Bradley Fikes writes in the NCtimes.com
A few years ago, I accepted global warming theory with few doubts. I wrote several columns for this paper condemning what I thought were unfair attacks by skeptics and defending the climate scientists.
Boy, was I naive.
Since the Climategate emails and documents revealed active collusion to thwart skeptics and even outright fraud, I’ve been trying to correct the record of my earlier foolishness. In one of those columns, I even wrote: “And see Real Climate (www.realclimate.org) for global warming science without the political spin.”
In fact, Real Climate was and is nothing more than the house organ of global warming activists, concerned more with politics than with science.
My mistake was assuming only the purest of motives of the global warming alarmists, while assuming the worst of the skeptics. In fact, the soi-disant moralists of the global warming movement can also exploit their agenda for profit.
Read the entire story here in the NCtimes.com
h/t to ClimateDepot
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
welcome to the dark side.
He’s still naive. One naive over-reaction to another.
Maybe the problem isn’t with the scientists at all.
🙂
Al Gore probably won’t like this.
I hope he doesn’t take all this as unsettling.
As a former trumpeter of the AGW theory myself, I completely understand. Now that I doubt the settled “science”, people react in a whole different way. They will say things like, “Sounds like you are listening to Rush Limbaugh too much.” The interesting thing is that I am still a liberal in many ways. I am anti Rush and Fox News. They are the only ones who are really discussing the issue though, sadly in their own fear-promoting way. I wish NPR would take this on and run with it. True science is the pursuit of what is really happening, not what we think or wish to happen. The older I get the less I “know”.
Good for Bradley. Maybe other journalists will see the light as well, or at the very least see the golden oppurtunities that being a ‘Sceptic’ reporter could offer.
All the cushiest jobs in warmist journalism are already spoken for and nothing gets up a new ‘Hacks’ nose more than a well ensconsed incumbant senior journalist.
I think getting the snowball rolling on demanding a review of scientific methodology is first and foremost. These folks haven’t had their work reviewed and validated but are using it as the basis for a hugely expensive CO2 abatement taxes and regulations. It is folly to trust them at face value without doing our due diligence and that means open books on everything.
If any genuine scientist sees this (link below) and doesn’t feel his stomach churning, I will lose all faith in science…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/a_climatology_conspiracy.html
I’m pretty disappointed that this found publication only in American Thinker, an intellectual on-line publication, but highly partisan (conservative). Perhaps it’s because most MSM reporters and editors, unlike Bradley Fikes, aren’t comfortable enough with their rational thinking skills to reevaluate their beliefs when new evidence appears.
Kudos to Mr. Fikes, who has departed the “Dark Side” for the light of the actual search for truth.
If I were a reporter, and were faced with the prospect of remaining silent or admitting in print to being naive… I think I would want to crawl under a rock and never come back out. What he did was very tough, very difficult to come out and say that.
To refresh everyone’s memory.
—-> The most important thing in life is to ask the right question, often.
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932.
science was settled on that, so nuclear power plants were never built.
[quote]welcome to the dark side.[/quote]
Gives “thumbs up” sign while cashing check from Exxon Mobil.
An accusation of ‘outright fraud’ against a scientist is extremely serious. Yet when we follow Mr Fikes’ hyperlink we find just this …
Tim,
Attached are the calibration residual series for experiments based on available networks
back to:
AD 1000
AD 1400
AD 1600
I can’t find the one for the network back to 1820! But basically, you’ll see that the residuals are pretty red for the first 2 cases, and then not significantly red for the 3rd case–its even a bit better for the AD 1700 and 1820 cases, but I can’t seem to dig them up. In any case, the incremental changes are modest after 1600–its pretty clear that key predictors drop out before AD 1600, hence the redness of the residuals, and the notably larger uncertainties farther back…
You only want to look at the first column (year) and second column (residual) of the files. I can’t even remember what the other columns are!
Let me know if that helps. Thanks,
mike
p.s. I know I probably don’t need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on this, I’m providing these for your own personal use, since you’re a trusted colleague. So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of “dirty laundry” one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things…
The words “Dirty Laundry” in quotes. Is that the sum total of the evidence that a fraud has been committed? Please tell me you’ve got more than that. Who was defrauded? Where? When?
Thin soup again.
In a second hand bookshop some years ago I read an entry in an antique encyclopedia telling the reader in no uncertain terms that heavier than air flight would never be achieved by mankind.
The science was settled.
As someone who went on to have a career as a pilot I wish I’d had the money and the foresight to have bought the encyclopedia at the time.
Jay you remarked “I wish NPR would take this on and run with it.” You really are missing the bigger picture. The day that happens will be the same day that Rush Limbaugh becomes a liberal. Anyone who doesn’t lean to the left knows that the mainstream media is as biased as Rush Limbaugh and will protect the agenda of the left to their death. The only difference is the liberal media never admits it and apparently folks like you are fooled by that. Do you really think global warming is the ONLY issue where the liberal media including NPR recognizes only one side of the argument?
To Bradley Fikeas and Jay Neumark (13:44:24) :
Welcome to your beginning foray from intelligence into the wonderful world of ‘wisdom’ where you become aware that the more you think you know the more you find you don’t.
Well I must confess to having been a warmer at one time. It lasted about 1 day. Then a fellow Libertarian asked me the question that launched me on my inquiry into AGW. He asked; “are you going to believe whatever government tells you?” Hmmm. To a Libertarian that’s a powerful argument. At least it convinced me to explore the issue more thoroughly. So i started doing more research and became more and more doubtful of AGW. The “Great Global Warming Swindle” convinced me it was a fraud. Then I found WUWT and became a diehard skeptic. I’ve never regretted that decision.
Gives “thumbs up” sign while cashing check from Exxon Mobil.
He’s not going to get very rich by doing that:
Exxon-Mobil = $23million, US Govt = $79 BILLION…
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/massive-climate-funding-exposed/
Everyone has the right to be naïve, and put the trust in those who makes us believe.
One could argue that this is neither rational nor logic, but in reality, and in practice, for most people, it is. If most people were adhering to theoretical rationale and logic they would probably not trust science, nor the scientific process, at all, ’cause there’d be to many damned people claiming everything and have the skill set to “prove” it.
People are supposed to be able to be naïve, because they’re supposed to be able to trust the process…. that led up to the theory of relativity, for instance.
Still don’t believe people have a right to be naïve? Did you do the blue prints for your house, and then built it yourself, including pipes, plumbing, and wiring, or did you trust other people to do it according to the “process”?
Hello Al,
Thanks to you, and all the others. I find being a skeptic perfectly rational when massive fraud and unprofessional conduct is found in a highly politicized field. Even in the field of embryonic stem cells, I have never seen this degree of polarization and hostility to different points of view.
Being a skeptic doesn’t mean I deny significant AGW could be happening; it just means I’m withholding judgment until the fraud is removed from the science, and skeptics are welcomed into the field, as is the norm for science elsewhere. Of course, that point will go over the heads of fervent AGW believers, to whom all who don’t accept AGW are “denialists.”
The repeated derogatory Climategate references to skeptics was a red flag to me that the Climategate gang was engaged in pseudoscience. They decided the theory was true and collected and evaluated evidence under that presumption.
Global Warming Hysteria: Carbon Prices Plunge in Europe
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/12/22/global-warming-hysteria-carbon-prices-plunge-in-europe/
Welcome Bradley. Glad to see you have decided to think for yourself. Kind of invigorating isn’t it?
Definitely OT but I just saw this link on Small Dead Animals about Build-A-Bear. Outrageous. I’m speechless (which is remarkable for me)
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/22/build-a-climate-scare-why-you-should-boycott-build-a-bear/
To Bradley Fikes and Commenter Jay Neumark,
Congratulations on breaking the herd mentality and misrepresentations of the AGW crowd. Hope you enjoy the fact based critical thinking used by we skeptics.
I’d like to thank Anthony Watts once again; if it weren’t for websites like WUWT, the AGW machine would have rolled over all of us, like the CFC ban treaty (Montreal Protocol). Anybody remember that? The CFC ban was fairly benign in terms of economic impact (it did deprive us of freon an especially efficient coollant), but nonetheless, the CFC ban was a triumph for junk science that was debunked after the ban was passed. CFC fear mongering was one in a long-line of late 20th century junk science scares (DDT, Alar, Y2K, silicone implants, cyclamates et al et al). AGW is the big one though because it is meant to lead to a few elites (Hansen, Gore, Soros, the UN) taking control of the energy markets. That’s why “we happy few” gathered at WUWT, must share information and analysis to thwart this most odeous power and money grab. Cheers.
My background is similar to the author’s, except that I’m just an engineer so nobody cares what I think.
I read the claims at CA several months ago and dismissed them as plausible arguments from an implausible source. When the ClimateGate letters came out, CA became plausible and the consensus science significantly less so.
Jay Neumark (13:44:24) :
I am solidly with you on all of those points. But the AGW panic and the ridiculous posturing by some self-described “liberals” (who really are’t liberal at all) are powering the recovery of the Republicans, and making Rush Limbaugh and Fox News look “fair and balanced” by comparison.
Curiously enough (and worryingly) the Fox News special on global warming (see ClimateAudit.org for the Youtube version) is well done, toned down and intelligent programming on the subject.
The Huffington Post could have done that sort of investigation but unfortunately it is still self-censoring the doubts of an increasing number of its audience.
The pummeling of liberalism using AGW as the pummel by the right wing of the Republican party makes me wince, but at the moment on this key issue the Democratic Party has very little to say.
There are plenty more liberals like you who are skeptical of the whole AGW panic, who are now announcing themselves to the world as the Climate of Fear collapses.
I think the older we get, the more we see patterns of human behavior such as “apocalyptic fevers” that happen once or twice a generation or so. We don’t know less, but we do recognize the cyclical nature of a lot of human behavior.
There is a book, written in the 19th century, that describes what AGW theory has become.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
I commend the author of the article referenced in this blog post for cmoing to grips with the current manifestation of a serious problem.