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
Mike Hulme has said for years that it wasn’t about science. This was about the appointment of Pachauri but the sentiments relate:
Mike Hulme
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: [Fwd: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote]
Date: Mon Apr 22 18:14:44 2002
Cc: s.raper
“Phil,
I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about Watson – why should he be re-nominated anyway? Why should not an Indian scientist chair IPCC? One could argue the CC issue is more important for the South than for the North. Watson has perhaps thrown his weight about too much in the past.
The science is well covered by Susan Solomon in WGI, so why not get an engineer/economist since many of the issues now raised by CC are more to do with energy and money, than natural science.
If the issue is that Exxon have lobbied and pressured Bush, then OK, this is regrettable but to be honest is anyone really surprised? All these decisions about IPCC chairs and co-chairs are deeply political (witness DEFRA’s support of Martin Parry for getting the WGII nomination).”
Appropos of nothing, Susan Soloman was a PhD student under Schneider.
[bridge too far ~ ctm]
“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.
He’s talking aboot Al Gore, Dr. Pachauri, Michael E Mann, Phil Jones and their ilk isn’t he… 😉
I have come to think the mania for AGW is in part supported by this kind of specious and potty belief. It is irrelevant. If the science is sound the other side’s funding, tactics and rules simply would not matter. It is a distraction, an excuse even, to lower their standards and play dirty.
In a sense they think the very worst of us and our scepticism (that it has been bought) so they can merrily discard our opinions and the sceptical science that people are producing, and discard their own scepticism in the process. They have convinced themselves that sceptics are advocates for big oil and they have to be advocates for statism and ‘the planet’ in return.
“…But where are my henchmen? Ming and every other self-respecting well funded merciless miscreant grasping for world domination has henchmen, where are my henchmen? I demand henchmen!…”
Here I am, Master!
I have just finished explaining our plan to dominate the world by dumping large amounts of plant food into the atmosphere and generating mutant mobile oak trees with laser beams in their branches to Phil Jones, and then I locked him in the dungeon with the broken lock and the air-conditioning vent.
What would you like me to do next?
And the Guardian? Remember those nice folk at the Guardian who want a reasonable debate? They’re moving back to the attack too with a piece attempting to discredit the IOP submission to the parliamentary committee:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/05/climate-emails-institute-of-physics-submission?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Despite the Grauniad’s bleating that they understand the term denier was not at all nice, the comments are packed with stuff like this (hilarious) one:
“Then I suggest you go back through the last year’s discussions and take careful note of the way Jones has been treated and the invective routinely directed at Hansen and Mann. Not to mention the use of the terms “alarmist” and “hysteric”, which express a value-weighting rather than a behaviour as the term “denier” expresses.”
Big Oil – big BS. The usual myths and fantasies of AGW/ACC religionists.
@Willis Eschenbach (01:08:33) :
“Man, the gall of those folks is unbelievable. Schneider says
Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate …
Stephen, I think your colleagues know that, viz:
James Hansen of NASA wanted trials for climate skeptics, accusing them of high crimes against humanity
Robert Kennedy Jr. called climate skeptics traitors
Yvo de Boer of the UN called climate skepticism criminally irresponsible
David Suzuki called for politicians who ignore climate science to be jailed
DeSmogBlog’s James Hoggan wants skeptics treated as war criminals (video)
Grist called for Nuremberg trials for skeptics
Emo-Joe Romm wanted skeptics strangled in their beds
A blogger at TPM pondered when it would be acceptable to execute climate deniers
Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel called for skeptical forecasters to be decertified
Bernie Sanders compared climate skeptics to Nazi appeasers.”
—————
I’m simply aghast at the lowball tactics of Hansen and the others, all of them proponents of the trillion dollar hoax. Could they have all read the same book?
http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Through-Intimidation-Robert-Ringer/dp/0449207862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267783524&sr=1-1
Schneider & Kooks are right – it sure is getting warmer!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100305/wl_afp/swedenfinlandshippingweatherstorm
Circling the wagons would be OK if you had plenty of ammunition, but they don’t. They fired all of it already.
So if they’re going to take out big ads, I would suggest along following lines…
List the names of Jones Mann Santer et al and state..
“I HAVE NOT HAD SCIENTIFIC RELATIONS WITH THESE PEOPLE.”
Well let them sqaunder money on futile newspaper ads, money given to them by mug tax payers. The print media deservedly on its last legs needs the money.
Please note that Stanford University, (Paul R. Ehrlich &
Stephen H. Schneider), Rutgers University (Paul G.
Falkowski), Penn State (Mike Mann) and Woods Hole
Institute for the Environment ( again, Stephen H.
Schneider) are all institutions not directly covered by
Federal or State Freedom of Information Acts or Open
Records Laws.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/
However the National Acadamy of
Science, and especially studies, etc., done or partially or
fully funded under it’s auspices are
subject to FOI requests.
Here in the U.K. we have a met office who are inspite of their claims are usualy unable to forcast the weather a few hours ahead. They have admitted to being unable of forcasting seasonal weather with any degree of sussess hence bbq summer and this winter was going to be mild. (it’s a new science)They are now begrudgingly admitting that it is the coldest for 31 years while other organisations say coldest on record, As usual it depends how you read records. I who have basic weather forcasting knowledge as I trained as a navigator.I told all my friends and aquainances to expect a freezing winter on the simple face that the sea temperture at the end of the summer was about 3c lower that the average which in a country kept warm by the sea is a huge drop.The met office receives alot of funding to prove the warming case,they like many organisations reley on this money and if they have to admit it isn’t happening will lose lots of income.It is hardly surprising they are starting to get desperate, they have been obtaining money under false pretenses, in most walks of life this is a crime.
I for one think that any of these organising if it can be proved they have been falsifing results to obtain further funding should be prosicuted. I am sure these so called scientists would not be quite so sure of their theories, if they were liable for the costs to the human race, for policies polititions are enforcing on us as a result of their research.
“…we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher
I am currently non-funded sceptic, searching for alternative causes. I would more than welcome any funds. Read my ‘slightly sceptical’ work at:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/41/83/04/PDF/NATA.pdf
if well-funded it could be modified to ‘severely sceptical’
Any energy company is welcome, just contribute generously!
Right here Willis, with in two weeks I will pull out a big Nuke, and level the playing field, can you say rebuild the whole understanding of how the weather / climate really works? Then, top it off with programs to generate good decade long weather and climate forecasts….. (Judith Curry call me…)
Well funded, come again?
“The Money Trail”
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm
If they don’t want to be political pawns, maybe they ought to be scientists instead of playing political activists for greedy grant s.o.bs. Just a suggestion.
Kind of ironic that they will try political dirty tricks and extreme activism to try and save face of bad science and worse scientists and keep denying the truth of the AGW debacle as it stands now, rather than actually finding out what’s what and taking it from there in an honest way.
What did they think would happen when the taxpaying mob found out that not only have they been cheated by extreme activism and pseudo-science but also been made complete fools of as well?
In a way this snowballing flash mob is well funded, since so much is tax funded.
Biologists certainly can be concerned if the agw theories/models were to be proved correct but they are not equipped to judge that the science is right or wrong. Hair dressers and hotdog stand owners and other worthy folks can also be concerned too but they have too much sense to put up their hard earned cash for attack ads.
Willis – Thanks for the excellent summary of the paranoid crazed witch-hunt comments made by nutjobs. Of course there can be differences and there will be, e.g. I don’t agree at all with Curry’s or Hans von Storch’s views on climate change, but at least they are sane, rational, respectful and want to keep science that way. The debate shouldn’t be run by the extreme eco-stalinist kooks who want to criminlise people who dare to have a different opinion. Clearly it has been, but now I sense we are beginning to see the first tantrums in reaction to them losing the control of the debate. The dikes have burst.
Their action from these CAGW nutters reminds me of the Beatles 1973 album ‘Band on the Run’. Not what should be expected from honourable scientists.
They must be getting desperate and this is another good sign that their scam is failing!
Willis
I’m sure you meant ‘henchperson’ not henchman.
I will volunteer to be one, but you must share some of the enormous proceeds you get from Big oil as one of the big cheeses amongst sceptics. 🙂
tonyb
I am sorry, but I can’t take these guys serious anymore. Do they even re-read what they think and write? Despite money being a stupid argument, perhaps the argument that actually tells you they have run out of arguments, they turn reality upside-down. Not only outspent their side (WWF, solar energy companies etc.) the side of the critics (which are mostly NOT funded by some energy company), but they also get all the airtime they want.
In what kind of a dillusional universe do these guys live? I know sanity and fact-checking is not always the way of science, but when I worked with scientists during grad-school, these weren’t the people that were allowed to lead or speak for the group…
It looks like they may be planning to send an away team to repair the AGW Express in the field and advise the passengers to ignore those pesky gremlins outside banging on the wheels with sledgehammers.
An open invitation to Schneider and Erhlich. List all the sources of finance that you and your fellow scientists believe is funding the work of the sceptics, then we sceptics will draw up a list of all the sources of finance that we know is funding the science of global warming. Perhaps we should draw up that list anyway, just for the record.
Also, why do they think that an advertisement in the New York Times will do anything other than scratch the surface – if even that – in gaining support for their confidence trick on the whole of the World’s population? It seems to me they are fighting a rearguard action to save their reputations – and their jobs at Stanford University – for when the World has once and for all accepted the sceptics logical viewpoint- and they most certainly will- and the science of anthropogenic global warming is cast into the University trash bin.
Please take a look where the real funds are
————————
Follow the money trail !!!
Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed.
Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm
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Whilst reading on climatedepot it hit me, that these guys’ve been hawking end of the world crap for decades, they’re nothing but g’damn helter skelter hippies!
Willis Eschenbach (01:11:47) :
I demand henchmen!
You get a hollowed out volcano lair, then we’ll talk about henchmen.