(Is climate catastrophism losing its ‘politically correct’ grip?)
by Robert Bradley Jr. from masterresource.org
January 4, 2010
The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as the polluted science embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros alike on the blogosphere (see Climate Audit, Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in particular).
Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at heart, but an entrenched mainstream of climate scientists–so many of them friends and political allies–will need to be nudged out of their denialism.
Old voices are challenging their ‘mainstream’ colleagues, and new voices are coming forth. I have seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is happening elsewhere.
Consider what Andy Revkin, the recently retired climate-change science writer at the New York Times, told the public editor at the Times regarding Climategate: “Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement.”
Sounds like the Times will report both sides of the issue now, rather than just trumpet alarmism as it was prone to do in the past (remember William K. Stevens?). Joe Romm at Climate Progress (Center for American Progress) is furious at this development, but just maybe over-the-top Joe has himself to blame for getting Revkin and the like to want to report on both sides more than ever before. And Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left, thanks to the four-part expose by the Breakthrough Institute.
Climategate, in short, is making quite a difference. But much more courage is needed.
Dr. Michelle Foss (University of Texas at Austin)
Consider Michelle Michot Foss, an internationally respected energy economist with the University of Texas at Austin who is past president of both the United States Energy Association and the International Associations for Energy Economics. Her December 8th letter to the New York Times read:
To the Editor:
Your editorial concludes, “It is also important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen.”
Hold on a minute. It was precisely because “one set” of opinions has been driving climate politics that the whistleblowers, not hackers, published the evidence. And it is precisely because of the type of coverage that The New York Times and other mainstream news organizations are giving the whistleblowing incident that the integrity of both the scientific and journalistic communities is being threatened.
Honest questions have been raised and honest attempts have been made to shed light on questionable claims about climate science for decades. We need to push for greater disclosure, more scrutiny, better research and a halt in the action before we jump into policy and regulatory schemes that we will deeply regret.
Dr. Foss has kept her views somewhat under wraps given her university position, but Climategate was enough for her to go public in the above very public way. And she has received a number of emails of support–and some emails by her alarmist friends to the effect: ‘gosh Michelle, I agree with you on Climategate, but I thought you were one of us….’
To such critics, her answer can be: Climategate proves that alarmism is exaggerated, and most modest warming scenarios win the debate for adaptation over mitigation. Robert Murphy has made this point in a post very widely read among economists and entitled “Apologist Responses to Climategate Misconstrue Real Issues.”
I think that if some on the UT-Austin faculty were to try to silence her powerful voice, they would have a (climate) McCarthyism issue on their hands post Climategate. What a difference compared to several months ago!
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Someone posted this on climateprogress.
Watts up tells us the Met refused to predict the massive storm. It was run thru the Political correct filter.
Lots of death and agriculture damage but the warmistas stay loyal. They deny cold, chilling and frigid temps. It casts doubt on the high priests of climatology.
1 example. Great Britain imports natural gas for heating. If they get weather reports that delete “inconveniant thermometers” that show cooling, they know people will freeze and animals will die.
One solution is to create a black market for heating oil, gas and coal. Then money can be made and people can have safe homes.
He should have taken time to study information before attacking out of reflex. Joe is famous for declaring a plane crash due to global warming after the plane disappeared and before they found where it went down.
Good well reasoned report, puts paid to the Warmist argument that no proper scientist disagrees with AGW.
and most modest warming scenarios win the debate for adaptation over mitigation..
Still believing in “modest warming” while surrounded or interred by snow and ice?
What a good article! Saying it exactly like we know it is, and saying it where it needs to be said – challenging the MSM and even more, the scientific establishment like Nature magazine.
Those who feel called by Robert Bradley’s words
would do well to putting that courage to use: Help get Neutralpedia up and running, take it from its current Alpha state through Beta…
If you visit my User page there, you will see I have done quite a bit of work in this direction… I am continuing “tweaking” and creating “stubs” to help generate the right energy there.
Neutralpedia has been conceived as a “complement” to Wikipedia, thus neither competing nor denigrating… simply doing what WP, by its very setup, is, for the best of reasons (ie No Original Research), unable to do… yet we now need a scientific edge, that cherishes Scientific Method yet keeps humanly-balanced and open to Citizens Science as well as the best of professional science. As do Watts Up With That, Climate Audit, and a growing number of blogs.
Henry chance (06:32:38) :
And Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left, thanks to the four-part expose by the Breakthrough Institute.
He should have taken time to study information before attacking out of reflex. Joe is famous for declaring a plane crash due to global warming after the plane disappeared and before they found where it went down
Henry-not only that-when they found it the Plane went down due to severe icing.
-Which Joe then blamed on Global Warming…
Someone ought to check in with
Prince Charles
who 19 montha ago said
we have only 18 months left.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/1961719/Prince-Charles-Eighteen-months-to-stop-climate-change-disaster.html#continue
Well, 18 months later the UK is shivering in cold and snow.
Henry,
I believe the Met Office here in the UK could NOT report the coming cold snap after going public with their claim that 2009 was the hottest year since the creation of the universe and then stating the reason they made the claim was to influence Copenhagen.
Now imagine trying to tally that with reporting a massive cold snap for the UK. People would just laugh at the Met Office and wonder what the hell they are on about.
For me, its almost as if the Met Office is so deeply entrenched in global warming that they cant publish anything that goes against that…well not until its obvious (ie. snowing outside and record cold temps around the country).
Mailman
What a difference a couple months makes, indeed. . . .
Every time one more respected academic like Dr. Foss @ur momisugly UT-Austin goes public with statements like her above letter to the editor, it’s another incremental step in the right direction. Still a long way to go, but there is a growing sense that the prevaling winds on AGW are fundamentally starting to shift.
Did you all check out the link behind the word “denialism”? Very interesting commentary by Ken Green. I agree that it’s about time we started dishing out what we’ve been taking for so long, and start calling the other side “deniers”, since the shoe now fits their feet much more closely than ours.
Regards,
Trevor
Iceagenow has a great clip of the BBC interview with the head of the MET
Dr. Tim Ball – The Science is NOT Settled (Part I)
Dr. Tim Ball – The Science is NOT Settled (Part II)
Dr. Tim Ball on Climategate (Part I)
Dr. Tim Ball on Climategate (Part II)
“Henry chance (06:25:44) :
[…]
One solution is to create a black market for heating oil, gas and coal. Then money can be made and people can have safe homes.”
I thought about that but it only works for big industry. Reason: Carbohydrates are too much mass per dollar you can earn. So you can only do black market profits when you carry huge chunks of it. They’ve been doing that by “topping up” oil tanker loads, in other words, when the official OPEC quota would allow somebody to load 100k Barrel, well bribe someone and top it up to 120k.
Doesn’t work for the small guy. Too much heavy lifting involved. That’s why ordinary people tend to smuggle higher value goods like cigarettes, chocolate and electronics. (Yes: people who smuggled cigarettes from Poland to Germany took chocolate on the way back because that was cheaper in germany than in Poland and it’s relatively high profit per kg)
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses one by one.”
Charles MacKay, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841.
John I
And Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left,
They are going to have to buy a bigger bus. With a LOT more room under it.
Every single newspaper in the UK has published the following satellite image of the UK today – it shows the entire country in glowing white – snow and ice now appears the entire British Isles from John O’ Groats at the Northern tip of Scotland – to Landsend in Cornwall.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/07/article-1241060-07C9B4D0000005DC-111_634x650.jpg
Despite this – and we are now in our 25th day of sub zero temperatures – the MET Office put up a spokesman on Newsnight last evening claiming that their forecast for a ‘very mild winter’ had ‘only been a probability!!
Show us the code, show us the data.
Otherwise, we’re not going to listen to you anymore.
Another series of excellent articles (embedded in the links) for the office door. Some of the comments from these deserve to be posted, too. Do you suppose my colleagues have figured out I’m a “denier” yet?
Good luck, Lucy! Hope some of the scientists who visit will join in your effort. If I see something where I could reasonably contribute (as a historian) I will join in your Neutralpedia effort.
Henry Chance
That politically correct filter seems to be working overtime at the Hadley Centre in Exeter where the CET to 6th has, after a long delay due to software problems, been promulgated at -.8C.
The figure for the 7th, published by http://theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/dattwocet.aspx is -2.3C
Further research reveals Philip Eden’s calculation up to the 7th as -2.1C
http://www.climate-uk.com/index.html
So there we have it.
Three attempts to measure the average temperature of a small triangle of England over a six/seven day period produce a discrepancy of -1.5C and yet we are asked to believe that they can measure the whole globe over a 100 year period and produce an irrefutable temperature rise of 0.7C
How can this be?
Well, the odd one out is the Hadley Centre, employing 200 persons in Exeter and funded by our apostolic warmist government through departments DEFRA and the Ministry of Defence.
However they also derive substantial funding from industry for advice on global warming through amongst others, Project EP2.
Once again we follow our money and find it tainted under a pile of self serving corruption in which even parts of our industry are complicit.
I’m thinking on a small scale, about my friends, and I can imagine this splitting environmentalists into two or three groups.
Some, who at the end of the day, won’t compromise on rational inquiry, will see the climategate emails and decide the research from that particular group and related groups, is not trustworthy. They value the objectivity of science, and will be keen to protect it by cutting out the cancers. These people will change their minds when necessary.
Those who have a new-age slant, on the other hand, who believe in their own intuition, feelings, and images about a natural healthy world, idealise a world free of “killing”, and who don’t want their own cherished beliefs questioned, will post-rationalise and become more entrenched. They were never that interested in science anyway, and will simply come to dismiss climate research as easily as they already dismiss medical research.
I guess that there are also other types, but they’re in a small minority. There are some true environmentalists who don’t care whether something involves high technology or not, whether it involves eating more meat or learning to meditate, but who just want whatever works. But I’m guessing they’re kinda a minority. Still, as greenie culture is 50 years old already, that minority will grow over time.
“Here comes courage” – when I saw that I was worried this was going to be a new Dan Rather sighting.
I have seen this effect myself. I am co-author on a scientific paper. A final draft was sent around for comments before being sent off to a journal for review. Climategate gave me the courage, born of outrage, to insist that the sentences which made gratuitous connections to global warming be removed as irrelevant. These had persisted despite my earlier objections. Amazingly, this time I got no fight. Getting these gratuitous references to global warming out of the literature is a small but important part of the battle, in my opinion.
I hope that he is right that ClimateGate will bring courage to closet skeptics and proper levels of transparency to climate science.
Hopefully, it will also encourage uninformed alarmists to consider why they believe the IPCC.
From the 01/07/2010 Lexington, KY Herald-Leader:http://www.kentucky.com/210/story/1085813.html
Australia’s Commenwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)are still preaching the AGW dogma:
http://www.csiro.au/science/Climate-Change.html
No mention of climategate, guess the CSIRO are still beholden to the hand that feeds them.