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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Read the entire article at the Washington Times
Sew them!
Reply: ???? ~ ctm
I am getting dizzy.
Is the above article implying NAS is funding the adds in the news media?
Let me see, as a taxpayer I fund the NAS [Nat’l Academy of Sciences]. Then the NAS apparently uses some of my funds for some of its scientist to advocate AGW theory with the intent to oppose me scientifically. They are using my funds in an attempt to convince the public that I am wrong.
Any NAS members here? Is there a policy for publically funded institutions like NAS to give equal time [at NAS’s cost] to opposing scientific theories?
NOTE: The NAS was signed into being by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863
John
Three biologists in a row.
Are most “climate scientists” now life science specialists?
I thought the current “climate science” discussion was of temperatures (energy), physics, planets (Earth), and mathematics.
You know, about water, atoms, currents, evaporation, admittance, wind, condensation, emissivity, pressure, convection, light, volume, ice, snow, air, conductivity, infrared, molecules, microwaves, convection, spherical geometry, X-rays, gravity, wavelengths, orbits… of these I know and they all generally fit in the area of physics but where does biology fit in? Are they standing in for the polar bears again?
Stupid is as stupid does.
Hey guys,
Don’t label all biologists as alarmists. Think of David Bellamy. And there are plenty of alarmists who aren’t biologists, too. My degree is in zoology, and I’m a sceptic. Let’s not use broad-brush denigration techniques. This is more typically an alarmist tactic and in the long run I don’t think it’s worked well for them.
Stick to questioning the science. Like lord Lawson implied, play the ball and not the man. On the warmist side, Judith Curry is a good ball player, and she comes across as the voice of sanity in the article. Sceptics need to come across in the same sort of way. We want the debate to be about the science, yes?
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.
Can’t wait to see the ad.
I’d offer them more rope, but it seems as if they’ve got plenty.
Excuse me for joining the debate late and possibly crossing other comments, but I just saw this post and am blown away by its ridiculous basis.
The “scientific method” is the subject of a UK Parliment legislative committee inquiry as we speak. Jones has lost his credibility as a “scientist”, and says that not sharing data is the “norm”.
This statement is being broadly challenged as wrong. For some it is the interpretation of this new body of “scientists” of “climate” that their “regime” is out of normal and plain incorrect. This entire group of new scientists are about to get a spanking.
So it looks like these individuals want to start a campaign against the scientific method. Wouldn’t that be a thrill. Follow the money! They see that future funding of future research programs are at risk.
Let’s watch and comment as the opportunity arrises.
PR review.
When you can’t defend the indefensible attack attack your critics and hope it all goes away!. Wishful thinking stupid.
To continue the comment… these guys are all biologists! Get Real.
Catastrophic climate change/global warming has reached stage 6 in Irving Langmuir’s “symptoms of pathological science” and these guys know it.
1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2.The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. Claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion
Since in gov’t funded climate research it is now apparently the money not the science that scientists are focused on, we should consider some alternate funding processes.
Anybody remember Tax Credits for Education?
We need Tax Credits for Research.
Imagine, for every dollar we give to voluntary (non profit) or private (for profit) research, then we get one dollar tax credit. $1 for $1. We make the law so that $1 dollar can be sent to any country for research and we still get the US tax $1 credit. We send our money where the best research/scientists are.
John
Re: IanP (Mar 4 21:58),
IanP, this was a recycled piece from the Independent in the UK, as reported by EURef here
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/they-just-dont-get-it.html
Unfortunately for us living in NZ, the “news” on climate change is just a load of recycled propaganda from the rather “past its sell by date” MSM
I can sympathize.
If the warmists think newspaper ads are the solution to their problems, its not surprising they’re in such a mess of their own making. Their problems are really going to ramp up when Governments and the courts seriously challenge the IPCC’s claims to authority on climate matters. That will really bring tears to their eyes.
Alarmist advertising? What would it look like?
“Feeling low, depressed and that your life’s going nowhere?
What you need is a crisis! A strong dose of CAGW, our new laxative, will clear you out daily and free you from your other anxieties.
CAGW in a university near you, get some today!”
He who digs a pit for others falls in himself, Paul Ehrlich.
Perhaps they’d be better advised to save their money and instead lock Ehrlich in a basement somewhere remote, bound and gagged.
Alongside Holdren.
I like that they adopt the tactics of their imagined enemy.
shadow boxing.
Erlich got one thing right. we play by different rules. we are not organized. work for nothing. publish our code and data. and dont read the NYT.
Ehrlich, Nader, others, and various NGOs such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Greenpeace, ran a sustained and highly political campaign against nuclear power in the 1970’s and 1980’s. They succeeded in preventing the expansion of nuclear power energy sources as a replacement of the (more dangerous and environmentally damaging) coal-fired power energy sources in the USA, UK, and in Germany. As large stationary power sources, i.e. coal-fired power stations, contribute ~ 30% of the total anthropogenic CO2 load in the atmosphere, now currently ~ 100ppmv, we could note that these people and organisations are responsible in an indirect sense for a significant part of the current anthropogenic CO2 load in the atmosphere, the environmental damage caused by sulphate aerosols, soot, open-cast coal mining, and coal-fly ash disposal.
But our best course in countering the AGW mantra is to ensure that dispassionate science continues to comes to the fore in demonstrating that the increasing CO2 concentration resulting from anthopogenic sources does not behave as significant GHG.
I know that this is slightly OT, but an excellent “starter” for readers who wish to compare the relative risks through the respective fuel cycles for nuclear vs coal sourced energy is a book by Petr Beckmann – it is now out of print – but it describes rather accurately the roles of individuals such as Ehrlich and others in their crusades against common sense science, technology, and engineering.
““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.”
These people can’t accept the fact that they will go to their graves knowing their life’s work has been completely discredited by proper science.
“A back-page ad in the New York Times.” That is hilarious! They won’t reach a single person who is not already in the tank with them.
I guess that must be the point. They know they can’t have any effect on anyone outside of the echo chamber. They just want to make sure that their base does not leave the reservation: “I am the Great and Powerful IPCC. Ignore the man behind the curtain!”
Where else could they go to find people stupid enough to follow that instruction?
And biologists, I don’t want to hear about x species of birds who also enjoying the weather like myself that occurred due to the slight warm-up in the 70’s, 80s’ and 90’s. If I was a bird I would have flown a bit north too, but not now, or have you not noticed the change. I want to know how much the warm-up was (minus the urban heat island effect), and since it hasn’t warmed of any great amount for 15 years, why did it stop, will it now go up or down, how much and exactly why. That is to be answered by proper physics and it’s not in your area, so please step aside! (Sorry to hear about your lack of grants)
Sounds like they’ve no intention of letting science get in the way of their agenda. Best of luck to them in all they aspire to.
Oh man, do I miss Julian Simon now? He would have put Erhlich in his place in no time.
These guys are true space cadets if they think a back page ad in the New York Times, of all places, will change anyone’s mind. If you are not a member in good standing in the Church of AGW you wouldn’t be allowed to read the Times in the first place.