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
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Direct link to Judith Curry’s article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-heretic&page=1
And I thought this website had a bunch of skeptics! One issue of the new Scientific American claims they want to discuss real science and you guys are falling all over yourselves like a bunch of love sick teenagers!
It’s a ruse. The old Scientific American that you knew and loved is no longer there. They are just trying to lure you in, to have you stick your neck out so that they can sacrifice you to the global warming mob. The mob will beat you up with bad logic, name calling, fake data and hysteria. Forget it. They are no longer trust worthy.
Another name for groupthink is Mass hysteria
Not many warmist comments on that article. I suspect the public component of the movement is fading fast. Soon only those with a siphon into the gravy river will still be motivated to push on?
Brian, interesting that you note that the warmists appear quiet. Roger Pielke Jnr suggests that they haven’t been quiet at all.. it looks like they’ve been quite busy attacking SciAm’s Lemonick behind the scences, directly. So much so that he’s backed down completely on his blog, dropping Judith like a hot cob. What a gutless wonder. That old back-room journal/media bullying’s worked for the warmists in the past and it still works for them now. RPJ’s right, it’s business as usual for the climatology high priests, and they’ve learned absolutely nothing.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I too have been an avid reader of SA since the early ’70’s. I noticed (with some dismay) that articles were becoming more and more politicized sometime in the mid to late ’90’s. More and more articles about climate change making wild claims with no counter point of any sort were published, and the quality of the articles were declinning to where even when a layman such as myself could easily pick apart their methods and conclusions. In some cases I had to double check what magazine I was reading – had I accidentally picked up Popular Science or something? – Nope, it was SA.
Recently (the past couple of years I believe) I have been noticing more articles in SA and Science on the “other impacts” of CO2 – I assume because AGW was becomming too difficult to defend. Weedy plants like poison ivy will thrive even as “good” plants are harmed. Acid oceans causing hard shelled creatures losing their shells, or their sharp points so they will be eaten, or dissolve, or whatever…
Now the Nitrogen Cycle is out of balance (in “Science” I seem to recall). While I agree nitrogen and phosphate runoff needs addressing…the cycle is out of balance? Come on.
It seems like nothing can just be a normal scientific problem to be studied, debated, and fixed (If necessary) anymore – everything is a global castastrophe requiring international intervention.
Chemical and Engineering News, a publication of the American Chemical Society, has been on the AGW bandwagon for years, in spite of many letters from members telling the Editor to stop their political agenda and stick to science. Every chance he gets, there is a dig at those who dispute the evidence. I have written both to him and to the president of the society, usually with no publication or reply. As far as I know, ACS does not get any direct money from the government which they would be in danger of losing if they don’t toe the party line. I cannot account for such closed minds in a scientific society. For example, they don’t publish what goes on at meetings of the Heartland Institute.
That is quite astonishing. To see it carried out with silent disregard is sickening. It is the most disgusting quashing of academic freedom and neutrality that I have ever seen.
Interesting to see so many comments from people who USED to subscribe to SA, but don’t any more. I’m another one. A good article, and welcome, but it continues to use the word ‘sceptic’ as a pejorative. Having worked as a scientist and engineer for some decades, I always thought it was a professional obligation to question ANY hypothesis. That’s how we find its weaknesses, and address them. The function of scepticism is to improve the relevance, testability, compatibility, predictive power, and simplicity of scientific hypotheses. It’s not just the quality of climate science which is worrisome (paleoclimatology in particular, it would seem). It’s the new paradigm which equates good scientific scepticism with ‘crackpots’ and ‘deniers’. That sort of argument never was, and never can be, tolerated. Assertions that the global warming hypothesis is merely a scam is extreme, and clearly contrary to the evidence. Assertions that the Medieval Warm Period didn’t exist is also contrary to a good deal of evidence. They’re not the same, though some scientists, and some scientific publications, treat them as such. That’s unscientific, full stop. There can’t be ‘consensus’ until the evidence is broadly accepted, and that hasn’t happened … largely because sceptics have been discouraged, and often prevented, from testing that evidence and criticising the interpretations derived from it. It’s good to see Curry speak out, despite so many qualifications to her criticism. The issue is a long, long way from solution, though, and a great many more scientists and publications will have to recapture an impartial stance before healing can properly begin.
I used to be a big fan of SA especially during the ’60’s. I began my own subscription in the 70’s, and kept it until now. But, as other posters have observed, as time progressed, the quality and reliability of the science clearly declined, as the publication morphed from a science magazine into just another of the many organs of propaganda to promote carbo-phobic pseudo-ecophilia.
My subscription has finally lapsed. The article on Ms. Curry doesn’t suggest to me that SA is heading back to any focus on science. To the contrary, it appears more likely they are just looking for ways to more completely shut out skeptical inquiry.
BWD
Being sceptic is allways right in the absence of convincing evidence. It is not about whether antropogenic CO2 emissions are the main driver of an increase in average global temperatures or not, it is about good and bad science valid conclusions and inacceptable political distortion of the scientific process as well as speculative alarming forecasts of potential consequences that are really unpredictable or straigtforward infamous fear spreading. It is about power and ideology not about true or false. This and and only this can be the result of the debate.
The ‘Guardian’ is up to its usual standard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/tea-party-climate-change-deniers
It says that some of Europe’s biggest polluters are funding the Tea Party in America. It fails to mention that the UEA emails reveal big oil companies funding climate warmists as well as skeptics. It complains of Europeans trying to influence the US electoral process – while doing the same thing itself! John Kerry lost thousands of votes when the ‘Guardian’ supported him. Arrogant limey lefties… I should know.
There? Their? Please use the right word. You make yourself look stupid if you can’t use grammatical English.
Steamboat Jack,
I think I probably overreacted. Feeling a little over-sensitive. As a bit of a lefty myself, I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable that on the issue of CAGW I have opinions that in the US seem to be almost entirely the preserve of conservatives.
As Shakespeare almost said “CAGW acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” So to speak.
Peace and Love,
James Evans
Wait for it, because soon enough it will be ‘Anthropogenic Dark Matter causes climate change! We must put a stop to Anthropogenic Dark Matter.’
Rob in Cardiff;
Well, if you don’t like “scam”, how about “fraud”?
Iconoclast in the SA comments: