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.
Anthony, Please do not worry about the Guardian and Sachs article. The way the weather has behaved in the Northern Hemisphere ths winter we will all be worrying about Global Freezing before too long.
I am old enough to remember the late Sixties and Seventies when the general concensus among the scientific fraternity was that the world was heading to another Ice Age. Perhaps they got their calculations right!
When debate degenerates to ‘ad hominem attacks’ you’ve won your argument. This is the last resort of the desperate who have run out of worthy ideas.
theres nothing worse than being damned with faint praise.
the Guardian knows damn well that the article is a political diatribe. The fact that they publish it in the face of mounting criticism of the whole Climate Science IPCC Industrial complex with powerfull interests in keeping the Government money flowing, simply tells us that the Guardian is being true to its ideological lines as a mouthpiece for the Labor Government and the Left/Greens.
Never the less they will be monitoring the comments, as will the ABC with their similar puff piece and the comments clearly show a huge shift in attitudes and values towards the sceptical end compared to say a year ago.
Dont be surprised if you see a subtle shift in the agenda from the Left /Green newspapers as they try to keep abreast with public opinion to stay relevant.
The politicians are getting increasingly nervous with elections looming.
PS Tom P – Phil Jones himself has gone on public record as admitting there has been no significant warming since 1998. It sort of makes a nonsense of all the warm biased figures that have merged from CRU over the last decade or so.
High time the “Big Money” allegation was reversed. As with all campaigns receiving the sort of political backing that the “climate change” lobby is receiving, one must ask that age old question “cui bono” and back comes the answer two industries in particular. First is the nuclear industry, which explains just why the European Union are the world’s greatest AGW headbangers, for which two countries dominate the European Union and which two countries have the largest nuclear industries – France and Germany in both cases.
Then in the case of the UK, one should ask why, to the great anger and disgust of so many of its supporters, does the Leadership of the Conservative Party so enthusiastically embrace the AGW campaign and once again back comes that old “Deep Throat” answer – “follow the money”. Then the picture becomes altogether clearer, for the tight knit group of David Cameron and friends who currently control the Party are very, very close to the City of London and get the bulk of their funding from the City and the City stands to hugely benefit from the “climate change” scam in two ways. Firstly, the City will make mega amounts amounts of money from the raising of the hundreds of billions that are going to be required to fund the construction of nuclear and clean coal installations and secondly the City of London is the location for 75% of all the world’s carbon trading desks and 80% of all carbon trading is carried out in the City.
Like I said, just ask that old old question “cui bono” and things make a great deal more sense.
Tom P (02:33:34):Either Spencer is right and there is no evidence that Phil Jones has been warping the data, or Spencer is warping the data as well. Which do you think?
14 whole years of correlation, I’m sure it confirms your faith.
All I can say is “I told you so.” I said if you want to take the moral higher ground, you have to make sacrifices.
But if you get into bed with dogs soon enough you’ll wake up with fleas.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen
http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen
In PR circles the enemy of your enemy isn’t necessarily your friend.
Of all the nefarious schemes perpetrated by the Warmers and their ilk, the one most egregious is the methodical adjustment factors exposed in the prior post Fudged Fevers of the Frozen North.
We need to dig up as many of those and hit them over the head with it over and over again.
It is a concept even the most inexperienced layperson can understand–they fudged the numbers down then they fudged them up, and without any substantive reasons. It is easy to see where most “global warming” came from (I call it the “honing of the hockey stick”)
Let people like Sachs become the bottom feeders (“Sucks”?) of climate slimes. In fact, let’s start calling a spade a spade: Such folks are indeed “climate slimes”.
I believe the term is fitting.
All this talk of tobacco industry methods is crap indeed. Hey Anthony, I bet you are even greener than Sachs.
No whenever I’m told by Warmers about oil funding or tobacco I copy and past the following:
CUR Funding:
British Petroleum (Oil, LNG)
Central Electricity Generating Board
Eastern Electricity
KFA Germany (Nuclear)
Irish Electricity Supply Board (LNG, Nuclear)
National Power
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (Nuclear)
Shell (Oil, LNG)
Sultanate of Oman (LNG)
UK Nirex Ltd. (Nuclear)
Source: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
————
In 2005, Pachauri helped set up set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.
———-
CRU seeks big oil and big business cash
Source:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=171&filename=962818260.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=156&filename=947541692.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=332&filename=1056478635.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=270&filename=1019513684.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1041&filename=1254832684.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=204&filename=973374325.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=185&filename=968691929.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=159&filename=951431850.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=362&filename=1065125462.txt
Sorry, meant 24 years, same insignificance.
smoking over the last 60 years smoking has more than halved (UK 1948 66% of the population, 2009 22.5%) but asthma has risen by 300% (again in the UK). So smoking is not the primary cause of asthma and atopy, I assume the doctor’s cars and industrial pollution. The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.
“Participants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.
The authors write: “We found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
“These associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.”
They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.”
http://www.medwire-news.md/…/…gic_sensitization_.html
This is a Swedish study.
“Children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubm…pubmed/ 11422156
Actually despite the Guardian’s typical ignorance acid rain has turned out to be a groundless scare. British acid rain is good for Norway’s trees, says a Norwegian scientific study http://web.archive.org/web/20040630202225/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml
In the normal manner of eco-scares the media give the fact that they were untrue not 1.000th as much coverage as the false hype.
In a similar way the paper’s George Moonbat attacked Martin Durkin’s Great Global Warming Swindle on the grounds that Durkin had, unlike him, opposed the breast implants scare, either not knowing or not caring that this scare had also been proven false.
In fact it is virtually impossible to find any eco-scare (or indeed Guardian campaign) which has not subsequently turned out to be wholly or largely untrue.
Correction: “No whenever ” should be “Now,/b> whenever “
May I join the chorus and say all credit to you Anthony, as we are your witnesses and as is every post on this blog.
As I read these guys there flashes before my eyes the religious controversies of the distant past. They have great empire built upon a dogma, and they are threatened, and now they have no answers. Think of all that you and CA have laid out in the public gaze…and what can he do…address them? No. He attacks his critics as agents of the devil.
That is what he is saying: Tobacco, Big Oil etc are agents of the devil. We are traitors of humanity, selling not only ourselves but all humanity to the devilish fiery destruction.
If this defence does not work (and soon it wont) History tells us that the next step can only be violence. And they cant win with that and so they wont use it. And so, as many have said above, this article is a good sign, a sign of desperation, a sign that this pathetic atribution as agents of the devil is all that they have left.
Its a sign that you are doing something right – so, I encourage you not to be baited by them with their namecalling and keep pushing the science!
@ur momisugly Stacey (01:02:40) : At first I was about to correct you and say “Surely you meant JUNK Science.” Then I remembered Copenhagen and thought “No, she’s right.”
@ur momisugly Mr Sachs: This is not the way to win friends. Well done, sir – you’ve just shot your cause in the foot. Again.
It’s a religion and its fervent adherents, who were less than polite to those they liked to term “deniers” even before Climategate, can be expected to become more and more strident and nasty as belief in the AGW religion diminishes. This example is only the start of what we can expect.
I think it has coma as a surprise to the Guardian’s editors – and no doubt they are still coming to terms with it – to find that comments against the AGW religion in response to article’s like Sachs’s are:
– articulate and expressed firmly but in moderate language
– numerous, indicating that a good percentage of Guardian readers are not AGW believers
– receiving a larger proportion of “recommend” clicks than AGW commens.
For example, the comment I posted (below) had received 316 “recommend” clicks when I last looked.
“Nil carborundum” , Mr Watts – someone who knows Latin will translate.
Martin A
____________________________________________________________
My comment posted on Sachs article….
The IPCC and its prophets are discredited.
“Climate change science”, as we have seen from the Climatgate emails – read them if you are doubtful – is based on analysis that is tweaked to produce the desired results and data that has been “value added” in ways that emphasise the desired results.
If your experiments (or your analyses) are not repeatable by others, what you are doing is not science. Richard Feynman, the greatest 20th C scientist, after Einstein, gave a talk on what he called “Cargo Cult Science”. There, you do everything that real scientists do except to apply scrupulous honesty in searching out your own errors.
Jones, Mann and co were aware their work was on dodgy ground – hence their refusal to release their data to enable others to attempt to duplicate their work.
If you attempt to prevent others from finding your errors, as “The Team” did, then what you are doing is worse than not being real science – it is anti-science.
What they were doing was generating propaganda for a cause. The cause they had come to believe in was the AGW Religion – not scientific truth.
Well, As for the background on the Project Syndicate – it was established by The Soros Foundation. here annual report : http://www.soros.org/resources/articles_publications/publications/soros_AR_1999/j_otherinitiatives_99.pdf#search=%22%22Project%20Syndicate%22%22
Let them do their worst, Anthony.
When dealing with the science of the left don’t forget they bring their political science playbook with them. Step on of this particular play is the smear by association with a defined “evil’ group then direct smear by linking specific persons to the group. The fact that the article was shopped around is get to step two where it is reported in two or more publications. Then it goes main stream media viral with the introduction of “as reported in”. All aimed at discrediting the messenger then the message.
It’s a damaging blow whenever it’s played. For example, if someone declares you molested a child the charge will be widespread. Regardless of outcome, you will be forever noted in the media as “involved in a child molestation controversy”. It’s like someone telling you that you must prove to them you’re not a racist.
It does show the political left-wing support group(s) are still in business. The debate, if there ever was one, is now moving to the mud-slinging Alinsky phase. As soon as Obama finishes nationalizing health care he may decide to take on the skptics. If so, the debate will become worse than you can imagine.
In his article Jeffrey Sach’s writes;
“The second issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental flaws in climate science.”
I note that at the top of his article’s web page, there is a link to a news story titled; “Climate scientists retract sea level paper”.
I’m reminded of the proverb; “There are none so blind as those who will not see”.
I did respond TinyCo2 (01:26:24), regarding Clive Hamilton’s piece, “Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial”, at ABC Unleashed.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2826189.htm
I suspect there are a few nutters out there angry enough to be intimidating in their emails but Clive’s argument would be on more solid ground if he were to give us a rough percentage of how many emails are as intimidating as those he is quoting: is it near 100 per cent; 50 %; 1%?
Also Clive, you cannot just assume that these intimidating responses are part of an orchestrated campaign without supplying evidence. I have no way of knowing but I think that the response of a number of people, who perhaps are fed up of feeling they are being lied to by the authorities (and the ABC) is sufficient for some of them to respond angrily in an intimidating fashion. You can only abuse people’s trust for so long. And before any climate alarmists get on my case bear in mind that those people seeking straight answers to straight questions not only wished to be taken seriously but also not be abused because they resist being obsequious to a supposed authority that is increasingly proving to be disingenuous.
Clive, in 2008 you were quoted as saying, with regard to the notion of anthropogenic climate change, “Well, quite frankly, if you’re not terrified, you’re not listening to what the climate scientists are saying”, after which you added, “I think we’re beyond feeling hopeful, and the only way to get people to take the necessary action is to scare the pants off them.”
This line of thinking comes directly from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research located at the University of East Anglia, home of the CRU email leaks. Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre, quoted in “The Guardian” newspaper neatly sums up this line of thinking by saying that, “self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth-seeking . . . scientists and politicians must trade truth for influence.”
Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of “The Australian” newspaper said in the March 21, 2007 edition that the climate “debate is no longer just about the environment. It is about economics, culture, ideology and foreign policy. The old debate about climate change believers and sceptics is dead (being kept alive only for political gain). The new debate is about policy solutions.”
Readers can draw their own conclusions; my conclusion is that Clive Hamilton, as a professor of Public Ethics, is manipulative and selective in his arguments. If the climate debate is about policy solutions then how about bringing people on board through an open and honest debate rather than through abuse and deceit. After all it is us, we the people, who will be paying for these policies.
er what’s on this about climate wars? Its only a bloody war on the internet – outside its looking pretty freaky – Warmest November on record followed by freak cold weather down to minus 20 in Glasgow, and parts of the Tyne freezing over. Ah – the end of climate change – I hear you cry – well no actually my Auntie lives in Vancouver and they’ve had the warmest winter on record – no snow at all.
even if climate change wasn’t happening and wasn’t down to GHGs – have you not thought of dwindling fossil fuel reserves?? energy security anyone?
A lot of the low carbon solutions (i.e. energy efficiency) measures should be applauded as they will avoid us having us send our troops to different countries to die just to secure future energy resources. It’s a bit of a no-brainer really. It saddens me that there are so many people out there getting so emotional about CC – when there could be using that energy into making positive change instead of moaning on about being swindled and about ‘stealth taxes’ (I know this as my own father harps on about it having being brainwashed by the daily express (he didn’t do any science at school).
As a country we have some serious energy decisions to make, and embarking on a low carbon future would mean we are more resilient and less dependent on volatile foreign energy sources.
Stop bitching, and think about how we want our future to be, support a large scale refurbishment of existing building stock, it’ll help eradicate fuel poverty, create local jobs and kick start the economy….
Yes – the Govt is misguided in lots of areas. However there are a lot of oil and coal companies with a lot of vested interests and a lot of £££ at stake to keep the status quo – just think on that a little would you?
While I understand your anger, it might be wise to bear in mind that no organization is monolithic. The goal of the paper is to sell pulp or hits, so most editors don’t have a great deal of integrity anymore… its business.
That doesn’t neccessarily mean that an individual within the Guardian isn’t interested in being an honest broker though. Castigating potential allies because of their associations seems shortsighted. If you’d said that the author of the article in question was the guy that wrote to you, then that’d be a different story altogether.
Mr Watts
As one of your regular readers and contributors: here’s my take on tobacco.
I worked, from aged 21 to 32, broadly, in Cancer Research. I was funded by the two major UK charities, Cancer Research Campaign and Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which merged to become Cancer Research UK. The last Director General (aka head honcho scientist) of that organisation made his single biggest campaign on the subject of smoking. And it sure as heck wasn’t promoting cigarettes to children in school…….
Here’s my take on oil. Rightly or wrongly, I took the position that the Iraq war was about oil, specifically UK and US interests exploiting Iraqi oil. Those who monitor the online media may just possibly detect that I made some fairly strong statements about that, which were not necessarily complimentary to oil interests……..
Another position I hold on oil. It’s the fuel of today and this century. It may not be the fuel of the next one, but right now, our world is run by it. And I for one wish to exist in heated houses, not a tent. Because I’m not a Berber in North Africa or an Arabian from Medina, I’m a Brit at 50+N degrees latitude…….whose last two winters were colder, not warmer, than the ones before………
Another position I hold on oil. Their funding of other energy sources is considerable. They are interested in wind power, biofuels, tidal energy and solar. Ultimately, they are energy generation companies. They are not brutally anti-‘green’, they are in the business of making money.
The final position I hold. The IPCC has an agenda. It funds research. So it prejudges the outcome of that research.
And the funds in the state sector for global warming far outstrips that of oil interests.
I’d like the Guardian to address THAT little nugget more than anything else.
The more they name-call, whine, complain and moan, the more it means we are getting the upper hand.