As the climate scare fizzles, Canada’s celebrity environmentalist resorts to ad hominem attacks
Guest post by David R. Legates
David Suzuki has never met, debated or even spoken with my colleague, scientist Willie Soon. But as more people dismiss Mr. Suzuki’s scare stories about global warming cataclysms, Suzuki has resorted to personal attacks against Dr. Soon and others who disagree with him.
Dr. Soon’s brilliant research into the sun’s role in climate change has helped make millions aware that carbon dioxide’s influence is far less than Suzuki wants them to think. In a recent column that was picked up by the Huffington Post and other media outlets, Suzuki attacked Dr. Soon, mostly with a recycled Greenpeace “investigation” that is itself nothing more than a rehash of tiresome (and libelous) misstatements, red herrings and outright lies. It’s time to set the record straight.
First, the alleged corporate cash. Suzuki claims Dr. Soon received “more than $1 million over the past decade” from US energy companies – and implies that Dr. Soon lied to a US Senate committee about the funding. In fact, the research grants were received in the years following the Senate hearing; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics took nearly half of the money (for “administration”), and what was left covered Dr. Soon’s salary, research, and other expenses including even toner for his printer.
By comparison, the Suzuki Foundation spends some $7 million every year on its “educational” and pressure campaigns – many of them in conjunction with various PR agencies, renewable energy companies, other foundations and environmental activist groups. They all stand to profit handsomely from Suzuki’s causes, especially “catastrophic climate change” and campaigns to replace “harmful” fossil fuels with subsidized, land-intensive, low-energy-output, “eco-friendly” wind and solar facilities.
Under another convoluted arrangement, the Suzuki Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, University of Alberta, US-based SeaWeb and other organizations provided or divvied up some $23 million, to promote an anti-fish-farming campaign. The years-long effort suddenly and inexplicably ended – and all traces of it disappeared from the Suzuki Foundation website – after Vancouver-based researcher Vivian Krause raised serious questions about its claims.
And yet Suzuki is criticizing Dr. Soon – while alarmist climate catastrophe researchers share over $6 billion annually in US and Canadian taxpayer money, and millions more in corporate cash, to link every natural phenomenon to global warming and promote renewable “alternatives” to fossil fuels.
If it is wrong to receive grants from organizations that have taken “advocacy” positions, then virtually every scientist with whom Suzuki has associated would be guilty. Even Suzuki recognizes this. “We should look at the science, and not at who is paying for the research,” he wrote recently.
But if he truly believes real science must stand or fall on its own merits, not on the source of its funding – why does he insist on double standards and continue to attack Dr. Soon over his funding sources?
Second, Suzuki repeats an absurd Greenpeace claim that Dr. Soon tried to “undermine” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “peer-reviewed” work. In reality, scientists are required to examine, review and even criticize other scientists’ research – especially when it is used to justify slashing the hydrocarbon energy on which our jobs, living standards and civilization depend. In reality, the IPCC solicits reviews of its publications but is under no obligation to address any criticisms that scientists raise – in contrast to the normal peer-review process.
Moreover, the IPCC refuses to conduct its own quality control – and repeatedly promotes scare stories about rising seas, melting Himalayan glaciers, disappearing Amazon rainforests, more severe storms and droughts, and other disasters. By now anyone familiar with the Climategate and IPCC scandals knows these headline-grabbing claims are based on nothing more than exaggerated computer model outputs, deliberate exclusion of contrary findings, questionable air temperature station locations, and even “research” by environmental activists.
Third, Suzuki’s most egregious distortion of reality involves the Climate Research journal’s handling of two papers by Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, regarding solar links to climate change. The publisher concluded that the manuscript editor had “properly analyzed the evaluations and requested appropriate revisions,” and the authors “revised their manuscripts accordingly.”
However, when Dr. Hans von Storch became editor-in-chief, he circulated a hurriedly written editorial declaring that the review process had failed, and the Soon-Baliunas manuscripts should not have been published, due to alleged “methodological flaws.” He intended to publish the editorial prior to a US Senate committee hearing, thereby discrediting Dr. Soon. von Storch even asserted that Soon and Baliunas should be barred from publishing again in Climate Research – a disciplinary action usually levied only for convictions of plagiarism or fraud.
The publisher refused to publish the editorial until the editorial board could be consulted – which meant after the hearing. So von Storch and other editors and review editors resigned. Senator Jeffords highlighted the resignations during the hearing. But fortunately, I was a hearing witness and provided a correct account.
Nevertheless, after the hearing, the publisher changed his mind and said the Soon-Baliunas paper should not have been published. I resigned as review editor because I felt the journal had succumbed to pressure from activist scientists and was no longer an unbiased outlet for healthy climate change debates.
Climategate made it clear that the truth was even worse. The emails paint a vivid picture of advocacy scientists strong-arming the publisher, threatening to destroy Climate Research by boycotting the journal, and intimidating or colluding with editors and grant program officers to channel funding to alarmists, publish only their work, and reject funding requests and publications from any scientists who disagreed with them on global warming chaos. Suzuki’s increasingly strident and desperate attacks mirror their campaign, as do Al Gore’s – and no wonder.
The global warming scare has fizzled. The sun has entered a new “quiet” phase, and average global temperatures have been stable for 15 years. Climate conferences in Copenhagen and elsewhere have gone nowhere. Kyoto has become little more than a footnote in history. Countries that agreed to “climate stabilization” policies are retreating from that untenable position. The public realizes that climate science is far from “settled.” The climate-chaos religion is about to go the way of Baal-worship.
Most important, Canadians, Americans and Europeans alike are beginning to realize that the real dangers are not from global warming.
They are from potentially cooler global temperatures that could hamstring agriculture – and from government (and Suzuki-advocated) policies that are driving energy prices so high that companies are sending jobs to Asia, and millions of families can no longer afford to heat and cool their homes, drive their cars, or pay for electricity that powers all the wondrous technologies that make our lives infinitely better, safer and healthier than even kings and queens enjoyed just a century ago.
Dr. David R. Legates is Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware and a former review editor for the journal Climate Research. He has worked with Dr. Willie Soon since they were the first to uncover the flaws in the so-called ‘Hockey Stick’ in 2002.
Dr. Legates,
I’ve tried to follow this story through several accounts over the years, and I just end up confused. Your account didn’t really help, but it looks like you were close enough to the thing to have some real insight.
I didn’t see a link to what Suzuki had to say about the publishing of Soon and Baliunas, so even though you’ve given an account, I don’t know how yours differs from his. I don’t end up knowing how Suzuki is misrepresenting what happened.
I follow this much: Soon and Baliunas wrote the paper, and it was published. Van Storch didn’t like it, but the reason you’ve provided, “supposed methodological reasons” doesn’t explain why. Was it the methodology of the peer review process, or the paper? Did Von Storch ever really explain exactly what his criticisms were, and if so, do you feel they were invalid? More importantly, did Von Storch ever explain why he felt that Soon and Baliunas should not be published in that magazine again? Were S&B convicted of some publishing crime, such as plagiarism, and if not, if the paper had flaws but was published, why would that be S&Bs “crime” and not the reviewers crime, in which case it would be the reviewers who should never be allowed to review for the journal again?
Further, what did the publisher say when they changed their mind…did they point to any supposed methodological or ethical considerations? Did the editorial board ever meet, and if so, is that also their conclusion?
Lastly If I remember the Climategate letters right, it seemed to me that the Hockey Team were blaming Von Storch for the paper getting published…but from your account, it sounds like he wasn’t involved until after the paper was published. Is that the right sequence of events?
Thanks,
RDCII
@David in Georiga on August 16, 2011 at 5:37 pm
“If we need to look at anything, it’s what the real data says,. . .”
That is the big problem. What is the “real data” of the Earth’s surface temperature over time? Anthony has pointed out many large and serious errors in that data. Others have, also. The “adjustments” that cool the distant past (pre – 1970 roughly) and warm the more recent past (post – 1970) are not the marks of good science. Chiefio on his blog has pointed out many, many serious errors and changing temperature locations while the keepers of the data were deleting many, many measuring stations.
The result is that no one really knows if there’s been any warming, or much warming, or how much warming. If we in industry ran our data gathering and analyses in such a manner, every factory and refinery in the world would have either ground to a halt or exploded long ago.
What we can (perhaps) reliably say is that some temperature measuring stations’ records show that there is no warming whatsoever for many, many locations. None, zip, nada, zero. Others show a slight cooling over an approximately 100 year span. What we must conclude from this is that CO2 is either capricious and selects which cities it chooses to warm, and which it chooses to ignore. Or, CO2 is not at all the direction mankind should be looking. CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere and to suppose that one city is warmed by CO2’s influence, while another nearby city is not is just absurd. Physics does not work like that. If a principle is truly physical, then it works impartially. In other words, CO2 is not nearly smart enough to play favorites.
Darren Parker says: “So go ahead Bystander, show just one single example of an ad hom attack. Just one. Should be easy shouldn’t it?”
Is “you apes” an ad hom?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/13/open-thread-8/#comment-720484
I have been to several of David Suzuki’s lectures over the years and he seems to get increasingly cranky with age and has a tendency to throw little hissy fits when contested. I gave up believing in what he claims he stands for, being we humans are using too many resources, be it fossil fuels and much of everything else in the environment. And yet he has produced 5 children – all of them the big middle class consumer category – so he hardly practices what he preaches. If he really believes in reducing human pressure on the planet he should have remained childless as a true believer to the cause. Basically I try not to listen to hypocrites as their real purpose in life is to feather their own nest despite what they may preach.
Anybody else seeing a pattern here ?
Few people know that David Suzuki receives funding from petroleum companies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suzuki_Foundation#List_of_donors
Problems with the Mann Hockey Stick graph? The blue chip panel on the Mann Hockey Stick graph said this:
“Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium”…”
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=4
The Mann Hockey Stick graph does not show a Medieval Warm Period or a Little Ice Age. It cannot be trusted to be accurate.
People, if you’d bothered to investigate, you’d know that Soon’s body of climate work has been shown to be error-riddled nonsense and fantasy.
Scientifically, Soon couldn’t carry Suzuki’s protractor..
Thanx, Bob, for that completely content-free comment.
Smokey, you’re welcome. Now go and investigate.
@ur momisugly Rob R
Aug 16, 2011
Well spoken.
Bob says:
August 16, 2011 at 8:32 pm
[much blathering)
Scientifically, Soon couldn’t carry Suzuki’s protractor..
===============================================
Sure Bob, you can give examples….right?
Last month I read the Wikipedia entry on the Soon-Baliunas paper, and it repeats the same story that the paper was so bad several people at Climate Research resigned over it. Sounded fishy but I couldn’t find a succinct write-up on what really happened.
Thanks for providing the rest of the story.
Bob says:
August 16, 2011 at 8:32 pm
People, if you’d bothered to investigate,…..[much blathering]
======================================================
‘Cause you’ve investigated………right?
I’ve got several Soon papers…….. Suzuki? Well, I’m not into genetics….. ..Do they use protractors in genetics? He might know more than I do in the subject of genetics…..climate? My grandchildren know more. Heck, you’d probably know more if you bothered to think instead of investigate the lunacy of that whack job.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 16, 2011 at 8:27 pm
_____________________________________
Apparently, he still uses a protractor. It’s purportedly somewhat weighty too.
James Sexton wrote regarding “ad hominem”:
From Webster….. “appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect. 2. : marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the …”
I was unaware of definition one for “ad hominem”, regarding feelings or prejudices. I had thought it was an attack on a person like in definition two, and from the latin meaning of ad hominem “to the person”.
I totally agree that arguments based on feelings or prejudices are inappropriate. But while I’m aware that attack on a person is often considered a logical fallacy, I don’t think it is inappropriate here. We can’t always make our judgments based purely on sound logical evidence. If we are unable to determine by our own evidence gathering and analysis whether an argument is sound, we may have to rely on our judgment of the credibility of the experts.
It is not only OK that we do this, but inevitable. Take for example a voter with little scientific training. The voter must make a judgment about the issue, if nothing other than whether it is safe to ignore it. When climate scientists tell voters that the risk of great disaster is far too high to be ignored, the voters who can’t gather and analyze the evidence themselves, must asses the credibility of the experts on each side. In cases like this, where the entire climate science community has been and is defending the hiding of data, both in graphs and in spite of freedom of information laws, even a scientist with advanced skills may have to make a judgment about the urgency of the problem in the face of doubts about the evidence that are impractical to resolve in the near term. That judgment will rest in large part on credibility.
Fred from Canuckistan says:
August 16, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I met him years ago . . . he was a bitter, angry man who refused to forgive and can’t forget that his family was one of the thousands of Japanese who got a rough go in WW2. Can’t change that but his on going campaign for vengeance for what happened in WW2 makes him a loser.
An unfortunate side truth about Dr. Suzuki. But it doesn’t erase the fact that he is angry and bitter about EVERYTHING. Just ask Tim Ball. Fortunately, there is a resurgence of reason in Canada led by the likes of Andrew Miall, who organized a conference (ignored by the Broadcorping Castration) in Ottawa, examining the climate issue. No alarmists appeared, despite invitations to do so. The jig is up, David.
Fred Berple,
While not trying to dismiss legitimate criticism of Suzuki, I need to point out that I have walked/driven past Suzuki’s house many times over the years. For what it’s worth, he has been living in that house for many years, long before global warming-induced sea level rise became a fashionable cause-celebre. And the house is on an escarpment, some 12 m above the water level. So, even with the most extreme sea level rise projections (Al Gore perhaps excepted), his home is in no risk of inundation.
Suzuki is an embarrassment to Canada. He is so putridly infected with his hatred of white westerners that he cannot stop preaching his Pol Pot ideology. He manages to twist all science into a presentation about the morality of our successful Western energy intensive consumer society and the absolute necessity of going back to a sustainable agrarian socialist society. Like many left wing nut jobs he is also a total hypocrite and does not live anything close to a sustainable lifestyle.
I’m Canadian. I still live in Canada (not for lack of trying). Do people actually watch the CBC for anything other that Simpson’s re-runs and good hi-def sports?
Suzuki still flies to Ottawa with Air Canada despite the solar battery on his back pack…LOL
Glad the work of Vivian Krause is recognized here!
MindBuilder says:
August 16, 2011 at 9:00 pm
………In cases like this, where the entire climate science community has been and is defending the hiding of data, both in graphs and in spite of freedom of information laws, even a scientist with advanced skills may have to make a judgment about the urgency of the problem in the face of doubts about the evidence that are impractical to resolve in the near term. That judgment will rest in large part on credibility.
=======================================================
Mind, it cannot be the entire climate science community if several climate scientists disagree. Willie Soon being one of many. Indeed, the author of this article, David R. Legates, is one of the community. It is beyond silly to believe or even purport the entire climate science community is in agreement on this issue. We both could list several more climate scientists who for some reason or the other, disagree with the media’s view of the science.
The way you were presenting the thought, was a “consider the source” argument. Which, at times may be valid, however, if one did “consider the source”, then we’d have to acknowledge the source of the opposing view also stands to, and does, gain considerable finances. In other words, using the ad hominem is still a fail.
Voters, while it is incumbent upon them to inform themselves, they should understand they can’t inform themselves about every issue. When the occasion arises, that they can vote on specific issues, and they aren’t properly informed on the specific issues, they should abstain. It is their civic duty to abstain from voting on issues they know they don’t understand.
Read this one by Vivian Krause:
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/david-suzuki-foundation-70-million.html
In an interview on global warming Suzuki had this to say.
When he thinks of global warming it makes him sad. It makes me think of this GEICO commercial:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qiQI-zrPvQ?rel=0&w=425&h=349%5D
Interesting to hear how many Canuks are fed up with the Man of TV Science. I read Soon’s paper and criticisms of it, and rebuttals and the guy is correct: the sun’s variations are much more important than CO2 to global temperatures. What seems to piss people off is Soon knows what he is talking about and has the relevant scientific credentials his critics do not possess.
I also note that comments that are pure ad hominem have no effect whatsoever on the arguments and proofs that the climate is dominated by solar events. Libelling the messenger is rarely effective in the long run. If a man of popular standing with massive access to TV and its consequent influences as Dr Suzuki cannot sell CAGW to the people around him, the movement has no future as a social and economic imperative.