UPDATE! See this new press release: AGU backs away from “climate rapid response team” citing faulty reporting
Gosh. A “Climate rapid response team” from Minnesota? What will they be armed with? Wits and a hockey stick? So far that hasn’t worked out too well. From the Chicago Tribune:
Climate scientists plan campaign against global-warming skeptics
The American Geophysical Union plans to announce Monday that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. The effort is a pushback against congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in last Tuesday’s election.
On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country’s largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.
Some are prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk-radio and television shows.
John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate-change skeptics, is pulling together a “Climate Rapid Response Team,” which so far has more than three dozen leading scientists to defend the consensus on global warming in the scientific community. Some are also pulling together a handbook on the human causes of climate change, which they plan to start sending to U.S. high schools as early as this fall.
“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists,” said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.
“We are taking the fight to them because we are … tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed.”
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Heh, that last sentence pretty well sums it up. Read the whole article here.
I find the phrase “climate rapid response team” a bit of an oxymoron. Given the speed of climate change, did they mean “weather response team”? 😉
Well it looks like I and many of my associates be traveling more. When these guys come to your town, demand some equal time to present the skeptic side of the story.
h/t to WUWT Reader “Craig” in tips and notes.
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John P. Abraham
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Associate Professor Email: jpabraham@stthomas.edu Phone: 651-962-5766 Toll Free: (800) 328-6819, Ext. 651-962-5766 Mail OSS101 2115 Summit Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105 Office Location: OSS 107 |
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“Climate-change skeptics argued that the sniping in some e-mails showed that scientists suppressed research by skeptics and manipulated data. Five independent panels subsequently cleared the researchers involved and validated the science.”
Validated the science eh?
Mr Abrahams
It’s cold out my way and it should really be quite warm.
Could you please send out the Rapid Response Team.
Does a callout fee apply, plus your normal hourly rate ?
I need an increase of about 5C, do you charge by the degree ?
Precisely the wrong approach, and very disappointing to this scientist. Refute the off-base claims of fringe skeptics if you have to, but treating this disagreement as some battle that needs a militant response only underscores the weakness of the AGW case. It is almost certainly motivated by an attempt to ensure continued flow of funds. Seems to me that admitting uncertainty and the need for “further study” is a better approach. As a federally funded life scientist, I understand the anxiety about continued ability to carry out our work, but this war room mentality is wrong headed. Having looked at John Abraham’s prior efforts, however, I don’t think that there’s too much cause for concern that it will be very effective, however.
Well they seem to promise just what you have been asking for – discussion.
Therefore why so much bad feeling?
Nice to see that consensus scientists are now ready to rise from the trenches and enter the barbed-wire zones, engage in hand to hand debate and win the war!
For those that do, much respect. Just a pity that your generals, Gore, Cameron, Arnie et al, hadn’t been as brave.
Go you dough-boys. Death or glory. Lions led by donkeys.
How sad!
Peter says:
November 7, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Well, their livelihoods do depend on continued funding etc. One almost feels sorry for them, until one starts thinking just how much it’s costing the rest of us.
Translation the house of representatives is in the hands of the tea party.
If we want any funding we need to make public spectacles of ourselves.
We will become a rent-a-mob as good as anything PETA, Code Pink, or ACORN can dredge up.
I generally don’t condone violence, but I may reconsider.
But what I don’t understand, like Can above, is what the politics of the issue have to do with the APS in any case. They should just concentrate on publishing (and checking) their papers and leave the politics up to the politicians!
How many of those 700 “climate scientists” are in danger of losing their funding? Probably most of them, from both the government and big oil.
“You cannot trust a man whose livelihood and family’s welfare depend on his agreeing with his boss.” – Author unknown
SOmebody should trot out the raw and adjusted temperature data from those 3 sites near Washington as often as they can. They speak directly to the problem:
(1) they show no warming, but cooling instead and
(2) they show the dishonest adjustments made to create warming, on paper.
“People who’ve already dug their heels in, we’re not going to change their opinions,” Mandia said.
Would be more accurate if he had said:
“People who’ve already dug their heels in, we’re not going to change OUR opinions,”
Haven’t heard from Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, for some time now. Is he preoccupied composing Vol. III of “Refutations Against Abraham”? If peculating Green Gangsters plan on issuing “Mickey Mouse on Climate Change” to kindergartners, Monckton could lend Peer Review a whole new dimension.
“…plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed…”
Sounds like they are counting Fifi and Dan from Accounts, Bill the office cleaner, Paddy and Willo the two gold fish in the office aquarium… Fred’s dog Boxy… the list goes on – so easy to find 700 climate scientists – such a lovely round number, not 645, not 723… no 700 precisely…
This is the worst nightmare of the pro-AGW-AGCD establishment. Having a group flying the establishment flag and taking part in public debate on AGW-AGCD can only lead to the revelation that the emperor wears no clothes.
“…Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds [?] of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened [threatened?] prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions [at least in the US. For the rest of the world, not so much.].
The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. [and some who have gone out of their way to actively protest and issue press releases.] Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in last Tuesday’s election.
I especially liked the “… many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media…” line
I remember one “prominent climate scientist” who complained that a former president censored his press releases. If he was really trying to stay out of politics and avoid the media, there wouldn’t have been stories about that.
The socialists-communists, Obama lobbyists, and Greenpeace are often found recruiting paid bloggers and community activists on craigslist. There was a recent Time magazine article complaining about the loss of most of Obama’s online activists since the 2008 election. The author of the article failed to take note of the extent to which the decline in online activism may have been due to the decline in hiring paid online activists.
Well, their media machine is working well. This story is in the LA Times too:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-climate-scientists-20101108,0,545056.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29
Here’s the part that made me laugh loudest:
“Climate-change skeptics argued that the sniping in some e-mails showed that scientists suppressed research by skeptics and manipulated data. Five independent panels subsequently cleared the researchers involved and validated the science.”
Hilarious.
More panic…
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-05-gop-climate-deniers-vie-to-run-house-energy-committee
Michael Cejnar says:
November 7, 2010 at 4:59 pm
“a handbook on the human causes of climate change, which they plan to start sending to U.S. high schools as early as this fall.”
Why are they targeting our children with their ‘truth’? They can’t win a scientific argument with us grown ups, so they target our naive children.
That’s called indoctrination, not debate.
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Agree 100%. On the bright side, you edited a key part of that statement out… “Some are also pulling together a handbook on the human causes of climate change…”
Yes. they will ‘pull something’ together, which, if their track record is any indication, should be fun for the kids to pull apart… if their brainwashers, I mean ‘teachers,’ allow them to discuss it.
Puts me in mind of the Templar Knights … warrior monks devout to a fault and trained to a high contemporary standard of combat effectiveness (read media effectiveness). Mock them if you will but do not under-estimate them. The AGW base has or soon will embrace them.
“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced….
Wait a sec!!! Didn’t the Obamanoids tell us they would END the politicizing of science, supposedly something practiced by the eeeeeevil Bush Cheney cabal?
Can’t these bozos ever maintain a consistent “message”??
I wonder if this “Rapid Response Team”, since it is so pure and scientific, will demand that all data and methods used to support their argument will be published? That would go a long way to bringing some credibility to their “cause”, assuming the data didn’t turn out to be fabricated and manipulated (with bias) in the first place.
They should be called the “Grant money protection group”…
Oh no!
Not a hand-book!!
Whatever shall we do!!!?
Billy Liar says:
November 7, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Some are also pulling together a handbook on the human causes of climate change, which they plan to start sending to U.S. high schools as early as this fall.
Handing out AGW ‘bibles’ in schools? Yep, it sure looks like a religion.
I was today chatting to my son (Phil – since you ask) who told me they were “doing global warming” at school. I suggested a few questions he could ask his science or geography teachers.
He said “Why them? We are doing it in Religious Education”.
“Hah! There is a God!”, thought I.
The only future the AGW pushers are worried about is the future of of the gravy train that has sprung up around so-called climate science.
Good to see Kevin Trenberth listed as one of the scientist. Maybe we can get a rapid response on the missing heat.
Tim says: November 7, 2010 at 4:55 pm
“It looks increasingly like Custer’s last stand.”
More like Pickett’s Charge.
“Pickett’s Charge was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s Union positions on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Its futility was predicted by the charge’s commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and it was arguably an avoidable mistake from which the Southern war effort never fully recovered psychologically.”