Scientist proves conservatism and belief in climate change aren’t incompatible
MIT professor Kerry Emanuel is among a rare breed of conservative scientists who are sounding the alarm for climate change and criticizing Republicans’ ‘agenda of denial‘ and ‘anti-science stance.’
Not touching this one with a ten-foot pole — just wondering what the motivation is for yet another Emanuel article, which get more and more political. Enjoy the article written by Neela Banerjee, Washington Bureau, with character witness Michael Mann. Article Links to the LA Times.
Update more about hurricanes: The Team at RealClimate can’t score on an empty net and are being disingenuous about the “global tropical cyclone record lows”. Let me help them: their colleague Dr. Emanuel produced a 2005 Nature paper and used a metric called Power Dissipation, which is analogous to ACE. I use ACE — I could have used Power Dissipation. The data is publicly available, and I am simply updating Emanuel’s work. Also, this work is already published back in 2009 for the Northern Hemisphere, when the global ACE was tanking. See Maue (2009), but then again, why bother with that peer-reviewed literature.
Fact: 2010 produced the fewest Tropical Cyclones globally on record — and it has NOTHING to do with global warming. The Team only can look at the Atlantic — but did they talk about 2009 being one of the quietest seasons on record?
[also, a note to RealClimate: Larry Bell was absolutely correct about global tropical cyclone activity record lows. You owe him an apology.]
[Follow up note to Ryan: RC’s apology really doesn’t matter, since nobody is paying attention to them anymore anyway, see below – Anthony]
Source: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/forbes.com
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@Bob of Castlemaine says: January 7, 2011 at 1:45 am
Yeah. “Emanuel said. “The parallel to that is saying, ‘You won’t buy property insurance unless I can prove to you that your house will catch on fire right now.’”
As you say – but actually it is even worse. More like “Pay ten times the value of your house as an annual premium but we’ll only pay out when you can prove those pesky pixies have started the fire using their moon-beam guns.”
And as far as the “right wing brains” piece, they don’t seem to have a result for an analysis of “greenie brains”. Still looking for one?
I also don’t follow the political dichotomy between beliefs about AGW and everything else either. I have friends across the political spectrum who have looked at the evidence and concluded that the AGW panic is confabulated and exaggerated.
And the converse is also true: because a person has come to the conclusion that AGW is exaggerated and probably false does not dignify the rest of their beliefs. So it is that I’ve also come across AGW skeptics who believe that 9/11 was done by the US Government, that evolution is false, that Barack Obama was not born in the US and/or is a secret Muslim or any number of other conspiracies.
But the climate realist side does not have a monopoly on crazy beliefs because there are plenty of strange beliefs amongst alarmists and plenty of instances of blatent historical revisionism in order to justify those catastrophist beliefs (and not just William Connelley, Naomi Oreskes, Joe Romm or RealClimate).
Conspiracy theories abound about fossil fuel funded climate skepticism (despite all the clear evidence of fossil fuel funding of alarmism), and other darker deeds possibly involving the Illuminati which are pretty much mainstream to climate alarmist commentaries. Bizarre pseudo-psychological profiles of climate skeptics as somehow deranged and in need of psychiatric care are reminiscent to me of the time of Trofim Lysenko and later the treatment of dissidents like Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn by the Soviet regime.
I tend not to write on posts which are overly political like this one, but I wanted to make my voice heard on this occasion. It does not follow that one’s beliefs about climate change imply any other political or religious belief system.
These days there are lots of people out there claiming to be “conservative” and grabbing the media spotlight in criticizing all the “right-wing zealots” now in the party. “Such wonderful and thoughtful centrists,” we are all supposed to think.
Kerry is turning into the next James Hansen – a complete political hack and enviro-wacko. There, I’ve said it. .
Neela,
Your premise is rather juvenile, unless you are saying that there is no liberal who is a AGW skeptic.
Too, it is a risible notion that one’s skepticism to AGW is based on ones political views – as directly – as you claim
Emmanuel probably just wants to get invited to all the right cocktail parties.
Anyone that can happily say/write: “Scientist proves conservatism and belief in climate change aren’t incompatible” has proven that they are not a scientist.
Perhaps it is because it has so many syllables that ‘anthropogenic’ is always dropped before ‘global warming/climate change/climate disruption’ ?
“Emanuel said. “The parallel to that is saying, ‘You won’t buy property insurance unless I can prove to you that your house will catch on fire right now.’”
The precautionary principle……..AGAIN! I think history has shown that fire is a real danger. AGW is a fairytale. Why not buy insurance for meterotites hitting your house, or Sasquatch attacking you while you sleep, or sea monsters attacking you at sea. Belief in fairytales has no parallel to provable events like house fires.
So many professors,
So little time.
So many labels,
What is mine?
I, too, fail to understand the shouty political definitions attached to whether one is sceptical of CAGW or not. As a Kiwi living temporarily in the UK, I am frequently surprised at how thoroughly ‘tribal’ and nastily personal UK politics are and how roughly similar they are to politics as they were back in the 1950s in my country, before we grew up a little as a nation.
I don’t wish to be a grump or to be hurtful of anyone’s delicate sensibiities, but my elderly mind tries to jump the sprockets of reason when I attempt to follow Ms Thorpe’s soliloquys – does her latest tell us she once defied her parents to take a ‘coloured’ friend to their country club and buy her a drink, and as a consequence daringly changed political ‘sides’ from that of her parents and her dumb but moneyed and priveledged peers ? Wow!
Like Rhett Butler in ‘Gone With the Wind’, ‘I just don’t give a damn!’.
Christopher Hanley says:
January 6, 2011 at 11:04 pm
Sure he can’t.
And to Alexander K, I say: Just claim to be a “climate realist”, take the moral high ground on veracity and truth, and lean not to any political side:
Politics (from Greek πολιτικος, [politikós]: «citizen», «civilian»), is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions.
Quite often, “politics” is the very antithesis of good science.
Dr. Emanuel has become the equivalent of a trained monkey in Cambridge and for liberals everywhere.
David L says:
January 7, 2011 at 3:58 am
The precautionary principle……..AGAIN! I think history has shown that fire is a real danger. AGW is a fairytale. Why not buy insurance for meterotites hitting your house, or Sasquatch attacking you while you sleep, or sea monsters attacking you at sea. Belief in fairytales has no parallel to provable events like house fires.
You make a good point–and the insurance premium should necessarily be commensurate with the risk. Assessing the risk level of a Sasquatch attack (whether you’re asleep or awake, even) would be so ridiculously low that the premium would also be ridiculously low. The problem is that the “insurance premium” the global warmers are attempting to extract from the world’s population is blown all out of proportion compared to the risk. My pocket change would actually be sufficient to cover the insurance premium for actual climate change risk.
“Not touching this one with a ten-foot pole — just wondering what the motivation is for yet another Emanuel article, which get more and more political.”
It very simple, really. Consider the timing – a new Congress has been sworn in which will (hopefully) be ending the Climate Ca$h gravy train these guys have been riding for the past decade or more. Academics like Emanuel are getting nervous that government funding for his (and his colleagues) pet projects may soon be curtailed or come to an end. The problem now for people like Emanuel is that we can no longer consider their advice to be unbiased with regards to climate change as they have firmly stepped into the political arena (as have Hansen, Schmidt, Mann, etc.).
Expect more climate ca$h-funded scientists (and their allies in the leftist enviro special interest groups) to start “speaking out” in more strident and shrill tones as the new budgets are debated in Congress.
“There was never a light-bulb moment but a gradual realization based on the evidence,” Emanuel said. “I became convinced by the basic physics and by the better and better observation of the climate that it was changing and it was a risk that had to be considered.”
Judging from that statement alone, I can see why there was never a “light bulb moment”. Not enough wattage there to run so much as a Christmas tree light.
Money perverts lots of things, huge government grants to prove what government wants proved is the worst. Something like $30 billion has been given in government grants to make the case that governments must regulate people’s action because of people breathing too much.
There is a trap there.
It is pretty clear that:
Kerry Emanuel’s Hurricane Research – is the same as E=MC^2
It cannot be questioned by anyone and especially by the elected representatives of the people. They are not qualified to ask questions. There are only there to provide money to climate researchers and cheer on their efforts.
Questioning global warming science is like questioning Einstein or that the Earth is a sphere or all of science in general.
In fact, you are personally anti-science if you even want to “see” the data.
Reviewing the publicly available data on your own is, likewise, an anti-science position.
It should be kept in a secure archive that can be accessed by CO2-based climate models only. It should, in fact, be classified as “top secret”.
Any other position is anti-science.
Re: Whether a person can be an “Oxy-moron”…
Yes indeed, they can be! Former Governer of Minnesota, USA – – – Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Definitely an OXYMORON…
Max
Gee Ryan you really should post a warning to have a vomit bag handy when you post a link to an article like the LA times one. My computer will never be the same.
As an actual conservative (not a Republican), this article had me laughing. The message the author got across to me was “We all know that Democrats are a bunch of idiots and will believe just about anything but look(!), we’ve found an honest to god conservative who believes in it so it must be true, right?”
Um……… no.
Christopher Hanley says: “A person can’t be an “oxymoron”.”
Sure they can. Gore is an ox, and a moron.
“Kerry Emanuel is among a rare breed of conservative scientists”
Yawn. So what.
Cynthia Lauren Thorpe, meet Mike Haseler.
“As a politically conservative climatologist who accepts the broad scientific consensus on global warming”
So, as a scientist he believes political propaganda and consensus science. He does not check the science, just trusts the bought and paid for “climate scientists.”
He also believes that the Republicans are anti-science. No, they are against junk science! Real science supports Republican and, no, science is not political – the Republican just happen to be right in this case.
Generally, the liberals want things that do not stand up to logical scrutiny and it makes sense that science, which is about as logical as can be, would not support what they want. So, they have to lie to support their agenda.
There is all kinds of argument about how the energy budget and radiative balance works in the atmosphere and climate. That is good, honest debate. Quite often there are missing pieces, however, as convection and water vapor are not included in the radiation flux discussion. When ALL factors are considered, the effects of changes in CO2 become too small to worry about and man’s contribution is thus inconsequential.
six million dollar man says:
January 7, 2011 at 1:56 am
I’m currently writing a book called ” As bad As Each Other: Comparing stupidity on boths sides of the fence” – Who made up these arbitrary divisions anyway? Why can’t we vote on every single issue via computer? We have the technology
========================================================
Because proper government isn’t a popularity contest. Democracy, in the form you describe is “2 wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner.” (paraphrasing)
Write that in your book. More over, if it had come to a vote a couple of years ago, we’d be stuck with cap-n-trade already.
Great the bring out a bunch of posers to convince us they are just like us. No, no they’re not. They still don’t have a clue about what’s driving the skeptical bus.
They can call themselves what ever they wish. It doesn’t make it so. A repub that voted for Bambi? You probably don’t meet the definition. An evangelical that believes mankind can control the weather? Uhhm, yeh, ok, I buying that. I’m really superman too, I just don’t wear it on my sleeve. ……..whatever.
They can call themselves whatever, I just want to be clearly separated from them. If he’s a republican that voted for bOwbama, then I’m a libertarian that votes republican. If an evangelical believes man can control the weather, then I’m a Baptist that believes we can’t. Label what you will.