?
Estimate for government funded research is between $50B and $80B – funding from oil companies and private sources is about $300M or about 150:1 and 240:1.
Evidently Krugman is arithmetically challenged, too.
In an economist, that’s bad…mmmmKay.
BTW, what are HIS qualification to judge climate science? Could he even pass Meteorology 101?
JackStraw
You might believe all that socialist takeover stuff but it’s nothing but fodder for those who like to dismiss skeptics as conspiracy theorists taking their orders from their veggie, socialist overlords – to quote Gavin. As such it doesn’t help us get to the truth. If the raw data says it’s warming then it’s warming and it that appears unnatural then ergo it’s partly man-made. Both of these are disputable merely because of restricted access to the raw data, dubious methods and biased models but it’s still a plausible hypothesis that still needs proper testing.
In fact Gavin had a very good point that the leaked emails make it abundantly clear that all these scientists utterly believe in the concept of manmade global warming. The only disconnect being that the data in it’s raw state is ambiguous so they felt they had to manipulate it to add upward trends.
Now you might correctly assume academics in earth sciences are 90% lefty and you might also correctly assume that in having no experience of being an entrepreneur they really don’t quite understand that business is what supplies the prosperity that allows the grants that keeps them in work. However the emails make it clear they aren’t taking orders from Maurice Strong or any other higher up- they truly believe that catastrophe is just around the corner. It is just classical groupthink!
Anyway, Maurice Strong might believe in a global world order and he might be near the top of the UN but the UN is a toothless organisation. They’d have trouble moving a good crap never mind world domination.
JamesG,
That’s really funny, because what the “leaked emails” make abundantly clear to ME is that these clowns were all about “hiding” and refusing to reveal actual data in order to promote an agenda, NOT that they “utterly believe in the concept of AGW”.
Then again, you’re telling us what Gavin said.
Here’s a really interesting idea… why not scan through some of the mountain of stuff and see for yourself instead of letting Gavin hand you your talking points?
Anyway, the hypothesis doesn’t seem very plausible to me, especially since the only way to even remotely make the data appear to match the hypothesis seems to be to alter the data…
“…The four nations issued a joint press release, which made it clear the developed nations should be ready to contribute funds and share green technology”
How about we give them all our windmill technology, a few billion dollars to compensate for using it, while we go nuclear?
JamesG-
I think you are not digging deep enough. The UN may be toothless as you say but the IPCC which funds and supports these scientists has had this conclusion for years. Pachuari, the head of the IPCC, is a creature of Strong’s as are many at the World Bank who has been dispersing UN (read our) money for years on sustainable energy programs around the world whether the countries wanted them or not. And let’s not forget that it was Strong who set up the IPCC in the first place in 1998 with the forgone conclusion that man made climate change was real. It may be toothless now but if Obama and Brown had their way they would accede to their demands in a heart beat. How toothless would they be then?
If you were a scientist over the last couple decades working on climate research, you knew exactly what conclusions you needed to reach in order to have your work see the light of day and equally important to receive funding.
It’s not a matter of me believing or not believing. It’s a fact. Do a little reading on Fenton Communications, the company that has been doing pr for the UN for years on this stuff. They also happen to represent WWF, Soros, Sierra Club, Tides, Heinz Foundation, etc., etc. They specialize in scare pr and some of their most famous (unitl this nonsense) work was the phony Alar scare and the equally phony Bovine Hormone scare. This is what they do and they only do it for far left causes.
You can pretend that this was just a few good hearted scientists who went astray but the facts don’t support it. This has been an organized campaign of the far left and as the walls come tumbling down it will be demostrated.
And no, when emails say that they need to find a way to “hide the decline” and state that there has been no global warming for years and that it is a travesty that they can’t explain it of that they are willing to rig the peer review process in order to keep dissenting views from being heard that doesn’t mean they really believed what they were doing. It means they were desparate to cover their unscientific butts.
And as for Gavin and Real Climate, you do realize who runs the site, right? If not, it’s a company that used to be know as Environmental Media Services (EMS), a Fenton client. Maybe you ought to rethink taking advice from Gavin.
>>>And your classifications of left/right are too
>>>plastic anyways.
>>>People, just like they come in all shapes and sizes, come
>>>in highly varied political convictions, too.
Quite possibly.
But, this sorry saga will only be solved politically – and politics means a group of like-minded people coming together to form a government or opposition who will fight the skeptic cause.
Like it or not, the majority of those standing up to AGWists are on the political right, and so it is likely that the opposition will therefore be composed primarily of right-wingers (Republican/Conservatives).
Oh, and BTW.
Why do the US political left and right use opposite party colours to the UK. I find this most confusing.
.
Jackstraw, it’s shocking how many people are willing to ignore the myriad, twisted connections between leftist causes (although, these people DO brag about their own connections, so it’s not like it’s a big secret). Oddly enough, many of these people who are blind to the connection between leftist political personalities and socialist/communist organizations are more than happy to believe that the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11.
There was a time I believed the Internet would free knowledge, however the VAST majority of people have become even LESS informed about reality than they used to be. Just as with the print and broadcast media, the Internet is being controlled by the left. So is it a “conspiracy” theory to point out who is on the board at Google? Or even to flip through Google’s policies? Or Wikipedia? In fact, the old refrain of “follow the money” still applies.
Unfortunately, the logic behind a “push poll” is not immediately obvious, just as the logic behind these and other massive online presences is not. RealClimate does not exist as a “forum”, it exists as a propaganda source. The IPCC was not “formed to find out the truth”, it was created solely to promote one hypothesis, create fear about one “danger”, and support one “solution”. Although I have no doubt that Wikipedia was originally intended to be a genuine, accurate source of information, it has been relentlessly used to promote inaccuracy and one point of view on several key topics.
But I really don’t think that most people are going to take your or my word for it, sadly. Nobody wants to believe that what they consider a trusted source of knowledge is actually promoting misinformation and political programming.
Of course this is a left-right isssue. Every left wing cause imaginable has latched on to the AGW movement and every single Democrat politician is on board.
At this 11th hour how can anyone possibly pretend it isn’t?
Every left wing TV/radio/newspaper parrots every global warming bromide and every right wing counterpart rejects them.
“a joint threatened walkout by India, China, Brazil and South Africa, if developed nations don’t accept their “non-negotiable” demands.”
Well, that gives leaders of the developed nations that are now harboring secret doubts about CAWG a motivation to think, “sayonara.”
“Why do the US political left and right use opposite party colours to the UK.”
About eight (??) years ago one of our newsweekly magazines used those colors to illustrate an electoral map of the US, and may have even used the terms red states as shorthand for Republican-leaning states. It caught on.
I don’t think the core values of classical European leftism align very well with environmentalism, nor with the type of people who are raving environmentalists. In communist countries, pollution control, etc. is given a very low priority. Socialists like Orwell famously derided the concerns and mentality of sandal-wearing vegetarians. Until recently the standard “left” attitude toward hyper-environmentalism was that it was a bourgeois affectation. “Blue dog Democrats” are strong leftists, but luke-warm enviros.
I think that a certain Messianic mentality is attracted to both leftism and radical environmentalism. And there are other overlaps. There’s lots more that can be said about this, and when we get around to apportioning the blame, 10 years from now, we can really let ’em have it.
But the time to do so is not now, because it is extremely counterproductive. It gives the warmists a stick to beat us with as right-wing-nuts. It alienates site visitors who are potential allies. (Pam has an unusually thick skin, I guess.) It constantly diverts discussion into tangents.
savethesharks (07:10:39) :
ralph: “You might think that something like climate would be non-political partisan, but it isn’t. It is rapidly becoming a left/right issue, and future elections may well intensify that divide.”
All I am saying if we are going to defeat this AGW disease, it is going to take people who would not necessarily be in the same room in any other circumstance perhaps.
You band together to fight a common enemy.
And your classifications of left/right are too plastic anyways.
People, just like they come in all shapes and sizes, come in highly varied political convictions, too.
So, rather than focusing on our differences, we focus on what we have in common to get this job done.
I think the true divide is smart/stupid.
Stupid people are sheeple….and they go with groupthink. And they are like Krugman.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Chris, I believe you’ve put the situation we have in a nutshell. The only thing I would clarify a bit on is the smart/stupid divide. I think it is more a wisdom/idiocy divide. There are plenty of PHD’s who are idiots, and people who perhaps never acquired a high school diploma who have wisdom. I believe we all were given an amazingly complex and sophisticated tool at our disposal, our brain. Children are sometimes seen as having a wisdom that adults don’t have. Without getting into who (or what) is to blame, I think that that natural, innate ability to think for oneself becomes lost at some point. This inability becomes shockingly apparent in the Warmists continual bleating that we must “trust the scientists”, or “the consensus”.