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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WHEN KIDS DON´T HAVE ARGUMENTS THEY START CRYING.
We should ask them for scientific arguments, experimentally reproducible facts, not guesses or numerology.
Reproducibility is one of the main principles of the scientific method, and refers to the ability of a test or experiment to be accurately reproduced, or replicated, by someone else working independently
Let us aask them for positive science.
This is and will be a real and trascendental breakthrough in the history of knowledge and, hopefully, the return to REAL science, to science without subjectivities (i.e.=corruption)
“In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times”
“Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting …..”
“Private email” is an new oxymoron. Should be the stuff of severe nightmares.
“Undaunted by the rash of scandals” when they should have been daunted by the release of “private emails” exposing the scandal.
How on earth did the Washington Times obtain these emails?
They could avoid the hassle of setting up yet another 527 stealth PAC organization for Obama and just ask ACORN to take them in under their wing. Is it me or are liberal biologists just predisposed to hating humanity?
Barganing! …If we form a group, buy an ad and set up a stage in my Uncle’s barn, we can put on a show! Then we can raise enough money to save our phoney baloney jobs, gentlemen! Harumph, harumph!
“RichieP (05:39:42) :
@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.[…]”
Oh, thanks. I guess different AGW specimen are also in different stages. That explains the confusing signals we get. These three seem to be definitely in anger. For Ehrlich, i think he’s stuck there since losing the bet against Julian Simon.
Henchmen are for Mafioso types; a superior being requires minions to do his bidding.
Please, just stop complaining like old hysterical ladies. We are ready to listen, to watch, to understand.
Just to begin with: Show us EXPERIMENTALLY AT A LAB, just a little and humble “baby black hole” and tell us your method of obtention in order to replicate it.
To all friends here: Please collaborate in adding more exercises to be made by them as a proof of their scientific proficiency and expertise.
Sounds like they are following Judy Curry’s playbook.
Dont worry about whether or not you are doing good science. Dont concern yourself with the uncertainties and overstated conclusions within your work, or the wild conjectures and specualtions that are using your work as justification for policy change. For GODS SAKE dont even consider listening to your critics, as there is absolutely nothing that you have to learn from them. No, you just need to concentrate on ‘communicating better’ to them. Taking out ads in a newspaper – where you can talk at people without having to worry yourself with a response, fits that pardigm perfectly. Thanks Judy.
‘Climate science’ is an avenue on the information superhighway network. That road might need to be widened, and have some flashy signs and lights installed, but let there be no doubt that it is a one way street. From the exalted ‘climate scientists’ in the ivory tower on the hill, down to us peons in the tar paper shack city.
I dont get the thing about buying ads in the NY Times. First, why buy ads on the back page? You already own every bit of space on the ‘news’ and editorial pages of that rag. And besides, the low-brow rubes that you are trying to convince of the glory of your revealed truth probably cant read anyways, right?
Arrogant ****tards need to understand that the sun doesnt shine out of their methane releasing orifices, and stop with the ‘poor little us’ persecution complexes. The research funding and ‘communication’ resources are enormous, and squarely in their corner. If they cant get their way with the propaganda machine they already have, they dont deserve to prevail.
Paul Ehrlich?! May Allah make us truly thankful for the stupidity of our enemies.
Paul Ehrlich! If AGW theory is as insightful and accurate in its predictions as _The Population Bomb_ then we can all just go home right now.
Wren (06:10:03) :
Good science is the best weapon against ignorance and lies.
Heh. Unfortunately for the CAGW/CC cargo cult scientists, good science is the one thing they don’t have in their arsenal, which is why they’ve had to resort to lies, stonewalling, and a huge disinformation campaign by the lamestream media. Now, thankfully, all of that is crumbling. This is just a pathetic, last-ditch effort on their part to keep the whole thing going a while longer.
Great comment at AoSHQ:
“…recall with me that Paul Ehrlich is one of the most discredited pseudo-scientific alarmists of all time. In 1968 he predicted that population growth would exceed the resources available on the planet, resulting in decades of famine and disease. He conned universities and governments into thinking that hundreds of millions of people would die by the 1980s.
His error, though he refuses to this day to admit it, was failing to consider such obvious things as: (1) more people means more land being farmed, not less; (2) improvements in farming techniques; (3) people (outside of academe, I mean) don’t just sit around and wait to starve; and (4) the market regulates scarcity far better than idiot pseudoscientists expect.
So that’s the guy? That’s the guy giving advice to the global warming alarmists?!? Awesome.”
http://minx.cc/?post=299014
I hope the add runs when Inhofe’s Senate Committee puts Al Gore on the stand th defend his false testimony. Of course the NY Times would not cover the hearing.
That should I hope the ad runs
“You’d sell your soul for a sack of quarters,” said the prostitute to the mayor.
“Nigel Alcazar (02:29:03) :
[…]
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.[…]”
It’s a crying shame that the forecasting models are not benchmarked against predictions made by simple observations like yours, and discarded as useless when they’re not up to par. Newspapers should then only refer to the models as useless: “Scientists have found out, using a useless computer model, that the winter will be…”
“an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.
In other words they are going to keep doing what they’ve been doing.
Not premature, unfounded is the word she was looking for. Glad I could help with that. Once public confidence in the science is restored, their funding will dry up, since it will be shown that the only catastrophe going on is alarmism itself.
One of the best pieces of parenting advice I was ever given was:
If your kids throw a tantrum in a public place, just laugh long and loud at them. They won’t do it ever again.
The same applies here, just laugh at the tantrums.
Roger Carr (21:55:00) :
Echoed. The principle of truth upheld is our wage. And in building an alliance that stands for that principle.
It was Dr. Schneider who suggested alarmism in the first place:
“To do that we need to get some broad based 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.”
Schneider is quoted in Jonathan Schell, “Our Fragile Earth.” Discover, October, 1989, pp. 45-48.
And advertising with ANY newspaper worldwide is nowhere near as effective as coming here or another online forum and debating like a gentleman.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703697004574497293992459948.html
We certainly are! Oh, he was talking about us. I thought he was looking in a mirror when he said that.
We need a thread where everyone posts a scanned image of their “oil company” checks or in some cases the brown bags of cash!
Pamela Gray (05:48:28) :
Their raw data got minced and apple-cored by thier undocumented code which had no version control (recompiled every run and changed daily).
They don’t have anything worth looking at, except that it says they totally botched it.
There are only 2 choices left: Pay top $$$ for what they claim sight unseen or hit the reset button.
Even the cash for clunkers program required redeeming a running vehicle.
When you buy a new car, they don’t let you trade in something out of the wrecking yard.
These people are supposed to be “Leaders in Science”.
But when you hear them babble about “Big Oil” conspiracies you realize that they are nothing but brain dead socialist robots.
It makes you wonder how the academic system failed so horribly as to allow them positions of power.
(If you get a chance, read a first edition of Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb”. You will quickly realize that he is a buffoon. The real question is why intelligent people still give credence to him.)
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
PS
I read Ehrlich’s book when it first came out. He was among the elite and I believed him. I gave him my trust and he betrayed me.
They still don’t get it. Lack of scientific acumen is eroding confidence in their work, not political battles.
Re: kwik (22:31:45) :
Thanks for that link to Donald’s ultimate tax: “I’ll make people wear meters on their chests! And every breath they take will cost ’em money!” Watch out—here comes the EPA!
For those who don’t know, “The Golden Helmet” (1952) is one of the many wonderful Donald Duck stories written and drawn by one man, the late Carl Barks, when he worked for the Disney studios.
Quite a mental switch—from the crackpot Paul R. Erhlich and his gloomy predictions, to the brilliant and jovial creator of Uncle Scrooge, The Beagle Boys, the Junior Woodchucks, and the many delightful adventures of Donald and his nephews that informed and entertained so many of us growing up!
/Mr Lynn