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
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I believed in global warming a little over a year ago and before. Today, I take the stance that we are coming out of the little ice age and maybe it’ll get cooler some years, maybe warmer on others, but overall the temperature is increasing and one day the ice age will be upon us.
So it’s no longer about being a believer or a denier. It’s more about “show me the data”. From that, let me make up my own mind.
To : George E. Smith
“But we don’t really need the political scientists, or epidemiologists and psychologists; they are just getting in the way. (i’m not expunging them; just thing they need to move out of climatology into more productive fields for their diciplines.”
And please, please, please, George. Don’t forget the economists.
It is interesting to read Fikes’ old stories. One of them dealt with an old dust-up between Richard Lindzen and Kerry Emanuel about Emanuel’s hurrican work. It got me to thinking….you haven’t really heard word one about the hurricane stuff through the whole Climategate mess, even though it was among the most distorted in the popular press AGW discussion. THen it dawned on me as to the difference. Despite the obvious differences of opinions on the matter ALL of the relevant data is out in the open. Anything Emanuel or Lindzen (or Pielke or Landsea) does on the issue can be easily investigated, criticized, pulled apart, verified or disproven. Thus when Landsea made a very good argument that Emanuel was far too trusting on the early “Best Track” data, Emanuel had to adjust his thinking. (Not enough IMO, but burying his head in the sand wasn’t an option.)
Compare that situation with the work at CRU and the inaccesibility of that data, and I’m surprised more journalists aren’t feeling like they have been taken for a ride, like Fikes seems to be feeling.
Of course, I’m not counting those “journalists” who are more “interested party” than “watchdog of the people.”
Left right, left right. I have said it before and I’ll say it again science should not be about politics but observation, repeatability and facts.
Some left-wing sceptics for ya!
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=B87E3AAD-802A-23AD-4FC0-8E02C7BB8284
Left right, left right. I have said it before and I’ll say it again science should not be about politics but observation, repeatability and facts.
Having said that ;-o some left-wing sceptics for ya!
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=B87E3AAD-802A-23AD-4FC0-8E02C7BB8284
NPR tonight in NY City, WNYC is in full alarmist mode. They are rehashing Cop, have guests on air from NRDC and some 350 carbon organization, and are taking calls. In standard all knowing tone, I hear one of them say massive demonstrations were a key part of getting their agenda accepted. He says activism will remain key for the future. I do not watch Fox News. I don’t care for it. Regarding Rush Limbaugh, I’ve listened to him regularly since 1989. He has spoken of AGW more in recent weeks, of course, but in recent years his coverage wasn’t his opinion but presentation of news stories about it. One story he read on the air was even from the AP by 2 reporters explaining how carbon offset money was being spent on hydro projects in that country. In short, China is a disaster. The reporters stuck to reporting events there, how money goes through the United Nations via CDM, how much of it is misspent or siphoned off. Did not get into whether or not AGW existed per se, and Rush presented it the same way.
@ur momisugly Bradley J. Fikes (16:51:59) :
“Wow . . . is all I can say after reading the comments. These are some amazing stories of confronting the science. ”
Be aware that your new found skepticism will likely carry over into other areas of your life. This is a good thing, but like anything else can be overdone. Also be careful that you are not just swapping one belief system for another. Skepticism is a way of thinking about assertions and evidence, not just a dismissal of a (prior) belief.
George E. Smith (17:19:26) :
Well is there any other branch of “SCIENCE” that encompasses as many diciplines (or seems to) as does “Climate science” ?
It seems that we have …
—————————————-
Sir, one of the reasons that I come to this site is because of your input!
It’s not the only one but it is important, to me and I suspect for others also.
For what it is worth you have been, proven wrong, on hens teeth singularities but have always cheerfully conceded your propensity to the odd mistake or three!
You’re not always the easiest to understand but you do come over as a bloke what knows!
Thanks Mr S..
@Phil Clark:
I agree that ‘outright fraud’ is too strong a term, and that by putting “dirty laundry” in quotes Mann signaled was talking about material that only “looked bad” at first glance. (Or anyway that’s the charitable view of that material that he’d talked himself into.) “Our side” should not take roundhouse swings and open itself to counterpunches.
———
“Please be specific, which published theory in which papers was contradicted by these data? What exactly do the data show?”
I’m not sure if the following is relevant to whatever it was that Mann was being coy about, but I’d like to remind people of it anyway, because it belies the team’s spin that McIntyre was a mere pest. Several months ago WUWT commenter Allan MacRae said:
“As a result of a Material Complaint filed by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre, Nature issued a Corrigendum in July 2004, a correction of Mann’s hockey stick. It acknowledged extensive errors in the description of the Mann data set, and conceded that key steps in the computations were left out and conflicted with the descriptions in the original paper.”
“Michael (17:39:45) :
BBC acknowledging The “Little Ice Age”?
”
Richard Black had a hard time in Copenhagen; he’s probably in vacation and can’t doublecheck everything now i guess…
I like most people. started out looking at those unbelievable graphs of warming, saying “Did we do this?” So I started to read and I started to monitor changes in seasons and the temperatures where I live. We did have a few nice years. I bought a fan in 05 because it was warm. I used it 3 times and then once in 06. I have not used it since. I do not and will never have a/c.
I wondered why 98 was called such a warm year. For all the warmth of 2005 and 2006, I have used more heating fuel every year since 1997. Are the winters that much colder? For the past two years, I have used more heating fuel than ever before as the furnace has been off 3 weeks of the past 2 summers. And yet the graphs still go up? I think the IPCC jumped the shark when they came out with the hockey stick graph. I know there was a Medieval Warm Period and I know there was a Little Ice Age. Humans have drawings of both those times. I could not believe that this was all made up and that our politian’s knew it and were still going to increase the price of electricity and heating fuel. After Climate gate, this is a certainty. I am disgusted with both the climate scientists and our elected officials. The IPCC should be disbanded and any elected official who speaks about global warming, climate change, cap and trade or carbon tax should never receive another vote. The climate scientists involved should be terminated from their position and jailed.
As punishment for your dismissal of skeptics, you must use a hide the decline ringtone for 3 months.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/hide-the-decline-ringtones/
Every time I hear it, it brings a smile. II is the best one.
Pamela Gray (17:28:41) :
I’m sorry for your sadness. I’ve read your posts on many occasions. They are usually concise and well thought. In this country, sadly, it has become a party issue. Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal. I have, for a very long time, aligned myself with the republicans. It seems a misnomer, but they, more often than dems(in my view), in recent years, tend more to give the individual more freedoms than the dems. It wasn’t always so. The line is blurred. The issues complex. The individual marginalized.
Freedom is earned, so is money. Yet, capitalist capitalize. And freedom is a right. But, it should not be so at the expense of one’s ability to achieve and excel.
One day, if I achieve my dream, someone, will be able to articulate the distinctions and the benefits of a free and capitalist society. Years ago, it would not have been deemed necessary.(In my mind, we have to re-invent the wheel.) No Utopia exists, nor, will it ever, nor, I believe, should it ever, in the world we live in. One day, it will.
Climate Change Alliance Crumbling
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9453654-ef2d-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
Many, many of us have a similar path.
Welcome back to reality!
The WHOLE East Anglia University site is down. That seems strange
Jay, you said that Fox and Rush are the only ones highlighting the real issues on climategate, but “sadly in their own fear-promoting way.”
I hope you understand that during all these years that the New York Times, Time Magazine, the nations school system, all the networks, all of the main stream media…. were promoting the ‘potential end of mankind’ from manmade global warming…… it was Fox and Rush that were seeing it more calmly and clearly…how you could call THEM the fearmongers is how brainwashed you were about the whole thing…..
you have one more level of cleansing before you are cleansed of your brainwashed liberal background….but calling Fox and Rush the fearmongers when they were the voices of reason….after all, the EU had started converting much of their land to growing fuel to burn instead of food (corn) to stop a nonexistent threat…imagine that, burning the worlds food supply in a panic unnecessarily…and it was Fox and Rush saying ‘now wait a minute guys’….
“Michael (18:36:47) :
Climate Change Alliance Crumbling
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9453654-ef2d-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
”
Ahem…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9453654-ef2d-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=0
Phil Clarke (16:08:26) :
Michael Mann could not afford the process servers to serve all the people who have called him a fraud in public.
Did you ask him if it was OK to pseudo-threaten people on here with your lame post ??
Remember that CFC ban has harmed people. In developing counties, people now have no refrigeration. They had an old refrigerator but now cannot get freon for it. My fridge is old and uses freon. When it breaks I will have to replace it as I cannot have it repaired. I can do that, people in developing countries cannot.
Another example of environmentalists acting before the science was settled.
The writing is now on the wall.
“Leftist Feel Good” Carbon Prices Fall In Wake of Copenhagen
http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:09d065a209d9d6ef6775afa0544392ff:2a4db4af4f2f4abeba7b12b153e963fd/Leftist-Feel-Good-Carbon-Prices-Fall-In-Wake-of-Copenhagen
A comment left by “Cam” on that website says
“I’ve actually tracked the origins of the CO2 theory back to a 1974 UN population conference in Romania and later the “Endangered Atmosphere” conference in the US a year later, where a series of sociologists (led by the anthropologist Margaret Mead) worked with a small group of climate scientists (led by Bill Kellogg) to fabricate a theory around CO2 influencing temperature (it’s in the conference proceedings!), in order to implement a global goverance model based on energy. There was even a form of ‘cap and trade’ discussed at the conference! It was intentionally fabricated and immediately integrated into UN policy. The birth of the IPCC occurred quitely behind the scenes at this conference. Extraordinary story.”
The problem is that I can’t find these proceedings online. in fact, the link to go to the official website is broken on this page http://www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/population.shtml
However, if one googles (better yet, bings) “UN population conference Romania 1974” many links are found with many quotes allegedly from this conference but nothing to a copy of a report that may have come out of this conference. Can anyone help?
Roger Knights:
“Green organizations have received enormous donations and benefactions in wills, which has given them traction,and then clout. There seems to be a tendency in many progressive organizations to get hijacked by their zanier elements.”
Roger, in no way to lessen the monumental nature of what we are currently witnessing, don’t you think that these tendencies are found in comparable social movements across the board?
Zanier elements…Civil Rights from around 1965?
Funding and zanier elements…the Religious Right from the 90s?
Perhaps, like the climate, there is a cycle here: when at rare maturity it’s a powerful vortex draws in more and more energy…only to eventually smash itself (and a lot else) to smithereens.
…but then you wake up and, hey, the landscape has changed forever – in ways that you could only have guessed at, but never have fully predicted.
This is no green thing, no left-side thing – these vortex are found in both (social) hemispheres, they just rotate in opposite ways. And in themselves they are not all bad…or good. And there is not always such a catastrophic ending, but, according to my computer model, this is a Katrina, and it is only just now made landfall.
They also said on local NPR affiliate tonight re the future, we will have to be ‘lucky about the science.’ Said their biggest problem isn’t the republicans but physics, said something about how information is interpreted. Perhaps the show is archived on WNYC as I didn’t get the details of what he meant about physics. He wasn’t advocating fraud, but was an interesting view.
Jay Neumark (13:44:24) :
As a former trumpeter of the AGW theory myself, I completely understand… I wish NPR would take this on and run with it.
Maybe you should rethink how you view NPR too.