By Harold Ambler
A new editorial in Nature is startling for what it reveals, especially the fact Paul Ehrlich is a go-to figure about how hard scientists have it when it comes to media access.
Ehrlich is an individual who became an international celebrity by spinning one frightening story after another (about the death of the oceans, for one thing) who maintains, with a straight face, that he and his fellow scientists have an unfair disadvantage in communicating their side of the climate debate.
He is quoted by Nature as saying, regarding the aftermath of Climategate and the fact that skeptic scientists are finally getting a hearing,:
“Everyone is scared shitless, but they don’t know what to do.”
People often forget: Goliath, right before the end, sensed that something was amiss.
For, ironically, among the most pervasive myths attending global warming is the one pitching David against Goliath, in which those touting the risks of damaging climate change are cast as David and Big Oil is Goliath.
The story requires observers to ignore the facts: Media, most scientists, and governments the world over have spent and received so much money on their version of events that they have collectively become Goliath. Observers must ignore, too, the reality that skeptic scientists maintain their intellectual freedom at significant risk. Funding routinely dries up; tenure is denied them; ad hominem attacks of the most vicious variety are launched against them from the Ivory Tower of academia, from the studios of multi-billion dollar news organizations, and from the bully pulpit of government.
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Ref – Anu (10:31:36) :
Pascvaks (09:36:06) :
“It’s worse than anyone at AGW thought”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/Americans-Global-Warming-Concerns-Continue-Drop.aspx
————-————
That’s probably true.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1842179,00.html
More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion.
… 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, “I was protected from harm by a guardian angel.”
With friends like that, who needs scientists ?
____________________________
CORRECTAMUNDO!!
I have a theory you’d probably like – ‘the reason the world is in such a mess is that all the good angels turned in their wings and are down here fooling around’
They beat us with s stick for years and years.
Well guess what?
We’ve taken the stick away from them, and now they are on their knees pleading and crying for us not to beat them back with it.
Screw em! – time to wail away!
Why doesn’t Paul Ehrlich just go ahead and put something in the water and turn us all into zombies.
“”” Herman L (09:25:13) :
I like the way you guys use a biblical metaphor here. Of course, it means absolutely nothing. We are in the 21st century with an open, modern scientific process that accepts only the good science that first gets published and then survives the test of time as other research builds on what has been learned.
Observers must ignore, too, the reality that skeptic scientists maintain their intellectual freedom at significant risk. “””
So just what was it in Johnathon Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels, that in any way related to the realities of the days when that was published.
The imagery in such stories is where the message is.
So in Lilliput the antagonists went to war over whether to open a boiled egg at the big end or the small end (I’m a big ender).
Sort of like the argument over whether high temperatures cause high CO2 levels or whether the cause and effect is the other way round.
As Gulliver pointed out to the Lilliputians; “Hey! it’s the water; stupid!”
Open your eggs anywhere you like; that has little to do with anything.
I do the big end; because then the teaspoon can fit inside the shell easier than at the little end; so like Spock, it’s the logical thing to do.
These fictional imageries serve to get us to think about what the real issues are.
Exactly how CO2 gathers up surface emitted thermal energy (we’re pretty sure it does (most of us)); it really doesn’t have much result on the bottom line, compared to the heavy hitter H2O vapor/H2O liquid/H2O solid; aka clouds.
The reality of the GH effect; as we describe it relative to the atmosphere; regardless of whether real GHs work that way; or irregardless as the case may be; that is not the hill you want to die on.
“Paul Ehrlich is a go-to figure about how hard scientists have it when it comes to media access” because he’s had it so so easy.
If only Julian Simon “The Doomslayer” was still around he’d laugh. For he could not understand why the media endlessly listened to Paul Ehrlich and yet ignored him. Ehrlich also lost his famous bet against Julian Simon, a milestone in the fight of empirical science against….
More of the original writings of The (Great) Doomslayer can be found at http://www.juliansimon.org/
Said the wicked witch of the West: “I’m melting!”
Correction: the **quote is attributable to innitials “W.C.” in the preface to a lecture series by Michael Faraday. Thank you. Probably W. Crookes.
Vincent (10:54:08) :
Partly right. However, we can’t say what is “good” science at the time it is published. I do agree though, that with time, as research builds it is the test of time that is the final arbiter. We can see exactly that – now that time has run out, how the AGW alarmists “science” is starting to crumble under the glare of scrutiny.
Just out of curiosity, Vincent, I’d like to know your take on some verifiable numbers here: how many “errors” are we talking about “under the glare of scrutiny” have been identified, and how many pages are there in the IPCC FAR?
Wonder what Ehrlich would do with this fact: “…Science and Nature have both publically taken positions
against publishing anything that opposes the notion of dangerous anthropogenic warming, while
publishing highly dubious science endorsing the notion.”–Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT
http://www.heartland.org/events/newyork09/pdfs/lindzen.pdf
Whoops, sorry, I forgot that Ehrlich does not deal in facts!
Re: Herman L (Mar 11 09:25),
Herman L, you are being willfully obtuse.
You damned well know that not enough time has elapsed since the alleged “good science” has been published to determine if “survives the test of time” and yet same science is used to scare the public “s***less” and demand economically devastating measures. Your vaunted “open, modern (dare I say post-modern) science process has skipped the survival of time test by prematurely shouting “fire” in the crowded public theatre.
As for us (“you guys”) being able to freely express what we want, most of us in the skeptical blogs that use our real names are happily in the position of being retired or financially independent and not vulnerable to the negative consequences of being labeled “deniers”. There are lots of examples of scientists who waited for retirement before “outing” themselves as skeptics. But with the climategate revelations, skeptics no longer the pariahs that they formerly were. Witness the overtures from Judith Curry.
In future we are going to have to refer to “the FORMERLY prestigious scientific journal Nature.”
Any publication which actually quotes Paul Ehrlich has just waived any claim to “prestigious.”
Or “scientific,” for that matter.
Canada’s Green Party is working on damage control. Here is a puff piece from Elizabeth May, head of the Greens in Canada:
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/11/elizabeth-e-may-don-t-demonize-the-messenger.aspx
Frank Lansner (11:21:40) :
“Ecologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University in California says that his climate colleagues are at a loss about how to counter the attacks. “Everyone is scared shirtless, but they don’t know what to do,”
reply theres a saying (only the criminals are scared of the police) .
Paul Ehrlich…. So he really exist?
My brain sort of imagined him as a historical figure like….[snipped by myself]
That Nature listen to him sounds like taken from a novel.
“Fear” by Michael Crichton comes to mind. This is how sick the western world has become.
Mark N (11:52:59), thanks for bringing up Julian Simon. It was a very happy day for me when I discovered his writings a few years ago. For me his Ultimate Resource II has been a sturdy umbrella against the steadily increasing rain of gloom & doom BS.
The more I think about it, the more often Paul Erlich is in the media, the better it would be for Science.
Hopefully together with Al Gore and Pachauri. Again and again.
I wouldnt mind the Norwegian Foreign minister joining.
They are turning children into zombies with public school indoctrination.
Schools used to teach about the industrial revolution in a positive fashion, before intellectuals started fantasizing about the joys of living in squalor.
Amazing. They really, really, do not seem to have a clue what has happened or why.
And Ehrlich’s whiny “Everyone is scared shitless, but they don’t know what to do” is priceless. It seems to me though, that the not knowing what to do is a function of being “scared shitless”, so his use of the word “but” is illogical.
I actually like Frank’s “scared shirtless” phrase. It has more class. Good thing they aren’t scared pantsless.
Richard Heg (11:33:14) :
SCHOOLS in three US states – Louisiana, Texas and South Dakota – have been told to teach alternatives to the scientific consensus on global warming.
It’s so very sad to see the instruction/indoctrination/terrorizing of little children by this crap. I worry that it fundamentally alters their view of the future to be much less optimistic. That’s a profound problem.
Frank Lansner (11:21:40) :
Ehrlich: “Everyone is scared shirtless, but they don’t know what to do,” he says.”
Lansner: “But why??
Scared of what?” (paraphrase: Having their bad conduct exposed.)
I agree with you, but can I add something else?
Now that the so-called “science” of AGW is being closely scrutinized and those examinations are revealing dodgy “science”, and is getting public exposure and recognition, AGW scientists (read advocates and polemicists) are fearful all their “science” will be successfully refuted.
And, in AGW’s place will be a body of science they CAN NOT successfully refute:
Thus, they will have no answer.
So, beyond the concerns about having unethical conduct exposed, there is the fear that in the end AGW advocates will have no answer.
They will be forced into silence.
And, implicitly, silence is a tacit admission.
Result: Man-made global warming is the biggest HOAX in history.
And, their names will be forever attached to that hoax.
Your legacy is perpetrating a hoax — that’s the biggest fear in Science.
Trust me.
Anu (10:31:36) :
A good question. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, so the point you are trying to make is really irrelevant, and somewhat distasteful. Who was it that said God doesn’t play dice? And what is it called when you disparage an entire class of people based on a belief system?
Anu (10:26:08) :
Not proven. I agree. Do you mind explaining the rationale behind creating the global temperature anomaly, pointing out the places the process could go wrong, and what controls are used to ensure the integrity of the process? How are these controls tested?
To all AGW alarmists and other miscellaneous perveyors of doom: DO NOT DESPAIR! There are still plenty of opportunities ahead! Even if civilization survives 2012, there will be plenty of time to create panic for the approaching ice age!
(I sincerely hope you still have that kerosene heater left over from Y2K!)
treehugger reports that Romm suggests that the right course of action would be for Big O to tour the US with his biggest guns – Holdren, Lubchenko and Chu:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/should-obama-science-team-national-campaign-climate-science.php
Like “Rolling Thunder” or something… “Rolling Warming” sounds nice…
Who actually are these skeptics so well funded by the fossil fuel industry?
Which companies wrote the checks? how much and when?
Where are examples of the media buys and expensive PR campaigns financed by this river of money?
Just wondering….
The journal Nature should be scared, too. This once prestigious publication allowed itself to be commandeered by leftist political science. In fact, when the smoke clears there will be not a few icons tarnished, perhaps beyond redemption. I was bowled over when after climategate Dr. Phil Jones was musing about revisions to one (or two?) of his old Nature papers. If you rob a bank, even giving the money back after you have been caught doesn’t bring redemption. Heck, they take the money back and chuck you in the slammer. I’m sure Nature will eventually wish to remove it and some others from the journal where it otherwise festers and serves as a reminder of the degraded quality of the journal itself.