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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“Scientists” (note ‘upper case S’) are highly educated and trained professionals (retired or not) who occassionaly comment in public about their area of expertise.
“psyentists” (note ‘lower case p’) are highly educated and trained professionals (retired or not) who often comment in public about areas for which they have no expertise whatsoever – they only think they do.
Doc_Navy (12:48:07) :
“”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)””
Why does this make me realize that good ideas sometimes come one or two generations too late to be effective. If their mother’s had only known??
So this is the kind of types the foreign minister of Norway, and the Nobel commitee has allied themselves with.
Its like jumping in bed with Pol Pot;
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/03/inconvenient-question.html
Wasn’t it a certain Adolf Hitler who boasted of his super-weapons as the Allies slogged their way across France, Belgium and Holland?
Also why are the ‘energy companies’, that is Big Oil or Big Coal, so CRAVEN?
They don’t fund sceptical – for which read proper – science – they fund the warmists (well, they do in the uk!).
I wonder if most of the AGW crowd understand that to gain the same level of understanding and supposed wisdom as their so called saints and heroes like Erlich, Schneider, Jones, Mann et al … and al, all you have to do is read about half a dussin 1000 pages books, i.e. about six thousand pages of information and that’s it, that’s all, that’s the the end and the fat lady singing. That’s it, that’s “climatic” higher ed.
How often do you let policy makers make policy on results from programs coded by computer illiterates who went to a summer course in programming cobalt or fortran in the 70’s? Think about it, no body even trust senior microsoft experts to come up with bug free code, ever!
Harry Eagar (11:36:28) :
Rather than demonstrating that he [Schneider] is the most comprehensively competent, talented Renaissance man of all time, all this is just evidence of his place in pathological science.
The “all this” we have been mainly and most relevantly talking about is Schneider’s grand capstone, Post Normal Science – which the Climate Scientist, Judith Curry, also touted. But by now a true Renaissance man or woman should advocate and practice the Scientifc Method, right?
thebomb has already been constructed. ( i heard ) It is just a matter of not being able to release it without too much collett et al damage. (i was told)
just kidding!!!
but how can he MAKE IT THROUGH SECURITY when the explosive de vices are obviously in his underwear?
‘a true Renaissance man or woman should advocate and practice the Scientifc Method,’
Yes, although not Baconian. David Goodstein, a Caltech physicist and former vice provost (that is, head of the school’s antifraud effort), has an interesting little book coming out in May called “On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from rhe Front Lines of Science.”
I recommend it to people interested in the question of whether, or to what degree, what has happened in climatology fits the definition of ‘scientific fraud.’ (Goodstein does not mention climatatology at all; his theme is more general.)
“On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from rhe Front Lines of Science.”
Thanks, I’ll watch for it – it sounds like it might provide some “patterns”.
If we listen to the scientist’s warnings, and take avoiding action now, it will allow a small window of opportunity for corrective contingency and implementation measures; that largely depend on a global response, for the right course of action to take in time, before any tipping point is reached.
If we ignore the warnings, then it is business as usual, there will be more Casualties, from ripple effect geopolitical turmoil, spawned by an increasingly unstable global Eco-system, which will continue to make corrective adaptive measures, as it strives to maintain global ambiance.
One of those adaptive measures could be earths natural response to a perceived global heating event, this could take the form of rapid global cooling as accelerated polar melt starts to influence the earths gulf stream, which is the earths major heat exchange mechanism, responsible for maintaining global ambient temperatures, that all dependent species, have enjoyed up till now.
We must not discount the planets ability for radical simpatico adaptation or second guess our earth’s superior Eco system which has survived for eons in hostile space environments. The part we play may be minuscule in comparison, however misguided in the extreme.
So as we approach crunch time, we look to the bridge for clear decisive action.
But no such action will be taken, because of radical uncertainty that permeates the whole debate on global climate change, at best there in no one on the bridge, and those that are raising the alarm are failing to relay damage assessment to a captain that is beset by problems, that makes those of a floundering ship seem trivial.
Burdened by the enormity of the task, we have fallen into a malaise, we wait for science to reconcile, yet know that this time, it will take not only all our ingenuity, but a truly collective global effort, equaled only by our willingness and resolve too engage in global conflict.
Radical c o 2 emission level reduction is the only game in town and must have a timescale that allows for Global adaptation, coupled with nuclear and inclusive renewable sustainable Solutions, that measure up to the extent of the problem.
(Some Solutions for the mitigation of long-term radical adverse global Climate change)
1. Make sure emissions peak in 2012 and decrease as rapidly as possible towards zero after that.
2. Developed countries must make cuts of 50 percent on their 1990 carbon emissions by 2030 with mandatory regulation by United Nations.
3. Developing countries must slow the growth of emissions by 20 percent by 2040, with support from industrialized nations
There is an inexorable link between global Eco-equity and global financial equity.
It is clear there is a need to link global sustainable economies, with global Eco-sustainability.
Failure to coalesce, for the mitigation of global adverse climatic change, in the short term, will force the planet to make that decision for us, whatever action we take then, will ultimately benefit the planet.
Long live the planet.
many a little makes a mickle. The writing style is creative. I dont know about that,