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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@Moderators
Some of these comments are ad hominem – perhaps you should consider whether this site will be able to retain the high ground unless you moderate a bit more actively.
Reply: Public figures are open for attack as long as people stay away from profanity. We discourage commenters from attacking one another. And I personally dislike the ubiquitous use of the term ad hominem which is meant to describe a mistake in logical debate not really a generalized term for insulting someone. ~ ctm
REPLY – Oh, come on, already! None of the posters are insulting each other. And as for the the chickenheaded, knuckleheaded chuckleheads who have concocted this square egg of a plan . . . I am surprised at the restraint shown so far. To quote the classic, “Sit down, Horace. If anything, the witness is browbeating Atticus.” ~ Evan
They are on the defense. Remember, we are not fighting the scientists but their more politically and strategically savvy political puppet-masters. If anything, this is a smokescreen. Now is the time to lay it on thick and call everyone into action. Now is the time to throw down and yell, “WE”RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!”.
We’ve won nothing and at this point our greatest mistake would be to believe this was anything more than an opportunity to strike at the heart of societies GWing cult problem.
This is a war and we now have the initiative. Fight to keep it.
These guys never really specify by company/corporation/persons from where the money comes to where the money goes. Neither do they reveal to us the amount of money involved. Rather unscientifically,- in my opinion.
The solution for upset scientists is to go back to doing what they did before they became celebrities. A bunch of billionaires planned the most evil organized crime scam in history and some climate guys’ names were thrown in the pot at the last minute. The main point was carbon trading and carbon taxes which were already underway before climate guys became buddies with Seth Borenstein.
All I can say is, “Bring it on. Please!”
Paul Ehrlich? Sheesh!
Talk about bringing a wet noodle to a gunfight.
(Gee, maybe Gotham City DOES have a caped crusader!)
He was the best mayor we ever had.
‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,’”
He said before trying to set up an organisation to do some mega spinning!
Duh!
“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.”
Pot ……….Kettle………………Black!
I’m very glad when any lefty,would-be tax grabber gets their ambition thwarted.I hope they spend all their money on many,many ads.AGW is nothing but a Lefty,Big-Government tax-grab.Anyway! How are these people qualified to discuss climate science?! They are only Biologists!
Was Anger before Acceptance or After?
REPLY – Between Lust and Gluttony. ~ Evan
”””’Alexander Feht (23:26:24) : He who digs a pit for others falls in himself . . .””’
Alexander,
That sounds like a Confucian proverb, or Buddish or Tao proverb. Sounds distinctly oriental to me.
How about;
‘What is sound of one alarmist ad clapping?’
Also, thinking about adapting to AGW, ‘How much wood could a woodchuck . . .’
John
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8550090.stm
A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.
It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.
If these guys think that this is a good idea. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining, how they can believe in something as irrational as AGW. Clearly rational and logical thought, and the ability to grasp the big picture is completely beyond their capabilities.
LoL… Typical. These mob are going to do anything….. except science, to further the cause of the AGW belief , er, hypothesis.
So predictable…. Well, I hope they do “go on the attack”. People are waking up to them. They show themselves up, better than we ever could, as the hysterical frauds that they are.
“we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,”
They might be in a street fight, I’m in a fight to see real science and not the bogus they pass off as science.
If they want us to believe they can forecast the climate, they should shut up with their well-funded publicity and just show us they can forecast the climate and the only reason they are having to resort to PR instead of science is because their climate forecasts are carp!.
The same Stephen Schneider that had a journalists microphone taken from him and forced out at gropenhagen due to difficult questions.
Iiiiiiiiiiitsss business as usual folks!
With Friends like these who needs enemies. The sooner these three speak up the better. They damn the whole crowd by simply being on the same side. Oh and will they add Osama Bin Laden to their paranoid numbers; he seems quite keen.
The population lobby has always been a case of the nearly extinct end of the genepool telling the rest to join them. Of cause they’re still not ready to top them selves. Voluntary human extinction excepted.
http://www.vhemt.org/ Yes, its a real organisation with hundreds of sterilised members.
This crazy lobby is not just a problem, they are dangerous, read Or see ‘Children of Men’ by P.D.James.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Men
The back story, not explicitly stated, is that some population fanatic with a microbiology lab has rendered humanity sterile. The real problem is that some of Erhlichs fans are doing microbiology.
The sooner these three do a big budget add the better. It backfires badly. We’ve had a group called Getup here in Australia they have been doing ‘green’ attack adds since before the last election. They caused many to vote for Labour and defeated the Liberal party at that poll but now their ferocious attacks have turned onto labour and the Liberals, now immune, are reaping the rewards.
The end is nigh for green house the loonys have started throwing stones from the inside out.
Perhaps these biologists are suffering from Evolution vs Intelligent Design induced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder..
“Formal diagnostic criteria (both DSM-IV and ICD-9) require that the symptoms last more than one month and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (e.g. problems with work and/or relationships).”
..no?
The big differene being of course, that the last time around, they were actually right..
I’m sure there are good, sceptical scientists everywhere saying to themselves: “Bring it on.”
At lest Judith Curry has hit the nail on the head. The way to win a scientific argument is to prove your point scientifically with good data, good methods of analysis and reasonable conclusions.
Make a watertight scientific case and the politicians and sceptics and general population will be forced to acknowledge the results.
Unfortunately if there is a group of scientists that regard independant review of their data and methods as unacceptable, public acknowledgement of their research can never happen. If they stoop to ad-hominem attack as their first line of defence of their research data and methods then they are doomed in terms of credibility. They are simply not credible.
If you want to feed at the trough, you don’t have to join an energy company.
Try Googling [“asian development bank” ADB “world bank” climate]. It won’t take you long to realize that the alarmists have managed to allocate billions for climate climate change, both mitigation and adaptation.
Some governments simply pass grant money to the ADB and World Bank for the multi-lateral effort, but others maintain bilateral projects (Denmark for example). Depending on where you live, your tax money helps fill the trough.
Along with physical projects, technical assistance feeds an army of advisers and consultants, including pofessors at leading universities.
An especially misguided initiative can be googled using [ADB climate mekong model]. This initiative is based on the notion that climate models are good enough to predict regional environmental change, good enough to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars.
What would be a more rational approach?
The ENSO (El Nino) and other short-term cycles can have as much impact in the short term as global climate change is projected to cause over 30 years.
So a more rational approach would be to determine what measures are needed to cope with these short-term cycles. Similar measures would likely work for longer term climate change. In the medium term, the solutions would provide economic returns on the investments because the hazards certainly exist because the short-term climatic cycles have existed for centuries.
An even more rational approach would be to seek elsewhere the causes of the problems of the Mekong. How would you determine what these problems might be? Try googling this: {mekong delta sinking}. And this [mekong delta “land use” deforestation].
Humans are certainly involved in sea-level rise in the Mekong Delta. But the rise in seal level is mostly a “relative” rise cause by the sinking of the land relative to the sea. Worldwide, river deltas sink relative to the sea because of the weight of the sediments carried down the river. These sediments also cause the delta to extend seawards. The new land created is at or just below sea level and adds to the weight that causes the delta to sink.
The sediments have been carried from upstream for millions of years, but with the population explosion of the 20th century deforestation has left the upper and middle reaches of the Mekong vulnerable to tropical rains.
The solution for the Mekong Delta may be the same as for the Mississippi Delta, which is to say that there may or may not be a technical solution.
Whether there are non-technical solutions is another question.
But never mind the science, climate change is able to justify any expenditure.
we’re in a street fight
Our science can beat up their science.
Skeptics powered by Big Energy? A number of folks have debunked that already. Where have these bozo’s been? So..Heartland got some early funding from Exxon – they’ve been cut off for years now. Additionally, the Big E companies have hedged their investments by diving into “alternative” ventures and many by dealing with the Administration. BE will make money no matter what – that’s an important part of their job. Hey, what about the NEW Big E – the Carbon Barons? Oh, with the outing of the truth on CO2 they may also be facing the increasing specter of bankruptcy. Such is the consequence of risking everything on the assumption that your targeted victims are idiots and would let the alarmists channel them into submission. Thanks to numbers of folks with simple, honest interests in pursuing truths and nature “finding another way” to tweak the vanity and arrogance of some weak alarmists who have had their faults laid bare.
I say to the alarmists: If you have so much at stake that you have to waste the rest of your careers by attempting to deny healthy skepticism without offering valid explanations you will lose everything. Why not save some honor and just let your future work attempt to redeem something of your scientific souls. Alarmists, just quit wasting everyone’s time and resources, especially these days, and contribute to advancement for a change – we need it.
Christoph (21:58:10): “On one side there is the biologists, on the other side their is the thinkers (mathematicians and physicists). Does anyone else think my broad overgeneralization has more than some truth to it?”
Not in the sense you mean. I think we have a classic fight between “soft” retrospective science (the use of scientific language to retrospectively describe nature) and the use of “hard” predictive science.
What these guys simply can’t get out of their thick skulls, is that no matter how well you think you can describe what happened in the past, if your assertions don’t produce meaningful predictions then you will look daft (as they do).
This is something everyone on on the planet can understand and no use of fancy words can hide any longer:
Predict no snow — there is snow — they don’t know what they are talking about
Predict global warming — it cools — they look daft.
Get caught upjusting the figures, and no one cares a damn what they say!
And the more they run ads telling the world that they are misunderstood because they are fantastic at predicting the past, the more people will wonder why they can’t predict the future!
Is this the same Schneider who wrote ‘Science as a Contact Sport’ and impugned the bona fides of anybody who doesn’t accept the output of his (as he himself admits) impenetrable models?
Why, yes, it is. He can talk out of both sides of his mouth.
Won’t we all have fun searching the ad donations for any sign of funding from Big Oil?
tonyb