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 |
Great idea. And if Josh can work it in, how about throwing in Monckton as the Dog Whisperer!
Ryan Maue 11/7/2010 10:11 pm They’d better be careful showing up on the conservative talk radio shows. They will get their asses handed to them by the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, and Michael Savage who have first-hand knowledge of the so-called climate science debate AND a crack staff ready to lay a field of land mines for naive scientists.
No, they wouldn’t get their asses handed to them by Limbaugh, Beck, or Savage. (I’m a conservative and an AGW skeptic.)
@DOUGLAS TODD old man
‘A group of scientists with nothing better to do reworked the math and said, ” Hey, this boy’s got something”, and Newton was knocked off his pedestal’
Far be it for me as an Oxford man to defend somebody from Fen Poly, but Einstein did not knock Newton from his pedestal. He merely showed that Newton’s work was a subset of his own. The experimental technology of his day meant that Newton could not possibly have made the discoveries that Einstein did. They both deserve to share that pedestal.
And Newton’s Laws are still good enough to get men to the moon….and back. Which must have come as a great comfort to those stranded in Apollo 13.
I find it really sad that John Abrahams has so little real understanding of the English language and of the science that he teaches that he has utterly missed the import of Monkton’s rebuttal of his ( Abraham’s) accusations and assertions. Even sadder is the fact that the strange little college that employs Abrahams has a leadership that do not understand the issues involved in their employee being both an incompetent and untruthful to boot, but by their support of him, encouraged Abrahams to behave as he does !
I see no signs of fierce scientific debate with Abrahams, or his fabled 700 scientist, on the immediate horizon for WUWT or any other rational forum, but hear empty vapourings from an increasingly defensive and embattled group who have not yet realised that their time in the sun has gone into history as just another failed idea.
OT.
A documentary on channel 4 UK TV called ( What the greens got wrong).
40 million deaths from the banning of DDT and no apology from the greens or the EPA.
http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.html
Michael in Sydney says:
Reminds of the (possibly apocryphal) story of George Bernard Shaw being cornered by a bore at a party. When, after two hours, GBS finally managed to get a word in, he told his tormentor, in a conspiratorial tone, “You know, between you and me we know everything there is to be known.” “Really?” replied the bore. “Yes,” said GBS “You appear to know everything except that you are the most boring man in the world, and I know that.”
The Ch.4 vid is inaccessible in Canada, and with only 4 views I assume it’s blocked in the US, too.
Paul Vaughan says:
November 7, 2010 at 7:39 pm
…………………
What is needed is allocation of funds for research the alternatives. Each tax-funded university or institution should allocate (make it a legal requirement) about 20% of their climate research fund and facilities for investigating natural causes of climate change. Mutual interaction and the knowledge interchange would produce far better science at both sides of the debate.
Robuk says:
November 8, 2010 at 4:12 am
OT.
A documentary on channel 4 UK TV called ( What the greens got wrong).
40 million deaths from the banning of DDT and no apology from the greens or the EPA.
http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.html
It is my understanding that DDT is not banned for residual spraying malaria control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_residual_spraying
http://www.treated-bednet.com/agro-chemical.htm
If I’m wrong, please correct me.
I must quote the wisdom of “Heathers” (1989) : “Give it UP! Gomers…”
Sending out AGW dogma pamphlets to public high schools is but one step removed from riding bicycles handing them out door-to-door like Jehovah’s Witnesses:
“Sir, have you found
JesusGore yet?”“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.”
Oh good, a “Little Green Book”. But, high schoolers? Methinks they are overreaching a bit. They should try kindergarteners, who are a bit more gullible and easier to mold.
But, I guess they realize they are out of time, and this is their last gasp effort.
This should be fun.
“We’re here tonight to celebrate total victory in the climate war. AGW is a done deal! In the immortal words of our President, ‘We won and they lost’.”
“Er….whats all that clatter outside, Speaker Abraham?”
“Ignore them. Those are just ignorant peasants and crazy people dissatisfied with the outcome of the war. Acknowledging them would send out bad signals; a sign of weakness; a sign of uncertainty. Total victory demands a show of certainty!”
“But….they’re climbing in the windows and the door is off its hinges!”
“Ignore them, I say! Royalty does not acknowledge common rabble. We won. They lost. End of story!”
“Dammit….who took my microphone? I need troops! I want 700 soldiers at my side! Now!”
Depends how you define rapid response. CEI is still waiting for FOI info from 2007. These sure are rapid responders.
Be interesting to see if ANY of these 700 so-called experts are not paid by the government. So far warming alarmists have been totally unable to find more than 1 alarmist scientist (Prof Lovelock in the UK) who is not paid by the taxpayer, though the majority of the world’s scientists are not so funded.
I would say bring it on but experience shows that such promises to debate are regularly made & rarely kept.
So a professor of engineering from a very small school knows more than climatologists like Lindzen, Pielke, Sr., Curry, etc.?
“Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York”
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They are really bringing out the big guns in this fight! I might beable to get my kid’s 7th grade science teacher to sign on as well.
“The American Geophysical Union plans to announce Monday that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. ”
Most posters here have picked up on the fact that this is nothing more than the “Climate Ca$h Protection Act of 2010”. If you think about it, here’s how much Climate Ca$h we’re talking about…
700 “researchers” @ur momisugly $100,000/yr (salary + benefits) = $70 million / year.
Assuming the average researcher controls about $500,000 / year worth of NSF and other related useless government projects, that’s: 700 x $0.5 million = $350 million.
Add in overhead (you know, trips to Bali and Cancun) and other costs, and you can see that we’re talk nearly $500 million / year of Climate Ca$h that’s at stake here.
Time to pull the plug on these clowns and spend the money (our tax money) on fighting poverty and disease, activities which are infinitely more useful to society…
Going into the 2004 Presidential campaign, the Democrats perceived a public relations shortfall and instituted the Air America Radio network.
We all see how well that worked out for them.
By stepping off the science platform and on to the politics platform, hasn’t the AGU now placed any government research funding that its members receive in jeopardy? Or itself violated aspects of federal law about using federal dollars for lobbying? Seems like a ripe area for a little legal research! Let the subpoenas fly.
“…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.”
The high priests of the Church of Global Warming are pulling out all the stops to protect their disintegrating power base–and I’m including those with the McKlatchy News Service who put this story together. McKlatchy supports the premise that there is a “scientific consensus” and happily mentions that the AGW scientists are preparing a propaganda handbook for distribution to our kids.
The hubris just keeps coming.
Steve Jones says:
November 8, 2010 at 3:41 am
“…And Newton’s Laws are still good enough to get men to the moon….and back. Which must have come as a great comfort to those stranded in Apollo 13…”
Just a pity these ‘laws’ stop working at galactic distances, but come to that neither do Einstein’s!
Interesting.
The Chicago Tribune article reads word-for-word like the LA Times article.
Both with the same pictures and both printed without attribution/by-line.
Looks like the Lame Stream Media is reprinting someone’s press release and calling it news again.
As the academia is organized it follows by necessity that there will be mutual grooming, caressing and self indulgement, a characteristic of apes´societies (as Desmond Morris tells us) as the human defects reinforced when there is not pursued individual development but corporative development and establishment, so the consequences would seem a conspiracy; thus not necessarily the best of academy is obtained as result but an “average”; thus science and knowledge will be obligatory “settled”: the product of a social agreement, of mutual and social caressing. It has happened differently where to achieve a doctorate it was needed instead of a doubtful “research”(as it can not be possible an infinite “menu” of themes of investigation) an examination, where the afterwards development was an individual achievement and a personal search and research following, if existent and present, the individual´s real interest in approaching knowledge and truth.
Thus, the characters who appear on the scene, the “researchers” or “scientists”, are, in the best scenario an “average” or worst, as it has evidently happened, the basest of the human kind, the lowest expression of society, protected by the “corpus academicum”, individuals incapable of surviving outside of the academic environment: the most feeble specimens of the human breed.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Yet so many of them resist debate requests for years.