These guys again?
Excerpts from: Climate scientists plot to hit back at skeptics
Donations to buy ad on climate change
by Stephen Dinan
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.
In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of “being treated like political pawns” and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.
“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.
“This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, ‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,'” said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.
The scientists have been under siege since late last year when e-mails leaked from a British climate research institute seemed to show top researchers talking about skewing data to push predetermined outcomes. Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative body on the matter, has suffered defections of members after it had to retract claims that Himalayan glaciers will melt over the next 25 years.
…
In a phone interview, Mr. Schneider, who is one of the key players Mr. Inhofe cites, said he disagrees with trying to engage in an ad battle. He said the scientists will never be able to compete with energy companies.
“They’re not going to win short-term battles playing the game against big-monied interests because they can’t beat them,” he said.
…
“What I am trying to do is head off something that will be truly ugly,” he said. “I don’t want to see a repeat of McCarthyesque behavior and I’m already personally very dismayed by the horrible state of this topic, in which the political debate has almost no resemblance to the scientific debate.”
Not all climate scientists agree with forcing a political fight.
“Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.,” said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Surprising, since these strategies haven’t worked well for them at all so far.”
She said scientists should downplay their catastrophic predictions, which she said are premature, and instead shore up and defend their research. She said scientists and institutions that have been pushing for policy changes “need to push the disconnect button for now,” because it will be difficult to take action until public confidence in the science is restored.
“Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial element of uncertainty is unnecessary and is bad politics, not to mention having created a toxic environment for climate research,” she said.
…
Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University who started the effort, said in the e-mails that he is seeking a $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad to run in the New York Times. He said in one e-mail that commitments were already arriving.
…
George Woodwell, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, said in one e-mail that researchers have been ceding too much ground. He blasted Pennsylvania State University for pursuing an academic investigation against professor Michael E. Mann, who wrote many of the e-mails leaked from the British climate research facility.
…
In his e-mail, Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” but said scientists have had their “classical reasonableness” turned against them.
“We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths,” he wrote.
==============================
Read the entire article at the Washington Times
I’d still like to know where these energy company slush funds are located. I’m still skeptical that such an energy company-funded comspiracy even exists. I’ve never seen any money.
I am pleased to be on the opposite side of the debate from Paul Erlich, a neo-Malthusian, anti-science, anti-growth, reverse-Cassandra scaremongering crackpot of long standing.
Ummm, if I were a serious climate scientist, dusting off my credentials and preparing for war, I would first and foremost tell everyone, at the top of my lungs, “I don’t know any Paul Ehrlich. Nevah hudduvim, nevah did.”
I mean, Ehrlich is past the gutter and into the sewer. His work makes comic books seem almost credible (Gee, maybe Gotham City DOES have a caped crusader!)
9 of 10 sentient beings reading these pages know of Ehrlich and his failed, Old Testament-style prophecies. All the guy needs is a beard, a robe and a sign saying, “The End Is Near (Again).”
Schneider is no better. He was there with John Holdren and Margaret Mead when the AGW scam was born, way back in 1975.
Good luck to the side of truth, because the crazies are extremely well funded.
In his e-mail, Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” but said scientists have had their “classical reasonableness” turned against them.
“We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths,” he wrote.
Incredible to a level beyond believe. This is a type of people that i won’t hold in high regard, they are right about that, in my opinion these people should be prosecuted for committing crimes against humanity.
High regard? Facts? Appeals? Am i missing something here in their black and white world view?
Schneider is up to his usual lies… blaming energy companies when the AGW scientists are being funded by the government with billions of dollars
Amusing. They still think the “energy companies” are against them instead of the science, the weather, the climate and not least, their own words and data released in the emails, etc! Should we call them denialists? (:-))
Of course the effect of these advertisements will be to focus even more attention on them, thus continuing the “debate”. I’m glad that they think there are many scientists who will cough up $1000. That’s a bit more than the rest of us can afford, as we are paying off our electricity bills, artificially raised because of their politicizing their science.
“This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, ‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’” said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.
Bingo! They need to stop the spin and start telling the truth if they want to regain any credibility. That’s not a slightly different approach. It’s the opposite approach for them.
Dr. Curry got it right. She’s advocating a steady course towards climate sanity. Unfortunately, there are former scientists out there who have fooled themselves into untenable beliefs and who will not be dissuaded from sailing over the cataract, brandishing their ad hominem slogans and blowing loudly on their kazoos. Pathetic.
Stay the course, Dr. Curry.
Dollars to doughnuts it will be a misuse of their funds when used to take out ads that do not begin to resemble legitimate research efforts. Political ads do not constitute research in anybody’s world.
Since when do grants have this kind of discretionary allocation? I venture to say that attacking other scientists in newspapers is not a form of scientific discourse and healthy discussion of disagreements.
Happy to see Dr. Curry continues to call the plays objectively. Evidently she is clearly distinguishing herself from the alarmist faction.
LOL, Paul Ehrlich, the scientist who has been wrong about more things than most anybody I know. Hey Paul, hows those malthusian “Limits to Growth” coming? Weren’t we all supposed to starve to death by the end of the 1980s?
Schneider, Hockey Team member, unrepentant decline hider…
These guys are organizing a Legion of Doom
I guess we’re up to stage 3…
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
[In a phone interview, Mr. Schneider, who is one of the key players Mr. Inhofe cites, said he disagrees with trying to engage in an ad battle. He said the scientists will never be able to compete with energy companies.]
He He He we got them on the run now! They think we got’em surrounded.
Isn’t ExxonMobil giving $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project between 2007 and 2017? Perhaps they can get into a bidding war with themselves over whether pro/anti AGW ads will be on the back page of the New York Times? British Petroleum, Dutch Royal Shell and His Excellency The Sultan of Oman can chip in by asking their beneficiaries down in CRU to continue discrediting themselves.
Still, we have Dr. Butterflies up there to thank for saving us from the global mass starvation he predicted for the 1980’s. Humanity stopped laying hundreds of our eggs on the underside of leaves just in time.
“Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.”
So if climate scientists throw up a tantrum, then the confidence in their work will be restored and the science proven as accurate. Sounds like some strategy.
My students are frequently surprised, upon re-reading, to find that what they just put on paper is not what they thought they had written. Or perhaps Mr. Woodwell is just not that familiar with English syntax. An “…opposition that is not going to listen to … appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard….” can only be construed to mean that the alarmists so hold themselves.
And as they are going to publish in a “mainstream” newspaper (which have not rushed to discuss climategate much at all), they will be doing the job for us of publicising their faults, at their own expense, that will have the effect of getting more people interested and finding out for themselves, so stirring up debate even more. It will become a discussion point again in the blogosphere which will again regurgitate climategate, glaciergate, etc etc. Good PR for yourselves fellas (:-))
“… by running a back-page ad in the New York Times . . .”
Jeez. These guys are so out of touch it is incredible. How many NYT readers do they think are skeptics? How many skeptics do they think still read the NYT? Pretty doubtful they will change anything for anybody, anywhere.
They will spend more time and more money preaching to the choir, just to preach to the choir. Thankfully, they might be using their own money this time.
These scientists must have much on their minds: They should welcome genuinely constructive questions or criticisms. All they are now doing is adding fuel to a fire.
The USA government, and others, needs lots of money to support the vast programs being proposed. No one seems to know how to get the amounts needed except by imposing costs on CO2 production. If such production isn’t going to destroy Earth then the justification for controlling CO2 goes away. To many of the people mentioned in this piece it is important to keep the money flowing for their projects, salaries, students, and university overhead. They could stay funded by studying issues more likely to be of benefit to Earth and its population of things but, so far, they haven’t figured out how to make the money flow in other directions. So, we get the sort of panic shown by this article. This is a sad time for science and serious problems are being ignored.
“Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.,” said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Surprising, since these strategies haven’t worked well for them at all so far.”
“Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial element of uncertainty is unnecessary and is bad politics, not to mention having created a toxic environment for climate research,” she said.
Okay I’ve been rather harsh on Dr Curry in the past so fair is fair. You have made 2 great points and should be commended for that. On these 2 I can agree with your assessment completely. You seem to be distancing herself from the alarmists at an increasing rate which is a smart thing to do because circling the wagons in this case is a Custer approach IMHO.
it is very disturbing that this person is still allowed to teach young people at an university.
at least energy companies could sue schneider for his infamy and untrue statements.
Back Page ad? I was under the impression that the NYT didn’t run a comics page.
John A (21:22:36) : I’d still like to know where these energy company slush funds are located. I’m still skeptical that such an energy company-funded comspiracy even exists.
I endorse that, John. It seems those making these wild assertions cannot comprehend that individuals would freely devote their time to fighting back against the alarmism being promoted. As an individual it has cost me precious time following and attempting to refute their wild predictions. I do it because I cannot tolerate the supercilious presumption of authority to socially engineer my world; I do it because I believe these alarmists have debased both science and truth; I do it for my children and grandchildren, both to guard the world they will continue to live in from a social dictatorship and to show them I did not come under the spell of a Hollywood-style blockbuster of belief.
Anthony Watts is an excellent example of a selfless campaigner against cant. I do believe it cost him personally to progress his social conscious of what is right, and if in the end he becomes a monetary winner I believe this is just ─ and equally believe this was never his intention.
World-of-tomorrow, you owe me. You owe many much, much more for taking their stand on morality. The vast majority of us will take our wages only in the knowledge we stood tall against a tide of insanity; and that will be enough.
But we were never propped up by cynical money, nor desire for it.
“an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach”
If they do that, their credibility is shot.
Their credibility may already be shot just for saying this.
People just laugh at hyperpartisan nut-jobs.
Advertising! Stick to climate science.
You want to change someone’s mind? Advertising doesn’t do that.
If they want to change people’s minds –
Invest the funds in time for climate scientists in different research areas to run blogs that post articles, explain their research and answer questions.
And try a radical departure from a well-known blog by not insulting/demeaning skeptical people with questions. I’m sure there are plenty of climate scientists who could do an interesting job and be very educational.
Recommendation for climate scientists – build some bridges:
Don’t say “It was published in Geophysical Research Letters, go and read my paper there”
Do say “Let me explain what we tried to measure and why..”
Let us encourage them to do it. Yes.
However, the ‘big-monied interests’ have transformed themselves in friends of AGW, for good reasons: If you can’t stop foolish regulations, then rebuild your business to benefit from it. Trade hot air. They are as smart as Al Gore is.
On one side there is the biologists, on the other side their is the thinkers (mathematicians and physicists).
Does anyone else think my broad overgeneralization has more than some truth to it?
Who needs to advertise when you have this type of press?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10630087
The New Zealand Herald piece by Steve Conner surely tells a sad story re the quality of the newspaper science reports down under!
jcspe (21:38:45) :
Ipsissima verba. You took the words right out of my mouth.
Good plan, place ad in the NYT. Back page. $50,000.
Friedman and Krugman both write glowing columms vouching for the climate scientists who bought the ad. The circle is complete. Let the back patting begin.
After all, Friedman admires the Communist Chinese system thats so sensitive toward the enviroment…..Oh wait…..dang
And Krugman won a Nobel prize in economics. We all know how hard it is to win a Nobel prize these days…Oh wait……dang
New Plan…Climate Scientists raise $3500.00 to place ad on back page of the National Enquirer….
The unfortunate part of this is that the Climate fraud may wreck real science.
When the ‘science’ fails to comply with observed reality, by all means, good scientists should resort to “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach”. Twenty-first century science at its finest.
Why do they need to raise the money individually. I am certain that Al Gore would pony up 50 K for the ad. Heck, he could make another 100 million by adding it to his snake oil show.
On another note: I wonder what Gavin thinks of this? Will he contribute to the “convince the public” campaign?
Uh oh!
* Runs off to cash Exxon-Mobile check before the plug is pulled *
They’re half right, you know. I have a deep relationship, almost a dependency, with oil companies, and money changes hands.
I buy gas.
“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.”
Wow, it’s news to me that I’m a “well-funded merciless enemy who plays by different rules”… well-funded, I wish… the reality is that times are tight and I’m looking for work… I’ve never taken any money from anyone for the topic of climate change. Heck I don’t even have ads on my http://www.PathsToKnowledge.net web site, not that there would be anything wrong with that.
The rules I play by are the rules of the scientific method that demands that scientists funded by the public purse show their work in full detail with all data, all fudging, all manipulations, all source code, all spreadsheets, all papers, basically everything about the work paid for by the public. That’s fair. No different rules. Show your work just like they taught us in high school science and math classes. If you don’t show your work you’re not a professional scientist. If you don’t show your work when asked you’re very possibly committing fraud and malpractice.
I simply want to see the evidence for the alleged AGW hypothesis. Those supporting a scientific hypothesis must provide the evidence that they claim support it. Sure it’s not likely to be in one paper, so show ALL the papers which have the conclusive hard undeniable evidence for the alleged AGW hypothesis.
Those making wild claims must provide extraordinary evidence per the Carl Sagan principle. The wild claims of the alleged AGW hypothesis surely demand extraordinary evidence. So far nothing but hockysticks with bad statistics hiding tree ring entails data that diverged from the thermometers and in the process falsifying the claims.
Oh, if you’re a source of funding I’m available for consulting work. I work in information and modeling systems. I could work building climate models that follow the scientific method rather than some political agenda presaging the outcome. Thanks.
pwl
http://PathsToKnowledge.net
It used to be a major honor for a scientist to be elected to the National Academy of Science. It seems that it’s not such a prestigious organization if they let these charlatans in.
This can and will blow up in there face, as seen as a joke. be ware we are not all fools on the far left.
Tim L
Ooops too late — should have thought of that when the AGW fanatics created an environment so hostile, people could not speak their mind about the weaknesses of the AGM position without fearing the would lose their jobs or get black balled by their zealot friends.
Sucks to be you now that you are tasting the fruits you sowed for 20+ years.
Larry
It’s a bit reckless to circle the wagons when that’s all that’s been done for a decade.
Public support dropping by the hour.
Instead of actually doing science and defending their results scientifically, brand new plan let’s do advertsing like we been doing for a decade.
Obviously students of Scipio the first and general Custer.
Where are all these science Divas coming from.
Bwaaha ha ha
dyslexia bites again –
Ooops too late — should have thought of that when the AGW fanatics created an environment so hostile, people could not speak their mind about the weaknesses of the AGW position without fearing the would lose their jobs or get black balled by their zealot friends.
I wonder what George Woodwell would say about the Woods Hole paper released last year that determined that the Indonesian warm pool SST’s had similar temperatures during the MWP to todays and suggested that northern hemisphere reconstructions (tree rings) should be reinvestigated.
The Australian has published another set-piece alarmist article from the Hadley mob here. See my rebuttal here.
Ehrlich is notorious for predicting in 1969 that all major life in the sea would be extinct by 1980 and for advising us to ignore aid to India because it was already doomed – Mother Teresa in reverse. Schneider is notorious for saying that it was necessary to offer up scary scenarios on climate to get attention. The continual paranoia about sceptic funding by oil companies (the b******s have not given me a CENT!! I’ll change sides!!) recalls Col. Jack Ripper preserving our vital bodily fluids in Dr Strangelove. What staggers is the whining about McCarthyism from the sort of people who described ‘sceptics’ as denialists (connotations of mental disorder and nazi revivalists), flat-earthers, vexatious disturbers of Phil Jones as he strives to find ‘tricks’, throwbacks to Galileo’s inquisitors, prats who f****d up, ‘idiots’ like Bob Carter here in Australia for precociously noting that global warming was pausing, stooges for Big, Big Oil, and operatives for the tobacco lobby (I have rubbished them for years). They also gave McIntyre and McKitrick hell for criticisms which Wegman with his impeccable statistician’s credentials validated. In short they did everything in their power to do McCarthy-style witch-hunting of their own. The science will never be settled if it is done in such a manner.
It’ll be just another name-calling rant that will only further alienate serious scientists and end up backfiring. Let them behave like kids.
Ask these population control freaks this question:
“Do you feel your support of anti-war ideals has led to an increase in population which would have otherwise been naturally controlled by the innate instinct in humanity for violent conflict?”
Answer: “Uhhhh… (head exploding)”
Mind you, I am not in accordance with any of the above ideals, but since these ‘gentlemen’ (if I can ruin the term) are, it is only fair to ask them if desiring health care to keep all alive, decrease in war to keep all alive, draconian ‘population management’ measures to keep all alive, ad nauseum, only further contributes to this ‘population problem’ and thus exacerbates it. Shouldn’t these folks advocate for the burning of more CO2, given their ideologies and political leanings? Then we can have the final solution for that pesky population problem, right chaps?
– Signed, David X(
Robert Carr: “It seems those making these wild assertions cannot comprehend that individuals would freely devote their time to fighting back against the alarmism being promoted. As an individual it has cost me precious time following and attempting to refute their wild predictions. I do it because I cannot tolerate the supercilious presumption of authority to socially engineer my world; I do it because I believe these alarmists have debased both science and truth; I do it … to guard the world … from a social dictatorship and to show them I did not come under the spell of a Hollywood-style blockbuster of belief.”
I concur with Robert Carr!
In addition I do it since I’ve seen no conclusive hard evidence that humans have destroyed our climate as the alarmists claim with their alleged AGW hypothesis. Prove it I say, or shut the frig up about it till you can prove it. In the meantime show ALL your work in every detail. Programs. Data. Notes. Emails. Drafts of papers. Files. Show us everything. Or stop being funded by the public purse and go into privately funded science and don’t publish.
Paul Ehrlich? Let’s get real…. this is a biologist who thinks demography is simply human herd and range management. The net result of his efforts and his “Club of Doom” co-conspirators has been to discourage reproduction among people who could afford to have and educate children while the illiterate and ignorant continue to reproduce. Oddly enough, demography is something I can claim some small experise in and I would welcome a discussion from anyone on the topic.
Paul Vaughan (21:55:22) :
People just laugh at hyperpartisan nut-jobs.
That is absolutely true. And it is part of the problem in getting the word out about AGW not being correct. The ‘Oil Industry’ maneuver was successful enough to put all anti-AGW folks in the lamp of Big Oil. What, then, is the proper solution for that?
Schneider has continuously said things that suggests that just think mankind is evil or stupid or both. He’s been trying to scare the public for his whole career.
This is an old strategy he suggested in 1989 “we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
In 1971, Schneider co-authored a paper warning of the possibility of a man-made “ice age.” See: Rasool S., & Schneider S.”Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols – Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate”, Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141 – Excerpt: ‘The rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
In 2009 his response to Pielke’s debate offer, “ I certainly will not schedule some political show debate in front of a non-scientific audience–all that does is generate confusions since lay audiences can rarely discern the quality of a scientific argument.”
It appears he thinks that only “he and the Team” can discern the truth! A dangerous megalomaniac lurking beneath the guise of science!
IanP’s link to the NZ story is worth checking out.
Our old freind from the Met Office at Hadley Center, Peter Stott, it seems has been busy. He’s rewritten AR4 so that we can all have newer “peer” reviewed version of the same story to replace the now tainted IPCC version.
Next we’ll have other favorites provide us with their back page political diatribes to the choir – and they cite a “new” peer reviewed IPCC replacment for their appeal to authority.
I didn’t think they’d give up but I’m glad to see them using the same tired tactics,slogans, and ad homs. Like the lady from Georgia says – it hasn’t worked very so far.
I think they should do this. It will prove that a Wal-Mart flyer has more integrity
then “climate scientists”
This definitely seems circular:
taxes->grants->donations->news paper ads->journalism->public opinion->taxes
I share the concern that the only significant effect will be a slight debasing of science – which will soon be exclusively seen as an ineffective lobbying cause.
Paul Ehrlich has predicted that hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. would prematurely die. Finally, he has decided to confirm his prediction by attacking hundreds of millions of people, the skeptics. Will the ads be enough for his first prediction to come true? Good luck to him and his equally mentally ill colleagues.
I didn’t realize Anthony, Steve, Jeff Id and the rest of them were so well funded…
I’m tempted to donate to hasten this opportunity for them to make fools of themselves.
Of course, if they are getting $1000 donations from scientists who’ve been feeding at the public trough then I may have already paid my fair share…
Thats very good news!
1) They think we are organized.
2) Running scary stories ad’s.
Fine!
In the mean time, here is my ad;
http://www.klimaskolen.com/DonaldDuck1.aspx
The world goverments will stand behide them because they can see all that money coming their way.Our P.M says he belives in AGW no mater what others say.(n.z)
Chronicles: The Wars between the ‘Ad Hoc’ versus the ‘In Hock’
So we get ‘Ad Hoc’ scientists publishing against us ‘In Hock’ skeptical science bloggers. We wouldn’t be ‘In Hock’ if all the hypothetical Big Oil checks atributed to us by the ‘Ad Hoc’ were real.
John
The Washington Times editorial is also worth a read:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/03/global-warmings-biggest-winners/
Meanwhile, here in the UK, “A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change. It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.” – Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent, BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8550090.stm
Just heard on BBC News (TV) that conditions in the Baltic are so bad that the icebreakers gone to the rescue of a passenger ferry are now stuck…
By all means let them advertise. That ad will become a figure in some future dissertation regarding the low point of science at the start of this millennium. And its not just climatology – the the British medical journal, Lancet, recently published a retraction of research they had run in previous articles, supposedly showing a link between autism in children and vacinating them for measles, mumps, and rubella. -Come to find out that the funding for this research was done by parents of autistic children and their lawyers. -Mad $cienti$t$ indeed!
This idea is just wrong-headed. Anyone who understands political science will intuitively grasp that to the degree they go ahead with this they make themselves “just another special interest” arguing for their turn at the funding trough.
That’s a large mistake, and a confirmation of the critique many of their opponents already level at them.
To the degree science has power in the political arena, it is to the degree that it is perceived to be disinterested in political outcomes. “It is what it is”, is the strength of science.
Where to begin…
“Tired of being treated as pawns”. Well, they are pawns and bought pawns at that. They are government paid-for pawns and they havel put out the kind of science they have been paid for. Oil company paid-for science? Nothing beats government paid for science.
“Gentlepersons debate”? Is it the “gentle” kind of person that viciously squashed honest questioners and destroyed careers if they persisted? Are these the “gentlepersons” that threw every imaginable obstruction in the way of honest questioners who simply asked for data to replicate or refute their conclusions?
“An outpouring of anger and frustration”? Why? Because they whored-out science and honest people objected? Because what they said wasn’t accepted as gospel? Who are the sanctimonious people?
“The emails leaked” Thank God they did, someone had a conscience somewhere to put them out. Note, leaked not stolen or hacked. It says someone had a conscience and couldn’t go with the sociopaths running the CRU.
“Big-monied interests”. Yes. Believe that and you believe in the tooth fairy. They live their lives living from big grant to big grant so that’s how they see reality. Everything that happens to these people must have big money behind it. Sponsors and opposition. They cannot imagine otherwise. Depressing when you think a scientist should think “outside of a box” generally. Says something about these “scientists”.
“Created a toxic environment for climate research”. Good. They aren’t scientists. They are political hacks with a technological background. They would even measure up to a competent engineer. Any engineer can do statistics and that’s all climate scientists are. Difference is an an engineer has to do good statistics because his job depends on it.
There is no mathematical theory for “climate science”. There is no theory to climate science to give it any legitimacy at all. There is nothing to be tested to prove or disprove. Climate Science It has no legitimacy as a science.
Yet the US spent $79 billion on these quacks in the past 10 years. Look at what that money has brought.
Brilliant idea after a long, cold snowy winter to take out global warming ads. A real stroke of marketing genius.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich
Science is the process of exposing the truth of how nature works, framed in the light of how mankind can be educated, to the processes at work, so individuals can use the information to better interact with nature, for their own good.
Good husbandry, and improving farming techniques usually protects nature, and people profit from the increased carrying capacity that results. There are positive feed backs to this system, that result from good education practices.
I would add to the general understanding of how the weather works, so the general population can do a better job of taking care of the Earth, and all of it peoples. Toward this end, I add all of the time and mental effort I can muster, with out any outside funding to solving the worlds problems.
I do not like the huge grant amounts being wasted on funding those whose goal is, to gather as much money and power to themselves at the great expense of every one else, including the environment itself. That is why I post here, and I suspect that is much the same for most of the others.
The removal of the impediment to understanding, should be the reason for institutions of higher learning, as well as general basic education for the masses, to make them more independent and profitable, to the point of self sustainability. It was one of the goals of our founding fathers, but the current state of the government does not reflect that anymore?
Which side of this action are these people on, that they would spread deception and lies, waste funding without producing anything usable, and try to control other by trying to keep them ignorant, arrogant elitists like these just need to get out of the way, and let the rest of us get on with life.
Richard Holle
A good way to improve confidence in climate models would be to get a prediction right once in a while.
“We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths,”
My goodness, delusions of Godhood.
Ehrlich and Schneider must have hides as thick as elephants. Do they truly believe that the human race has no collective memory of their outrageous history of failed prophecies of doom.
That any reputable seat of higher learning is still prepared to employ either of these two must surely exemplify either breath-taking human gullibility, or ideological fanaticism.
That’s right, they don’t get it Paul. Climate Change Science is post-normal – it has and always has been political – you made it that way. You were the first of the Alarmists and dont let anyone tell you otherwise.
So you’ve gotta do what Mike Hulme says, it ain’t about science, its a war of values and so you’ve got to start playing the post-normal game!
Thats ’cause the sceptics think it’s normal science but they are wrong. They think its about truth. If its about evidence, truth, science, they win. But it has never been about truth, ask Mike Hulme, as Jerry, it has always has been about – you made it Paul and Steve made it all those years ago – you make it P.N.S.! And so it will stay that way…until it all just falls apart and vanishes into thin air.
“It’s worse than we thought. They are on to us”
“It’s big oil”
“But they are our biggest supporters”
“We must hide the decline in our populairty”
“Yes, this is unprecented in the record”
“Lets get a press release to the New York Times”
“Its a travestry that they do not believe us any more”
“Yes, we need another disaster like Hurricane Katrina”
Dr. Curry is right, don’t do it.
Sen. Inhofe knows the political ropes, his advice is likewise sound.
Dr. Schneider will be the 1st one they roast. He’s clearly not looking both ways before crossing the street if he stick his neck out there.
The Met Office article by Peter Stott is here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8550090.stm
Paul R. Ehrlich? Him again?! Isn’t it about time for him to retire to a well-deserved obscurity? Must be a nice job to have where you’re paid despite being so often wrong about, well, just about everything.
Here’s a hint boys — you’re being trounced not by ads or political infighting, but by something far more deadly — good science being performed by real scientists seeking to gain understanding and not conforming to a politically imposed orthodoxy.
On another note, I found this article interesting, suggesting that the previous Ice Age was preceded by fluctuations in the climate that might be similar to what’s been happening the past few centuries. Who knows, the tipping point that’s been spoken of so frantically may just be around the corner, when the next cooling episode keeps on cooling and cooling till the massive glaciers once again begin their deadly march south.
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-study-says-global-warming-may-be.html
The press release from Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres is here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/haog-wsw030210.php
this is a bunch of kool-aid drinkers. They will go down with their ship. I would pity the fools if they were not wasting tax dollars….
So, why do I get so harsh and abrasive about (and abusive to) enviromentals and climate kooks?
Well, these three fine fanatics, have really explained it for me.
“This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, ‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’” said Stephen H. Schneider ”
Indeed. That would be lovely.
I’m sure many sceptics would like nothing more.
Here’s an alternative idea- forget the newspaper ad- that only buys so much space, is expensive and doesn’t allow for commentary/dialogue. We live in the modern world, so how about using modern tools? If you’ve got something to communicate to the public, start a website a put forward your case there. You’ll be able to go into much more detail and answer any questions as they arise. I’m certain you’ll get more views by presenting fair and intersting information on a website than the back page of a newspaper anyway- most people interested in AGW theories know the internet’s where it’s at.
The reputations of scientists increase in the eyes of the public when they are seen to stick with science. Looking for ways to take cheap political shots at people who’s opinion you disagree with in ad format isn’t going to help anything and will in all likelyhood backfire. If you truly want a civil dialogue then you will need to present yourselves and your ideas in a civil manner. If you want a political fight, then plenty of people will sign up for that also, but as you say that’s a far cry from discussing actual science.
If you want to be acknowledged as scientists, stick to science.
That’s how good their science is that they have to defend it in the sewer. Impressive admission of incompetence.
Sew them!
Reply: ???? ~ ctm
I am getting dizzy.
Is the above article implying NAS is funding the adds in the news media?
Let me see, as a taxpayer I fund the NAS [Nat’l Academy of Sciences]. Then the NAS apparently uses some of my funds for some of its scientist to advocate AGW theory with the intent to oppose me scientifically. They are using my funds in an attempt to convince the public that I am wrong.
Any NAS members here? Is there a policy for publically funded institutions like NAS to give equal time [at NAS’s cost] to opposing scientific theories?
NOTE: The NAS was signed into being by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863
John
Three biologists in a row.
Are most “climate scientists” now life science specialists?
I thought the current “climate science” discussion was of temperatures (energy), physics, planets (Earth), and mathematics.
You know, about water, atoms, currents, evaporation, admittance, wind, condensation, emissivity, pressure, convection, light, volume, ice, snow, air, conductivity, infrared, molecules, microwaves, convection, spherical geometry, X-rays, gravity, wavelengths, orbits… of these I know and they all generally fit in the area of physics but where does biology fit in? Are they standing in for the polar bears again?
Stupid is as stupid does.
Hey guys,
Don’t label all biologists as alarmists. Think of David Bellamy. And there are plenty of alarmists who aren’t biologists, too. My degree is in zoology, and I’m a sceptic. Let’s not use broad-brush denigration techniques. This is more typically an alarmist tactic and in the long run I don’t think it’s worked well for them.
Stick to questioning the science. Like lord Lawson implied, play the ball and not the man. On the warmist side, Judith Curry is a good ball player, and she comes across as the voice of sanity in the article. Sceptics need to come across in the same sort of way. We want the debate to be about the science, yes?
I think this kind of reaction from Ehrlich is actually to be welcomed and will be perceived for what it is – a proposal for last-ditch kamikaze rather than a charge of the Light Brigade.
Can’t wait to see the ad.
I’d offer them more rope, but it seems as if they’ve got plenty.
Excuse me for joining the debate late and possibly crossing other comments, but I just saw this post and am blown away by its ridiculous basis.
The “scientific method” is the subject of a UK Parliment legislative committee inquiry as we speak. Jones has lost his credibility as a “scientist”, and says that not sharing data is the “norm”.
This statement is being broadly challenged as wrong. For some it is the interpretation of this new body of “scientists” of “climate” that their “regime” is out of normal and plain incorrect. This entire group of new scientists are about to get a spanking.
So it looks like these individuals want to start a campaign against the scientific method. Wouldn’t that be a thrill. Follow the money! They see that future funding of future research programs are at risk.
Let’s watch and comment as the opportunity arrises.
PR review.
When you can’t defend the indefensible attack attack your critics and hope it all goes away!. Wishful thinking stupid.
To continue the comment… these guys are all biologists! Get Real.
Catastrophic climate change/global warming has reached stage 6 in Irving Langmuir’s “symptoms of pathological science” and these guys know it.
1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2.The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. Claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion
Since in gov’t funded climate research it is now apparently the money not the science that scientists are focused on, we should consider some alternate funding processes.
Anybody remember Tax Credits for Education?
We need Tax Credits for Research.
Imagine, for every dollar we give to voluntary (non profit) or private (for profit) research, then we get one dollar tax credit. $1 for $1. We make the law so that $1 dollar can be sent to any country for research and we still get the US tax $1 credit. We send our money where the best research/scientists are.
John
Re: IanP (Mar 4 21:58),
IanP, this was a recycled piece from the Independent in the UK, as reported by EURef here
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/they-just-dont-get-it.html
Unfortunately for us living in NZ, the “news” on climate change is just a load of recycled propaganda from the rather “past its sell by date” MSM
I can sympathize.
If the warmists think newspaper ads are the solution to their problems, its not surprising they’re in such a mess of their own making. Their problems are really going to ramp up when Governments and the courts seriously challenge the IPCC’s claims to authority on climate matters. That will really bring tears to their eyes.
Alarmist advertising? What would it look like?
“Feeling low, depressed and that your life’s going nowhere?
What you need is a crisis! A strong dose of CAGW, our new laxative, will clear you out daily and free you from your other anxieties.
CAGW in a university near you, get some today!”
He who digs a pit for others falls in himself, Paul Ehrlich.
Perhaps they’d be better advised to save their money and instead lock Ehrlich in a basement somewhere remote, bound and gagged.
Alongside Holdren.
I like that they adopt the tactics of their imagined enemy.
shadow boxing.
Erlich got one thing right. we play by different rules. we are not organized. work for nothing. publish our code and data. and dont read the NYT.
Ehrlich, Nader, others, and various NGOs such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Greenpeace, ran a sustained and highly political campaign against nuclear power in the 1970’s and 1980’s. They succeeded in preventing the expansion of nuclear power energy sources as a replacement of the (more dangerous and environmentally damaging) coal-fired power energy sources in the USA, UK, and in Germany. As large stationary power sources, i.e. coal-fired power stations, contribute ~ 30% of the total anthropogenic CO2 load in the atmosphere, now currently ~ 100ppmv, we could note that these people and organisations are responsible in an indirect sense for a significant part of the current anthropogenic CO2 load in the atmosphere, the environmental damage caused by sulphate aerosols, soot, open-cast coal mining, and coal-fly ash disposal.
But our best course in countering the AGW mantra is to ensure that dispassionate science continues to comes to the fore in demonstrating that the increasing CO2 concentration resulting from anthopogenic sources does not behave as significant GHG.
I know that this is slightly OT, but an excellent “starter” for readers who wish to compare the relative risks through the respective fuel cycles for nuclear vs coal sourced energy is a book by Petr Beckmann – it is now out of print – but it describes rather accurately the roles of individuals such as Ehrlich and others in their crusades against common sense science, technology, and engineering.
““Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.
“This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, ‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’” said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.”
These people can’t accept the fact that they will go to their graves knowing their life’s work has been completely discredited by proper science.
“A back-page ad in the New York Times.” That is hilarious! They won’t reach a single person who is not already in the tank with them.
I guess that must be the point. They know they can’t have any effect on anyone outside of the echo chamber. They just want to make sure that their base does not leave the reservation: “I am the Great and Powerful IPCC. Ignore the man behind the curtain!”
Where else could they go to find people stupid enough to follow that instruction?
And biologists, I don’t want to hear about x species of birds who also enjoying the weather like myself that occurred due to the slight warm-up in the 70’s, 80s’ and 90’s. If I was a bird I would have flown a bit north too, but not now, or have you not noticed the change. I want to know how much the warm-up was (minus the urban heat island effect), and since it hasn’t warmed of any great amount for 15 years, why did it stop, will it now go up or down, how much and exactly why. That is to be answered by proper physics and it’s not in your area, so please step aside! (Sorry to hear about your lack of grants)
Sounds like they’ve no intention of letting science get in the way of their agenda. Best of luck to them in all they aspire to.
Oh man, do I miss Julian Simon now? He would have put Erhlich in his place in no time.
These guys are true space cadets if they think a back page ad in the New York Times, of all places, will change anyone’s mind. If you are not a member in good standing in the Church of AGW you wouldn’t be allowed to read the Times in the first place.
@Moderators
Some of these comments are ad hominem – perhaps you should consider whether this site will be able to retain the high ground unless you moderate a bit more actively.
Reply: Public figures are open for attack as long as people stay away from profanity. We discourage commenters from attacking one another. And I personally dislike the ubiquitous use of the term ad hominem which is meant to describe a mistake in logical debate not really a generalized term for insulting someone. ~ ctm
REPLY – Oh, come on, already! None of the posters are insulting each other. And as for the the chickenheaded, knuckleheaded chuckleheads who have concocted this square egg of a plan . . . I am surprised at the restraint shown so far. To quote the classic, “Sit down, Horace. If anything, the witness is browbeating Atticus.” ~ Evan
They are on the defense. Remember, we are not fighting the scientists but their more politically and strategically savvy political puppet-masters. If anything, this is a smokescreen. Now is the time to lay it on thick and call everyone into action. Now is the time to throw down and yell, “WE”RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!”.
We’ve won nothing and at this point our greatest mistake would be to believe this was anything more than an opportunity to strike at the heart of societies GWing cult problem.
This is a war and we now have the initiative. Fight to keep it.
These guys never really specify by company/corporation/persons from where the money comes to where the money goes. Neither do they reveal to us the amount of money involved. Rather unscientifically,- in my opinion.
The solution for upset scientists is to go back to doing what they did before they became celebrities. A bunch of billionaires planned the most evil organized crime scam in history and some climate guys’ names were thrown in the pot at the last minute. The main point was carbon trading and carbon taxes which were already underway before climate guys became buddies with Seth Borenstein.
All I can say is, “Bring it on. Please!”
Paul Ehrlich? Sheesh!
Talk about bringing a wet noodle to a gunfight.
(Gee, maybe Gotham City DOES have a caped crusader!)
He was the best mayor we ever had.
‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’”
He said before trying to set up an organisation to do some mega spinning!
Duh!
“We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths,” he wrote.”
Pot ……….Kettle………………Black!
I’m very glad when any lefty,would-be tax grabber gets their ambition thwarted.I hope they spend all their money on many,many ads.AGW is nothing but a Lefty,Big-Government tax-grab.Anyway! How are these people qualified to discuss climate science?! They are only Biologists!
Was Anger before Acceptance or After?
REPLY – Between Lust and Gluttony. ~ Evan
”””’Alexander Feht (23:26:24) : He who digs a pit for others falls in himself . . .””’
Alexander,
That sounds like a Confucian proverb, or Buddish or Tao proverb. Sounds distinctly oriental to me.
How about;
‘What is sound of one alarmist ad clapping?’
Also, thinking about adapting to AGW, ‘How much wood could a woodchuck . . .’
John
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8550090.stm
A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.
It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.
If these guys think that this is a good idea. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining, how they can believe in something as irrational as AGW. Clearly rational and logical thought, and the ability to grasp the big picture is completely beyond their capabilities.
LoL… Typical. These mob are going to do anything….. except science, to further the cause of the AGW belief , er, hypothesis.
So predictable…. Well, I hope they do “go on the attack”. People are waking up to them. They show themselves up, better than we ever could, as the hysterical frauds that they are.
“we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,”
They might be in a street fight, I’m in a fight to see real science and not the bogus they pass off as science.
If they want us to believe they can forecast the climate, they should shut up with their well-funded publicity and just show us they can forecast the climate and the only reason they are having to resort to PR instead of science is because their climate forecasts are carp!.
The same Stephen Schneider that had a journalists microphone taken from him and forced out at gropenhagen due to difficult questions.
Iiiiiiiiiiitsss business as usual folks!
With Friends like these who needs enemies. The sooner these three speak up the better. They damn the whole crowd by simply being on the same side. Oh and will they add Osama Bin Laden to their paranoid numbers; he seems quite keen.
The population lobby has always been a case of the nearly extinct end of the genepool telling the rest to join them. Of cause they’re still not ready to top them selves. Voluntary human extinction excepted.
http://www.vhemt.org/ Yes, its a real organisation with hundreds of sterilised members.
This crazy lobby is not just a problem, they are dangerous, read Or see ‘Children of Men’ by P.D.James.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Men
The back story, not explicitly stated, is that some population fanatic with a microbiology lab has rendered humanity sterile. The real problem is that some of Erhlichs fans are doing microbiology.
The sooner these three do a big budget add the better. It backfires badly. We’ve had a group called Getup here in Australia they have been doing ‘green’ attack adds since before the last election. They caused many to vote for Labour and defeated the Liberal party at that poll but now their ferocious attacks have turned onto labour and the Liberals, now immune, are reaping the rewards.
The end is nigh for green house the loonys have started throwing stones from the inside out.
Perhaps these biologists are suffering from Evolution vs Intelligent Design induced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder..
“Formal diagnostic criteria (both DSM-IV and ICD-9) require that the symptoms last more than one month and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (e.g. problems with work and/or relationships).”
..no?
The big differene being of course, that the last time around, they were actually right..
I’m sure there are good, sceptical scientists everywhere saying to themselves: “Bring it on.”
At lest Judith Curry has hit the nail on the head. The way to win a scientific argument is to prove your point scientifically with good data, good methods of analysis and reasonable conclusions.
Make a watertight scientific case and the politicians and sceptics and general population will be forced to acknowledge the results.
Unfortunately if there is a group of scientists that regard independant review of their data and methods as unacceptable, public acknowledgement of their research can never happen. If they stoop to ad-hominem attack as their first line of defence of their research data and methods then they are doomed in terms of credibility. They are simply not credible.
If you want to feed at the trough, you don’t have to join an energy company.
Try Googling [“asian development bank” ADB “world bank” climate]. It won’t take you long to realize that the alarmists have managed to allocate billions for climate climate change, both mitigation and adaptation.
Some governments simply pass grant money to the ADB and World Bank for the multi-lateral effort, but others maintain bilateral projects (Denmark for example). Depending on where you live, your tax money helps fill the trough.
Along with physical projects, technical assistance feeds an army of advisers and consultants, including pofessors at leading universities.
An especially misguided initiative can be googled using [ADB climate mekong model]. This initiative is based on the notion that climate models are good enough to predict regional environmental change, good enough to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars.
What would be a more rational approach?
The ENSO (El Nino) and other short-term cycles can have as much impact in the short term as global climate change is projected to cause over 30 years.
So a more rational approach would be to determine what measures are needed to cope with these short-term cycles. Similar measures would likely work for longer term climate change. In the medium term, the solutions would provide economic returns on the investments because the hazards certainly exist because the short-term climatic cycles have existed for centuries.
An even more rational approach would be to seek elsewhere the causes of the problems of the Mekong. How would you determine what these problems might be? Try googling this: {mekong delta sinking}. And this [mekong delta “land use” deforestation].
Humans are certainly involved in sea-level rise in the Mekong Delta. But the rise in seal level is mostly a “relative” rise cause by the sinking of the land relative to the sea. Worldwide, river deltas sink relative to the sea because of the weight of the sediments carried down the river. These sediments also cause the delta to extend seawards. The new land created is at or just below sea level and adds to the weight that causes the delta to sink.
The sediments have been carried from upstream for millions of years, but with the population explosion of the 20th century deforestation has left the upper and middle reaches of the Mekong vulnerable to tropical rains.
The solution for the Mekong Delta may be the same as for the Mississippi Delta, which is to say that there may or may not be a technical solution.
Whether there are non-technical solutions is another question.
But never mind the science, climate change is able to justify any expenditure.
we’re in a street fight
Our science can beat up their science.
Skeptics powered by Big Energy? A number of folks have debunked that already. Where have these bozo’s been? So..Heartland got some early funding from Exxon – they’ve been cut off for years now. Additionally, the Big E companies have hedged their investments by diving into “alternative” ventures and many by dealing with the Administration. BE will make money no matter what – that’s an important part of their job. Hey, what about the NEW Big E – the Carbon Barons? Oh, with the outing of the truth on CO2 they may also be facing the increasing specter of bankruptcy. Such is the consequence of risking everything on the assumption that your targeted victims are idiots and would let the alarmists channel them into submission. Thanks to numbers of folks with simple, honest interests in pursuing truths and nature “finding another way” to tweak the vanity and arrogance of some weak alarmists who have had their faults laid bare.
I say to the alarmists: If you have so much at stake that you have to waste the rest of your careers by attempting to deny healthy skepticism without offering valid explanations you will lose everything. Why not save some honor and just let your future work attempt to redeem something of your scientific souls. Alarmists, just quit wasting everyone’s time and resources, especially these days, and contribute to advancement for a change – we need it.
Christoph (21:58:10): “On one side there is the biologists, on the other side their is the thinkers (mathematicians and physicists). Does anyone else think my broad overgeneralization has more than some truth to it?”
Not in the sense you mean. I think we have a classic fight between “soft” retrospective science (the use of scientific language to retrospectively describe nature) and the use of “hard” predictive science.
What these guys simply can’t get out of their thick skulls, is that no matter how well you think you can describe what happened in the past, if your assertions don’t produce meaningful predictions then you will look daft (as they do).
This is something everyone on on the planet can understand and no use of fancy words can hide any longer:
Predict no snow — there is snow — they don’t know what they are talking about
Predict global warming — it cools — they look daft.
Get caught upjusting the figures, and no one cares a damn what they say!
And the more they run ads telling the world that they are misunderstood because they are fantastic at predicting the past, the more people will wonder why they can’t predict the future!
Is this the same Schneider who wrote ‘Science as a Contact Sport’ and impugned the bona fides of anybody who doesn’t accept the output of his (as he himself admits) impenetrable models?
Why, yes, it is. He can talk out of both sides of his mouth.
Won’t we all have fun searching the ad donations for any sign of funding from Big Oil?
tonyb
Richard North is up to half a Billion pounds Government spending on alarmist propaganda pushers in the UK alone and still counting.
Globally, more than five times the cost of the Manhattan Project. So far.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/five-times-cost-of-manhattan-project.html
As has been pointed out, the Government, Big Oil and especially Big Bankers are actually pouring money into the alarmists’ trough so fast that they are having to learn how to breath through their arses as well as talk through them.
But we are well funded?
Yeah. Right!
John Whitman:
“He who digs a pit for others falls in himself” is an ancient Russian proverb, translated verbatim.
Actually, I think Luboš Motl is correct, and some of environmentalists (certainly Schneider and Ehrlich) are mentally unstable. Which doesn’t release them from responsibility for their financial abuse of science, of course.
Man, the gall of those folks is unbelievable. Schneider says
Stephen, I think your colleagues know that, viz:
So yes, it’s not a gentlepersons debate … and Professor Schneider, everyone knows who is responsible for that.
Once again, I must commend Judith Curry for seeing the real path and speaking the truth.
‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’
This is exactly what we skeptics have been saying for years!!
This is hilarious coming from Stephen Schneider, one of the promoters of the 1970s ice age scare.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/
Schneider still has a hockey stick up. Full contact sport? Someone’s getting a bodycheck. 😉
But the good news is, before I was merely a (temporarily) retired citizen scientist, but now I’ve been promoted to a “well-funded merciless enemy”, like Flash Gordon’s arch-enemy, Ming the Merciless. That’s just awesome.
But where are my henchmen? Ming and every other self-respecting well funded merciless miscreant grasping for world domination has henchmen, where are my henchmen? I demand henchmen!
It’s worth reading the comments at the end of the Washington Post article.
Not one is favorable to these crooks and some border on the scandalous.
If they were looking for some sympathy from Joe public, they grossly underestimated the audience.
As far as the population is concerned, I think the planet can handle 25 billion people comfortably. You know, there are 250 million tones of water on the planet per capita currently. That works out to 90,711 Olympic size swimming pool volumes each. Check my math.
Didn’t I read somewhere that Exxon has donated somw $20M to climate change studies over the last 25 years! Wow that’s big oil money really talking man! Really makes the US government’s contribution of $79Billion look like pocket money!
Andrew P. (22:36:17) :
The Washington Times editorial is also worth a read:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/03/global-warmings-biggest-winners/
Meanwhile, here in the UK, “A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change. It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.” – Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent, BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8550090.stm
Just heard on BBC News (TV) that conditions in the Baltic are so bad that the icebreakers gone to the rescue of a passenger ferry are now stuck…
Form what I heard the Met Office rep say, was that the evidence is overwhelming of a warming world. Correct me if I am wrong, but does anybody out there who is sceptical believe that the earth has not warmed by around 7/10ths of a degree C over the last 150 years? Classic tactic, turn it against sceptics when it is atribution of warming that most of us are questioning, not warming itself. I had cause to write to a friend the other day to remind him that we’re in an inter-glacial, & the previous three over the last 400,000 years were warmer than to today according to ice-core data! Prof Jones has confessed that the rates of warming between 1860-1880, 1910-1940, & 1979-1999 were pretty much the same as posted on this site not so long ago. This alone seems to put paid to the “science” that the rate of warming in the late 20th century was unprecedented surely?
””’Willis Eschenbach (01:11:47) : every other self-respecting well funded merciless miscreant grasping for world domination has henchmen, where are my henchmen? I demand henchmen!””’
Willis,
And henchwomen. Don’t forget them.
Or would that be wenchhenchmen?
Some of the feminine persuasion help me out here please.
John
“God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,” said Stephen H. Schneider…
Waitaminnit — what happened to “The science is settled — there is no longer any room for debate”…?
Aren’t Erlich, Schneider, and crew the ones who demanded — in 1979 or thereabouts — that we cover the Arctic ice cap with lampblack to warm things up and eliminate the imminent threat of Teh New Ice Age?
I simply can’t believe Ehrlich is still clinging to the idea that there is money in skepticism. Has that man ever said anything of any veracity ever?
Doesn’t Ehrlich get that the whole well-funded opponent theory is not only wrong, not only the opposite of what is true – but is totally irrelevant? Since when did a defensible argument depend on money?
Ehrlich and co make me sick to my stomach. The sheer damage and fear that man has inflicted on the world is staggering.
To correct some people here, these people don’t think energy companies are funding opposition; this is the big lie they want to propagate.
Willis Eschenbach (01:08:33): great comment.
Willis Eschenbach (01:11:47) :
But where are my henchmen? Ming and every other self-respecting well funded merciless miscreant grasping for world domination has henchmen, where are my henchmen? I demand henchmen!
Will we be issued death rays? Will they have lots of dials and sparkly tubes and make really cool theremin noises when they’re fired?
Ummmmm — ix-nay on the inal-spay ump-hay, though…
“Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University who started the effort, said in the e-mails that he is seeking a $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad to run in the New York Times. He said in one e-mail that commitments were already arriving.”
I’m sure they will have no problem finding 50 scientists to pay “stupid tax”.
Paying for an alarmists’ ad in the New York Times? Don’t they know the Times do it for free?
Hell, the Guardian will pay Schneider.
Willis Eschenbach: “But where are my henchmen?”
I am here your evilness, what is your desire?
A nice cup of coffee perhaps? or … or .. a biscuit as well? Or shall we be really evil and open up the chocolate hob knobs!
Harry Eagar (00:44:12) :
“Is this the same Schneider who wrote ‘Science as a Contact Sport’ and impugned the bona fides of anybody who doesn’t accept the output of his (as he himself admits) impenetrable models?
Why, yes, it is. He can talk out of both sides of his mouth.”
More like he’s talking out of his [self snip].
Where is the “man-made global warming” lying propaganda leading us?
Here’s a clue…
British Businesses are facing a nasty “emissions” law shock
The British government has underestimated by six times the number of businesses to be covered by “greenhouse gas” emissions legislation that will take effect in just over three weeks. Ministers have told the business community for more than a year that about 5,000 to 6,000 companies in the commercial sector will be covered by the regulations, but in fact as many as 30,000 could be involved. This enormous revision to the government’s estimates is likely to cause consternation among small to medium-sized businesses, thousands of which may be unaware of the restrictions to be faced.
The regulations, originally called the “Carbon Reduction Commitment” and now known as the “CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme”, cover companies whose electricity is metered by the half hour and whose total electricity consumption exceeded 6,000 megawatt-hours in 2008, requiring them to monitor and report their electricity use.
Officials have been preparing the rules for about four years, after the scheme was proposed by the government-funded Carbon Trust, a body that advises businesses on their emissions. But Environment Agency officials recently discovered the scope of the regulations to be far broader than had been thought. Companies covered by the regulations will be required to register from April 1 and will have until September to show that they comply. Between now and September, the Environment Agency, which is in charge of implementing the CRC, will work on establishing exactly how many businesses must be included.
The problem of implementing the regulations is compounded by the fact that the government is relying on companies to come forward on their own initiative to register. Some companies, particularly smaller businesses, may be unaware of how much electricity they use, if bills are paid at the branch level rather than centrally.
Companies covered by the scheme will include retailers, banks, owners of large offices, and hotels. Public sector bodies that operate large estates of buildings, and hospitals, universities and some large schools are also expected to qualify. When companies have calculated and submitted details of their energy use, the government will publish a league table ranking them on their efficiency. Companies at the bottom will be penalised, with the money raised redistributed to those at the top.
The CRC is already controversial. Several companies, including British Telecom, have complained that the energy they take from renewable sources, such as wind turbines, is not reflected in their ranking. Another source of contention is that those companies that are highly efficient in their energy use will lose out to rivals that have never taken efficiency measures, because the latter will be able rapidly to improve their position in the league table at minimal cost.
The government also expects investors to use the rankings as a way of judging environmental performance and as evidence of how well a company controls its costs. Procurement managers may also use the tables as a tool to ensure their suppliers meet “green” requirements.
Just confirms what the Royal Socities of Chemistry and Statistics and the Institute of Physics were saying. These guys are not following scientific procedures. When they are questioned they resort to abuse. Ironic that they accuse people who disagree with them of being in the pay of someone, when they would have no research funds without heavy Government support. Talk about vested interests. Government in EU has used their research for greatly increased taxation, with not much visible sign of it going towards real solutions to the perceived problem.
I hear Katrina victims are suing oil companies for causing the hurricanes due to global warming. LOL. If it’s true oil companies are funding much of the AGW fraud then it’s sweet justice. Perhaps that’s what we need. Let’s all sue the oil companies for trillions. Watch them turn around and not only rubbish AGW but prove this it is a hoax, scientifically and in the courts. With all their resources it wouldn’t be that hard.
My apologies to Humpty, the King’s Men and the Horses but I couldn’t resist…
Climate Science Sat On a Wall,
Climate Science had a Great Fall,
All of the Adverts and attacks Hominem,
Can’t put Climate Science Together Again.
Maybe they should put an add on the home page of “The Journal of Irreproducible Results”; http://www.jir.com
As usual Willis Eschenbach comes up with a scientific rebuttal of the claims. Thank you Willis.
Mike Hulme has said for years that it wasn’t about science. This was about the appointment of Pachauri but the sentiments relate:
Mike Hulme
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: [Fwd: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote]
Date: Mon Apr 22 18:14:44 2002
Cc: s.raper
“Phil,
I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about Watson – why should he be re-nominated anyway? Why should not an Indian scientist chair IPCC? One could argue the CC issue is more important for the South than for the North. Watson has perhaps thrown his weight about too much in the past.
The science is well covered by Susan Solomon in WGI, so why not get an engineer/economist since many of the issues now raised by CC are more to do with energy and money, than natural science.
If the issue is that Exxon have lobbied and pressured Bush, then OK, this is regrettable but to be honest is anyone really surprised? All these decisions about IPCC chairs and co-chairs are deeply political (witness DEFRA’s support of Martin Parry for getting the WGII nomination).”
Appropos of nothing, Susan Soloman was a PhD student under Schneider.
[bridge too far ~ ctm]
“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
He’s talking aboot Al Gore, Dr. Pachauri, Michael E Mann, Phil Jones and their ilk isn’t he… 😉
I have come to think the mania for AGW is in part supported by this kind of specious and potty belief. It is irrelevant. If the science is sound the other side’s funding, tactics and rules simply would not matter. It is a distraction, an excuse even, to lower their standards and play dirty.
In a sense they think the very worst of us and our scepticism (that it has been bought) so they can merrily discard our opinions and the sceptical science that people are producing, and discard their own scepticism in the process. They have convinced themselves that sceptics are advocates for big oil and they have to be advocates for statism and ‘the planet’ in return.
“…But where are my henchmen? Ming and every other self-respecting well funded merciless miscreant grasping for world domination has henchmen, where are my henchmen? I demand henchmen!…”
Here I am, Master!
I have just finished explaining our plan to dominate the world by dumping large amounts of plant food into the atmosphere and generating mutant mobile oak trees with laser beams in their branches to Phil Jones, and then I locked him in the dungeon with the broken lock and the air-conditioning vent.
What would you like me to do next?
And the Guardian? Remember those nice folk at the Guardian who want a reasonable debate? They’re moving back to the attack too with a piece attempting to discredit the IOP submission to the parliamentary committee:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/05/climate-emails-institute-of-physics-submission?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Despite the Grauniad’s bleating that they understand the term denier was not at all nice, the comments are packed with stuff like this (hilarious) one:
“Then I suggest you go back through the last year’s discussions and take careful note of the way Jones has been treated and the invective routinely directed at Hansen and Mann. Not to mention the use of the terms “alarmist” and “hysteric”, which express a value-weighting rather than a behaviour as the term “denier” expresses.”
Big Oil – big BS. The usual myths and fantasies of AGW/ACC religionists.
@Willis Eschenbach (01:08:33) :
“Man, the gall of those folks is unbelievable. Schneider says
Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate …
Stephen, I think your colleagues know that, viz:
James Hansen of NASA wanted trials for climate skeptics, accusing them of high crimes against humanity
Robert Kennedy Jr. called climate skeptics traitors
Yvo de Boer of the UN called climate skepticism criminally irresponsible
David Suzuki called for politicians who ignore climate science to be jailed
DeSmogBlog’s James Hoggan wants skeptics treated as war criminals (video)
Grist called for Nuremberg trials for skeptics
Emo-Joe Romm wanted skeptics strangled in their beds
A blogger at TPM pondered when it would be acceptable to execute climate deniers
Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel called for skeptical forecasters to be decertified
Bernie Sanders compared climate skeptics to Nazi appeasers.”
—————
I’m simply aghast at the lowball tactics of Hansen and the others, all of them proponents of the trillion dollar hoax. Could they have all read the same book?
http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Through-Intimidation-Robert-Ringer/dp/0449207862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267783524&sr=1-1
Schneider & Kooks are right – it sure is getting warmer!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100305/wl_afp/swedenfinlandshippingweatherstorm
Circling the wagons would be OK if you had plenty of ammunition, but they don’t. They fired all of it already.
So if they’re going to take out big ads, I would suggest along following lines…
List the names of Jones Mann Santer et al and state..
“I HAVE NOT HAD SCIENTIFIC RELATIONS WITH THESE PEOPLE.”
Well let them sqaunder money on futile newspaper ads, money given to them by mug tax payers. The print media deservedly on its last legs needs the money.
Please note that Stanford University, (Paul R. Ehrlich &
Stephen H. Schneider), Rutgers University (Paul G.
Falkowski), Penn State (Mike Mann) and Woods Hole
Institute for the Environment ( again, Stephen H.
Schneider) are all institutions not directly covered by
Federal or State Freedom of Information Acts or Open
Records Laws.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/
However the National Acadamy of
Science, and especially studies, etc., done or partially or
fully funded under it’s auspices are
subject to FOI requests.
Here in the U.K. we have a met office who are inspite of their claims are usualy unable to forcast the weather a few hours ahead. They have admitted to being unable of forcasting seasonal weather with any degree of sussess hence bbq summer and this winter was going to be mild. (it’s a new science)They are now begrudgingly admitting that it is the coldest for 31 years while other organisations say coldest on record, As usual it depends how you read records. I who have basic weather forcasting knowledge as I trained as a navigator.I told all my friends and aquainances to expect a freezing winter on the simple face that the sea temperture at the end of the summer was about 3c lower that the average which in a country kept warm by the sea is a huge drop.The met office receives alot of funding to prove the warming case,they like many organisations reley on this money and if they have to admit it isn’t happening will lose lots of income.It is hardly surprising they are starting to get desperate, they have been obtaining money under false pretenses, in most walks of life this is a crime.
I for one think that any of these organising if it can be proved they have been falsifing results to obtain further funding should be prosicuted. I am sure these so called scientists would not be quite so sure of their theories, if they were liable for the costs to the human race, for policies polititions are enforcing on us as a result of their research.
“…we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher
I am currently non-funded sceptic, searching for alternative causes. I would more than welcome any funds. Read my ‘slightly sceptical’ work at:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/41/83/04/PDF/NATA.pdf
if well-funded it could be modified to ‘severely sceptical’
Any energy company is welcome, just contribute generously!
Right here Willis, with in two weeks I will pull out a big Nuke, and level the playing field, can you say rebuild the whole understanding of how the weather / climate really works? Then, top it off with programs to generate good decade long weather and climate forecasts….. (Judith Curry call me…)
Well funded, come again?
“The Money Trail”
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm
If they don’t want to be political pawns, maybe they ought to be scientists instead of playing political activists for greedy grant s.o.bs. Just a suggestion.
Kind of ironic that they will try political dirty tricks and extreme activism to try and save face of bad science and worse scientists and keep denying the truth of the AGW debacle as it stands now, rather than actually finding out what’s what and taking it from there in an honest way.
What did they think would happen when the taxpaying mob found out that not only have they been cheated by extreme activism and pseudo-science but also been made complete fools of as well?
In a way this snowballing flash mob is well funded, since so much is tax funded.
Biologists certainly can be concerned if the agw theories/models were to be proved correct but they are not equipped to judge that the science is right or wrong. Hair dressers and hotdog stand owners and other worthy folks can also be concerned too but they have too much sense to put up their hard earned cash for attack ads.
Willis – Thanks for the excellent summary of the paranoid crazed witch-hunt comments made by nutjobs. Of course there can be differences and there will be, e.g. I don’t agree at all with Curry’s or Hans von Storch’s views on climate change, but at least they are sane, rational, respectful and want to keep science that way. The debate shouldn’t be run by the extreme eco-stalinist kooks who want to criminlise people who dare to have a different opinion. Clearly it has been, but now I sense we are beginning to see the first tantrums in reaction to them losing the control of the debate. The dikes have burst.
Their action from these CAGW nutters reminds me of the Beatles 1973 album ‘Band on the Run’. Not what should be expected from honourable scientists.
They must be getting desperate and this is another good sign that their scam is failing!
Willis
I’m sure you meant ‘henchperson’ not henchman.
I will volunteer to be one, but you must share some of the enormous proceeds you get from Big oil as one of the big cheeses amongst sceptics. 🙂
tonyb
I am sorry, but I can’t take these guys serious anymore. Do they even re-read what they think and write? Despite money being a stupid argument, perhaps the argument that actually tells you they have run out of arguments, they turn reality upside-down. Not only outspent their side (WWF, solar energy companies etc.) the side of the critics (which are mostly NOT funded by some energy company), but they also get all the airtime they want.
In what kind of a dillusional universe do these guys live? I know sanity and fact-checking is not always the way of science, but when I worked with scientists during grad-school, these weren’t the people that were allowed to lead or speak for the group…
It looks like they may be planning to send an away team to repair the AGW Express in the field and advise the passengers to ignore those pesky gremlins outside banging on the wheels with sledgehammers.
An open invitation to Schneider and Erhlich. List all the sources of finance that you and your fellow scientists believe is funding the work of the sceptics, then we sceptics will draw up a list of all the sources of finance that we know is funding the science of global warming. Perhaps we should draw up that list anyway, just for the record.
Also, why do they think that an advertisement in the New York Times will do anything other than scratch the surface – if even that – in gaining support for their confidence trick on the whole of the World’s population? It seems to me they are fighting a rearguard action to save their reputations – and their jobs at Stanford University – for when the World has once and for all accepted the sceptics logical viewpoint- and they most certainly will- and the science of anthropogenic global warming is cast into the University trash bin.
Please take a look where the real funds are
————————
Follow the money trail !!!
Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed.
Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm
————————-
Whilst reading on climatedepot it hit me, that these guys’ve been hawking end of the world crap for decades, they’re nothing but g’damn helter skelter hippies!
Willis Eschenbach (01:11:47) :
I demand henchmen!
You get a hollowed out volcano lair, then we’ll talk about henchmen.
I think this has no legs because they are quite right that a scientist funded ad campaign can’t be big enough.
A government funded one can.
It does, however, show the depths some alarmists are happy to contemplate. I trust all honest alarmists will publicly denounce Ehrlich for the thug he is.
This is the same Ehrlich who said, in the 70s that by 1990 pollution would have reduced life expectancy to 42, that we would have to move away from the seaside because the smell of all sea life rotting would be poisonous (really) & that billions were bound to die of starvation. Since I believe none of these happened I would presumably be a victim of wll funded charlatan’s attacks.
@ Willis Eschenbach (01:11:47) :
Sign me up as hench’person’!
Yes – kudos to Dr Curry, she has shown courage again.
Regarding all the Big Oil/Everything ‘Bad’ – money flowing into the coffers of sceptics: well, can they come up with well-researched and documented analyses, such as those about the stream of funding being poured into the various ‘Climate’-NGOs, as shown by Richard North here: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ …?
Thought not.
Climate scientists? Biologists? Eh?
Simon would challenge them to a bet. If Erhlich et al. had some sense and wanted to get lots of publicity and enhance their credibility, they’d challenge our side to a bet. A convenient betting mechanism is already set up, on the well-known event-prediction site https://www.intrade.com There are about ten bets available there on future global temperatures.
Didn’t the Cru emails show that what got in the way of the science was the hockey teams aggressively partisan approach?
” Plus Ca change, plus meme chose!”
Their tactic is bad for them and cannot succeed. Much of the public is ignorant of the scam. If they advertise attack ads many people will wonder “I thought the debate was settled” and start searching on the internet. They will find sites like WUWT and Climate Audit and even more of the public will become sceptical of CAGW.
In regards to funding:
“He said the scientists will never be able to compete with energy companies.
“They’re not going to win short-term battles playing the game against big-monied interests because they can’t beat them,” he said.”
REPLY:
January 2003
“ExxonMobil will make a $100 million grant to Stanford University in furtherance of its research into climate change science”
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/11307/ExxonMobil_Stanford_Team_Up_on_Climate_Change.html
CRU 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.
“He is an internationally recognized figure in energy and sustainable development, having served on numerous boards and committees including Director of the Oil and Natural Gas Company of India; Director of the Indian Oil Corporation Limited;…
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/advisors.htm
“Our chemical lab in Houston is state of the art, custom built for purpose with one goal in mind – to supply the US oil industry with world class biotechnology to increase oil recovery from mature fields.”
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/technology.htm
“Our research facility in India focuses primarily on long term R&D projects such as heavy oil degradation, methane biogeneration from coal beds, and other initiatives.”
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/company.htm
———-
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
is Stephen Schneider a biologist?
Willis,
You shall be;
Captain He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. [ jk rowling my apologies to you : ( ]
You are in great company.
Since;
Admiral He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is already taken by Steve McIntrye
Vice Admiral He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is already taken by Anthony Watts
All your evil associates are the nazgul, assorted mountain trolls, etc.
Based on his performance at the British commons hearing the other day, clearly Jones is gollum.
John
‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’” said Stephen H. Schneider
Does the term projection occur to anyone? These guys seem determined to accuse the evil sceptics of every single thing they have been caught red handed doing themselves. Can they seriously believe this will convince anyone who hasn’t drunk liberally of the koolaid?
Yes, a civil dialogue would be nice. It’s certainly not what these guys are after though, is it?
Methinks they protesteth overly much.
==================
Well, let’s see who has enough money that they can afford to run ads.
(These antlers for sale — so far no bidders.)
This is what has changed since Climategate:
“In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times”
Those fine scientists running the AGW scam have lost their protective layer of secrecy. They apparently sent emails to other climate scientists to raise money for the ad. Too bad that this time one or more of the recipients contacted a newspaper.
no surprise Paul R. Ehrlich is involved. After all he did coauthor ‘ecoscience’, a book about eugenics.
These guys simply have forgotten what they were told about how science developed, have forgotten that they are here to learn from the Universe and not tell the Universe what it is to do. I mean, a theory is a theory, if new data cannot be predicted by the theory then that theory is dead wrong.
I am a Geologist and if I write a report, I put ALL the data in the report, detail the method, what checks there are on the accuracy of the data and then the conclusions from the data. I have had many reports where I could see the conclusion halfway through and then when ALL the data was considered, had to come to a completely different conclusion.
These guys are obsessed with their self importance.
What would be a just sentence for compromizing the science by CAGWers?
Carbonize them!
DUM DUM DUM dum De dum – dum DE dum
John
Well, if they take out an ad, maybe we should too.
We will need to pony up $1.00 each, then only 50,000 of us will need to sign up. All too easy. This could be done in a month if only 1 out of 40 visitors to WUWT takes the time to donate.
If their ad appears, it will be full of falsehoods, so ours could have a point-counterpoint format, except ours would read claim >> truth (with sources in fine print)
At the end, it could say this ad was funded not by “big oil”, but by “appeals of $1 each from 50,000 people who hold themselves in high regard”
They’re going to run attack ads in THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!
ROTFLMAO!
That’ll convince those sceptics out in flyover country.
Do these nimrods have any clue? Someone needs to explain the concept of “preaching to the choir”.
“… and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.”
What’s the strategy, appeal to your base? What’s next, MSNBC?
What do they need ad’s for anyway. Has the NYT’s told them that they are tired of pushing their propaganda for free and it’s now pay-go?
“Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” but said scientists have had their “classical reasonableness” turned against them. “We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths,” he wrote.”
People often tell you more about themselves then they realize when describing an enemy that they don’t know very well. People tend to assume that the enemy will act as they would if the roles were reversed. Not yielding to facts, holding themselves in high regard, thinking that their assertions and data are obvious truths about sums up the thinking of the AGW inner cabal.
If the facts were behind this group then they wouldn’t need to resort to political attacks. I view this as a frank admission that the science is against them.
Mike Ramsey
As I’ve said, desperate times call for desperate measures. A cornered animal is the most dangerous animal because of the flight-or-fight instinct; flight becomes impossible so the animals only option is to fight.. These eco-groups are cornered by the facts. Flight is now impossible. So their only option is to fight back. Instead of indirectly calling people shill of big oil, they are now directly calling people shills of big oil. And things like that. Of course, they hope nobody ever asks where they got the money to run such slanderous ads. And they hope nobody checks how much money there is for Big Environment.
“God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’” said Stephen H. Schneider”
The time for civil dialog, discussion the truth is over for you. Shortly you will be only answering questions under oath.
al-Reuters: The EU Socialist Counter-Revolution.
“Leading by example is no longer enough.”
…-
“Europe’s Green Diplomacy
Global Climate Governance Emerges as Test Case for EU
“A major opportunity for stronger global clout for the European Union is at hand in the form of the newly minted president of the European Council, its new foreign policy czar and the EEAS. Climate change can no longer be left in the hands of environment ministers or even the new climate commissioner alone.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,681931,00.html
One comment on this. I think Steve Schneider deserves some credit here, and not just for his statements in this news article. While he might be classified as somewhat alarmist in the 1980’s, his thoughts on this topic are quite nuanced, particularly about uncertainty in climate change. Read his essay here:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Policy/CliPolFrameset.html
It heavily draws from Jerry Ravetz’s postnormal science
The AGW empire strikes back!
The ‘esteemed’ Gentlemen Erhlich et al must be worried about their funding and their jobs.
The Met Office are also ‘at it’ today.
Here’s the Telegraph slant;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7369339/New-evidence-for-man-made-global-warming.html
Naturally the BBC – (Bu*****t Befuddling Clima(scien)tology) mongers have featured the Met Office c***/conjecture…………… YES – more on melting Arctic Sea Ice (with the polar bears thrown in [the deep end?] – I might add) and the ‘disappearing Antarctic’ ice cap, s’pose its all true, cos the beeb sez it.
Don’t they do any basic research and maybe look up the present Arctic Sea Ice extent and how it is recovering?
I am with evanmjones, bring em on. As stirred up and misinformed as they are, some lawyers are going to make a nice 30%. And they will have to shut up on advise of their legal council. They don’t seem to understand the internet tough guy syndrome.
Apologies if already posted;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8551416.stm
Met Office admits that they can’t even predict the weather three months ahead.
Perfect timing.
It’s going to look like exactly what it is, a defensive move.
It’s not going to play well at all.
We should all donate and encourage them.
These people are hilarious. They can’t take a [snip] without organizing a conference to discuss it first, so naturally they have to believe that “skeptics” are “well-organised”, because if they ever faced the fact that our disorganization is almost total, their precious little egos would fall apart like a Hong Kong suit in the rain.
Oh, yes, and bring on the old “Big Oil” canard, as well, for good measure. Anyone know where I can get some of that river of cash?
I’m glad to see “The Washington Times”, owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the one true Unification Church, exposing this false religion of AGW which is confusing so many gullible, busy people all over the world.
I’m also glad to see Reverend Moon use his powers to cause “private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times” which underlies this story.
I wonder if Rev. Moon is the source behind the stolen Climategate emails ? I look forward to more private emails being stolen and made public – this is obviously a good way to keep climate scientists, bankers, Pentagon planners, pro golfers, CEO’s and website founders honest.
” $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad”
WE should be able to match that with 1000 scientists paying $50 each.
Maybe we’ll see the courts settle this once and for all:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522957
(Oh boy, I can’t wait!)
I watched an end of the world movie a number of years back (forgot the name) that had one of the best lines I’ve ever heard, and should be repeated out loud by all scientists at the start of everyone of their “arguments”:
“What do I think?; What do I know?; What can I prove?” (paraphrased)
I suspect there would be a lot less “arguments” postulated.
Jose
The McCarthyists are afraid of McCarthyism?
The AGW movement has used totalitarian master surpression techniques as thier trade mark.”Deniers” “contrarians” they have pictured everyone dissaproving thier wiews to be attached with an evil hidden agenda or just simply stupid.There been proposed that “opposition” shall be inprisoned.
I can tell you all. Nothing makes me so angry when this people and in power, and used to be in an propagandic monolog. Now is crying like the princess on the pea, when they no more is alloud to advocate and pressured to be just as scientific they`ve claimed to be. Climatescience has put it self where it is right now. I think, and they know, that they won’t survive to adapt to the scientific basic rules. Its thier privilege to make up thier own rules whats concider to be science that is under siege…finnaly!!
I posted this little skit on the Guardian because they seem to be interested in “exploring matters of trust”
Scene: a quaintly thatched medieval village.
[Enter sorcerer Jones]
Jones: RUN, run for your lives! Abandon your homes! Abandon your crops!. A dragon cometh!
Peasant 1: Where? Where?
Jones: He cometh through the fog!
Peasant 1: Where in the fog?
Jones: Why should I tell you? You’ll just say you can’t see him.
Peasant 1: You’re asking me to abandon my home and crops, I think I have a right to see for myself.
Jones: Are you a sorcerer?
Peasant 1: No, I’m an honest peasant.
Jones: Honest peasants cannot see dragons, only sorcerers can. It’s because we study statistics.
Peasant 1: Call statistician! Call McIntyre!
Jones: Run! Run for your lives! Abandon your homes and crops! A dragon cometh!
Peasant 2: Where? Where?
Jones: No way I’m telling you! I squinted through the fog all night, you think I’m just going to TELL you where he is?
Peasant 2: Uh, weren’t you PAID to stand watch? Isn’t telling us everything you know – like part of the job?
Jones: Run! Run for your lives! Abandon your homes, crops and children! But first, slay the unbelievers.
Wait a minute… an ad in the New York Times? They’d be preaching to the choir!
What a bunch of morons!
Met Office to give up making seasonal forecasts
The Met Office have an undoubted abysmal record of long term forecasting both locally and globally. It is also a fact that the effect of natural variation increases dramatically for longer term forecasts, so e.g. it is very hard (for a real forecaster) to say they can predict the climate in 100years when they clearly can’t forecast the climate 10years, 1years (9/10 high) or even for the next season.
Whilst it may not appear very obvious, this is in fact as clear an admission of defeat as there can ever be. For an organisation which is still spinning the PR of being able to predict the climate in 100 years, to refuse to commit itself to even a 3month forecast because it has been so abysmal at such forecasts, means that it is really saying: “we can’t forecast short-term-climate/ long-term-weather” more than one month in advance.
You reap what you sew.
If climate scientists wish to stop being treated as political pawns, perhaps they might begin to stop acting like political pawns and repair the problems of practice within their discipline which make it all too easy for anyone peeking at their work to question their findings.
But the human tendency is to blame someone else.
”””’Judith Curry (04:31:21) : One comment on this. I think Steve Schneider deserves some credit here, and not just for his statements in this news article. While he might be classified as somewhat alarmist in the 1980’s, his thoughts on this topic are quite nuanced, particularly about uncertainty in climate change. Read his essay here: [see Judith’s post for address] . . . . It heavily draws from Jerry Ravetz’s postnormal science””””
Judith,
Given that you might likely be right, I would think Steve Schneider’s message [that you referenced] would better serve him in a different venue than with a NYT ad associated with the group of others that the article talks about.
We might gently advise him, somehow.
John
Even Dr. Curry still seems to think Big Oil is the villain of this piece. And where do you think Big Oil is sending the money? Find out the real numbers instead of your assuptions.
As Will has pointed out the vilification of the other side started with the CAGW alarmists.
Where is the real money trail? Authoritarians have a pattern that is showing up here. Pick an issue that you can get people fired up about (CAGW). Fake or twist the data to support your position. Find someone to smear with the blame. Condemn anyone who attempts to be rational and charge that they are using the tactics you are using. Convince people that you are the only solution. Who might that be? How about Big Government?
@ John A (21:22:36) :
The Big Oil (please do not refer to them as ‘energy companies’, that does not sound evil enough) ‘slush funds’ have been comingled with the slush fund of the ‘Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’ in an effort to obfuscate the origin of the funding to the ‘denialist machine’.
————————
Wait, these guys are biologists, not climate scientists, why are they being referred to as ‘top climate researchers’ ?
Indiana Jones – who do you have working on this climate change stuff?
Biologists – Top men
Indiana Jones – Who?
Biologists – TOP….. MEN
RockyRoad (04:52:03) :
Maybe we’ll see the courts settle this once and for all:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522957
(Oh boy, I can’t wait!)
————————-
Careful what you wish for…
The fact is that these scientists view the public as imbeciles to be manipulated by whoever has the deepest pockets and the most air time.
The public obviously can’t think for themselves. An advertisement will get surely get these morons back on-board! After all, when they controlled the media message, there was smooth sailing and high public approval! $50k should be enough to offset those that nasty email leak, because the public has short memories and is, frankly, stupid beyond belief.
Revenge of the Turds?
*********************************************
Willis Eschenbach (01:11:47) :
I demand henchmen!
Arch-villains also need minions. Sign me up!
IanP (21:58:57) :
The New Zealand Herald piece by Steve Conner surely tells a sad story re the quality of the newspaper science reports down under!
I saw that yesterday Ian, in utter disbelief. But if one reads the Your Views pages when the AGW issue comes up, Kiwis (8/10?) have a very different attitude than I saw just three years ago. Of late, however, the Herald just avoids asking for views.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/your-views/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501154&objectid=10609766&pnum=2
If you write the author and complain about the headline, they shrug and say someone else writes the headlines.
NZCPR is a constant source of better info and discussion.
The energy companies are excited and hopeful about the carbon dioxide related rules and regulations. The companies that make equipment for power generation and delivery are working with government representatives on the Smart Grid to reduce and manage energy consumption. This “crisis” means that a lot of money will be spent on new equipment. They sound like kindred spirits, to me.
It doesn’t seem possible, but their grasp on reality, which was extremely bad to begin with is slipping further. They’ve been spouting lies for so long that they no longer know what truth is. It hardly seems fair to fight them anymore, but fight them we must. They are losing what they pathetically call a “street fight”, which has actually been an all-out war which they started, and somewhere within the deep recesses of what is left of their rational minds they know it.
Fire at will.
“They’re going to run attack ads in THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!
…
Do these nimrods have any clue? Someone needs to explain the concept of “preaching to the choir”.”
AH, but you see thats their mindset. The New York Times is THE authoritative paper, ergo anything seen in the NYT is more credible than anything seen anywhere else.
It’s the “appeal to authority” thing, which is all they know. Besides, if they place an advert in the NYT, then ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and even Fox will be talking about it. It lets them get their message out much in excess of the NYT delivery. The subesquent coverage by ABC, etc, can filter out the ridiculousness too to make it seem more rational. 🙂
What will the ad say…?
We are real scientists, really! Come on, don’t you believe me? Trust me! I’m telling the truth this time.
Paul R. Ehrlich, the discredited buffoon of fear mongering idiicy is now going to lead the charge against AGW skeptics?
Bring. It. On.
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/5446/1972-Article-Unearthed-Worse-than-Hitler-Population-Bomb-author-Paul-Ehrlich-suggested-adding-a-forced-sterilization-agent-to-staple-food-and-water-supply
Anu,
Do you mean to imply that Moon’s religous beliefs make his journalists obtaining leeaked material bad, while the NYT’s obtaining leaked e-mails is good?
Or do you mean to imply that since Moon has an odd religion, that makes AGW true?
At this time; the more publicity, the better,
Bring it on.
Rick Bradford (04:49:25) :
(…)
Oh, yes, and bring on the old “Big Oil” canard, as well, for good measure. Anyone know where I can get some of that river of cash?
________
Reply:
Well, ya, you’d have to go work for Stanford University and rub shoulders with the likes of Erhlich and Schneider. Personally, I don’t think the money would be worth it. 😉
@DirkH (00:06:06) :
“Was Anger before Acceptance or After?”
The theory on the stages of grief/loss etc. isn’t a linear progression, though acceptance is usually (understandably) in last place. The rest can appear all over the shop, though it’s hard to avoid the assumption that mainstream CAGW’s now in the denial-anger phase – though maybe the Guardian’s having a few days when bargaining’s raising its head before, still unable to cope, denial and rage set in again. As a rational person (or so I think), the performances of these people and their cohorts seems quite astoundingly crazy. But anyone who’s ever read the Malleus Maleficarum on witch-hunting will recognise the pathology, driven by twisted religion and hatred of life.
Here is an idea: beat them to the punch.
Find some willing “skeptics” and place thier faces and arguments as to why they dont buy the AGW agument on the back page of the NYTs. Keep it civil and scientifically sound.
Thank you Judith for filling us in about Schneider’s “nuanced” version of alarmism in his dissection of “post-normal” science; actually I’d prefer to refer to it as “post-normal” alarmism.
In this version of alarmism, a physically impossible proposition is put on the table for contemplation, such as
“including a possible shutoff of the Gulf Stream in the high North Atlantic” (Schneider)
the Gulf Stream arising from the Coriolis force of the rotating Earth (diverted where it is by the sea depth off the African continent).
That is, a physically impossible event unless the Earth stops rotating, and this is real “post-normal” science all right, and it is this type of thinking that gives “science in policy making” a dimension that it never had before.
So, why indeed, have alarmists lost credibility among the general public.
richard (04:45:51) :
Apologies if already posted;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8551416.stm
Met Office admits that they can’t even predict the weather three months ahead.
——-
Reply:
Good point. Please realize that today’s weather forecast is about 80% accurate, tomorrow’s is about 60% accurate, and the day after that is about 40%. It gets worse for the remaining 7 days of a 10-day forecast.
Reminds me of an estimate I once read that indicated weather prediction in Boston was 80% accurate. However, had they just predicted “sunny” every day, they’d be 75% accurate.
But don’t worry… Climate is NOT weather. Or was it weather is NOT climate.
Yah, Judy, I luv ya’ too, but Stephen Schneider destroys his nuances with his Oreskes worship.
========================
The biggest thing the entire lot of scientists could do to try and convince us of their truth is to post the raw data, code if used, the resultant data, and the articles surrounding the research, without paywalls and stalling tactics. That should apply to any research that was supported by tax dollars of any amount. Even if a $10 dollar grant, or publicly funded lab was used. On the other hand, if for example, an energy company owned the lab and funded the research with profit money (not government-granted laundered money), then fine, keep it to yourself. Please.
So go ahead and take out that ad with the information above in it. I for one will buy that edition and read the ad.
The “Big Oil” argument is the “Boogie man under the bed”.
“Big Oil” (plural?) aren’t oil companies but energy companies: BP are investing in solar, and I’m sure other conglomerates are backing alternative sources to oil. Even if it’s hedging their bets.
Simply, these big companies are the ones with resources to provide the solutions that the AGW crowd are crying out for. They don’t *need* to support an anti-AGW agenda/conspiracy.
These men are not “scientists” they are used in my classrooms as examples of “how not to do it” when teaching scientific method. They should be drummed out of the NAS for the damge they have done to its credability.
Projection is exactly what these AGW proponents have been doing for 20 years. They know their case is very weak and always have known some maybe have convinced themselves the danger is real as happens in many cult situations, but many entered with political motivations.
Jan Pompe I have my $50 ready.
I told my fellow phrenologists we should have attacked our detractors in newspaper advertisements. I always knew my pointy head indicated people should hold me in high regard, and my forehead showed how forward-thinking I was.
What is it with these nutters and energy companies? I doubt they all walk to work and go to bed when the sun sets.
Judy, your link is actually kind of pitiful. It’s ‘the train is leaving the station’ climate science. Face it, the Precautionary Principle is a Paean to Ignorance.
You should know that we cannot make wise policy without knowing the climate’s sensitivity to CO2. It seems apparent that that sensitivity is lower than the IPCC and the models have estimated. Calculations of that sensitivity from observations rather than models have been showing a much lower sensitivity.
Get with it; you’ve been betrayed by some of those you trust the most.
=================
Perhaps both Eherlich and Joe McCarthy were partly right.
Pauli has outlived his usefulness, and his ilk are everywhere.
If they want credibility, all they have to do is publicly display all of their data and software creations, and allow full public scrutiny, open debate and analysis. This nonsense of “Trust us, we’re experts!” has to go:
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2644185
Paul
“In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of “being treated like political pawns” and need to fight back in kind.”
I don’t know if fighting back in kind is a good idea.
If you wrestle with a pig, both you and the pig get dirty, but the pig likes it. Legitimate criticism of climate science should be acknowledged and answered in a civil manner, but little is to be gained by stooping to the level of the mud slingers.
Good science is the best weapon against ignorance and lies.
“Big Oil” is despised for being a sustainable industry – the revenues derived from extracting and processing oil are used to go locate and extract some more. That’s how the industry “sustains” itself.
Wind and solar energy are as “sustainable” as a patient on artificial life support; once Government money delivered intravenously to solar energy projects goes away, they stop delivering energy.
So Big Oil has a lot of money to spend on countering alarmism, but the truth of the matter is they don’t – because they supply a commodity that people will buy no matter how loudly activists yell.
Activists don’t supply a product that people “need to” buy, by the way. Activism is not a “sustainable” industry.
John Whitman (03:40:36) :
Vice Admiral He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is already taken by Anthony Watts
Since this all is sponsored by BIg Oil i would say:
“Greetings from The Humungus! The Lord Humungus! The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!”
[mind you, i am not going to catch that boomerang]
It seems a little disengenuous to claim that the truth can’t be told and then have that story covered by a major newspaper. They’ve had free advertisements for years in the Science section of NYT. I guess now with the scandals they actually have to pay for good coverage. This was always a house of cards, and now it’s come tumbling down.
Climate Zombies gone wild. I say bring it on. It will be the only day I buy a copy of the NYT.
Perhaps Anthony can post that Donald Sutherland picture you used a while back when the ad comes out. That was my favourite. I’m still laughing about it.
Well, I can see “an outlandish, aggressively partisan approach”, or “an outlandishly aggressive partisan approach”, but “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” ??
Do they do their science the same way they use English?
OT, but:
U.S. DEMOCRATS MOVE TO BLOCK EPA ON CLIMATE CHANGE
LAWMAKERS MOVE TO RESTRAIN EPA ON CLIMATE CHANGE
COLD FEET: JAPAN RETREATS ON CLIMATE PLEDGES
and more from Benny Peiser’s CCNET list.
I think that MidWest101 is a genius.
That being said, no matter how “noble” people have painted the sciences out to be, science has ALWAYS been a war between true science and the hoards of snake-oil salesmen.
Any time any issue comes up where the snake-oil salesman think there is a potential profit, their war against science begins. They attempt to co-opt the science and corrupt it to line their own pockets.
The fact that lately they have attempted to co-opt science and corrupt it in the name of “saving mankind” when it is clear that their main motive is to obtain power and to profit should tell you what sort of people the snake-oil salesmen really are. They claim that we need to suffer so that the earth can heal, all the while enriching themselves and living the lifestyles which they tell us are unsustainable.
Hypocrites.
Willis and John Whitman.
I would like to be a henchette, but only if I get a cute outfit!
Alexis
Pamela Gray (05:48:28) :
The biggest thing the entire lot of scientists could do to try and convince us of their truth is to post the raw data, code if used, the resultant data, and the articles surrounding the research, without paywalls and stalling tactics….
=======
I agree, providing the additional expense is worth it.
“In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of “being treated like political pawns””
Well then here’s a Klew™:
Stop politicizing science!”
Wren (06:10:03) :
Good science is the best weapon against ignorance and lies.
It certainly appears to be working against the CAGW brand of ignorance and lies — of course, it took the leaked e-grams to get The Usual Suspects to clam up long enough for good science to be heard…
Regarding the idea of a counter ad campaign, I’ve got a ready $20 bucks.
However, I just have difficulty understanding what we would significantly gain with dueling ads in the NYT or anywhere in MSM. I do not think we could keep up a sustained campaign. Whereas it seems possible substantial ad money would very indirectly come to them through green NGOs and green industries, especially the progressively greening energy industries who switched some investments from fossil to green energies because the thought there was a reasonable probability that Copenhagen would be ‘successful’. The energy industries were wisely covering their bets.
We could try, before they place their ad, to goad them into putting the web address of any of the good ‘skeptic’ blogs in their ad, them thinking it would show how ‘anti-scientific’ we are. They could not be so naive to do that.
We could do letters to the editor in protest over their ad once published. Always worth one more try with some big hitter ‘skeptic’ personality.
We could counter with challenges to a debate again in response to their ad. That is always really good.
Probably of all options, we would be best served by just some posts about their ads on the ‘skeptic’ blogs. It is what, in the main, has been most effective to date.
Obviously, the MSM journalists are all closely monitoring the good ‘skeptic’ blogs.
BIG sincere thanks you all ‘skeptic’ blogs for the past ~5 years!!!
John
Here are some selected quotes from Paul Ehrlich:
“Actually, the problem in the world is that there is much too many rich people…” – Quoted by the Associated Press, April 6, 1990
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Quoted by R. Emmett Tyrrell in The American Spectator, September 6, 1992
“We’ve already had too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.” – Quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in her book Trashing the Planet (1990)
“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.” – Ehrlich in his book, The Population Bomb (1968), predicting widespread famine that never materialized
http://www.nationalcenter.org/dos7111.htm
————
“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
[Is he thinking of computer climate models?]
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/to-err-is-human-but-to-really-foul-things-up-you/538081.html
The most newsworthy thing is that the Wash Times is actually doing some investigative reporting against the Carbon Cult. I think this is the first time an American paper has taken up the side in a serious way, other than a few scattered commentary columns.
I for one would be honored to donate $100 for a counter ad to head off the propaganda machine proposed by Schneider/Ehrlich et al.
Who knows, maybe we could lobby our “energy company” partners to match dollar for dollar?
Excuse me, but who financed IPCC?
I would think the proper weaponry and armament of a true scientist is in fact science!! If they simply stick to that, follow the evidence wherever it leads and share methods and data, they cannot lose! (even though some of their hypothesis might fail or be pushed aside).
What the hell is this guy suggesting?
These scientists got in to trouble in the first place by becoming advocates, and now, in response to the fact that some of their science is under fire, he thinks going big time with the ad-hominem stuff is their salvation???
I would hope that cooler heads prevail, because if one side of this debate uses scientists in this fashion, science will soon be equated with witch-burning, and that would be bad for all of humanity. Isn’t this sort of how the dark ages began?
Interesting
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/05/patrick-keeney-trust-us-we-re-experts.aspx
richard (04:45:51) :
Apologies if already posted;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8551416.stm
Met Office admits that they can’t even predict the weather three months ahead.
——-
Reply:
Good point. Please realize that today’s weather forecast is about 80% accurate, tomorrow’s is about 60% accurate, and the day after that is about 40%. It gets worse for the remaining 7 days of a 10-day forecast.
Reminds me of an estimate I once read that indicated weather prediction in Boston was 80% accurate. However, had they just predicted “sunny” every day, they’d be 75% accurate.
But don’t worry… Climate is NOT weather. Or was it weather is NOT climate.
=====
No one is trying to forecast Boston’s temperature for the second Friday in March 2080.
Long-range projections address trends, not daily fluctuations. We know, for example, the stock market should rise in the long-term because a growing population is expected to spur economic growth. But no one knows what the market will do next week or next month.
Paul Ehrlich huh?
The same man who lost a 10 year bet with Julian Simon as shown here:
“Paul R. Ehrlich – 1st wager
Simon challenged Paul Ehrlich to a wager[8] in 1980 over the price of metals a decade later; Simon had been challenging environmental scientists to the bet for some time. Ehrlich, John Harte and John Holdren selected a basket of five metals that they thought would rise in price with increasing scarcity and depletion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Lincoln_Simon
THAT Paul Ehrlich.
Notice that Holdren was involved in the bet?
LOL.
Whenever scientists advocate taking a “partisan approach” it’s clear that they are NOT speaking as scientists. It seems to indicate that the folks stating this are feeling the “heat”…so to speak.
From In Search of: The Coming Ice Age
Roll the tape:
”
Dr. Steven Schneider, is a climatologist from the National
Center for Atmospheric Research.
‘ Can we do these things (soot in Arctic to melt)? Yes.
But will they make things better? I’m not sure. We can’t
predict with any certainty what happens to our own climactic future. How can we come along then and intervene
in that ignorance? You could melt the Ice Caps, what would
that do to the coastal cities? The cure could be worse than
the disease. Would that be better or worse than the risk
of an Ice Age?’ “
”
Dave:
Ask these population control freaks this question:
“Do you feel your support of anti-war ideals has led to an increase in population which would have otherwise been naturally controlled by the innate instinct in humanity for violent conflict?”
Answer: “Uhhhh… (head exploding)”
”
Unfortunately there Dave, war is too chaotic and inefficient to do the job right. Such mass exterminations as these zpg idiots promote need highly organized systems to operate in. The history of the 20th century proved that.
as for those biologists wanting to promote CAGW, one simply needs to remember that probably none of those three ever took a physics course beyond undergraduate freshman level which puts them lower on the physics education totem pole than anyone with any 4 or 5 year engineering degree.
I’m glad to see mr butterflybrains involved. I was afraid he was already dead(rather than merely brain dead). I wouldn’t want him to miss out seeing all of his life long work peddling lunatic crap shown to be nothing but fodder for late night comedians.