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.
Contact Us
Mailing Address
The Earth Institute, Columbia University
405 Low Library, MC 4335
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
Inquiries
Please direct your inquiry to the appropriate department, as listed below:
General Inquiries
Judy Jamal
phone: (212) 854-3830 fax: (212) 854-0274
Scientific Information or Expertise
The Earth Institute Directory is a comprehensive database of Earth Institute personnel, that is cross-referenced with databases of research projects, publications and expertise. By visiting the “Search by Subject” section of the directory, you can search for experts in a wide variety of scientific specializations.
Earth Institute Media Contact
Journalists may call these contacts for information. Other inquiries, please see separate entries below.
Kevin Krajick kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu
phone: (212) 854-9729 fax: (212) 854-6309
Kyu-Young Lee klee@ei.columbia.edu
phone: (212) 851-0798 fax: (212) 854-6309
Kim Martineau kmartineau@ei.columbia.edu
phone: (845) 365-8708 mobile: (518) 221-6890
Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs
Media requests for Professor Sachs should be directed to Kyu-Young Lee at klee@ei.columbia.edu.
Jeffrey Sachs’ monthly Enviromarxism column was THE reason we cancelled our subscription to Scientific American a few years ago.
One column in particular infuriated me… He essentially demanded that the Wall Street Journal Op/Ed page be muzzled. Sachs’ little hissy fit went over very well at Real Climate Dot Org.
Sachs is not a scientist. The Columbia Earth Institute is not a science program. It another one of those pseudoscience touchy-feely interdisciplinary programs in which liberal arts majors are indoctrinated in enviromarxist policies and taught to use scientific-sounding sound bytes. It’s almost as bad as John Holdren’s Energy and Resources Group at Berkeley.
Columbia’s LDEO is one of the premiere geosciences schools in the world… Yet Columbia also sponsors two of the worst purveyors of junk science: Sachs’ group and GISS.
The Guardian just don’t get it. Their latest offering, entitled “Do climate change sceptics give scepticism a bad name?”, is from a psychologist. “His interests include the psychology of communicating climate change”?!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/22/climate-change-sceptics
Will every area of scientific enquiry bring itself into disrepute defending the indefensible?
wayne (01:51:50) : mods, could you rule between my paragraphs. The last one concerned WUWT, not Anthony.
I would like to thank Jeffrey D. Sachs – Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Guardian for publishing the article which has given my sceptical resolve a great boost.
I am in your debt Jeffrey. Please keep up the good work. Sticks and stones ……
I saw the Guardian article.
What I did notice was the consistent comments like:
At the time I saw the article I think it was 30%-50% of that kind of comment, effectively saying: “please stop this rubbish”.
And pretty much every Guardian article I have seen for the last six months has had a strong – often majority – comment kickback against the nastiness.
It’s sad. I used to think of The Guardian</i< as a great newspaper. But they've given it away for "the cause".
Understanding complex scientific arguments – like climate – is usually a challenge.
If you want to make sure no one buys into your arguments just insult them first. Guaranteed result! Well done, The Guardian!
I wouldn’t worry about it – it reads like a conspiracy theorists rant because it is one, and it will just put people off believing him on anything else. Similarly the chief scientist on that BBC Newsnight ‘demonstration of the science’ who hinted at the special resources and dark operations required to get the CRU emails…
Folks,
The people we are dealing with had their origins last century with the Fabian Society, and in order to understand them now, you need to understand their history – http://www.keynesatharvard.org.
This is the start of a rather nasty “Empire Strikes Back” battle after the IPCC suffered serious damage (a little like the destruction of the first death star in Starwars) with the various “Gates” etc.
These people are the ebola virus equivalent of humanity, they are dangerous and will stop at nothing to win this one. They have the resources of the state behind them, and that should make you very very fearful.
Do not play their game of faulting the science – it’s the tool they using for something far more sinister as Willie Soon and Lord Monckton of Brencley discovered.
We need an update to the glossary section of WUWT. This is the second or third reference I’ve seen to CAGW and I have no idea what it means except for the AGW part (assuming CAGW is a more qualified type of AGW). According to Google it could mean one of the following things:
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming
Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming
Citizens Against Government Waste
Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington
There are probably others. I just gleaned those from the first page of my Google search results. So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Richard (01:36:38) :
The Guardian newspaper is basically bankrupt, financially, and kept afloat in its Green journalism by AutoTrader, a second hand car magazine. So, Monbiot works for AutoTrader!
Good grief, so are it’s “comradely” sisters in Australia, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, to name two of the greener shades of journalism here.
“Recycled critics”
AGW sceptics also have been found to side with critics of DDT-ban, acid rain theory, swine flu vaccination, earth being the centre of the universe, … go figure.
Regarding the ozone hole. Wasn’t it supposed to continue to widen until 2030?
it is interesing to note how vigorously enablers like North, Sachs and possibly Boulton now step forward and take the driver seats, which have become vacant after so many activist scientist foot soldiers have been discredited.
they surely try to rescue their agendas by any ugly means, however their mission is risky and they know.
If there is any consolation: These articles appeal to the core AGW/greenie constituency, but actually undermine support for AGW from the general public – even including some Guardian readers.
You might want to consider complaining to the Press Complaints Comission (pcc.org.uk ) which is the UK newspapers self-regulation body. They will may say it is an opinion column, and therefore not hold it to as high standards as news columns, but it could be worth a try. (see the report about the ruling on the article on Stephen Gateley on the pcc site, where there were thousands of complaints about an article that was considered offensive)
Mr. Anthony Watts, thank you for all you have done in the effort to find truth in CC…you deserve a real Nobel Prize! Your Honor has been slimed by not only the Guardian & the too Sachs but a huge Bureaucratic Beast, i.e., USDOE, NASA, Obama, Gordon Brown, Kevin Rudd, UN IPCC and all the shadow entities of the mighty George Soros via his Project Syndicate with it’s membership of 440 leading newspapers in 150 countries….please don’t let them get away with the defamation of your character, FIGHT BACK, the British anbt-defamation laws work for the Saudis, they should work for you. We supporters have your back and we will support your efforts. The Battle for Science has been joined….thanks to Brave men such as you, we will not be denied the truth!
This is nothing new. Whenever I post my opinions on AGW elsewhere, there’s usually some twonk who pipes up with an association fallacy:
Source A makes claim P.
Group B also make claim P.
Therefore, source A is a member of group B.
I’m usually told I must be a creationist; tabacco causing cancer denial is second on the list. The fact that I think tabacco does cause cancer and that I’ve got a library full of Richard Dawkins material is irrelevant! But anyway, if this is the extent of the warmists PR fightback, I don’t think we’ve really got a whole lot to worry about.
The guy has a slimy man wig as well.
WUWT should not in anyway associate itself with an organisation that censors as the norm skeptical views on climate change.
Indeed I would go further I suggest a BlackRoll should be setup on WUWT to highlight those blogs that regularily censor views on climate change.
Anthony – do NOT let this man get under your skin.
Keep your cool.
Continue with your program of factual information.
We are behind you.
(he’s obviously rattled or in cloud cookoo land).
Never trust The Guardian. Ghastly people. They have no interest in the truth and they are not on the side of ordinary taxpayers. They are happy for the state to waste billions on non existent problems without asking any questions. My sister in law reads it. I can’t stand her.
I have just been watching the KUSI programmes. Great! And there was Anthony Watts, a face at last putting in an excellent performance. Good men with the welfare of ordinary people at heart attacking corruption. Unlike The Guardian.
Let’s hope that every state in the US sues against these warming taxes. Now wouldn’t that be a great show.
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. But first, I am so sorry of your personal losses due to tobacco.
Here are some observations.
Prior to November 17, the skeptics were winning the debate slowly with the use of science with not too many personal attacks on the AGW camp. Since November, the skeptics had a great moral boost with the revelation that the science was indeed corrupt and that resulted in an increase in the taunts directed at the alarmists.
When the scam got started the perpetrators never envisaged the internet and the communications between bloggers would be a threat. In fact it, the internet, is comparable to a termites nest. Collective intelligence, a few alone is nothing, but several million create an intelligence that can “do” and “create”.
A corrupt collection of people with the same aim will destroy themselves from within. Remember, there is no honor among thieves. There will be more and more scientists break ranks and betray their colleagues. Imagine what the rest of the “Team” are thinking now that Phil Jones did that “guarded” interview with the BBC.
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.
The other bloggers can then get too again and feed all the other snippets if information back to the blog sites for the experts to work on.
Keep personal attacks to a minimum and say very little. Let the scammers destroy themselves. It must happen.
BTW. I admire your work Anthony !
I agree with AWatcher, but I wouldn’t bother complaining, Anthony. You have much more important things to do with your time. On to the next triumph dear.
I don’t know what you people are worried about. The comments section seems to be 99% against Sachs. More silly articles like Sachs simply make it worse for them let them go on doing it! A classic is Monbiot again one of the skeptics best friends LOL
Jeffrey Sachs’ piece is prima facie evidence of the corruption, misinformation and propaganda coming from the alarmists. We can see it as propaganda, of course, but the Guardianistas are supposed not to. Change a few words and it could well have been written under the Third Reich. One has come to expect this sort of thing from Monbiot & co. in the Guardian stable. But, hey, this guy is not a scientist – he is an economist. The fact that he says “What is amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established facts” shows that he hasn’t a clue about what’s been going on.
Sachs is in bed with Pachauri and the IPCC. Pachauri is Chairman of the Earth Institute’s ‘International Research Institute for Climate and Society’, and Sachs is on the board of that as well. They have to talk this garbage to keep the money rolling in.
Sachs also wrote the foreword to Gavin Schmidt’s piece of blatant propaganda, see here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/04/gavin-schmidts-new-climate-picture-book/
Sachs described the book as “a tour de force of public education”
Sachs also wrote the foreword to the paper (reviewed by Gavin Schmidt) ‘The Psychology of Climate Change Communication’, which says
“When communicators craft their climate change messages, they should remember
that framing requires the careful selection of words that will resonate with the audience’s orientations”
“When talking about climate change, communicators should frame their messages to
match what they think the audience may already relate to and worry about in terms of national security. For instance, when speaking to people in the military, communicators could highlight the connections between climate change and potential conflicts over natural resources, especially by so-called “failed states,”
a term often used to describe a state perceived as having failed at some of the basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government. When speaking with a group of parents, communicators might want to describe what the world could be like when their children are adults—when issues like water wars, food shortages, and sheltering environmental refugees may become realities for people in the US.”
“The most effective communication targets both processing systems of the human brain. Communicators should make use of the following experiential tools in addition to the more common analytical ones when creating presentations on climate change:
• Vivid imagery, in the form of film footage, metaphors, personal accounts, real-world analogies, and concrete comparisons;
• Messages designed to create, recall, and highlight relevant personal experience and to elicit an emotional response.”
So, it’s all par for the course for the alarmists.
Tom P – from what I understand of the satellite data used by Phil Jones it was highly selective. Pretty much like the surface temperature data was. I am of the opinion that at the root of every great lie there is a grain of truth to give the lie substance.
There’s a certain satisfaction in seeing those who proclaim
to be your opposition reduced to thrashing with strawmen in
the mud.
The anarchist in me enjoys it when any defender of
consensus and conformity has to shout shrill insults
to make a statement that gets any attention at all.
The modern individual tends to shy away from opinion
leaders who appear to have become openly irrational.
J.D. Sachs has gone one toke over the line. Then again,
playing in mud can be good therapy for irrational thought
and bring on a cathartic experience.
Anthony, continue providing the stimulus so the dogs of
AGW can salivate and whimper.
I became skeptical four years ago, and when I first ventured to express my skepticism I got “slimed” head to toe by a family member who I not only respected but loved. It occurred in public, so I was extremely embarrassed by the whole episode. However it was a good lesson in “standing up for your beliefs.”
As the years have passed I’ve come to realize that some Alarmists use “Global Warming” as a platform for deeper beliefs. They have watched lovely farmland surrounding cities be turned into sprawling sub-developments that are as bad for a human’s need for community as they are for the eco-system. They intuitively feel such development can’t be right, and I tend to agree with them. However they didn’t take their thinking deeper, and instead simply leapt aboard the bandwagon of “Global Warming” because it “sounded right.”
Now that bandwagon is losing wheels, has fallen into a river, and is rafting over a Niagara. I have some pity for the folk aboard it. However the pity is, they never had pity for me four years ago.
As we throw out the bath-water of “Global Warming,” we need to take care not to throw out the baby, which is concern for our environment, both in terms of our natural environment and our social environment.