Mike Lorrey looks at the PNAS skeptics paper and some historical issues related to it. – Anthony
My primary area of accomplishment in life, other than virtual worlds development, is in political activism. Despite my technical training, I am a very political animal, having helped Killington, Vermont vote to secede from that state in protest of excessive taxation, and having organized the effort to eminent domain the New Hampshire vacation estates of Supreme Court Justices Souter and Breyer after the Kelo decision, as political theater to “encourage” the two political parties these gentlemen hailed from to support my state constitutional amendment to restrict eminent domain.
I was a founding member of the Free State Project, yes, one of *those* libertarians, guilty as charged. I’ve managed the election campaigns of both libertarians and republicans, and treat politics as a sport or quest to improve our country’s “more perfect union” with principles couched in pragmatic use of political theater and holding petty fascists to their own standards. I’ve studied the Constitution and the writings of the founding fathers extensively, as well as their Enlightenment forebears, and a lot of the little known history of this country. I’ve also studied the history of various flavors of tyranny, in particular the various modern flavors, communism, fascism, islamism, and especially liberalist majoritarian tyranny.
So it is from this perspective that I approached the global warming issue, observing the players and how they act, trying to tease out their hidden agendas, if there are any. Originally I believed the dogma. I founded a company in Seattle focusing on energy conservation safety lighting, inventing new lighting products that were highly rated by the EPA’s Greenlights program. I was once the poster boy of Al Gore’s reinventing government campaign, getting government agencies to buy my new technology despite not having prior issued paperwork, etc. Eventually I was given access by the energy department to a lot of material that exposed to me how screwed up the energy conservation business is, and I started to challenge claims about global warming orthodoxy. I saw how Al Gore, in the early Clinton administration, sabotaged the proposed carbon tax, turning it into a BTU tax, so that coal produced by his home state of Tennessee would not be the most highly taxed energy source. So I questioned more, and was cast out by the ruling party from golden boy status. So I questioned global warming a lot more, online, publicly.
This caused a certain degree of conflict within my family. As some of you know, my cousin is a professional climatologist. When he was still working on his doctorate, certain persons of influence attempted to threaten his academic career before it really got started in order to coerce me into removing statements I’d made about global warming from certain influential email lists. This was in the 2000-2001 timeframe, so I got a pretty early taste of the sort of “tricks” that the high inquistors of the Church of Global Warming would pursue in order to enforce their orthodoxy against heretics like myself, and when I acted offended, about my first amendment rights, I was made to look like the bad guy.
This is why this recent essay about modern political correctness being merely a form of social marxism developed during WWI by a group of renegade marxists who sought to use Freudism to spread marxism through society struck a chord with me. It illuminated a lot of what I’d been thinking over the past years, and perfectly explains why the AGW alarmists behave the way they do. The witch hunts, the character assasination, the Alinsky method du jour. The Hockey Team is a Marxist organization, not in the traditional economic sense (though their prescription for “saving the planet” is extensively marxist) but in how they operate toward their opponents. This is not unusual, though. It has become standard practice in academia to engage in persecution of dissidents from orthodoxy.
This fact is illustrated quite clearly in the new National Academy of Scientists Blacklist of Climate “Deniers” this is the list that is online, referenced by the PNAS paper trying to make skeptics into media untouchables. At first glance, its pretty amusing that the author of this list ranks skeptics by the number of references in the published record to their FOURTH published paper, with the claim that anybody who has only published a few papers, even if they are “big papers” is clearly a lightweight. As if Einstein wasn’t immediately a rock star when he published his first paper on Special Relativity, eh?
Maybe I’m an ignorant heathen, but it seems to me that someone who can’t get their most important ideas on the same subject, with sufficient proof to convince the entire world of the truth of their writing, published in a few papers, is simply regurgitating the same old tired pap and really isn’t intelligent enough to have even one “big paper” in their lives. But I may be wrong. However, the ranking this guy does seems to rank a lot of the best skeptics at the top: Pielke, Jr., Dyson, Lindzen, Tipler, etc. It seems to me, though, that the number of cites should be divided by the number of years since their PhD to give an idea of their relative productivity in their field… However, when you shift the ranking to go on the cites of climate related papers, you get a more impressive list:
68: Roger A Pielke Sr, FAGU
446: James J O’Brien, FAGU
1649: Kirill Y Kondratyev
747: John R Christy
710: Reid A Bryson
278: Sherwood Idso
1562: Robert C Balling
1410: Patrick J Michaels
136: Richard Lindzen, FAGU
1198: G Cornelis van Kooten
1686: Sultan Hameed
954: Willie H Soon
1503: S Frederick Singer, FAGU
625: Petr Chylek, FAGU
1024: James A Moore
500: Roy W Spencer
1230: Nils-Axel Moerner
1651: George Taylor
These are the top 15. Sure, they don’t have NAMES like Dyson or Tipler, but we all know who most of these guys are from their climate work that tends to debunk the AGW garbage, and which tends to get published, and cited by others. I’ll try to post a link to the excel file I made from scraping the PNAS blacklist.
The entire list is essentially made from the names of any scientist who has ever signed a letter, petition, or public advertisement expressing doubt about the AGW orthodoxy, IPCC, or the Hockey Team. SO the list really ISN’T about whether their science is for or against the AGW orthodoxy, the list is meant to intimidate and damage the reputations of anybody who has dared to publicly question the absolutist “we have a consensus” political games being played by those who are intentionally politicising climate science to pursue their leftist agenda. This is classic Alinsky tactics. There is no valid scientific purpose for this PNAS paper or this blacklist. It is a political showboating that is going on under the guise of “science”.
mike, thanx for the essay.
however, it is vital this fight for scientific accuracy on the subject of CAGW does not fall into the left/right political pit. there are sceptics of all political persuasions and what unites many will be opposition to the money grab and the creation of another unsustainable financial bubble created out of thin air.
7 July: UK Tele: James Delingpole: Never mind the Climategate whitewash – what about our new £50 billion annual climate bill?
The new figure our glorious Coalition intends to squander – every single year for the next 40 years – is £50 billion, all in order to deal with a problem that doesn’t actually exist.
We learned this horror in questions posed in the Lords earlier this week by Lord Lawson of Blaby in response to something called the Green Investment Bank Commission on “Unlocking investment to deliver Britain’s low carbon future” – aka the Wigley Report.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: “I am grateful to the Leader of the House. Is my noble friend aware that only a couple of days ago, Mr Bob Wigley, the chairman of the previous Government’s Green Investment Bank Commission, stated that meeting the requirements of the absurd Climate Change Act will cost the United Kingdom £50 billion a year, every year, for the next 40 years. How-above all in this age of austerity-can this possibly be justified?”
I don’t know which is more terrifying – Lawson’s shock revelation or the nauseating mix of delusional arrogance and complacency in the response from the coalition’s parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change Lord Marland.
Lord Marland: ” I am very grateful to noble Lords for fighting over a question for me; it is quite rare in this job. However, I must correct my noble friend; the Green Investment Bank was an initiative set up by our own party and one must not rule out the phenomenal business opportunities that it offers for this country. We must have 2 million heat pumps by 2020. We must have bioenergy, which will create 100,000 jobs at a value of £116 million. Wind alone should create 130,000 jobs at a value of £36 billion. At a time when the country needs investment, these are heartening numbers.”
Why is that Lord Marland’s boast reminds me so much of my favourite Daily Mash story – the one about ex-chancellor Alastair Darling’s ingenious scheme to pay off the national debt by selling unicorns to the Chinese?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100046507/never-mind-the-climategate-whitewash-what-about-our-new-50-billion-annual-climate-bill/
Wikipedia: Jonathan Peter Marland, Baron Marland (born 14 August 1956) is a British businessman and former Treasurer of the Conservative Party…
In 2010, he was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change [12], serving on Her Majesty’s Government frontbench
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Marland,_Baron_Marland
Sarkozy, Merkel and their ilk are as keen to create the CO2 bubble as are Obama and Lula, not to mention the Chinese.
it is on this level we can all agree and the fight is far from over. more power to the sceptics on all political sides or none.
Bill Illis: Your premise sounds nice and reasonable. Unfortunately, the big Government advocates have decided that C02 is the culprit and YOU and YOUR FAMILY are the cause of earth ending warming that has not occured. Never mind that there is no evidence of their claims and the weather has always changed. It is still YOUR FAULT!
Alexander Feht says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:11 pm
. . . In the USA, both parties are green. In the UK, all three parties are green.
There is one party in any modern Western state, and it is green.
Not to mention that the green banner of Al Gore’s religion merges seamlessly with the green banner of the fundamentalist Islam. Jews, take note.
***********************
VILLABOLO:
Let’s see. Republicans are “green”?!?! And, of course, Al the Demon Gore is spiritually seamlessly merged with Islamic fundamentalism.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzHtm1jhL4&hl=en_US&fs=1]
[Thank you for providing your theme song. ~dbs]
Bill Illis says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:41 pm
“It would be nice if the debate changed to WHAT is right or wrong versus WHO is right or wrong.”
I disagree. The question goes directly to who is right and who is wrong. It should be WHAT, but that isn’t what occurred. If we’d not passed prohibitive and expensive laws, we could still debate the question. However, we went beyond the scope of the question and made it an assertion.
All the while, we know, from this website and others, but particularly Mr. Watts, no one can say, with any reasonable assertion of knowledge whether the earth is warming or not. Check the weather stations and the statistical perjury occurring. No one can say with any reasonable assertion what the optimum temp should be, so we don’t know if we’re running to the best temp or not, even if the first assertion is correct. Maybe we should be a bit warmer. Lastly, if we are warming, we don’t KNOW the cause of the alleged warming. Many have said CO2, but that assertion is only a hypothesis, many others have attributed the alleged warming to other factors.
Given the uncertainties, why go through the draconian, totalitarian measures? Who is indeed the question for me. Even if their assumptions are correct, they can’t possibly know they are correct, yet it is insisted on human suffering to correct something they don’t know is in error.
Yes, beyond the question of right, it goes to morality. I see the CAGW crowd as woefully lacking in such a base, human quality.
This is the kind of place bad scientists belong.
Could we come to an understanding that the word “breath” is a noun and “breathe” is a verb and use them appropriately in our posts? AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
[Reply: Why certainly, Sisyphus. A simple task. ~dbs, mod.]
Smokey,
If Heartland or CATO had put this list together showing how many Scientists are critical of AGW I wonder if the same claims of ‘Blacklist’ would be heard.
pat says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:57 pm (Edit)
“mike, thanx for the essay.
however, it is vital this fight for scientific accuracy on the subject of CAGW does not fall into the left/right political pit. there are sceptics of all political persuasions and what unites many will be opposition to the money grab and the creation of another unsustainable financial bubble created out of thin air. ”
I agree entirely, Pat. If you read my entire essay you’d see that I dismiss the whole left/right thing as inapplicable. The idea that you can assign two ideologies that believe in the same means to similar ends to extreme opposite ends of some fictitious single axis political spectrum is laughable. Libertarians like to promote two axes in their Nolan Chart to help illustrate this, but even this merely covers domestic policies and does nothing about foreign relations. I try to make it clear here that I distinguish marxist policies from marxist tactics. You can have one without the other. Marxist tactics are a toolset for undermining a stably governed society with a revolutionary movement. It is not necessary that the forces behind the instability be leftists, or rightists. In this case, it is some scientists using marxist tools to undermine science in order to enforce a politically motivated orthodoxy against other scientists.
Scientists in general should be aware enough to recognise these tactics when they arise and agressively reject them from infiltrating science, no matter what agenda is being pursued by the practitioners of these tactics.
Mike Lorrey says:
July 7, 2010 at 7:56 pm
I behaved as a tin pot fascist, “victimizing” the poor supreme court justices, in order to motivate their allies in the two major parties into voting for the Eminent Domain Restriction Amendment that I was the actual author of. Thus I was a non-marxist using marxist tactics to achieve anti-marxist ends. Some might say it was unethical of me to do that, but in reality, since I, as a libertarian, was excluded from the electoral political process by rigged election laws, it was perfectly acceptable for me to use other means to get elected officials to do what I wanted…
Interesting post, and interesting followup comment.
To try to help steer the debate back towards scientific relevance, I would like to mention the book by Paul Feyerabend called “Against Method”. In it, Paul Feyerabend described the way scientific viewpoints are advanced and promoted and achieve dominance not by revealing Scientific Truth through rational debate and logical reason in an orderly sphere of academic neutrality, but by kicking, gouging, maligning, cajoling, evangelising, outmanouvreing, lying and cheating. Just like politics. He is not saying that this is how it should be, but that it is how it is.
Science is not seperate from the rest of the sphere of human intellectual activity, and it’s players are not any less human than the rest of humanity, with all it’s faults and traits. He summarized the situation with the phrase “Anything goes”, which is pretty much what Mike descibes in the way he got what he wanted in his battle with the state.
It’s also the way the warmists have tried to make their view dominant, using a mixture of rabble rousing, false certainty, infiltration of institutions and their quality control procedures, and media manipulation, all resting on a corpus (or corpse as we see it) of scientific knowledge which claims legitimacy.
Sceptics have fought back through the uncontrolled media (blogosphere) and organised their own conferences and press releases, championing legitimate scientists who oppose or at least nuance the warmist stance with their output.
The great danger here is in making stereotyped caricatures out of the actors on both sides of the divide. There are warmies who genuinely believe the world is in danger and practice good science which feeds into the warmist agenda. at the other end of the spectrum there are cycnical manipulators such as Gore and Romm, who peddle falsehood and political bias under the guise of sciency propaganda. There is a coterie of salaried hangers on who want to advance their careers on the back of the green agenda etc etc.
People who strongly believe in the scientific method and simply want good science to prevail are rightly appalled at the misuse and manipulation of the data and theories. It seems to me the way to getting climate science, and a few other sciences back on track is by reinforcing oversight of quality control, and giving the informed public more of a say in the directing of public funding towards research.
In the C19th there was a strong push from the enlightenment science community for a seperation of church and state. Reading the main post, I think many will be pushing for a seperation of science and state. The danger is, once a field of human endevour is cut off from the political sphere, it withers intellectually, much as the church has over the C20th.
Science unable to influence policy loses much of it’s raison d’etre. Science manipulated by policy makers loses much of it’s moral and literal authority, whichever colour of administration is in power at the time. To polarize the science debate around political categories simply drives the whole enterprise further into the mire of personal prejudice and mutual misunderstanding. National politics doesn’t export well.
They say the only certainties in life are Death and taxes. The death of the current adminstration will be followed by another which still needs to raise taxes. Those of us who cherish science and the truth can only hope it will be honest about why we will all be paying more for energy in the future.
jcrabb says:
July 7, 2010 at 10:40 pm (Edit)
“If Heartland or CATO had put this list together showing how many Scientists are critical of AGW I wonder if the same claims of ‘Blacklist’ would be heard.”
That is irrelevant. The PNAS article clearly states that they assembled this list with the stated purpose of using it to inform their media lackeys about who is politically reliable and who is not in AGW orthodoxy. Therefore, it is a blacklist.
We bloggers are not MSM, while AGW people are deeply woven into the major media and major government agencies, thus we are incapable of being oppressors when we don’t hold government power or media influence, while AGW elites are all about power and influence.
Can I be on the black list too? Can I can I can I paaleeezzze????
Maybe we could have an annual party / awards ceremony for folks who have been on the black list the longest. Issue little medallions with the date one first made the list?
Surely there is some way we can recognize these folks as being clearly the best and the brightest… Perhaps an annual research grant for the Most Influential on the Blacklist or “best blacklisted paper of the year” award? I’d kick in some bucks for that…
E.M.Smith says:
July 7, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Issue little
medallionsenamelled yellow smiley badges with the date one first made the list?There, improved it for you. How’s the competition going Anthony?
Great ideas E.M.
Villabolo (whoever you are):
1) Yes, most Republicans in the US and most Tories in Britain make noises in favor of the AGW/ACC scam. This poison pervades the whole fabric of our society; Vatican is as green as EPA.
2) All green media outfits (such as BBC World News) are active supporters of Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbolla. The leftist anti-Semitism is established and widespread in Europe, and is becoming fashionable among American socialists.
Don’t pretend that you were born yesterday, please.
Using the F, N or C word is traditionally taken to mean you have lost the argument. Losing your job /funding is not the same as going to the gulag. It may be alleged there is a Hollywood blacklist. Unequal access to the media is annoying but largely misses the point. The big climate deal failed. The public are not prepared to take the hit on living standard. Public belief in climate warming is like the everyday Church of England folk. There is a vague feeling they should believe, but they still prefer to go shop on Sunday rather than go to Church. You can pass bills to censor Films/DVDs/internet as Christians we need to protect children. But if the target is divorce or birth control/ we are whole not lot Christians, as we are directly concerned.
So if you are a mild warmer or cooler, this is not life and death stuff, and we need to take a tone that reflects that. Which in turn means when people make comments about going after 17 Warmer or any warmers we clearly have to oppose it. You can tackle the idea but not the person. You can go after an error of fact or interpretation.
Even malpractice is in practice at the limit and needs a light touch, as there appears not to be common standards.
Bill,
IMO the “what” is valuing the title above the actual claim. In the AGW debate the title is the credentials of the individual or group who makes the claim. It is the (academic) hierarchy which determines those credentials, with the hierarchy being instrumental in marginalizing the individual, as discussed by Mike Lorrey.
In the context of AGW/ACC, the claim is that there exists current and foreseeable environmental damage which is due to anthropogenic causes, specifically carbon-based emissions. IMO the best form of denial is one that specific enough to repel straw men from the apologists and has sufficient relevance such that it is apparent that it relates to an essential link in the logical chain of the claim.
I would guess that the particular argument you favour depends on your area of expertise. The point I would like to stress is that your argument should avoid the fallacy (called an appeal to authority) of making a reference to a title in support of that argument. If a reader picks up on your fallacy then he has good reason to abandon the consideration of your argument.
jcrabb says:
July 7, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Smokey,
If Heartland or CATO had put this list together showing how many Scientists are critical of AGW I wonder if the same claims of ‘Blacklist’ would be heard.
That is exactly the point. They wouldn’t and they haven’t.
I’ll stick in my oar again on behalf of my button-idea: A pair of upraised hands snapping a hockey stick, with a large-type caption around the rim that reads, “Gore Resisters League.” It’s a clear, clever “grabber.” (Would work for T-shirts too.) Nothing else comes close.
Ditto the queen. (Nattering to the UN on the matter now.)
From the green-agenda website, a small sample of the attitudes and politics behind the AGW attempts to establish central control —
“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society,
which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
– David Brower,
founder of Friends of the Earth
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
– Judi Bari,
principal organiser of Earth First!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the
United States. De-development means bringing our
economic system into line with the realities of
ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another
United States. We can’t let other countries have the same
number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US.
We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
– Michael Oppenheimer,
Environmental Defense Fund
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty,
reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
– Professor Maurice King
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place
for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and
plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams,
free shackled rivers and return to wilderness
millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
Arno Arrak described Bjorn Lomborg as the first victim of the warmists. It is worth reminding people (although readers of pro-AGW blogs would be more in need of a reminder) that some of Lomborg’s opponents complained about his work to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) and the DCSD, to its shame, found Lomborg guilty on the following counts:
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
5. Plagiarism;
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results.
At first I thought that some of the items on that list reminded me of Climategate, but I was obviously wrong because the Climategate crew did nothing wrong according to the … what was name of the Committee? I’ve forgotten but never mind. If you wait a few weeks I’m sure that yet another committee will come along to exonerate them.
By the way, anyone who did not follow the Bjorn Lomborg saga can read more about it in the Wikipedia article about him. He was eventually exonerated after the Danish Ministry of Research and Information Technology investigated the DCSD’s handling of the investigation and found it improper.
Actually I don’t think such committees are a very good way of settling scientific questions regardless of whether the persons under investigation are people like Bjorn Lomborg (who actually accepts AGW but thinks money spent combatting it could be better spent on other things like providing clean drinking water) or like Phil Jones and his associates in the Climategate scandal.
“And the irony is that of the quixotic quartet, only one (Schneider) can lay claim to “credibility” and “expertise” – in accordance with their “criteria”!”
As hr001 noted, the name-calling exercise PNAS paper about the ‘expertise’ of ‘skeptics’ is put together by a student, a librarian-blogger and a private foundation officer. They sure missed the irony train on that one.
“We, the undersigned hereby find that skeptics have no expertise and therefore the media should not talk to them, but we don’t have much of the same ‘expertise’ anyway”
Secondly,
If you live out in the rainforest subsisting on yams and small mammals, minding your own business and you are forced to organize your community when you are evicted – you become a “left-wing revolutionary”.
If you live out in the suburbs, minding your own business and you are forced to organize your community and protest against one more ‘tax’ – you automatically become a ‘right-wing, libertarian nutter’, ‘tea-party revolutionary’ etc.
The idea is not to smear you per se, but to smear you, the initial naysayers and early protesters who awaken to some of the negative aspects of any measure (say CAGW-directed policies), so much that, other neutrals will not follow along the same path or discuss the issues raised. It is a form of exclusionary politics.
If AGW is ever falsified this list will have the opposite effect for which it was intended. They may even receive a joint Nobel Prize. :o)
I note that Saul Alinsky is mentioned several times in this post and commentary. People seem to think that his methods are the exclusive property of the looney-liberal-groupthing-left. The New York Times noted several years ago that conservatives and libertarians were reading his works and applying his organizing techniques with good results. (I believe Newt Gingrich was a fan.)
Politics is about power: who has it, how to get it, what to do with it. It’s really silly to to approach scientific issues politically, and to assume that your opponents in scientific debate are the only ones doing the dirty deeds you would never stoop to. Most often, you would, and have, when the opportunity arises.
The defense some Warmers offer here of the blacklist mentality is frightingly illogical. That itself completely corroborates this post.
No comment.
“Fascist Ecology: The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents
Peter Staudenmaier”
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html
[reply] Link seems to be broken, try this: http://www.openwaldorf.com/anthroposophyandecofascism.pdf RT-mod
My conclusion – homo-sapiens is a highly superstitious genus, with an innate need to seek relevance through worship of one religion or another, be it Buddhist, Christianity, Judaism, Hindu, Islam or in the Western post religious era the earth mother Gaia.
Sadly over the ages religious zeal has lead to the persecution of many visionaries of science e.g. Darwin, Copernicus, Galileo to name but a few. Sadly, many of our present day scientific visionaries will have to endure this vilification by ideological zealots and the opportunistic beneficiaries of the greenhouse gravy train until the passage of time inevitably vindicates their efforts.