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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Dawn Watson (08:32:36) :
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”
————–
Reply:
Does your “background” consist of a degree? And just who is this organization you work for, Dawn? And have you built anything yet? And if so, what? Or is everything you do at this point “visualization”?
“Dawn Watson (09:08:30)
32 people died in Brazil due to extremely hot weather last week:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35338116/ns/weather/
Freak weather events around the world on the increase”
As someone who has personal experience of southeastern Brazil, going back a few decades, Dawn, I can assure you that the moment that 39C in February becomes “extremely hot weather” in Rio or Santos, that’s when it’s the time to talk of “global cooling”.
I’m not being insensitive to the death of those 32 people, but to claim that those temperature levels are uncommon in summer in that region is simply to display one’s ignorance.
Both my parents died of smoking-related illness. I hear you, man.
But let’s be more practical. Where can I get me some of this Big Oil money?
Al Gore and several other mainstream scientists are some of Soros’ ventriloquist dummies. But then, so is Obama.
TMotion (05:59:47)
This planet will run low on seafood and clean water in a matter of decades
It will NEVER happend that. That’s prophet Gore’s stupid preaching.
It happened 12,000 years ago, as cuneiform tablets tell, when a guy called Ut-na-pishtim told about the universal flood in Sumeria…12,000 years ago, in the past Aquarian age!!.(Then it was when they decided to depict Aquarius as a young beautiful lady pouring down a jug full of water. LOL
Do you know out of which is water made?
The GWR church was recently preaching about the amazon basin would turn into a desert when, suddenly, it became flooding right NOW, not in your fancy dreams but in crude reality.
What this whole thing points out to me is that facts will never get in the way of an agenda.
Anthony,
I am sorry about your hearing loss. I had hell too as a child with ear infections and multiple ear drum patches (both paper and vein grafts). I sympathize.
My panacea for just about every chronic ill I have is long term, water only fasting. Sometime, in the future, after your current campaign, you might look into it. One day, after I garner enough will power with weight training, I hope to do another one myself.
Best wishes.
Anthony, you were just sucked in by the Guardian. AGW types everywhere are screaming as their beautiful dream is losing momentum, and Sachs and the Guardian are no different. In the absence of scientific evidence, they are reduced to name calling. Ignore them and do what you were doing.
Pachauri criticizing Sach’s travel emissions (I kid you not):
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/transcripts/tr_pachauri.html
“Rajendra Pachauri: Let me at the very outset thank Jeffrey Sachs for giving me this privilege. It’s also a great pleasure for me to speak on a subject which is a little different from climate change, as often I am required to speak on climate change and I travel around all over the place, and I start by apologizing for the airline emissions that I may have induced as a result. But I have no reason to feel apologetic this time because there’s Jeff Sachs over here, he travels far more than I do, so my crimes bail into insignificance on that account.”
Mustn’t forget to include the mutual acolyte images…
http://www.fortuneforum.org/images/renu_and_pucharuari_2.jpg
http://www.fortuneforum.org/graphics/Renu%20and%20jeffery%20sachs.jpg
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.
The amazing thing is that this sort of argument is actually the best that the AGW proponents have. And it almost always involves an avoidance or denial of reality, which explains why the “arguments” are almost always wrong in some way or other, and often even the exact opposite of what is going on in the real world.
xyzlatin (03:13:20) :
‘Anthony,
I’m a retired PhD in Psychology, specializing in Human Behavior.
I am a skeptic, but try to stand back and observe the behavior of both camps, after all this is what I do best. ‘
When the scam got started the perpetrators never envisaged the internet and the communications between bloggers would be a threat.
In my view, it would be prudent to make a few well calculated steps into the future to completely dismantle this scam, and it won’t be easy. These steps, as I see it, are:-
Let the lawyers take up the fight directly to the perpetrators. They too like the smell of money and will battle hard and long given the right ammunition.
The bloggers with the special expertise, like you Anthony, and Steve McIntyre and all the others with the special skills, keep doing what they do best in dismantling the shonky science.’
xyzlatin I like this ! I think you have got this sorted and Anthony it sounds like a plan to me.
Cheers
Doug
Totally unacceptable. It’s one thing to anonymously troll on blogs about your pro-AGW view. It’s another to write a such sleazy hit piece on a national newspaper with your name and professional position. I have seen people hanged for making statements way less inflammatory than this. If NASA still has any integrity, they should fire this guy. Of course, I am not holding my breath.
@JamesG
> ie if we keep the argument based on a decent energy plan then there is a lot of common ground, but it’s usually the aging eco-hippies who like to keep the fight going. I’ve reached the conclusion that it is the fight itself that is important and CO2/energy is just a smokescreen
Back in 1989, when I was still a student. I remember having a discussion with some greenies/lefties (some of whom have subsequently became quite prominent in greenie-leftie campaigning fields). I considered myself to be one of them at the time (although even then i did disagree about lots of things, my views haven’t changed that much).
Anyway, this was the time that Fleischmann and Pons were in the news with their claims of cold fusion, and for a brief time (days), it seemed we were on the verge of a real break-through – cheap and clean energy that could be produced with relatively unsophisticated equipment.
I thought this was a great thing. Cheap and clean energy! Imagine what it could do for the world’s poor! Imagine what it could do about the pollution problems we face!
However the greenies/lefties universally felt a source of cheap and clean energy was not just a bad thing – but just about the worst thing that could happen.
Because, we (we as in humanity), would surely abuse it
Because, if energy sources were not polluting, there would be little pressure to cut back on their use, to economise.
Because if energy sources were cheap, there would be little incentive to encourage “sustainable” (by which they really meant non-industrial) means of energy production in 3rd world countries.
Anthony,
Sorry to say, but this slime is the result of Green Money. I applaud you and all others (I hope to be counted in that list) who have challenged the sloppy science of AGW through personal devotion to science done right – no money! My little old money pit of a blog has never even covered its operating costs, yet I still find the time to put together analyses and pose hard questions that deserve to be answered.
The fact is the cult of AGW is not science based. It could be, and I for one would stand behind any reasonable proof of AGW, if I ever found one. But the hard fact is the more we dive into the theory the worse the math and science is we discover. There is NO error/uncertainty budget – which means there is no real confidence levels (which is not provided by statistical confidence in one calculation). There are completely erroneous and unfounded claims based on estimates derived from questionable and unproven ‘adjustments’. The raw data shows no significant warming beyond the natural fluctuations.
And it is not the skeptics responsibility to prove otherwise. My assessment of the AGW mind think from the CRU emails is we have been led astray by a bunch of inexperienced ‘scientists’ who have no clue how to apply math to real world issues. Those of us who do, and have done so for years, are right to question the approach. And it is the responsibility of the theory supporters to prove their case, not denigrate and silence those challenges.
JamesG (09:16:49)
Have you ever wondered what the definition for “excessive consumption” means? I have seen this term bantered about with the green-types for years but they never seem to talk about when, I guess, acceptable consumption becomes “excessive”
For good old Al Gore, four 30″ monitors on at the same time in one office is, I guess, acceptable… while in California the Greens are working to essentially ban plasma TVs (cheapest, but least efficient type of flat screen TVs) and effectively limit the size of LCD TVs
I wish I could afford a giant LED-backlit flat panel or, LOL, hybrid Escalade to cart the kids around in… I just can’t afford to be that “sustainable”
@JamesG (09:16:49) :
————————————————–
“it seems cheap, green energy, even if achievable is not actually the goal. The goal is to stop our consumerist, growth-obsessed society”
————————————————–
Justin Rowlatt, BBC, Transcript from radio programme:
“John Sauven Greenpeace director
SAUVEN: Well we’ve made our position on nuclear
power quite clear. We will do all in our power to
oppose nuclear power”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt
The Green Agenda
http://www.green-agenda.com/index.html
Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration:
Tom P (05:55:53) :
“Roy Spencer is analysing his own data and finding very good agreement with the CRU temperatures. The period analysed is from 1986 and shows a significant warming trend:”
Tom, As you say, there is good agreement, in terms of the shape of the graphs – but not in magnitude. Roy Spencer explains that his figures are magnified by a factor of 1.36, giving a temperature anomaly increase of 0.67 degC for the ISH stations. He also says that both sets are contaminated by UHI effect, which could almost double the overall rise in the global temperature anomaly.
I trust ANTHONY will add his comments on this important development in due course.
Regards, Bob
It’s difficult to decide whether Prof. Sachs actually believes what he’s saying, or if it’s just a mechanical/reflex response to play the same old tobacco/big oil/wealthy boogie-man cards again and again.
I think the best thing is to let Prof. Sachs and his cronies keep talking. People are looking for concrete evidence, not the nonsense they jokers keep pumping out.
Paul
P.S. I watched as lung cancer from smoking took my father’s life. Believe me, you DO NOT want that to happen to anyone.
Herman L (09:41:17) :
I’m not going to delve into the fight between Anthony Watts and Jeffrey Sachs. I’m not interested in it. What I am interested in is the following statement Anthony put in this post:
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.
————-
Reply:
I can help you out there, Herman.
Simply go back through all the posts on this site, starting with the one entitled “Fudged Fevers in the Frozen North”. On that one, if you can honestly answer the question why those fudge factors look like an inverted skewed pyramid centered on 1970, then you will have taken a big first step. A very big first step.
“It’s full of the kind of angry, baseless, stereotypical innuendo . . .”
Physician, heal thyself.
I thought it was a pretty tame article, myself. Certainly correct on the facts. A nice corrective to the hysterical nonsense that’s been coming out of the UK press lately.
REPLY:Since you brought it up Robert, as a health care professional, will you now proceed to diagnose me? What arrogance, what lack of empathy you have. I certainly hope your beside manner is better than your blog manners.
Shall I talk about your links to drug company funding? -A
@ur momisugly Dawn Watson (09:08:30) : 32 people died in Brazil due to extremely hot weather last week: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35338116/ns/weather/
Freak weather events around the world on the increase – eg from Oz: http://www.greencrossaustralia.org/our-work/extreme-weather-heroes/insurers-believe-extreme-weather-events-are-on-the-rise.aspx
Dawn, do you think you would ever have heard about that if it weren’t for the internet and 24 hour news television?
It only seems like there’s an increase because we have instant information at our fingertips. 20 years ago, stories like these would never have seen the light of day globally–they would be local news, yes, but outside of that, no one would know.
“John Sauven Greenpeace director
SAUVEN: Well we’ve made our position on nuclear
power quite clear. We will do all in our power to
oppose nuclear power”
———————
Too bad he’s so behind the times. LENR can take any nuclear waste and render it harmless. Amazing stuff. Or is he just against the human race (which would be amazingly hypocritical, but for many that’s not something they’re able to grasp).
Mr. Watts,
I wouldn’t take anything in the Jeffrey Sachs piece personally.
The guy long since quit being a real economist. He’s turned into a tinhorn politician whose driving purpose is keeping his place in the Establishment.
His Guardian piece, whether Sachs wrote it or had it written for him, is proof of desperation more than anything else.
This bit of history may have been covered on this site before I became a regular reader—if so, maybe someone can direct me to it—but how did the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (named after a rocketry pioneer) ever get involved in global climate stuff? Surely that wasn’t part of its original mission…
Maybe it’s time for a bill to be introduced into Congress defunding GISS?
Tom P – “Roy Spencer is analysing his own data and finding very good agreement with the CRU temperatures. The period analysed is from 1986 and shows a significant warming trend.”
Roy Spencer also has this to say about the data:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/05/spencer-record-january-warmth-is-mostly-sea/
I’m an archaeologist with a Holocene onset Quaternary leaning. This makes me an informed historical climate observer, not an expert in satellite data. If Dr. Spencer’s raw data does support the CRU satellite data then that means not all of the data is corrupt. However, it does not mitigate the data that has been proven to be corrupted with a warm bias: the proxy temperature data and the land surface temperature data. That still leaves CRU and Phil Jones on the wrong side of the truth equasion.
Here’s a link to an article in the Telegraph regarding the next financial bubble – the trading of “carbon credits.” Also, within the article, follow the link to the longer expose in Atlantic magazine:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100003851/here-comes-the-next-bubble-carbon-trading/
As in everything, follow the money.