Opinion by Anthony Watts
There has never been a time at WUWT that I’ve used the word “slimy” in a headline. This is a special case. I thought of about a half dozen words I could have used and finally decided on this one. I chose it because of precedence in a similar situation where Steve McIntyre wrote his rebuttal to a similar piece of amateur journalism entitled Slimed by Bagpuss the Cat Reporter.
Last week, the Guardian invited me to participate in their new online story forum. They were seeking the input from climate sceptics on issues they were writing about. They especially wanted my input. I said I’d consider it, but was a bit hesitant given the Guardian’s reporting history. But, after some discussion with one of the reporters, it seemed like a genuine attempt at outreach. I suggested that if they really wanted to make a gesture that would make people take notice, they should consider banning the use of the word “denier” from climate discourse in their newspaper. Nobody I know of in the sceptic community denies that the earth has gotten warmer in the past century. I surely don’t. But we do question the measured magnitude, the cause, and the scientific methods.
Now, any progress that has been made in outreach by the Guardian has been dashed by the most despicably stupid newspaper article I’ve ever seen about climate skeptics. The Guardian for some reason thought it would be a good idea to print it while at the same time trying to reach across the aisle to climate skeptics for ideas. Needless to say, they’ve horribly botched that gesture with the printing of this article.
Here’s the headline and link to the Guardian article:
Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain
It’s full of the kind of angry, baseless, stereotypical innuendo I’d expect Joe Romm to write. Instead, the writer is Jeffrey D Sachs. who is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, home to NASA GISS.
And it’s not just the Guardian. Apparently this article has been shopped around. It made it into The National in Abu Dhabi which you can read here. Apparently the article from Columbia’s Sachs was distributed by an outfit called The Project Syndicate.
A check of their website show the author list, some of the stories they are pushing to media, and they seem to be rather vague about where their money comes from. In their contact and support page all they offer is a PO box for their HQ in Prague:
Project Syndicate PO Box 130 120 00 Prague 2 Czech Republic
So much for transparency.
Back to the article. After reading it, one can see that Sachs is simply repeating the same sort of drivel we get from trolls every day on climate science discussions. Baseless accusations of being involved with deep pockets, connections to tobacco, denial of links to cancer, and other assorted decades old slimy talking points that have nothing to do with the real issue at hand: scientific integrity in climate science.
It is clear that professor Sachs didn’t do any original research for this article, he simply repeated these same slimy talking points we see being pushed by internet trolls and NGO’s like Greenpeace. He provided no basis for the claims, only the innuendo. It’s a pathetic job of journalism. It’s doubly pathetic that the Guardian allowed this to be printed at a time when they were reaching out to skeptics.
It seems incomprehensible to Sachs and others like him that people like myself, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Id, Joe D’Aleo, John Coleman, and others who write about climate science issues might have original thoughts and do original research of our own. It seems impossible to him that an “army of Davids”, such as the readers and contributors to CA and WUWT, could shake the money bloated foundations of climate science today with daily blog posts, FOI requests, and commentary. No it had to be big money funding these skeptics somewhere.
Newsflash: It’s worse than you thought. It’s a growing revolution of like minded people worldwide that want to see the climate science done right and without the huge monied interests it has fallen prey to.. Tobacco, big oil, and other assorted contrived boogeymen haven’t anything to do with skeptics that question CRU, GISS, NOAA, etc.on these pages and the pages of other blogs.
Oh sure they’ll say “but you went to the Heartland convention, and they took money from Exxon once, they defended smokers rights, that makes you complicit.” Bull. I’ve made my objections loudly known to Heartland on these issues, but the fact is that no other organizations stepped up to help skeptics with a conference to exchange information. While people like Sachs were denouncing “deniers”, and Al Gore was leading multimillion dollar media campaigns saying we were “flat earthers” and “moon landing deniers”, no scientific organizations were stepping forward to ask the tough questions, or to even help regular people like you and me who were asking them. Had any such scientific organization had the courage, you can bet that skeptics would have flocked there. Instead these organizations all got on the consensus bandwagon.
The claims made that skeptics are connected to tobacco companies is ludicrous. It is especially ludicrous in my case.
So here’s my challenge to Professor Sachs. Give me ten minutes in a room with you. That’s all I need. I’ll tell you about my story related to tobacco. I’ll tell you how secondhand smoke most likely contributed to my profound hearing loss through a series of badly treated ear infections as a child, I’ll tell you about my efforts to get my parents to stop smoking , and then, I’ll tell you how I watched both of my parents die of tobacco related disease. I’ll tell you what I think of tobacco products and companies. I’ll tell you to your face. I promise you it won’t be pretty, I promise you that you’ll feel my pain caused by tobacco.
Finally, I’ll tell you what I think of you for writing this crap you market as journalism without asking leading skeptics any questions, but instead relying on this slimy innuendo that’s been repeated for years.
Professor Sachs, contact me by leaving a comment if you have personal integrity enough to hear it.
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Dear Rocky Road,
I have a background in Geology specialising in resources geology and I’ve worked in the construction industry for a number of years. My organisation will be building the next wave of new nuclear power stations.
What I object to in your comment was your assumptions of me to why I hold my opinions? So no, not some arty farty social scientist after all.
Why do I have to take my opinion’s somewhere else? Is this a fascist site where you can only have one view? I notice that there was critisism of some of the other sites – Climate skeptic for example to not get into a debate… are you also guilty of this?
gadfly (01:59:13) :
“I’ll tell you about my story related to tobacco. I’ll tell you how secondhand smoke most likely contributed to my profound hearing loss through a series of badly treated ear infections as a child, I’ll tell you about my efforts to get my parents to stop smoking , and then, I’ll tell you how I watched both of my parents die of tobacco related disease. I’ll tell you what I think of tobacco products and companies. I’ll tell you to your face. I promise you it won’t be pretty, I promise you that you’ll feel my pain caused by tobacco.”
With all due respect, sir . . . and as an ex-smoker who once had a two and one-half pack-a-day habit, let me suggest that you look at the myth of second-hand smoke with the same skepticism that you display for things AGW.
You may not like the smell of cigarette smoke, but there is no empirical evidence that it kills or causes disease. In all the world, there is no death certificate that reads “second-hand smoke.”
—————-
Anthony and Gadfly:
I understand and have shared most of Anthony’s pain. I too had a smoking parent, and I and my nearest brother both suffered numerous severe ear infections as children. I averaged 3-4 serious infections requiring antibiotic treatments per year, and have vivid memories of sitting up all night one night, bleeding from one ear, in which the eardrum had perforated due to the severity of the infection. The pain was worse than childbirth: I should know – I’ve had 4 children. In the end I required tubes in my eardrums, as did my brother, and fortunately for me, this ended my hearing loss, although my brother was not so lucky. My school grades jumped remarkably, from a C to an A average.
Naturally, given my experiences, I was prepared for numerous ear-infections in my own children. To date, with the oldest one nearly 24 and the youngest 12, my sons have had nary a single ear infection.
It was only last year, when I speculated before my environmental history class that there was probably some link with my mother’s smoking, that I looked up the possible link. I am 100% convinced that my mother’s habit was to blame. I am very sorry that you suffered permanent and needless hearing loss from your parents’ addiction, Anthony. IMHO, smoking should be outlawed, now that we know all the ills that come from it. I guess you can count me in as a firm CAGW skeptic who also not only has no positive links with the tobacco industry (I’m only a victim of it) but would be exhilarated if it were to be sued into oblivion. BTW – my mother died of emphysema, and my father suffered from severe asthma.
Desperate measures by desperate people………
I’m surprised Soros can’t buy a more competent flak than Sachs to try to save his “green” investment strategy.Sachs ad hominem smears and insults demonstate only the intellectual bankruptcy of his position and the low quality of Coumbia University academic standards.
Well Anthony, you said it yourself, when you first told us they wanted to hear from you.
But I am just another in what looks like a long list who have been turned off by Sachs and his ramblings in Scientific American.
He is one reason, why my Scientific American Subscription will lapse forever when it runs out next January; after at least 40 years of reading what used to be a science magazine.
I made the mistake of going to the California Academy of Sciences museum in GGSF park on Saturday.
They have a big straight down the IPCC propaganda line display on global warming and climate change and all about CO2. Their curve of Mauna Loa CO2 going back way before 1958 overlaps almost exactly on their curve of global temperature, which I believe was GISS. Only problem is their was no annual cycling in the CO2 so it clearly was homogenized data, rather than actual observations.
I don’t believe the word water vapor exists anywhere in the entire display; in fact water is only mentioned as the repository of most of the world’s “heat”
It’s a total scare the kiddies presentation; along with a hook board with punched cards, so the visiting school teachers with their classes, can all write their suggestions for how to stop climate change.
I filled one out and told them they could stop a large fraction of climate change; by simply updating their display to reflect the latest known science.
That place has only been in existence for a few years, and since they built it, there really hasn’t been any global warming according to Phil Jones.
My wife, who is a liberal school teacher, was even more disgusted with the whole place than I was; and i didn’t have to say one word to her about it.
It’s really a Hollywood/Disneyland architectural curiosity; rather than a science museum. The expert scientific Astronomy instruction in the Morrison Planetarium, was given by that famous astronomer, Whoopie Goldberg !
They claim it is scientifically accurate; well it is more like that idiotic stream of consciousness claptrap that was at the end of the movie 2001, or maybe it was 2010; with the baby and old geezer zooming around the universe in his bed.
Hmmm, Doesn’t that other economist Paul Krugman say about the same thing regarding “deniers” and “climate change”. Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics but does Sachs?I wonder who comes up with this stuff first.
I wonder if he has any interests in “Carbon Trading”.Have to check to money trail, you know.
I wonder what happens to carbon trading if AGW goes by the wayside?
Perhaps we can get Mr Sachs to take an exam on science to actually determine what he knows about “things” scientific.
The Guardian has had the reputation for pursuing lost causes for years. Take heart. Their circulation is in free fall and the paper is losing millions of pounds so hopefully it won’t be around for much longer.
Here is my comment at the Project-Syndicate.org site. (It was originally 349 words, but the site has a 200 word limit):
As an oncologist and scientist, I find it patently offensive for Mr. Sachs to smear those who raise legitimate questions about man-made CO2’s influence on climate with comparisons to those who denied the link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer. This is not a scientific, or even a rational argument.
Important errors are found in the data used to support the existence of a significant climate effect from anthropogenic CO2, and the modeled consequences. Lapses in professional integrity by those in climate science have been discovered. New observations are continually proving false the projections of models. Mr. Sachs addresses none of this head-on, preferring to argue ad hominem. That Mr. Sachs repeats the discredited “extreme storms” shibboleth is laughable.
As someone who cares about the natural environment, I am far more concerned that the fraudulent campaign against CO2 is detracting from legitimate pollution concerns, like groundwater chemicals, airborne sulfates & polyaromatic hydrocarbons. There are many good reasons to use fossil fuels wisely, cleanly, and efficiently, but CO2 is not among them. Continued drumbeating will only undermine legitimate environmental science.
Mr. Sachs has written a sleazy polemic in place of a reasoned argument. He should know better.
Dawn said
“If you refurbish houses to passiv house standard – fuel povery could be eradicated – costs estimated at £40bn /year for 40 years in the Uk. Yes, pretty expensive but we dish out £27bn /year on fuel payments anyway.”
You have done it again and made extravagant claims that can’t be substantiated. The UK spends around £2.7 Billion per year on Fuel payments not £27 Billion. Where do you propose to find the £38 billion a year difference needed to insulate house to ‘passive’ house standards-which incidentally are based on rather warmer ambient temperatures than we actually get.
I’m all in favour of better insulation-I saw this run of cold winters coming two years ago and upgraded our 1970’s house accordingly. I’m also all in favour of micro generation, but at present it is just not financially practical.
Instead of Greenpeace trying to bring our economy to its knees by sabotaging Bridgnorth Power Station don’t you think it would be a good idea for them to do something more positive? For example they could get into micro renewables sales direct to consumers and thereby cut out the extremely expensive middle man-renewables are being sold like Double glazing at present in the UK which makes it impracticable to all but the richest or most gullible.
Tonyb
This is totally OT, but I felt that this thread could use some OT-ness.
I recently started looking for a new vehicle in California. In visiting dealerships you see all sorts of stickers on the windows of the vehicles. Usually it’s a list of options, the performance, the gas mileage, etc…
Then I saw this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50716889@N00/4378825841/
…and I doubled-over laughing.
I wonder who scores these vehicles for Global Warming?
Dawn:”Or do you lot advocate wars to secure future fossil reserves?” You lot? I for one have insulated my home to the limits possible, and have bought energy efficient cars and I doubt any scepic would advocate wasting energy.
But the “solutions” to global warming will cause fuel poverty. Imagine we’d had a cap ‘n trade regime in place this winter and the energy companies had to buy carbon credits to get the extra energy to deliver to our homes. We would have to pay for that and bang goes fuel poverty eradication.
For sure we need to move away from fossil fuels, but it will take decades in the meantime we have to use them, there is no alternative and the very notion that with the world’s population expanding exponentially, and that the developing world leaping forward into the 21st century, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of reducing CO2 emissions. Which is probably just as well because CO2 can’t be related to rises in temperature but sure as hell can to healthy plant life. We’ll need all the food we can get.
Dawn said
“The vested interest that a lot of oil and coal (and even gas and nuclear) companies is to provide you energy at the lowest price with the most efficient infrastructure.”
Perhaps you can tell me where you believe our future energy sources will be derived from? I’m all for renewables (as will be most of the people on this blog)but they are at least twenty years away from providing any more than a fraction of our base load energy needs. Please tell me what you suggest we do for power over the next two or three decades minimum?
Tony
This article is a sign of desperation.
When a topic which is clearly a non political matter of fact gets muddied by smears and innuendos it demeans the perpetrator.
We must not be detracted by such irrational provocation.
Its this kind of approach that made me get off the fence and become much more of a sceptic.
Keep a clear head and stick to the science is the best reply.
“I’ll tell you about my story related to tobacco. I’ll tell you how secondhand smoke most likely contributed to my profound hearing loss through a series of badly treated ear infections as a child”
Wow, same here. Luckily with me it was only one ear but man, I can remember being closed up in a car in the winter with both parents smoking in the front seat and all the windows shut tight. I ended up with constant ear infections and lost a good deal of the hearing in one ear because of it.
Luckily my mother quit decades ago, my dad passed away of causes unrelated to smoking.
But having said the above, the study done that points to heart disease, etc, due to very diluted second-hand smoke like one might get in passing has been shown to be a scam. It is a bad study. Yeah, locked up in a very tight space like a car with a couple of people smoking is like a gas chamber. Someone passing by you in the street with a cigarette isn’t going to do much damage to anyone but themselves. And not it has gone to extreme with “third hand” smoke which is just silly.
Thank you Anthony. How disappointing is their lack of integrity.
There is that word again – Could.
The fuel price hike is already well under way here, now, at this moment in time. May I suggest that what you believe “could” happen should have been done before the astronomical fuel price increases and one of the worst Winters in memory. Thinking of those in “fuel poverty” after the event is typical of utopian thinking. Oop’s
Perhaps once the weather has broken and the “excess winter deaths” numbers are in we can re-visit the subject.
Dawn
I realise the comment I highlighted in my 8 47 52 came from another commentator to which you were replying as it being ‘laughable’. Sorry, I made it sound as if it were yours; Look forward to your comments on;
* Glasgow non record temperatures
* The very short Vancouver records
* Your retraction on fuel payment costs
* Where you believe our future energy can come from
* Whether Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth can do something more constructive than sabotaging power stations by, for example, offering domestic renewables.
Tonyb
Mr Dave Watson:
Your ‘low carbon, energy efficiency, oil addiction’ screed is nonsense. At several levels. “Let’s buy solar panels. So that we don’t invade countries with oil”. If there was ever a reason not to go to war…!
Are you aware of the crushing economic burden the world would have to bear – the economic violence that would be inflicted upon the working-class, tax-paying, non-war mongering citizens of the developed and the developing world, to realize your ecologic power-fantasies?
Power, wealth and time accumulates in the hands of Europe and the United Kingdom, not its citizens mind you, and we have to live with the eruption of its ‘will to power’ via this imagination-challenged, eyesore on the intellectual landscape – the monstrosity of boredom called global warming.
It is, as it was ever thus – the march of doom under cover of darkness, the ‘resonance’ of the message, chiefly due to its metronome-like monotony if anything else and the ever-upward creeping global temperature anomaly that settles the science and pokes the eye.
Anthony, I like your version of reasoned anger. You have greatly advanced the “AGW- head-rolling” project with your detailed research and clear reasoning. Lets see…
1. The Guardian. Further exposed as a desperate rag. You willingly offer to cooperate; they premediatively slash-and-burn. Their readers don’t think much of them. Your amazing international following is helping them close their failing business.
2. Joel Sachs has now been exposed, not only to Guardian readers but to your “amazing international readership” for the wanna-be fascist global dictator that he is. How many countries and lives has he wrecked? How many fellow-travelers has he enriched beyond their wildest imaginations. Director of the Columbia Earth Institute, indeed. One might think that someone with valid earth-science credentials might head that org. But, no, it is located in:
3. Columbia University, that heinous left-wing pseudo-academic institution (are all faculty members there wanna-be global fascist dictators? ), not only employs Sachs, but houses NASA GISS. Oh, aren’t they the ones who change temperature records of the past at will, eliminate historical raw data, drop thermometers at the drop of a hat, eliminate those at high altitudes so only comfy warm ones will register, and hide the recent decline – all in the service of saving the world from human-caused global warming? I think those tactics smell like a “wanna-be global fascist project”.
4. George Soros, hmmm. Doesn’t his name keep popping up all over the place wherever these wanna-be global fascists dictators emerge. Now many more influential readers are exposed to the details of Project Syndicate – and, thanks to your commenters, lots of further research citations are available. (Wasn’t Soros an influential financial backer of the Obama win?).
Anthony you are a blogger with no equal. I hope you understand your special talents. Thanks for making our world freer and more available to the search for truths
Mr. Sachs says ‘the message is clear’.
But Phil Jones says:
Q. When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean – and what don’t they mean?
A. It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.
Who should we believe????
Such a ridiculous diatribe from the head of The Earth Institute puts that body in total contempt with all right minded people. Sachs realises that he is fighting a lost cause but he would rather stoop to untruthful and totally irrelavent slanging rather than trying to win the argument on a scientific level, which he obviously finds great difficulty in doing. I for one will never again believe a word that this so called institute puts out. I hope his employers soon realise what a terrible mistake he has made in writng such a contemptuous article and give him the boot which he truly deserves. When are these people going to accept the growing mountain of proof that their science is blighted and make their apology to the world for attempting to lead us all into an economic catastrophy?
“Pachauri has been under tremendous attack over the goof-up in the IPCC report, but the Indian government is supporting him. Let me tell you one thing, people did not spare even Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammad and Mahatma Gandhi when they were spreading the message of goodwill and harmony, but later they realised the importance of their work,” Abdullah said at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS). He being the Minister of New and Renewable Energy for India.
When the AGW crowd throw an insult or give a compliment, it contains such outrageous hyperbole, you get some sense of what propels their bandwagon – hysteria and rage evidencing a pathological commitment that worries me as much as their fake science.
Have only read a few dozen comments so far, so this has probably been mentioned:
The comments are closed (and unviewable) at the Guardian article.
The only way that oil and gas companies (and coal and nuclear companies) can return a profit to the shareholders is through delivering their product to the consumer in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible.
If the multitude of “green energy” products could be delivered to the consumer in a efficient, cost-effective manner… Oil, gas, coal and nuclear would be the “alternative energy” sources.
Companies that set out to deliver a product at higher than market prices go bankrupt. Only gov’t agencies or gov’t sponsored businesses can deliver products at higher than market prices without going broke.
If the gov’t taxes cheap and plentiful energy in order to make alternative energy sources competitive in the marketplace, they are just making energy more expensive and less plentiful. This destroys wealth.