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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” steven mosher (09:13:01) : I’ve not made much of schneider’s role in climategate. Perhaps it’s time for a focused article.”
Yes please!
I had never heard much about Schneider until I saw the Copenhagen press conference where they were trying to shut down that guy asking uncomfortable questions. Isn’t the nature of science being confronted with uncomfortable questions and dealing with them out in the open?
I haven’t had time to read all of the posts here but after reading about half, I seem to see this somewhat different than many.
Comments here about The NY Times, and “speaking to the choir” IMO is exactly what their intent is. The last group the AGW Scientists and Politicians want to engage is the Skeptic Community. (i.e. Al Gore) They feel public opinion slipping away, and they need a forum to not only reinforce their alarmist views to their choir, but to continue the attack on the well-funded, uneducated, flat-earth skeptics. And what better place to do that than in the Main Stream Media, who have been totally silent about Climategate.
There have been several comments about what a dumb idea it is to think they will convert people to the AGW Religion with these ads. They are not interested in conversion! They are trying to frantically hang on to their positions; to their grants; to their professional reputations. They appear to be approaching “full panic mode”, and if I were in their shoes, and realized what impact AlGore’s internet is having on their questionable Science, I would be panicked also.
My final comment is to those of us who are absolutely furious about the entire AGW fraud, and I am one of those. This is just my opinion, but I think we all can recognize pretty quickly the non-technical (and maybe technical) “Trollers” on this site. I think we should let them have their 15 minutes of fame, but that’s all. We should certainly respond to them when their facts are wrong, but to allow them to dominate WUWT is not only irritating, but is helping them achieve exactly what they came here hoping to do. I think the very best and most interesting information and ideas, comes from the ” WUWTsters”.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it- Until someone has a better idea.
I keep waiting for that Limo to pull up with the agent that has a suitcase full of money, or the Anonymous Fed-Ex box stuffed with cash, but all I get are these lousy emails from Nigeria.
How fool I am! I didn’t realize from the beginning that this can be a real Prime time succesful SOAP OPERA: “Ugly Deniers make scientists cry “
What? You don’t want to be a vamp; “a woman who uses her charm or wiles to seduce and exploit men (Merriam-Webster)? Every evil emperor needs vamps to deal with those so easily seduced scientists and engineers.
LOS ANGELES — Two Texas-based refinery giants have pledged as much as $2 million to fund signature gathering for a ballot initiative to suspend California’s landmark global warming law, according to Sacramento sources.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-climate-ballot4-2010mar04,0,7939184.story
Wake up folks. When the medical doctors said tobacco was a killer ,Big Tabacco set up foundations and “think” tanks to fight back. Who was right? There is no reason that most of the worlds climatologists would make AGW up. But there is big money on the other side.
@ur momisugly Rhoda R (11:40:02) :
Willis Eschenbach
You wanted henchmen and I’d like to volunteer. Someone suggested ‘henchpersons’ for those of us of the other gender – but that’s cold; ‘henchwomen’ is better, but frankly I like ‘wenchhenchmen’ best. Can I be one of your wenchhenchmen?”
I second that. I have a degree in professional writing–I’ll proofread for you.
HA! Good luck with that!
I just chuckle at the.. Spend all the money on ads that you want, won’t do any good. Sorry…
““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.”
Christ in Heaven, is this joker still making pronouncements from on high about the impending end of the world? And what’s with these morons, does the billions of dollars in grant money they are all going after not count as ‘funding’ in their eyes? Where the hell is this well oiled, well funded ‘skeptic’ machine? You’d think even the majority of the moronic main stream media should have keyed in by now on the fact that the contantly over inflated and politicized rhetoric and unending conspiracy theories from AGW proponents like Ehrlich coupled with their unparalleled capacity for making astoundingly off the mark predictions might, just might be indicative of a deeper issue with their pet theory/cause and the kind of people who latch on to it.
First, my thanks to all the prospective henchdudes and henchbabes out there, a map to my hollow volcano lair will be emailed to you as soon as I get one. Well-funded mercilessness roolz! I demand a volcano lair!
Second, Judith Curry made a home run statement in the article, viz:
And I commended her for it above. But now, Judith, you’ve got me pounding my head on the table, you’ve managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, viz:
First, “credit for his statements” in the article? Say what? You mean his statements about the poor scientists who can’t work because of the spin? Or perhaps his statements about the big-monied interests?
Exxon Mobil just gave $100 million to Stanford, where Schneider works, to study climate science. I don’t know which is more amazing, that after that Schneider has the balls to rail about “big-monied interests”, or that you think he deserves credit for his statements.
Next, you know, Ravetz’s post normal science (PNS) lunacy really deserves a thread of its own here … oh, wait, we’ve already had two of them, here and here. Judith, you should read them including the comments if you haven’t. I really hope you haven’t, because if you have, I’m not sure what to say.
Post normal science claims that truth is meaningless, that what counts is some undefined thing called quality. It leads to Stephen Schneider preaching that scientists have to balance honesty and effectiveness. Judith, I don’t want PNS scientists that balance honesty with anything. I want honest scientists. Period. Duh …
Post normal science is one of the big villains in the climate science story, and that you endorse it makes my mental gears start to strip. It explicitly says that scientists are justified in lying, so I refer to it as “Post Moral Science”.
Regarding Schneider’s “nuanced” paper, it is inter alia a plea for invoking the “precautionary principle”, one of the least nuanced and most misused “principles” on the planet. Please see my article on the subject here for an explanation of why the precautionary principle doesn’t apply to climate change.
Next, it is not “nuanced” to claim that the Gulf Stream, which is driven by wind and the rotation of the earth, will stop. If you think that’s anything other than egregious alarmism of the first degree, turn in your scientist’s licence on the way out.
After babbling about post moral science and scaring the credulous about the Gulf Stream, Schneider next references his paper on the probability of dangerous climate change. It is a classic piece of garbage science of the type known as the Drake Equation. Please, Judith, please tell me you don’t believe this kind of nonsense. If so, click where it says “Drake Equation” and get disabused. The Drake Equation is pseudoscience for babies, it can be used to “prove” anything, and Schneider wields it like a club.
The article abounds with simple mistakes and clever misdirection. He says, for example:
Well, no. Increasing resolution doesn’t improve the ability to forecast, because the “kinda good enough” approximations used by the models break down at smaller gridscales. Ugly, but true … and I guess Schneider thinks it is worth covering up, or he wouldn’t have mentioned it. There’s a host of good information on this and related subjects here.
Schneider also repeats the oft-refuted, and refuted again, and refuted again, claims of increased damage from increasing extreme weather events … and that one, Judith, as you should know better than most people, is nonsense.
Based on his reliance on them, he clearly thinks that the climate models can forecast (or project, or soothsay, or scenariotize, or prognostofornicate, or whatever the IPCC approved politically correct term is), the climate a hundred years from now. Again, Judith, please tell me you have more sense than that. That idea doesn’t pass the laugh test. We have absolutely no evidence that, although climate models can’t forecast the short term climate like, oh, say, the lack of warming since 1995, they can forecast long term climate. Not a scrap of evidence to support that idea. Not one piece of evidence that models can do that. If you believe claims without evidence, once again, please turn in your scientist’s licence on the way out.
And you call his paean to alarmism “nuanced”? Post normal science is one of the most insidious and dangerous philosophical movements in a long while. It is simply Marxism rewritten in a scientific context, with all of the problems that implies. It is at the root of the problems with climate science. It preaches that it is perfectly fine for scientists to exaggerate and spread alarmism, because it is in a good cause. It claims that truth no longer matters, what matters is “quality”.
Judith, as a scientist you should be ashamed to be backing PNS, or Stephen Schneiders pathetic alarmist post-moral anti-scientific stance in any way, shape or form. Turn the sensitivity on your bullsh*t detector back up to the setting called “Climate Science” (that’s the one just below “Astrology”), and read his piece again.
And this time, read it like a damn scientist, not like a sycophantic acolyte. At each statement, stop and think “Why is he saying this? Is this statement true? What assumptions is he making? What facts is he missing?”
Because what he has written is not science, it is pseudo-Marxist PNS propaganda. Well crafted, heavily “nuanced” propaganda, to be sure, but propaganda nonetheless. As Ann Landers used to say, “Wake up and smell the coffee” …
Willis et all
I think you can have both henchmen and minions. Minions are clearly at the lower ranks. But you definitely need a No 2. Who will be your No 2?
Willis Eschenbach (12:29:04) :
“need to push the disconnect button for now,”
However mother nature has chosen to push the RESET BUTTON and make all of us to get back to the old faithful, traditional and universal laws of REAL SCIENCE.
You’re done babes!…Now you can “cry me a river” if you will, the “turn of the screw” is here!. Your were right in just one thing: The Apocalypse Now!…ethymologically understood= Greek: Enlightment. So the armageddon is all yours!!
Paul Erhlich???
Isn’t that the scientific mental GIANT who wrote “The population Bomb”? The same guy who said the England would cease to exist by the year 2000, and that FORCED contraception coupled with pregnancy licencing was a GOOD THING? (Oh yeah, and we’re all gonna die of starvation, too)
I thought the guy was dead to be honest.
Do people actually listen to or give any credit to him anymore?
As for Schneider… He’s a flip-flopping, yellow bellied, coward with a big mouth. I seem to remember him espousing that it was a good idea to LIE to the public and use scare tactics in an effort to get people to listen to you, if your views couldn’t stand on the strength of their own merit.
I also seem to remember him making the claim that skeptics don’t debate because we’d (and I quote):
“If these guys (sceptics) think they are “winning” why don’t they try to take on face to face real climatologists at real meetings… with those with real knowledge–because they’d be slaughtered in public debate by Trenberth, Santer, Hansen, Oppenheimer, Allen, Mitchell, even little ol’ me. It’s easy to blog, easy to write op-eds in the Wall Street Journal!”
Then when Peilke Sr. challenged him to a debate (the next day) he chickened out, claiming that he needed it to happen at a venue of HIS choosing and that there be other scientists there who acribe to tha same AGW beliefs, to back him up. I also believe that Peilke Sr. AGREED to Schneider’s stipulations, and when so faced with having to defend his own statements, Schneider chickened out a SECOND TIME.
That said… I hope they DO take out their little attack ads. It will only hemorrhage out what littel credibility the CAGW side has.
Interesting post about Schneider:
http://pc.blogspot.com/2009/03/stephen-schneider-stranger-to-honesty.html
Doc
Schneider and his ‘systems science’ is the exact opposite of what researchers used to think investigation was about, which was to reduce questions to bits small enough to be asked about.
He just multiplies entities until he can assert anything about anything.
He is also (read his book) a nasty character assassin: According to him, McIntyre is a ‘serial abuser’ of FOI laws. Most people around here could tell you within a +/- of about 2 how many FOI requests McIntyre has made.
They have to fight for it among themselves like the White Hats such as Mann, Jones, et al. May the best henchman win, so long as he presents no threat to his Lord and Master.
Kay (12:17:59)
Whoa, smokin’ hot evil-scientist-type henchbabes with even more brains than beauty, what more could a well-funded merciless world dictator want? … be still, my beating heart.
On a more serious note, speaking of professional writing, I’d like to turn some of my blog posts into journal articles. In particular:
Tropical Tropospheric Amplification
Can’t See The Forest For The Trees
I don’t speak Scientese all that well, it always feels like I have to lobotomise myself to speak it. Plus, people have claimed that sometimes my writing is a bit aggro, don’t know why, but there it is.
I would, of course, prefer people with enough math to follow my expositions and some publication record and some knowledge of the field(s) and the journals. However, all that is really necessary is the ability to turn my edgy ravings into proper scientific journal form.
So … if there are people out there who would like to work with me to re-write one of these as a co-author, please contact me at willis [at) taunovobay.com
My thanks to all, keep up the good fight,
w.
If anybody believes the three biologists at the top are pedigreed to speak on climate science, then so am I. Therefore, say I…Rubbish.
Mike (12:14:25) :
(…)
There is no reason that most of the worlds climatologists would make AGW up. But there is big money on the other side.
——————-
Sure, Mike, sure… You’re telling me that if the climate scientists said this warming was nothing to worry about, that it was just a response from the earth coming out of the Little Ice Age, and that CO2 was actually a beneficial trace gas that was increasing foodstuff production world-wide, they’d still have JOBS?
To borrow a phrase from Charles Krauthammer:
You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.
curious that a lot of warmists are into this: http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/ kind of shit huh?
When the principals of an action are fully understood, the causes and outcomes of those actions become understandable and predictable.
The well known fact that weather models break down rapidly, shows that they DO NOT reflect the real drivers of global circulation. Building climate models based on some of the same principals, and just throwing in a hand full of other variables, DOES NOT HELP!
The understanding of what drives the weather, has been so politically regulated by the accepted experts maintaining a name for them selves, that the resultant “knowledge base” has become flawed by political opinions, defended as gospel, from way before climate science was born of energy/carbon agenda parents.
When the real truth is revealed about what is driving the global circulation that results in the weather, and how the trends in those cyclic patterns as they interact results in the variations in the climate, become known the resulting increase in forecasting skill using these methods will extend the current 3 day skill levels out past 10 years of daily forecasts.
The resultant sudden drop in the left over noise will leave little doubt about the influences of trace gasses, and man’s almost nonexistence of real level of influence on the scheme of things. I await the net results of these revelations with baited breath. If the alarmist are having problems maintaining false vintages now, just wait till the fog clears.
NOTE: The NAS was signed into being by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863
Well that settles it for me. Bought and paid for by Republicans. Can’t trust ’em.
For the sake of science and the future of humanity It is time to distinguish between climate scientists and their lunatic fringe.
The appropriate organisations to make this distinction are the professional societies. They have significant damage to repair given their previous lip-service to unscientific consensus and advocacy straying far beyond their spheres of professional competence. However physicists, statisticians and chemists have given a good lead with their submissions to the UK Parliamentary inquiry. That momentum and direction needs to be maintained.
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.
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a suicide attack. The difference was that the Light Brigade was not intending suicide.
Willis and John Whitman.
I would like to be a henchette, but only if I get a cute outfit!
Alexis
… with pointy shoulder pads. Don’t forget the shoulder pads!
This is a treat! Got a science question? ask Alan Boyle Science Editor MSNBC!
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/03/ask_alan_boyle_science_editor.php