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.
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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.
When global warming is a bitch department: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/03/05/sweden.ice.ships.stuck/index.html?hpt=T2
Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals #4 Hold your opponent to their own standards, there is no way they can meet them. (paraphrased) Also some good libel suits against these “gentlemen” might be in order for defamation of character.
“A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.”
That is true. However, as the role of these “human activities” ie urban heat islands, changes in land usage, soot etc become clearer, the role of CO2 in “climate change” diminishes.
Only 2 short comments.
I should apologize to Judith Curry for criticizing her letter. She now seems like the most sensible one in the group.
And where is my big oil money? I seem to keep giving them money!
I’m browsing the back issues of Popular Science, which have just been made available free:
http://www.popsci.com/archives
I like the 1969 article listing many factors that could affect climate, by both cooling and warming.
I also like the 1913 article discussing whether forests have an influence on climate.
Neither article has definite answers. But I do note that in 1913 they wrote that these sorts of questions about climate go back 500 years!
So here’s a thought: there have always been questions about whether we are changing the climate, and there have always been questions about whether we are running out of this or that. But nobody can predict this stuff, and perhaps nobody ever will. Even if we had a perfect model of the world today, something novel would appear in the near future and the model would start to go wrong.
So the “experts”, at a loss for anything practical to do, decided to quietly give up on science and get into politics instead.
The NYT is in perpetual financial difficulties. If these folks want to donate money for an ad which will just make them look stupid in the long run: fine.
Hang on hang on hang on!
If we have Willis the Merciless, then who is Flash CAGW? Hansen, Mann, Jones, Schmidt?
I just got a really bad mental image of a Comic-Con and Gavin running around in spandex… arrgghhhhh, IT BURNS!!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
Judith Curry (04:31:21) :
I think Steve Schneider deserves some credit here, and not just for his statements in this news article.
He certainly deserves credit for what he said in 1978:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that 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. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
It’s OK to lie, in other words. The ends justify the means. And you’re still defending this guy? Unbelievable.
Did you see that the UK Met Office announced today that they have independently reviewed the last IPPC report and that they conclude that the evidence of AGW is even stronger now than when the report was first published – these guys just don’t want to give up – guess the staggering amounts of cash being stolen from the tax payer is too much to let go
TonyB (02:51:11) :
Willis
I’m sure you meant ‘henchperson’ not henchman.
Nup — that’s the job *title* not the job *description*.
Think military rank structure. A Naval “Able-Bodied Seaman,” an Air Force “Airman First Class,” an Eischenbachian “Galactic Dark Overlord Henchman,” etc.
“I don’t want to see a repeat of McCarthyesque behavior ….”
Which brings to mind the question I have every time someone invokes McCarthy’s name:
What do you call a witch hunt that keeps on finding witches?
LOL
All the brilliant people on this blog and you all missed the real strategy. There isn’t going to BE an add. They aren’t even going to TRY and collect the money. They PROPOSED an add (for $50K), leaked the proposal to the media, and the resulting articles got exposure repeating their claims worth millions upon millions more than their proposed $50K could get them, in MSM read by millions, while the effective rebuttals we see here won’t make it in, not even as a letter to the editor rebutting the ad because there won’t even BE an ad.
“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.
Uh. A partisan group can’t be non-profit. Unless they are only partisan for their own cause.
Good luck with that.
RockyRoad (06:22:10) : “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?”
— Oh snap! Could someone post that on the Washington Times site please?