Readers may recall this story last week: Ad hoc group wants to run attack ads
Here’s an update from GlobalWarming.org by Myron Ebell
According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism. Their scheme would involve officials at the National Academies and other professional associations producing studies to endorse the researchers’ pre-existing assumptions and create confusion about the revelations of the rapidly expanding “Climategate” scandal.
The e-mails were first reported in a front-page story by Stephen Dinan in the Washington Times today. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has independently obtained copies of the e-mails. A list of excerpts, with descriptive headlines written by me, can be found below. The entire file of e-mails has been posted as a PDF and can be read here.
In my view, the response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position. The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate in the public debate on global warming.
Selected Excerpts.
Note that the descriptive headlines in italics are by me. The statements in quotation marks are excerpts from the e-mails.
Can we get corporate funding for some splashy ads in the NY Times?
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 26: “I will accept corporate sponsorship at a 5 to 1 ratio….”
But our ads will be untainted by corporate influence.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “Over the past 24 h I have been amazed and encouraged at the support my proposal has received from Section 63 and beyond. We have had about 15 pledges for $1000! I want to build on that good will and make sure that the facts about the climate system are presented to a very large section of the public—unfiltered by the coal, oil and gas industries….”
What is it about the New York Times? Aren’t Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman enough?
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “Op eds in the NY Times and other national newspapers would also be great.”
Scientists should be effecting social and political change.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 26: “I want the NAS to be a transformational agent in America.”
Snow in Washington is anecdotal, but no snow in Vancouver is proof.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “…the coal, oil and gas industries (who, ironically, are running commercials on NBC for the winter Olympics, while the weather is so warm that snow has to be imported to some of the events.)”
Robert Paine, Feb. 27: “The beltway’s foolishness about climate change seems especially ironic given the snowless plight of the Vancouver Olympics.”
David Schindler, Feb. 27: “I’d add that Edmonton is near snowless….”
This is a political fight, and we’ve got to get dirty.
Paul R. Ehrlich, Feb. 27: “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.”
Top scientists adore Al Gore.
David Schindler, Feb. 27: “I recall an event at the Smithsonian a couple of eons ago that I thought did a great job, & got lots of media coverage. AL Gore spoke….”
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “Al Gore has a very well written article in the NY Times.”
Forget the science, we want energy rationing!
William Jury, Feb. 27: “I am seeing formerly committed public sector leaders backing off from positions aimed at reducing our fossil fuel dependence.”
They’ll forget Climategate if an authoritative institution repeats the same old line.
Paul Falkowski, Feb. 27: “An NRC report would be useful.”
Steve Carpenter, Feb. 27: “We need a report with the authority of the NAS that summarizes the status and trends of the planet, and the logical consequences of plausible responses.”
David Tilman: Feb. 27: “It would seem wise to have the panel [writing the report] not include IPCC members.”
Stephen H. Schneider, Mar. 1: “National Academies need to be part of this….”
Stephen H. Schneider, Mar 1: “It is imperative that leading scientific societies coordinate a major press event….”
The last academic defense: It’s McCarthyism!
Stephen H. Schneider, Mar. 1: “…Senator Inhofe, in a very good impression of the infamous Joe McCarthy, has now named 17 leading scientists involved with the IPCC as potential climate ‘criminals’. …. I am hopeful that all the forces working for honest debate and quality assessments will decry this McCarthyite regression, and by name point out what this Senator is doing by a continuing smear campaign. …. Will the media have the fortitude to take this on–I’m betting a resounding ‘yes!’” [Note that Schneider has already sent this e-mail to the media asking for their help.]
To read all the e-mails that CEI has obtained, go to the PDF posted here.
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“This is a political fight, and we’ve got to get dirty”
I give them two thumbs up. They’ve achieved their goal. It makes me so happy I ultimately decided to go into engineering and not science.
This kind of smear campaign does nothing to restore the credibility of climate science. The exact opposite, in fact.
i don’t get why this is still possible… don’t they ever learn not to say this stuff in official foia-able emails?
Amazing that this Falkowski fellow thinks a snowless Vancouver means something. We frequently have no snow in the winter.
Having the Olympics on our North Shore mountains was always a gamble.
What’s less of a gamble is that some scientists today will spew any old nonsense without having done some empirical research.
Are these guys using drugs? They are getting close to UFOs and other conspiracy theories.
You should have printed the email where Erhlich goes “Muahahahaha” at the end.
So much for that rebuilding trust idea.
I really really hope they do it. I also hope the AAAS and NAS endorse it to the hilt. And finally I hope reasonable people see through the hyperbole and finally see exactly who it is that is peddling this cr@p.
I’m sure that these guys ae doing their campaigning in their own time..and not on the taxpayers dime.
No doubt their pubilcly available timesheets, together with the audited accounts of the money spent from any research grants will show this clearly and unequivocally.
Just in case anyone is so impolite as to have any doubts.
Some quotes from Paul Falkowski
– Regardless of the evidence, cell phones cause brain cancer.
– One result is that fewer and fewer Americans want their children to be scientists.
– I feel I must help us use our scientific expertise and prowess to push back against the wall of disinformation and lies that has come to be the common forum of what is the news and information flow.
Wow, this is what the best scientist are today? Obviously, we all receive a big check from the fossil fuel industries, are here to deceive, we don’t care about the future of our children, we spread lies and disinformation.
I am pro nuclear and shouting to anyone that will listen to switch from fossil fuel ASAP to nuclear if we are to survive and provide clean power to humanity.
I have been documenting and searching for the truth for years, telling my two child about it all.
I have help my children be aware of alarmist and understand that the real debate is not climate change, but energy.
I feel personally attacked by many of these statements.
Please let me know if you find anything on my blog that would show that I lie, being paid by big oil or there to deceive.
Like you say, those people are afraid of their job.
http://simonfiliatrault.blogspot.com/
I’m so glad these Climate er… Biologists are getting into the fray…
There’s that word again. “Transformational”. I don’t think it means what they think it means (with apologies to Inigio Montoya). When Falkowski, Erhlich and Schneider have served their purpose, Soros will discard them like a kleenex.
Tsk, tsk, tsk …
I sense a nightmare world ruled by scientists and a technological elite. But then, it’s been written about some time ago, hasn’t it?
These guys really need to get out into the real world.
Dear Myron
A great piece which would be better without the descriptive headlines. The best thing about the Climatgate emails was just reading them and judging them for ones self.
We need a separation of science and state, as science has become religion.
PS
The Great Green House Conspiracy
Is this the same Steven Schneider at about 6.30mins in. Was he telling the truth then?
(Video originally seen on Watts)
these activists are talking as if they own and control the national academy of science. and they probably do.
Anybody got the email address for Big Oil. I need to get ahold of them and let them know I haven’t been receiving my checks. Maybe they’ve got the wrong address in their files.
Paul Ehrlich’s book “The Population Bomb” was used as a first-year biology textbook in many colleges in the 70’s. He was responsible for poisoning the minds of a generation, and the repercussions have been evidenced in childlessness, abortion, Luddite-ism, “green” associated with self-hatred and self-abnegation.
The damage he’s already done is really significant, seeing as he was wrong about everything — but he’s apparently not done yet.
There goes snow in Vancouver again. Why don’t these jerks just say what they really mean… “Hey retards, if it’s warm it’s climate if it’s cold it’s weather. WTF do you not get about that?”
To call these people scientists is a great disservice to real scientists, both past and present.
The McCarthy line is really too much. What is it, Sourcewatch.org? Every bad word spoken against AGW and every suspected link to Big Oil is documented there – there’s even a page against Pielke Jr.
Are all the alarmist “scientists” in this group biologists ?
Well, here we have right here…proof that the planet is just a scorchin up more than ever…
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/evidence-of-man-made-global-warming-grows-stronger/19384663?icid=main|main|dl2|link2|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fworld%2Farticle%2Fevidence-of-man-made-global-warming-grows-stronger%2F19384663
To me, it will forever be, Climategrate…
What Section 63? Distribution and Repurchase of Securities? What are these climate scientistists into? Collusion monies with corporations 5 to 1? Don’t understand.
I believe Inhofe has made a tactical error, he’s given them the opportunity to imply that the scientists are being persecuted for their beliefs, that’s what they’re putting out.
They seem to be ignoring the fact that the science is in tatters because of obvious malfeasance and they clearly thing Mann shouldn’t have been investigated, not because they didn’t think there may have been malfeasance, but because to do so was giving in to the forces of evil.
If I was working in climate science and was surrounded by these eco-zealots in senior positions I’d keep my head down and say I supported AGW else I suspect I’d be toast.