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”.
The author says:
“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.”
Yes, you’re wrong. Simply look at the number of papers Roy Spencer has published. Or maybe Stephen Hawking: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=a+hawking&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=
But I wouldn’t call you an ignorant heathen.
So, it has come down to :”If you can’t attack the science, you attack the scientist”.
“The market for mitigation credits is now worth an estimated $2.4 billion a year in the United States”
“The trade in ‘species credits’ amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”
“In 2009, the voluntary carbon market was worth about $387 million worldwide,…”
“In 2009, the global carbon market was … $144 billion for the regulated market”
“The money raised (Mexican forest tax) has grown from US$15 million in 2003 to $150 million this year.”
“Similar schemes are under way in countries such as China, the United States, South Africa and Costa Rica”
Where, can you guess these ideas and facts are floating around? In the latest issue of Nature magazine, no less.
These people are running a protection racket on nature itself. Plain and simple. Only it is couched in good terms and published in the peer-reviewed literature.
Nature Volume: 466, Pages: 184–185 Date published: (08 July 2010)
DOI: doi:10.1038/466184a
More…
“Imagine, for example, that the Brazilian government introduces regulation that imposes a value on the environmental services of a rainforest. The regulation would make it more expensive to destroy the rainforest, thereby increasing the production costs of whatever replaces it, for example, soya beans or cattle. As these costs would be passed on to the consumer, this would push people and companies to find ways of producing without destroying the ecosystem. At the same time, it would make it more profitable to protect the rainforest, thus creating a market for conservation.”
“Green blackout
Careless environmental ideology was a root cause of the blackout that cut off power to tens of thousands of Toronto homes, businesses, and institutions for several hours during rush hour on Monday this week.
Although a full technical report on the event is not yet available, it is clear that some transformer station equipment at the Manby transformer station in west Toronto failed. Transmission planning experts have long identified a failure at Manby as a known risk to the reliability of Toronto’s electricity supply. Three years ago, the Ontario Power Authority published a transmission plan for the province that included a detailed scenario analysis for a failure at Manby almost identical to Monday’s event. Unfortunately, that transmission plan got shelved, replaced by government directives to support more wind and solar generators.
Transmission experts have also long recognized that the power transmission network upon which Toronto depends is the most vulnerable to blackouts of the type experienced on Monday of any major financial centre in North America. Toronto’s special weakness is its lack of local transmission system redundancy.
The transmission system serving downtown Toronto is operated at its limit, with no capacity to spare. As a direct result, maintenance schedules are squeezed or eliminated, a factor that may well have played a role in initiating the event. The ability of grid operators to transfer load from one transmission path to another in the event of failures is severely limited, a factor that directly determined the scale and duration of the blackout. The large number of customers blacked out and the duration of blackout was a function of the system’s flawed design.
Environmentalists, including the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, the David Suzuki Foundation, World Wildlife Foundation Canada, Peter Tabuns of the Ontario NDP and Toronto Councillor Paula Fletcher, have played leading roles in blocking the development of another transmission line into the city’s core.
Many environmental organizations, working with the Ontario government’s Trillium Foundation (which distributes the government’s gambling profits), the Ontario Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure and others formed an umbrella group in 2007 called Transforming Toronto. The new group was developed specifically to oppose a new high-voltage transmission line into Toronto. In Ontario’s highly politicized electricity policy environment, affected electric utilities and agencies have not challenged Transforming Toronto’s fluffy assertions that transmission reinforcement is not needed.”
http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/columnists/3247806/story.html
…-
“To The Good Citizens of Toronto Sweltering Through This Heat Wave
Just think of it as practice.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014382.html
@Mike Lorrey – And i was doing so well today that i haven’t engaged my brain all day now you’ve taught me something with your very good post.
And if you put the law behind the warmists i’m sure they’d prove to be facist’s as they’d happily give up trying to assasinate your char. if they could simply cart you off to the Arctic to measure ice gain or feed you to the polar bears (Of course as i said only if it was legal).
Unfortunately for the CAGW, Climategate changed the game. Only die-hard believers left, with the political will destroy economies to save the planet gone for good.
The sceptics have won this battle, but other opportunities to crush the freedom of individuals will be sought by the ruling elite. Luckily we are many while they are few.
There is a difference between being a conservationist and being a climate skeptic. Being your basic New England cheap chap (Use it up, wear it out, do without), I have pretty much replaced all the fluorescent lights in my house with SMD LEDs. (The billion little leds on wafers stacked together have thermal problems that cause the wafers to detach from their power bus, do not use them if they are in any sort of capsule that traps the heat.) So I run my own well, run my solar system, use Leds for lighting and generally use less power. However, there are some places that only an incandescent will do. High temperature environments do not take well to either florescents or leds.
I will admit that part of my motivation is to “get off the grid”. The clowns in DC can’t get at me that way.
Everyone with any sense at all is in favor of “better environmental conditions and cleaning up a little of the garbage we’ve created in the last hundred years or so”, but –and this is where it get’s sticky– there is the truly vast majority in favor of a cleaner and better neighborhood, city, state, country; and there is the truly loudmouthed minority in favor of worldwide retribution, restitution, and restriction programs and, oh yes, total revolution. It’s not a realy distinct “we vs they” fight; it’s much more crazy than that. I guess that’s why our poor old old old politicians are sooooo confused.
Boris says 9:03
Sorry Boris- but I don’t think you know a nut from a plum.
“They” aren’t the enemy.
The narrative they put about is what needs to be dealt with.
Remember “I have met the enemy and the enemy is us”, that’s just how it is .People will always have their point of view without being “evil” or driven by base motives they just see it differently.
Surely the strength of our argument, backed up with science, is sufficient over time without going to war with the other side. Ad hominem attacks are just plain tacky whether against the individual or the group.
We are correct, no doubt about it, we just need to remove their arguments using facts and logic not “sport”.
If we are going to go round in meandering circles, would it not be easier to just get steve to post something about arctic ice….?
Keith Battye says:
July 8, 2010 at 8:01 am
“They” aren’t the enemy.……………………..
And if “facts and logic” do not suffice? Will you surrender to the other point of view?
The question here is one of commitment. And when the stakes are high, so is the commitment. And if both sides are equally committed to their point of view? Carried to the logical extreme it does indeed mean eventual war. Real war, with real weapons. As has been demonstrated time, and time again, throughout history when differing points of view were irreconcilable.
Was the exclusion of skeptic scientists prompted by a coordinated effort of ex-Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan & activists at Greenpeace?
“Smearing Global Warming Skeptics”: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/smearing_global_warming_skepti.html
“The lack of climate skeptics on PBS’s ‘Newshour’ “: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.html
Ref – Keith Battye says:
July 8, 2010 at 8:01 am
“They” aren’t the enemy….”
_______________________
On the other side of the veil this is probably true. On this side, your ‘worst’ enemies are yourself and those most like you. You are in a conflict if they want to force their will upon you, or you wish to force your will upon them. It’s a very human condition, and there is no escape. As they used to say on TV – ‘There can be only one!’
Seriously! This is a conflict. We may be able to dissuade some, perhaps most, but the truly dangerous ones will then be all the more dangerous. With them…? Keep your eyes open and your powder dry;-)
Vilabolo,
The difference is, the 17 on the Inhofe list have all violated scientific integrity standards, and many of them have skirted perfectly valid FOIA requests, and quite of few of them have testified before Congress giving Congress information that now looks like it may have been completely manufactured rather than factual.
You see, for most of those 17, it is fairly likely that their activities can be PROVEN TO HAVE VIOLATED EXISTING LAW.
What are you called if you can be proven to have violated existing law? Hint: Criminal
I am afraid if the shoe fits they are going to have to wear it.
It isn’t a “witch hunt” if the people on the Inhofe list are actually guilty, and that looks like it may very well be the case.
On the PNAS list, the only thing the blacklisted scientists are guilty of is speaking the truth, which is of course heretical to the religion of AGW.
So you mirror analogy is actually quite apt. A mirror shows you THE REVERSE IMAGE of the actual object. So, on the one hand, you have a blacklist of scientists who are attempting to tell the truth, and on the other hand, you have the Inhofe list of 17 “scientists” that very likely did actually violate existing law.
Berniel,
The black list was NOT made by a State Institution? Where do the universities and PNAS get > 90% of their funding from for “climate studies”… the GOVERNMENT perhaps?. PNAS might not be an “official” government institution, but it knows where its money is coming from.
stephen richards says:
July 8, 2010 at 1:16 am
-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.
Here is a list of 500 scientists who disagree with Global warming published by the Heartland Institute,
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/21971/Research_by_Hundreds_of_Scientists_Undermines_Global_Warming_Alarmism.html
Günther Kirschbaum says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:19 pm
“What is ‘Fruedism’?”
Use your grey cells? The name “Freud” should pop up automatically.
If not, check for the color of the cells. If green, go to a doctor.
Hopefully he will not use anything from Freud when trying to fix the situation.
Curiousgeorge says:
July 8, 2010 at 8:38 am . . . .
That being the case we need to up our game because far too many of our posts are totally interchangeable with theirs with very little modification.
I suppose I feel that we are on the high ground and rushing down the hill into their lowlands will not serve us well.
Be careful getting down into the mud to fight the pig because the pig likes it down there.
Keith Battye says:
July 8, 2010 at 9:18 am
That being the case we need to up our game because far too many of our posts are totally interchangeable with theirs with very little modification………………………
That’s true. However; this issue moved from the scientific arena to the political arena many, many, years ago. The “science” is merely a convenience and is nearly irrelevant to the real dispute – that being political power. It will be won or lost on political ground (or mud if you prefer ), not on the ivory pedestal of science.
“Boris says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Ha…I knew the mass exonerations of Mann and Jones would push WUWT toward the nuttery right. Kind of like the way the 911 Commission report made truthers even crazier.”
I loved the 9/11 Commission report. What a great PDF to download and read. I never knew that Hani Hanjour was “the most experienced of all the 9/11 pilots”. Wow. A few quotes from the owner of the flight school “he was a complete waste of time” and “he could not fly at all”. Then there were the 2 certified flight instructors who checked him out a month before 9/11 “he could not keep the plane level” and “he had trouble controlling the plane”. For a Cessna 172? 1 prop and 2 seats? I think Commander Kolstand was right on his take.
Evil do exist as cancer do exists: A group of cells, enough idiotized as to believe themselves more powerful than God’s organism, rebel against him
The heading above refers to “a famous statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group”
“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came…
Smokey says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:09 pm
“The PNAS blacklist names political undesirables. Rather, people should be free to offer their opinions unimpeded by political correctness. Blacklists like the PNAS list do not allow that. They are the equivalent of the Supreme Soviet Politburo.”
Correct!
And those who support it are anti-democratic. “Socialisticly inclined”, I would say.
Smokey, isnt this list illegal according to the Constitution?
The Constitution of the United States of America is there to protect citizens against that kind of madness. Thats what it is made for.
If we analyze the issue philosophically we shall see that this is the eternal struggle between opposites: agnosticism and gnosticism, the first one denying knowledge to man, the second one affirming it.
But it would be rather more constructive to see it as thermodynamics see it:
Entropy, going to the maximum order: Death, and Negentropy, going to the maximum freedom and disorder. Tanathos,death and Eros, life. Then, it is not a matter of the prevalence of protons over electrons or these over protons but the elegant, peaceful, dynamic coexistence and equilibrium of water.
The Hockey Team is a Marxist organization
We all saw Mann, at the Washington rally, shouting with the crowd: “The people, united, will never be defeated”
That was the first time in my long life the last thing I could have imagined being heard in an american street, which was a daily scene during the 1960’s in south america.
Once more, they naively believe that imposing a centralized order works: It doesn’t, we have already tried it and it didn’t. Ideology is seen and thought as good by good hearted people, however that is a total mistake.
Under such regimes, believe me, the only ones who can eat, yes, eat everyday, are party people.
One day, i was riding in a public transportation bus; being an employee working for a enterprise owned by the government, I use received two bags of food every mont; in it two bottles of corn oil. Passengers looked at me, some with anger and some others trying to see what I was carrying in those bags, until two people couldn’t wait any longer and offered me to buy one oil bottle, which was impossible to find in those days in the market….
There are a lot of stories like these that tell you the stupid levels human idiocy can reach. It seems, everything indicates that, that you are going that way.