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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
David Suzuki is a TV star, plain and simple. He narrates (Gore received a Nobel for his narration), an entertaining science program – The Nature of Things. For those educated primarily by TV: He is the Man!
Suzuki, like Hansen, bought into CAGW early, by first report data, synchronicity with socialistic ideology, and went “ALL IN”. All in, for these men, meant the mission was so important – that the end justifies the means. Once this line was crossed, he became a non-scientist, and the letters after his name… decorations. Influence and large sums of money greased the path beyond the point of no return. Pity! GK
Bystander says:
August 16, 2011 at 4:32 pm
“Snort – you guys complaining about personal attacks on scientists.”
Careful, that white powder will rot your brain.
“Now that is ironic… Do y’all ever read what you write?”
Actually, I could give a rats arse about it. Suzuki is no more credible than Kaku when he starts his bobble head yammering out side of his field. Both now fall far short of being scientists and are more of a little show ponies that the media trots out when they are trying to drum up attention to their point.
And as for attacking them… the TRULY ironic part is they they place themselves on a pedestal and sling invectives at people who have differing views despite having no evidence to support their claim…. okay, no verifiable evidence. You know, that stuff that can stand on it’s own merit with out any cheerleading or obfuscation.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a defense of the 2003 Soon / Baliunas paper. I think in light of all that has happened in the climate world, it holds up pretty well.
It’s a given that Wikipedia is a biased source, so Dr Soon is mentioned as having received over US$1M from petroleum and coal interests since 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon
Contrast that entry with that of Dr Suzuki. There is no mention of his loot, only a list of honours, awards & honourary degrees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._David_T._Suzuki
Early in his research career Dr Suzuki studied genetics & is a zoologist. Where is his expertise in Astrophysics? He’s no Willie Soon, that’s for sure!
Bob says:
August 16, 2011 at 8:32 pm
“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.”
If any such work had been done, it’s a good bet it would have been discussed here. So perhaps you’re referring to Phil Jones’ email to Mann in which he said “Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow [Soon & Baliunas] even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
It is evident that while Soon had committed the sin of doing actual science, his detractors were busily engaged in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Greenarse Wankerism. They didn’t have a case in 2003 and they don’t have one now. Take off the blindfold and see where the real nonsense is taking us.
James Sexton wrote:
It is beyond silly to believe or even purport the entire climate science community is in agreement on this issue.
I left out the qualifier – almost. Almost everyone on the alarmist side of the climate science community is defending the hiding, or at least failing to criticize it. For future reference, when it is claimed that everyone in a group of many thousands is doing something, it is usually not meant that every last one is doing it. Unless you think the difference is really material to the argument, don’t quibble the obvious. What I meant is that if so many of the alarmists are so willing to defend misleading science and hidden data, even an expert could find it very difficult to sift through the bad science and come to a reliable conclusion.
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.
Even if both sides are found to be unreliable sources, that is useful decision making information, not to be disregarded as a logical fallacy. If alarmists say you should spend a trillion dollars to stop global warming, but you find they consider it acceptable to hide data, you might reasonably consider that to be important information in deciding whether to spend that trillion.
It is [voters] civic duty to abstain from voting on issues they know they don’t understand.
I don’t generally agree with that. Sometimes the vast majority of voters who understand an issue are those with a special interest in the subject. Leaving the vote to only those who have a special interest is often not the best course for the people as a whole.
Bystander says:
August 16, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Snort – you guys complaining about personal attacks on scientists.
Now that is ironic… Do y’all ever read what you write?
Garethman says.
I agree. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. If we are the good guys, we should not be behaving in the same way. And lets face it, a quick review of our posts will see some pretty obnoxious insults aimed at warmists from time to time. Don’t let this site get like Skeptical Science where cyber bullying is the norm rather than an aberration.
I thought that Suzuki was great in the early days but I changed my mind 2 years ago he is on the gravy train sitting next to Al Gore and this mad mates
Suzuki wrote this column a few years back. Its hows his utter lack of knowledge in the subject of global warming.
From the good doctor:
It has been known since the last century that carbon-bearing compounds are transparent to sunlight but opaque to infra-red. In other words, sunlight passes through carbon-containing air whereas infra-red heat rays tend to be reflected by the carbon.
We are familiar with this effect in a car that has sat in the sun. The interior becomes hot because the carbon in the glass keeps the heat in.
Suzuki made these 6 elemental scientific errors, in two short paragraphs.
1. Carbon in glass? Maybe in the front windshield, sandwiched between 2 sheets of glass. As glass is mostly opaque to infrared (IR), its moot.
2. Carbon compounds may or may not trap heat. Polyethylene, for example, is transparent to IR.
3. Heat in the car is from modifying convection, not radiation. Decreased convection = increased radiation. Polyethylene vs glass in greenhouses shows no difference in heat retention, in spite of the different IR properties of the two barriers. The heat retention is from preventing convection.
4. Glass is mostly opaque to IR, not the supposed carbon in it. Suzuki assumes it’s not opaque, by needing the “carbon” in it to stop IR.
5. Carbon molecules may, or may not, allow visible light through. Again, it depends on the molecule.
6. Suzuki says carbon bearing compounds REFLECT IR. Some compounds allow IR through. The ones that don’t, ABSORB IR photons, then re-emit photons. They don’t reflect.
Suzuki wrote that column for a newspaper, but did not bother to research his facts. Suzuki is ignorant of simple elements of chemistry and physics.
This man is not a scientist. Any university education has long since leaked out.
Here is the column, and if I can steal a line from the Daily Bayonet, prepare to start banging your head on the desk, in an effort to make the stupid stop.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/features/suzuki/story.html?id=4bee3fa9-9a10-46f1-9d6a-648a19710b30
Wax on, wax off.
Suzuki is not above trying hide when he is obviously wrong:
Suzuki’s web site pulled articles and posts on salmon, after the salmon population recovered. Suzuki was stating “up to 95%” of salmon died from sea lice from salmon farms. He did not state the full range, 9% to 95%, and even that was based only on computer modeling.
This article also shows the realtionship between the various actors and the foundations that support them. These foundations are admittedly promoting anti-salmon farming. In other words, the foundations are paying money to groups and researchers to flog the anti-salmon farming message.
Again, US charitable foundations plays a prominent role in promoting Canadian “environmentalism”.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/05/31/the-missing-sea-lice/
Suzuki stated, in a radio interview, that his Foundation
“corporations have not been interested in funding us.”
A look at his 2006 annual report shows different facts. From an article by Joseph Ben-Ami, via Tim Ball on SPPI:
Actually, the David Suzuki Foundation’s annual report for 2005/2006 lists at least 52 corporate donors including: Bell Canada, Toyota, IBM, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Microsoft, Scotia Capital, Warner Brothers, RBC, Canon and Bank of Montreal.
The David Suzuki Foundation also received donations from EnCana Corporation, a world leader in natural gas production and oil sands development, ATCO Gas, Alberta’s principle distributor of natural gas, and a number of pension funds including the OPG (Ontario Power Generation) Employees’ and Pensioners’ Charity Trust. OPG is one of the largest suppliers of electricity in the world operating 5 fossil fuel-burning generation plants and 3 nuclear plants… which begs the question – is Suzuki now pro-nuclear power?
The radio interview (the best part is where he loses it, and storms out):
Tim Ball’s post:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/sad_legacy.html
Of course, like Gore, hypocrisy runs rampant with Suzuki. He owns at least 2 homes, two of them on the ocean, of course. He may also own another home in Toronto, but I have not confirmed that. He might also own a little pied de terre in Vancouver, according to University records.
He also, when not speaking on the evils of over population, has made time to have 5 children.
http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2008/06/5_letters_6.html
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/Suzuki/2009/08/12/10440256-ca.html
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/my-unexpected-encounter-with-david-suzuki-1.html
How about a looming prospect of using lie detectors? Let’s get “our” people to pledge that they’ll take a lie detector test on live TV to declare that they are SINCERE in their belief that human CO2 is, say, not causing or not going to cause any amount of global warming large enough to be ‘X’ or cause ‘Y’. Let’s see shills like Suzuki, Mann, Schmitt, Hansen, etc. step up to make the same pledge to confirm their sincerity in believing the opposite. I just want to put them on the spot and force them to make excuses for their likely refusal to make the same pledge.
Then the whole subject changes from science to integrity as I think it ought to at this point. Instead of ABC news asking a climate shill if they think the next heat wave, (snow storm, tornado, hang nail, etc), is going to be worse because of our CO2, the elephant sitting on their camera will always suggest that they first ask them the question “Why to you continue to refuse to pledge to take a lie detector test when all of these other distinguished PhD scientists have pledged to do so?”.
Somehow, they need to be exposed and discredited for their arrogant dishonesty so that no one will listen to them or want to be associated with funding them any longer. Maybe there are other approaches to that end so, whatever it takes.
And speaking of the lame tobacco reference he mentions, (they ALL do..), is it just me or does anyone else see the obvious connection as made apparent by the following quasi-algebraic parallel?
Tobacco -> Declare it Bad (whether it is or not) = Collect a lot of tax money
CO2 -> Declare it Bad (whether it is or not) = …..
Dr. Fruitfly (the least pejorative name I can come up with for him) is a supreme hypocrite. He has a large house not far from UBC in Vancouver; some of the highest priced real-estate in that city. It’s my understanding that he also has another house on one of the small islands between the BC mainland and Vancouver island — again very high priced real estate. While he lives a luxurious lifestyle in one of the expensive cities of the world, he preaches about the need for everyone (excluding him) to decrease consumption and eliminate industrial civilization. I’m sure he buys carbon offsets which seem to excuse any level of excess consumption by the high priests of Gaia.
In a classic example of CAGW cultists not practicing what they preach, he has absolutely no training in the area of climatology. He used to do research on fruit flies and I don’t think he’s done much work since the 1970’s. He did have some expertise in the area of molecular biology back then. Even when I was in my environmentalist phase in the 1970’s, my impression of one of his talks that I attended around 1974 was that he was an idiot. My opinion of him hasn’t gone up any during the last 35 years.
He’s Canada’s version of Al Gore living a lifestyle that only a few percent of the population can afford and telling everyone else about why they should never aspire to his lifestyle. The only reason that he’s considered to have any scientific expertise is because of the Commie Broadcasting Corporation providing him an outlet for his views supposedly on science topics. Hopefully that outlet will soon be closed and the Canadian government can save $1.5 billion currently spent on Canada’s CAGW propaganda network.
An angry man with a messiah complex and a bizzare dislike of humankind and a strange perception that we are killing the Earth mother Gaia. Shrieking like Gore but personally living the good life. A wasted and bitter life,sad and some what pathetic.
Frank says:
August 16, 2011 at 9:36 pm
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?
——
Appearently so. I stopped watching CBC long ago, because of their gross leftist/socialist bias.
Suzuki’s “Nature of Things” program is a great series (when it is not promoting global warming which is actually quite rare). It goes way back to before any of us, Suzuki even, had heard of global warming. Lately, it has been running a series called Geologic Journey which goes through the geologic/plate tectonics history of the Earth – 12 programs and it never mentions climate change or CO2. So, there is an actual scientist in there somewhere.
Bystander says :-
Snort – you guys complaining about personal attacks on scientists.
Now that is ironic… Do y’all ever read what you write?
Suzuki is not a scientist.
Suzuki should stick to fruit flies.
Mindbuilder says:
August 17, 2011 at 12:21 am
James Sexton wrote:
It is beyond silly to believe or even purport the entire climate science community is in agreement on this issue.
==============================
I left out the qualifier – almost. Almost everyone on the alarmist side of the climate science community is defending the hiding, or at least failing to criticize it. For future reference, when it is claimed that everyone in a group of many thousands is doing something, it is usually not meant that every last one is doing it.
=======================================================
Mind, I think at this point we should just agree to disagree about the use of ad homs
I would point out though, I don’t believe there are thousands of alarmists in the climate science community. Much less constituting an overwhelming majority. A large majority to be sure, but I think I can name a skeptical scientist for every 2 or three alarmists I can name.
=====================================
“It is [voters] civic duty to abstain from voting on issues they know they don’t understand.”—JS
“I don’t generally agree with that. Sometimes the vast majority of voters who understand an issue are those with a special interest in the subject. Leaving the vote to only those who have a special interest is often not the best course for the people as a whole.” ——MB
And that, my friend, is why we have the president we do today. Can you describe to me an interest that you wouldn’t, or someone else wouldn’t classify as a ‘special interest’? I’ve long been an advocate of providing cheap and reliable energy to this entire nation…… that view is characterized as a “special interest”. The onus is upon the voter to educate himself(or her) as to the issues. Failure to do so and then voting on the issues anyway is a corruption of the process and damages the idea of democracy.
Mike M says @ur momisugly August 17, 2011 at 3:30 am
Tobacco -> Declare it Bad (whether it is or not) = Collect a lot of tax money
Are you saying that Tobacco isn’t bad for human health?
Your analogy actually serves to just remind everyone of the skeptics using the Tobacco industry methods/tactics.
As the chinese (not japanese) philosopher said: “Just wait seated at your front door and you´ll see the corpse of your enemy passing by” (Confucius). It´s a matter of time: The next winter and following winters will tell the truth….his words along all armageddonian forecasts will fall, as the carbon shares, frozen under a real reloaded and new “Maunder Minimum”… 🙂
Gareth Phillips says:
August 17, 2011 at 12:31 am
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. If we are the good guys, we should not be behaving in the same way. And lets face it, a quick review of our posts will see some pretty obnoxious insults aimed at warmists from time to time. Don’t let this site get like Skeptical Science where cyber bullying is the norm rather than an aberration.
Actually, given what the Warmist camp has done and/or is trying to do to science, to truth, and to humanity I believe we have shown remarkable restraint.
Ditto with the feces-hurling Warmist trolls who grace us with their presence from time to time.