Vincent Gray advises me via email:
Dear Folks
I have been a subscriber to the “Scientific American” for as long as I can remember. I have been bitterly disappointed at there persistent embrace of the climate change fraud and the publicity they have given to its promoters.
I have still kept subscribing for the occasional genuine scientific articles.
I just received the issue for November 2010 and I almost fell off my chair at two of their articles. They now admit for the first time the sceptics might be right and they invite discussion on their website.
The first article, page 8 entitled “Fudge Factor” tells of a scientist who always found the results which fitted theory when they did not, how this sort of thing happens all too frequently and includes a sentence questioning whether proxy temperatures measured from tree rings are not an example..
The second article, page 58 has a full page photograph of Judith Curry, Climate Heretic who has been consorting with the likes of Chris Landsea, Roger Pielke Sr, Steven McIntyre and Pat Michaels, who has doubts about the entire IPCC process. I had noticed her intelligent letters on the various blogs.
There is a diagram showing how ridiculous the Hockey Stick becomes when you put in the uncertainties.
I have only just finished reading this so I have not so far commented, but I thought you should know that when a magazine like the “Scientific American” permits free discussion on climate change it must mean the beginning of the end.
Cheers
Vincent Gray
==========================
Direct link to Judith Curry’s article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-heretic&page=1
SA = Still on the [insert 4 letter expletive] list of publications I no longer subscribe to or read.
Sometimes it pays to remember that “…and one robin doth not a springtime make”
“Iconoclast”, IPCC reviewer from Day 1, takes CS and AGW apart with a scalpel, comment #14.
KnockJohn says:
October 23, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I considered that Climate Change/Disruption’s days were numbered last week when David Cameron (UK Prime Minister) announced during the UK Government Spending Review that the greatest threat to the UK is now…. cyberwarfare. We have a new “State of Fear” subject as Michael Crichton put it.
Does Cameron mean cyberwarfare as in the Climategate emails/documents release?
This is just an article saying that Judith Curry sees flaws in the IPCC (as does everyone else) and — having studied the skeptics’ arguments at length — that she still believes the science behind man-made global warming is sound and a serious problem.
Where is this great breakthrough of which you speak?
Well it is good to see a report from Vincent Gray and learn that they do get SA in Kiwiland;but evidently a different version from the USA print. I just got my issue; a day after I got their letter telling me that my subscription has officially expired. My page 8 does not contain the first paper that Vincent describes; but the issue does have the Curry article, starting at page 78.
I can’t say I got the same rosy feeling after reading it.
For example, they mention Dr Curry’s venture out into the skeptic blogs, which we all remember from quite recently. Among the “skeptic blogs” that SA mentions; there’s not a hint that WUWT exists, or that Dr Curry spent a good deal of time in dialog here, and the tout c-r as the premier Climate Science blog under GS’s leadership. Not a mention of their selective censorship policy. Towards the end of the SA article they go into assassination mode. and have a large setion headed:-
” Doing Damage “; where Curry is chastised for doing damage to “The concensus”
The SA article is authored by one Michael D. Lemonick, who was for 21 years a science writer for Time Magazine.
And the article is titled “Climate Heretic.” a nice scientific phraseology. and a front page footnote basically says that Governments have to act now.
Well it is the same thing as the fiasco of Obamacare; We have to pass it before they find out what’s in it.
So before the roof caves in on the IPCC and AGW we have to take expensive and irreversible action. Yeah right. And Dr Curry is reported to ave said that the rise in Temperature from a doubling of CO2 could be one degree or it could be 10 degrees.
The author of the SA article reports that the late Stephen Schneider claimed that the “Climate Sensitivity” (Climate “science’s” velocity of light (c)) is known accurately to a few percent. “Few” to me, meens 3-5 percent. (the above words re cs and c are MINE, not Scneider’s, he allegedly is the inventor of cs, which Dr Curry says is somewhere in the 1-10 deg C range. Can you believe that this is peddled as science ?
I can make one recommendation for this Nov issue of SA; the Dec issue will be my last.
There’s a very nice article about Dark Matetr, and Dark Energy. I think this is the most readable paper on that issue that I have ever read. I’m not a fan of dark matter or dark energy, or multiverses, or string theory. I just cant accept as fundamental, something that wriggles. So if it wriggles what sort of pieces is it made up from ?
But this paper might get me believing that DM and DE may be real. Don’t have an opinion yet on whether I favor WIMPS or Super WIMPS.
Dr Gray,
Your post is great news. We are being heard.
The media, even a scientific magazine, reflects the opinion of the public. Media people: editors, publishers, producers, writers, reporters, anchors, talk show hosts, photographers and their teams are constantly hearing from the public and their work eventually tends to be somewhat reflective what they hear. When all they heard were Al Gore, the IPCC, environmentalists and left leaning political activists they tended to echo those opionions. Thanks to an army of opinion shapers and the constant distribution of their efforts by websites such as this one and the years of constant work by Heartland with their conferences, papers, speakers, emails etc and the work of Steve Milloy and Bob Furguson and others in Washington, Joe D’Aleo and Marc Marono and others in making scientists such as Lindzin, Singer, Soon, Happer, Lewis, the Idsos and so many others heard, opinion has been shifting. It shows in public opinion surveys.
As public opinion is beginning to turn on Global Warming the media is hearing from those who question the Al Gore/IPCC scare. More balanced articles are appearing. Wikepedia is moving to open the way to a balanced presentaiton.
Politicians are always trying to reflect the voters opinions. As those have shifted somewhat, more elected officials have moved toward middle ground. This has been particularly true in state legislatures where James Taylor of Heartland has worked so hard and effectively. Now the majority of the new Republican Congresspersons to be elected in two weeks will be skeptics of global warming.
It is in response to all of this movement, that NOAA and the AMS are now undertaking major global warming “educational” campaigns.
I think the Scientific American articles are a true sign of progress, but not of victory.
We must continue to work hard to correct the run-away bad science that has branded carbon dioxide as a pollutant that will distory of our climate and therefore our way of life.
My contribution will be another long form video presentation, this time in HD, within the month. My last powerpoint presntation was tagged by the Republican National Committee in a national email and was viewed on line by over a million people in a two week period. That demonstrated to me how the new open internet media is a powrful tool. I must note that Watts up with That proves this power every day. Anthony Watts is a hero.
“”” pat says:
October 23, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I think they decided not to go down the road of Nature and other media as a tool of crazy environmentalists. “””
Scientific American is a part of the NATURE publishing group; so they are one and the same.
Vincent, “… when a magazine like the “Scientific American” permits free discussion on climate change it must mean the beginning of the end.”.
There’s quite a few people seeing “the beginning of the end”, but in my opinion, there is a darker force at work and this force will never, ever, ever give up, they already have the next generation brainwashed. We must remain ever vigilant.
SA has had its moments – perhaps unintentionally.
Check Gale, N.H and Stos-Gale, Z. (1981) “Lead and silver in the ancient Aegean” Sci. Amer. June 1981 and rate the cleavage photo.
Of course, they now have the biodiversity kick and the IPBES to fall back on! Plan B is about to unfold on an even greater scale than the (failed) Plan A.
Judith Curry reckons that 1% or 10% of what the skeptics say might be valid.
Me, I think that 90% or 99% of what she says is snake oil marketing, at a price tag of Trillions of dollars.
Whether she actually believes it or not.
The big question this begs is: “if the ‘elite’ of science can be so easily misled about something as simple as bogus climate models and data being tailored to fit theory”
… how much of the rest of ‘established’ science is bollocks?
@amino
You missed showing Bob Watson’s response to the slightly critical BBC film.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11576013
which was the usual…’we are right, there are just teensy weensy bits that need clarification, you are too stupid to understand’ stuff that he’s been spouting for some time.
IMHO his explanation is not helped by his sloppy and unkempt appearance on a (relatively) serious show. I initially thought that he may have spent too long in ‘hospitality’ the interview, but seemingly not. He just always looks like that.
Andrew Neill (presenter of The Daily Politics) is one of the few working for the BBC who has not swallowed the AGW story hook line and sinker. Long may he continue.
JDN says:
October 23, 2010 at 2:26 pm
I have no idea why some people on this site like Judith Curry. The Climategate evidence of scientific misconduct speaks for itself. Anyone who can’t see that at this late date doesn’t have the courage necessary to be a scientist. Judith is just such a person, according to this Sci. Am. article.
She is positioning herself to speak for people who oppose IPCC and the scientific fraud of CAGW. This is very dangerous to allow her to do, as she is very much an establishment figure. Fairly soon, CNN might employ her as the resident climate skeptic, when she is nothing of the sort. It’s an old trick that continues to work. I would like to see her denounced instead of congratulated.
**************************************************
JDN – I am inclined to agree with your assessment. Everything that I have read so far from the pen (or mouth) of Judith Curry says that she is an arch-warmist through and through. All she seems to say is: “We need to convince the sceptics of the truth of warmism in a nice way”. I have seen no suggestion from her anywhere that the tenets of warmism are open to challenge. She does not appear to have a sceptic bone in her body.
All the best.
In the Judith Curry piece, I thought this was a tad rich:
“The alternative version paints her as a dupe—someone whose well-meaning efforts have only poured fuel on the fire. By this account, engaging with the skeptics is pointless because they cannot be won over. They have gone beyond the pale, taking their arguments to the public and distributing e-mails hacked from personal computer accounts rather than trying to work things out at conferences and in journal papers.”
A touch rich, given that the Team have a proven track record of deliberately keeping sceptics out of conferences and journals.
P.S. I’m glad I’m not alone in considering Dark Matter to be the fudge factor par excellence. What a load of utter tripe!
I have been bitterly disappointed at there [their] persistent embrace of the climate change fraud and the publicity they have given to its promoters.
There is only one reason and one reason only for “$cientific American” to publish anything and it has nothing to do with science.
I just wanted to add my voice to the many others here who quit “Scientific” American about ten years ago. As a child it was the first magazine that I read regularly. I even dreamed of being an editor. I knew that whatever they published was gospel truth and the magazine sparked my interest in computers early on and helped shape my career. Then, about ten years ago, it fell off a cliff, leaving a great void in the popular scientific literature. Now when I’m at the airport facing a long flight, I’ll pick Car and Driver over SA or any of the other non-science magazines like Discover or New Scientist. Are you listening SA editors? There are lots of us out there that you have lost. It’s instructive that I’m posting this on WUWT and not on the SA blog.
Well, I’ve read the piece on Judith Curry over at scientificamerican.com, and it’s still firmly pushing the same old CAGW agenda, even using the bulls**t phrase “most experts broadly agree that it will take massive changes” “to avert a potential disaster” and such alarmist phrases as “if people and governments are going to take serious action, it pretty much has to be now, because any delay will make efforts to stave off major climate change much more expensive and difficult to achieve.” Or to paraphrase: “The science is settled, we must act now or we’re doomed. DOOMED, I tell ye. (Potentially).”
Beginning of the end? Not if this article is anything to go by.
For scientific papers like this to present the case they have, they must have changed their staff from open minded scientists to rather less than open minded replacements. If they are prepared to misrepresent this, what else are they prepared to misrepresent? Accepting that the counter case has some validity after a decade, and because it increasingly looks like you will lose your credibility on which you sell your magazine is hardly evidence that the publication has regained its scientific integrity.
garbage, SA has too much invested to make themselves out to be liars.
They will follow this with more “science is settled”.
I was a subscriber to SA for nearly 30 years but I stopped after they started using staff writers and cut back on the number of articles by genuine scientists.
There was too much subjectivity from the inhouse journalists. Climate change garbage being just one aspect of this.
I will continue to ignore SA, NS and any of the other MSM ‘puppet’ so called scientific productions – the day the editors act more like they are genuinely interested in science and the scientific method, I will pick one up to read – but until then – No thanks!
ShaneCMuir:
Are you sure? They state in
http://thunderbolts.info/EU%20Intro%20and%20Chap1.pdf
at p.20:
How is the one dimension of distance cancelled out?