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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—> “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.”
I’d say your scientific debate has almost no resemblance to a scientific debate. But don’t believe me, I’m only a fellow scientist.
That’s not Steven H. Schneider, Club of Rome founder is it?
starzmom (06:54:26) :
I should apologize to Judith Curry for criticizing her letter. She now seems like the most sensible one in the group.
Sensible, maybe, but also completely wrong, and refuses to see it. Post Normal Science isn’t science at all, though she still defends it.
Do not be taken in by her “niceness”. It’s all a ploy.
lol, CAGW scientists……… a thick lot, aren’t they. I wonder, do they truly believe energy is funding critics? Big energy companies don’t care how it goes, they’ve hedged their bets either way. They understand, that despite all of the fanciful dreams of windmills and plug-ins and solar panels ect., that we are still going to need providers. They(big energy) are positioned to do exactly that. Of course, there are some companies that would be thrilled if society moved on the presumption that CAGW was a real threat. See GE.
Somebody should explain to these fellows that an ad in the NYT is not a good idea. The influence and the circulation of the NYT are both in decline. On second thought perhaps an ad in the NYT is a good idea after all. This will demonstrate the decline.
Once again they prove that no amount of education can teach common sense.
It boogles my mind that some of these scientists are so out of touch with reality, the way I see it,
1. the big petro-energy companies exist to make a profit,
2. they are doing well at selling petroleum products at commodity prices,
3. they continue to do it only by allocating their resources, according to accurate long-range forecasts,
4. When renewable energy becomes profitable, they’ll jump on it in a big way, then sell petroleum as high profit specialty chemicals and make obscene profits.
Then they come up with this NYT ad scheme, why would anyone waste $50K preaching to the choir? They would be better served taking out radio ads on the “Rush Limbaugh show”, he’s a lot closer to the demographic that they have deluded themselves into believe we skeptics are.
Me thinks they protest too much.
well, a lot of big energy companies were forward looking enough to hedge their bets on how to increase their profits no matter which way the debate turned out. Unfortunately, they didn’t quite realize the severity of the damage to society which will occur if the loonies prevail with their CAGW claims.
Will this be the future of scientific debate?
“Your mother wears army boots”
“You look like the poster child for the campaign against inbreeding.”
Perhaps it is just me but preaching to the choir in the New York Times is not really going to change anything lol. I think if they actually could, well you know, prove what they are saying it would change skeptics minds a lot better then ads do.
To be honest the only reason I am a ‘skeptic’ is because I have yet to see anything other then correlation in the temperature increase. Not to say CO2 does not increase the surface temperature, but according to all the science I understand it can not be near temperatures that would cause catastrophe.
Stop making claims that say we are all going to die by 2050, which is partisan. Give me science that is provable, testable, and predictable.
Just as heroin dealers need to do no advertising, oil sells itself. “Hey buddy do you want to stay alive, warm and prosperous and have education and care for your children and infirm?” Duh-uh.
I will never forget Schneider’s twitching when Phelim McAleer had the unbound audacity to direct a question his way at Copenhagen. Or the burly “guard” that shut down their camera-man and microphone while they waited patiently to put another question to the unsettled “scientist”. His facial expressions and body language said it all. Forget the oil, this is ALL about the snakes.
These are the people we have to deal with. Make no mistake, they tremble when confronted as they know in what passes for their hearts that they have built on sand. They will ignore where possible, lie when necessary and divert the remainder of the time.
They will fight with all their resources to keep their cosy, cloistered environment.
David Segesta (07:44:39) :
In other words they are going to keep doing what they’ve been doing.
If I have learned anything from the executives, middle management, and various bureaucrats I’ve met over the years… if you’re doing something that’s not working never give up, step on the gas!
It is both a sign of desperation on the part of the monied AGW movement, and also a sign that they are not dead. Getting the science back into Climate Science is going to be a long hard fight, and those with monied interests are not going to go quietly.
Bruce Cobb
At least Judith Curry is taking the trouble to engage with us and we should welcome that first tentative step, which can’t be easy for her.
The next step is for her to realise that ‘post normal science’ is merely a euphemism for work that fails to meet the exacting standards expected by those of us who are quaint enough to believe in the age old scientific method.
Tonyb
Paul Ehrlich: “Basically, the Population Bomb was a ridiculously optimistic book…”
I kid you not, he really says that:
Stanford – we put the “mad” in “mad scientist”…
The energy companies’ biggest threat is running out of oil, so they fund “useful idiot” alarmists who can then persuade governments to use taxpayers’ money to subsidise the development of alternative energy sources. Beats paying for it themselves!
Plus they can play musical chairs with carbon allocations under cap-and-trade, and make money off the taxpayer that way as well. It’s adding insult to injury when people like desmogblog accuse us all of being funded by ExxonMobil.
Watch that youtube film and you will understand how far out in La-La-land Ehrlich really is. Astounding.
starzmom (06:54:26) :
“I should apologize to Judith Curry for criticizing her letter. She now seems like the most sensible one in the group.”
Yeah, me too, I was also overly harsh over there.
Having said that, I do have to add that being ‘the most sensible one in the group’ might also tell you something about ‘the group’ 😉
I just saw an ad on TV that advocated for “clean energy” (wind towers in BG).
It took the tack that by continuing to use large amounts of oil, we enrich our enemies.
This at least is partially truthful.
And I agree with the philosophy.
For some reason though I am stuck with the idea that running headlong into particular technologies that are already in use and somewhat questionable may not be a good idea.
That further taxes and trading schemes will not spur innovation but will squash it.
Meanwhile, these extremely creepy dudes mentioned in the OP
must be exposed as the perennial alarmist creepy social engineers looking for a pastoral malthusian utopia, that they are.
polistra (06:33:55) :
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.
Actually, the Washington Times is one of the few remaining actual newspapers to take the opposite side of the debate, i.e. opposed for example to the NYT or WaPo, i.e. the sceptics side is included in the debate. Example:
EDITORIAL: Global warming winners: There are big profits in climate hysteria
A simple search on just “Global Warming” reaveals the following on just the first search page:
Washington Times – EDITORIAL: Global warming’s biggest winnersMar 3, 2010 … The Washington Times delivers breaking news and commentary on the issues that affect the future of our nation.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/03/global-warmings…//print/
Washington Times – Climate scientists plot to fight back at skepticsMar 5, 2010 … James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and a chief skeptic of global-warming claims, is considering asking the Justice Department to …
washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists…//print/ – 8 hours ago
Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics – Washington TimesMar 5, 2010 … “Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial … DEMINT: White House land grab · EDITORIAL: Global warming …
washingtontimes.com/…/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/?… – 10 hours ago
EDITORIAL: EPA’s global-warming power grab – Washington TimesFeb 25, 2010 … Scientific scandals and record snowfalls have begun to melt away the congressional appetite for more global-warming regulations.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/…/epas-global-warming-power-grab/
The cult of global warming – Washington TimesIn the time of Galileo, all the scientists believed the world was flat. Now a large number of contemporary scientists believe global warming is …
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/the-cult-of-global-warming/
EVANS: Global warming snow job – Washington TimesFeb 12, 2010 … Not even 30 inches of snow falling on Washington has discredited claims of “global warming,” the belief that human activity is appreciably …
http://www.washingtontimes.com/…/has-global-warming-got-you-snowed-in/?...
EDITORIAL: Global warming snow job – Washington TimesFeb 11, 2010 … Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global warming fraud is without … Because of purported global warming, the world supposedly …
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/11/global-warming-snow-job/
New federal office for global warming – Washington TimesFeb 9, 2010 … Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. …
http://www.washingtontimes.com/…/new-federal-office-would-study-global-warming/
PRUDEN: The red-hot scam unravels – Washington TimesFeb 16, 2010 … Not everybody is on to the global-warming scam, not yet, but all the people — or enough of them — are getting there.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/…/pruden-the-red-hot-scam-begins-to-unravel/
If you go to their site, it’s free. There is a lot more investigative reporting on this and many other statist oriented scams currently being pushed in this country and around the world.
I’ve not made much of schneider’s role in climategate. Perhaps it’s time for a focused article.
“…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…”
__________________________
I’m afraid this is much worse than I originally thought. We definitely have a new syndrome, I believe it’s only fair to call it Ehrlich-Schneider-Falkowski Syndrome or ESF.
I was initially under the impression that it might be related to the environments these three have been working in and thought to call it Rutgers-Stanford-Woods-Hole Syndrome. But after very careful analysis of temperature measurements at these three locations for the past 30 years, there’s no indication whatsoever of environmental origin. It is more likely that they acquired ESF in their early majority, possibly while involved in post-graduate studies. Currently, ESF is terminal and there is no hope of recovery. Cold Shock treatments of the head for brief periods in 4 ltr of sub 0 C water with 1 tbls of salt provides approximately 5 minutes of lucidity. This treatment should be accomplished at 10 minute intervals for as often as the patient is able to endure the pain. Treatments have occasionally noted fleeting euphoria in the patient. Teaching is contraindicated. Contact with students of any level, in any environment, should be avoided.
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.
Dr. Curry, Schneider is either delusional or cynically manipulative, or an even more toxic combination of the two. From the above Washington Times article:
“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.
Instead of espousing and touting diversionary arguments = propaganda, perhaps you both should spend more time championing and demanding adherence to the pre-Post Normal, Scientific Method?
But instead you say:
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.
I read enough of your reference to know it’s not worth reading, that is, unless you can break it down to some practical rational course of action which avoids Post Normal Science’s appeal to meaningless verbiage and, the others side of the same coin, its avoidance of rationality and especially its avoidance the Scientific Method – in favor of PNS’s reliance upon “nuanced” babble by self-annointed or groupist acclaimed Cult Leaders.
Then epitome of “nuance” is nonsense. See also “Postmodernism”.
And, Dr. Curry, did you perhaps miss the “Ravetz” conversations here on WUWT? It wasn’t pretty.