Roger Tattersall, aka “Tallbloke” has an old story worth re-telling today in the “false balance” arguments being made about my appearance on PBS. Its’ all part of a strategy. He writes:
Nice old cutting this, from the ‘Boston Sunday Globe’ 31 May 1992. Click for the full size image, sorry for the poor quality, but it is legible. The attempt to remove dissenting voices from the media has been in full swing for 20 years. Lewdandorky’s attempt to get man made global warming sceptics written off as ‘lunar landing deniers’ is just another route to the same goal. These people are unable to convince the public via fair open debate with their intellectual opponents.
It is journalistically irresponsible to present both sides as if it were a question of balance. Given the distribution of views, with groups like the National Academy of Science expressing strong scientific concern, it is irresponsible to give equal time to a few people standing out in left field.
T]he overall weight of evidence” of global warming “is so clear that one begins to feel angry toward those who exaggerate the uncertainty.
-Stephen H Schneider 1992-
Russell Cook (@questionAGW) says in comments there:
That is a scan I originally linked to in my JunkScience guest article “In Case of Heart[land] Attack, Break Glass” http://junkscience.com/2012/02/19/in-case-of-heartland-attack-break-glass/ (7th paragraph there), and in my comment here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/the-other-problem-with-the-lewandowsky-paper-and-similar-skeptic-motivation-analysis-core-premise-off-the-rails-about-fossil-fuel-industry-corruption-accusation/#comment-1076717 which is within the comments section of my own guest post at WUWT about ‘the other major problem’ with the Lewandowsky paper.
I also showed it in the comment I placed at the PBS NewsHour to predict the AGW backlash Watts was going to get: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec12/climatechange_09-17.html#comment-653837814
My heartfelt hat tip goes to Australia’s Brenton Groves for supplying me with that scan and the larger “Racing to an environmental precipice: Fear of future on deteriorating planet sets agenda for Rio de Janeiro summit” May 31, 1992 Boston Globe article containing it.
I believe there was a Gore / Schneider / Gelbspan connection at the beginning of it all. Consider that in September of 1992, Schneider said the following in a Discover magazine “Can We Repair the Air?”article (8th paragraph): “The White House, some business groups, and a few contrary-minded scientists had always argued that the possibility of a nasty greenhouse effect was too uncertain to justify spending billions of dollars to fix it. They (as the tobacco industry has done for decades with smoking) called instead for further studies. …” http://discovermagazine.com/1992/sep/canwerepairtheai120/?searchterm=Hurricanes%20Intensify%20Global%20Warming%20Debate ( http://www.webcitation.org/69uvrQUd2 )
My thanks to you for spreading the word of how this is a 20 year boilerplate smear.
It is 3 simple talking points: “settled science” / “corrupt skeptics operating in a parallel manner to old tobacco industry shills” / “the media is not obligated to give skeptics equal balance because of the first two points”.
Ross Gelbspan consolidated this 3-point mantra into the successful smear it became after late 1995. The story must be told far and wide, and I and can use all the help I can get in telling it.
pat:
re your post at September 20, 2012 at 3:50 am.
Oh the spinning! I’m so dizzy from it that it hurts!.
Either AGW is greater at the poles – both of them – or it is not.
There is no known mechanism which would induce AGW to cause one polar region to cool and the other to warm. None, not any, nada.
So, Arctic sea ice decreasing while Antarctic sea ice is increasing neither proves or disproves AGW. It merely demonstrates that AGW – if it exists – is too small for its effects to be discerned against the natural climate variations in those regions.
Richard
Freedom of speech was thought an important right also because the majority can be wrong. So to avoid a democratic tyranny by the majority, dissenting views need to be heard.
So OK, they worked up a consensus amongst a group of experts, fine. But they then believe that that consensus is worth more than it is, ie. that it gives them the right to shut up alternate views. No, it doesn’t. But they seldom relent on this point, apparently. They took the hill and now want to use it to dominate everything? That’s exactly what freedom of speech is supposed to help, to keep things healthy.
It is a diversion to say it is about “balance”. Nobody has balance. It is about openness and flexibility and disseminating views so that people can then be better informed. They realise the alternative views are in direct competition, so they try to shut them up.
@ur momisugly DC September 20, 2012 at 2:40 am
I can’t see why you infer slander.
Stephen Schneider at http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199608/upload/aug96.pdf August/September 1996 page 5
“On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need [Scientists should consider stretching the truth] to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
…
”Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
I would agree with tallbloke that this would appear to be activism/advocacy.
Science is never “settled”; science is mutable, but always based on facts. Consensus is the inverse of science.
I wrote to Michael Getler, as I’m certain many others have – you’ll see the text at this link:
http://www.r8ny.com/blog/vincent_nunes/censoring_a_voice_of_reason.html#comment-3167934
Anthony – truth will out.
E. T. Jaynes wrote on ‘Converging and Diverging Views’ in the ‘Queer uses for probability theory’ Chapter 5 of Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (Cambridge, 2003). Only a narrator thought balanced by the entire audience can report evenhandedly. Otherwise, the narrator’s biases are magnified by the prejudices of the audience driving them to greater polarization. Hence, the need for qualified audiences.
I have tried to tell the world that the incompetent climate consensus should have been cut short 20 years ago, when the detailed Venus atmosphere data was obtained, and people like Schneider and Hansen were in the early stages of conning the people and the system. It is not off-topic, however, to bring everyone’s attention to the climax now occurring, of long-held but wrong-headed beliefs, in the political realm itself:
Happening Now: the Fruits of Unsupported Dogma Over Reason in America
If it helps anyone I’ve scanned the improved image posted above, and run it through some OCR software. And……after a further half hour correcting errors, it finally looks OK!
Here it is in its entirety:
To some, global warming may be only hot air
While most environmental and atmospheric scientists say there is little time left to respond to the threat of global warming and rising sea levels, a minority of policy makers and researchers say the data are far too inconclusive to justify such alarmist predictions. Atmospheric dynamics are too complex and scientific knowledge so incomplete, they say, as to defy accurate predictions of climate change by computer models that attempt to play out the trends in existing data. And while few dispute that humanity is generating geometrically increasing quantities of “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide, some say their effects are so poorly understood that it is wrong to conclude we are facing a planetary environmental crisis.
In the absence of what he called “more convincing data” about Global warming, US Energy Secretary James Watkins said in a recent interview that it would be foolhardy for the United States to implement dramatic reductions in fossil-fuel burning. Conceding that the data do indicate some impending changes in climate patterns, Watkins said “the present state of scientific uncertainty” does not provide conclusive evidence that such change will be rapid or catastrophic. Asked why the United States is not discussing a crash program to switch to renewable energy sources, he responded: “Can you imagine what that would cost, especially since the scientists aren’t really sure of what’s going on?”
Several researchers, including Robert C. Balling Jr., director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University, said in interviews that global warming is more “media hype” than anything else. Balling, one of a handful of scientists who have publicly dismissed concerns about global climate change, agrees that greenhouse gases are concentrating in the upper atmosphere at a rapid pace, but he said there is no evidence they will produce anything other than minimal warming of perhaps 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). That, he said, could have beneficial effects.
Although greenhouse gases have increased by 50 percent in the last century, he said, “all we see is that the weather has become cloudier.” “Night temperatures have risen, while daytime temperatures have fallen, and the world is getting somewhat wetter,” he said, noting that the historical temperature record indicates a warming of only one-half degree over the past century. Balling believes that saturation of the upper atmosphere by carbon dioxide will have negligible effects on global temperatures, and that efforts by developed countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions would be equally inconsequential. “We’re looking at the doubling of the Earth’s population by 2030. which means there’s no hope of even slightly reducing carbon dioxide emissions by then,” said Balling. “Any emission reductions will have zero effect unless we curb population growth.” In 40 years, he said, China alone will burn about 50 percent more coal.
Similarly, S. Fred Singer, a physics professor at the University of Virginia. wrote recently that “the scientific base for an enhanced greenhouse warming … is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.” A rise of 1 degree Celsius in average temperatures, he said, would result in longer growing seasons, fewer frosts, the northward expansion of agricultural land and no increase in evaporation of water from agricultural soil. Singer said dramatic countermeasures proposed by environmentalists are “sure to stifle economic growth and reduce human welfare.”
His position is echoed by Murray Weidenbaum – head of former President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. “The doomsayers have no monopoly on the truth,” Weidenbaum said in a recent interview. Weidenbaum, who now heads the St. Louis-based Center for the Study of American Business, says the belief that pollution and atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide is increasing geometrically “runs counter to any science I’ve seen.”
However, these voices are increasingly in the minority. And as evidence has accumulated, the tide of the debate has swung increasingly toward those who believe that the Earth’s ability to withstand untrammelled human activity has reached the breaking point. Dr. Stephen Schneider, a leading atmospheric researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said recently, “It is journalistically irresponsible to present both sides as though it were a question of balance. Given the distribution of views, with groups like the National Academy of Science expressing strong scientific concern, it is irresponsible to give equal time to a few people standing out in left field.”
Sen Al Gore (D-Tenn.) conceded that uncertainties about atmospheric interactions make it impossible to forecast specific phases of climate change. But, he added, “the overall weight of evidence” of global warming “is so clear that one begins to feel anger toward those who exaggerate the uncertainty.”
This completely distorted mindset was refuted with a particular paragraph in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, (p. 735 in my copy):
“We never make assertions, Miss Taggart,” said Hugh Akston. “That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell–we show. We do not claim–we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw–we can help you to name it, but not to accept it–the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours.”
It has always been rejection of the truth that causes these people to behave in the irrational manner they do–like the “looters” in Rand’s book, their only goal is power and domination, and with that comes fame and fortune, or so they think.
No wonder they have a complete hatred for a group that do show; that do prove–that require truth in all things. Sadly, very few of them will ever accept it; rather, they are expert at false assertions.
So you have to go and find a 20 year old paper where someone in the news organisation is promoting “balance” rather than a contrary viewpoint at any cost.
Absolutely the LAST thing you want is even handed reporting. If you got the representation your viewpoint deserves, you would get 0.2% of the news time. Or once every 5 years or so. Your viewpoint is already massively overrepresented and this article was simply one that pointed to this heavy bias.
As for the rest of the comments? Keep believing. True faith can actually work miracles. Sadly for the rest of us in the real world, it’s a grim future we are looking at. 1 Million official climate refugees in the horn of Africa alone and god knows how many others not counted. Certainly it’s likely that the official figures are no better than 1 in 5.
All I can say is that you’ll need to find a bigger sandpit to bury your head in over the next decade.
Eugene S Conlin says:
September 20, 2012 at 5:21 am
Thanks, Eugene, for providing the fuller context of the Schneider quote about ‘making little mention of any doubt’ etc. I could only find the short version in my brief web search.
The worst thing is that since that 1992 article, the climate has shamelessly played along with the corrupt megalomaniacal scientists, getting warmer and warmer. But the climate is such a capricious thing. It keeps throwing in short cooling periods to give skeptics false hope.
Still you have to give skeptics credit. For over twenty years now governments have needed an excuse to do nothing, and the skeptics have done a great job of providing excuses. Well done.
NeilT says:
September 20, 2012 at 6:15 am
“1 Million official climate refugees in the horn of Africa alone and god knows how many others not counted. ”
Bollocks.
Global warming is a large and complicated thesis with quantifiable uncertainties. How can you report that uncertainties exist without automatically being taken to a place where unanimity does not exist?
So, so true / sarc
Now, why should journalist take a more balanced approach? Could it be that people can get it wrong at times? I don’t know but let’s go back to the future.
More hilarity and entertainment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqsRD4HPtH0
http://www.john-daly.com/schneidr.htm
I’ve been hammering on the PBS NewsHour over this concept of “fair balance” since December 29, 2009. See: “The lack of climate skeptics on PBS’s ‘Newshour’ ” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.htmI
My thanks to “tallbloke” for moving the comment I placed at his blog yesterday up into the main text body.
(FIXED the link) See: “The lack of climate skeptics on PBS’s ‘Newshour’ ” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.html
NeilT says:
September 20, 2012 at 6:15 am
We don’t operate on “True faith” around here, Neil–we don’t make assertions like yours: What proof do you have that your “1 Million official climate refugees” are due to the increase in CO2?
Oh, none, you say? Not surprising.
No, we operate on showing and proving, whereas you use assertions.
See the difference?
“The other issue is the conduct of science and the integrity of the science process. The corruption of science in a worthy cause is still corruption, and it has led to its further corruption in an unworthy cause—the ideologically driven claim of anthropogenic global warming.” S. Fred Singer (http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/01/03/secondhand-smoke-lung-cancer-and-global-warming-debate)
pat says:
September 20, 2012 at 3:50 am
WUWT link in the comments:
19 Sept: LiveScience: Natalie Wolchover: Record-High Antarctic Sea Ice Levels Don’t Disprove Global Warming
In the post, climate change skeptic and blogger Steven Goddard states that Antarctic sea ice reached its highest level ever recorded for the 256th day of the calendar year on Sept. 12. He reasons that the Southern Hemisphere must be balancing the warming of the Northern Hemisphere by becoming colder (and thus, net global warming is zero)…
Despite its lack of scientific support, Goddard’s post has garnered attention around the Web. In a Forbes.com column about the record high Antarctic sea ice, skeptic James Taylor writes, “Please, nobody tell the mainstream media or they might have to retract some stories and admit they are misrepresenting scientific data.”
***But if anyone had asked an actual scientist, they would have learned that a good year for sea ice in the Antarctic in no way nullifies the precipitous drop in Arctic sea-ice levels year after year — or the mounds of other evidence indicating global warming is really happening.
“Antarctic sea ice hasn’t seen these big reductions we’ve seen in the Arctic. This is not a surprise to us,” said climate scientist Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC…
http://www.livescience.com/23333-record-high-antarctic-sea-ice-levels-don-t-disprove-global-warming.html
Pat if you were to ask an actual scientist (it sounds as if you haven’t) – they would point out that we are currently in the cooler end of the12,000 years of the Holocene and that satellite observations of the poles only started ~30 years ago, so less than 0.3% of the period. There is evidence of wave action on the shores around the Arctic that indicate that it was open water during the early and mid-Holocene. This appears to be at a time when humans were keeping domestic cattle in what is now the Sahara desert and of course the polar bears survived this period too. In the Eemian the temperatures were warmer still yet the world did not come to an end. A scientist tends not to panic over statistically insignificant observations of one area when information is already available from another. But then Pat you do not appear to be a scientist.
Evidence please. And if you do provide it show me how carbon dioxide caused it?
Droughts were supposed to be just a thing of the past. Children won’t know what drought is.
By the way would the 1 million refugees be part of the still missing the 50 million climate refugees. 😉
http://asiancorrespondent.com/tag/50-million-climate-refugees/
As far as I remember, it was shortly after researching for this Boston Globe article that the author, Ross Gelbspan, switched from listening to us climate skeptics to claiming we’re all “in the pay of Big Oil”… if only! 😉
In case some of you haven’t heard of Gelbspan, he has been remarkably influential in promoting the “Big Oil” conspiracy theory.
Apparently, the motivation for his shift from balanced reporting to “skeptics=evil” occurred after Dr. James McCarthy (now head of Union of Concerned Scientists) told him that he shouldn’t have listened to the skeptics Gelbspan interviewed for the article. Why? Simply because McCarthy was convinced he was right, so he assumed everyone that disagreed with him MUST be in the pay of Big Oil.
Anyway, McCarthy urged Gelbspan to ASSUME skeptics were all corrupt and instead “follow the money”. This apparently prompted Gelbspan on his mudslinging voyage, resulting in books like “The Heat is On”.
Of course, once published, Gelbspan’s work then became quotable by other people who wanted an excuse to ignore climate skeptics… including McCarthy! Soon after, the Union of Concerned Scientists did their own mudslinging report, called “Smoke and mirrors” or something like that…
Around this time, inspired by Gelbspan, James Hoggan set up DeSmogBlog and asked him to join in. (For those who don’t know, Hoggan runs a PR firm which represents a number of green companies… and ironically, Exxon’s rival, Shell!)
Greenpeace also did a similar report called “Exxon Secrets” (or something like that), inspired by Gelbspan.
Of course, now there were several interlinked sources ALL saying the same thing “ignore the skeptics – they’re all in the pay of big oil”. The fact that they all originated from just a few sources, and were based on rather flimsy arguments didn’t matter. Instead, people who started to read up on skeptics like Singer, Lindzen, etc, would find dozens of links, apparently from several different sources – Gelbspan, DeSmogBlog, Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace.
They started quoting these sources, and by doing so, they became secondary sources, e.g., George Monbiot wrote an entire chapter in his “Heat” book, allegedly “proving” that the skeptics were evil. The proof was merely a repetition of Gelbspan, DeSmogBlog, UCS and Greenpeace. But, then people who read Monbiot’s book would quote him as a NEW source without realising it was a just a collection of quotes from the same sources: Gelbspan, McCarthy, Hoggan, Greenpeace and co.
—
P.S. Lest Prof. Lewandowsky think I’m promoting a conspiracy theory ;), I must stress I DON’T think the “Big Oil conspiracy theory” is itself the result of a conspiracy. (although it certainly would be ironic!!!)
Instead, I think McCarthy, Gelbspan, Monbiot, etc genuinely believe what they are saying. So, the fact that they quote each other isn’t a conspiracy – it’s just confirmation bias.
Rocky Road: ‘This completely distorted mindset was refuted with a particular paragraph in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, (p. 735 in my copy):
“We never make assertions, Miss Taggart,” said Hugh Akston.’
Except that in this statement, Akston is making an assertion. Perhaps he was just being economical and meant ‘mere’ or ‘unsupported’ assertion.
But taking Akston’s assertion at face value, it is unsupported. In which case, his statement does not support this assertion: ‘This completely distorted mindset was refuted with a particular paragraph in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged’.
Interestingly, Akston then goes on to tell Miss Taggart that, ‘We do not tell–we show’; and then claims, ‘We do not claim–we prove’.
To be charitable, perhaps Rand was doing irony.
Actually I preferred Bollocks as an answer. At least it’s a knee jerk reaction and not some pseudo massaged response.
OK the figures are official figures of the refugees from the horn of Africa. I’m not going to link it you all have Google, stop being so lazy and go find it. Oh sorry you don’t want to hear that so why should you bother. As you don’t want to hear it you will never look for it.
OK now to proving that CO2 caused it.
I’m not going to. If you can’t read 150 years of scientific literature then my lone voice is not going to convince you. You have taken your position; namely that an increase of CO2 into an atmosphere does not increase the heat content of the environment which contains that increased atmospheric CO2 mix. Given that it continues to receive the same, or even slightly less, energy input.
As this is obviously so completely and utterly bollocks, what more could I say more that would convince you? In my estimation nothing. Your minds are closed on a path which is in complete contradiction to well documented and tested, science. Everything you say is in justification of your position. There is not one single piece of original work which expands either knowledge or science on this site. In fact quite the opposite.
So I will continue to stand on the sidelines and cheer you on in your inconsistencies.
Neil T , Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha you have a three year olds debating skills. I told you so I told you so , I know more than you I know more than you . What are you going to do next ? Go tell your mommy we are bad and will not listen to you ?
NeilT says:
September 20, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Nice deflection, there, NeilT, which is a polite way of saying Epic Fail!
Because if your “lone voice” could indeed come up with definitive proof of what you assert, you wouldn’t have to toss out the lame “150 years of scientific literature” excuse–one would be enough.
Your allegation of popular support for CAGW is very similar to what Einstein said regarding the book “100 Authors Against Einstein”, which was:
“If I were wrong, then one would have been enough”.
I’m challenging you to produce even ONE! Epic fail, there NeilT; Epic Fail!
(Just how am I supposed to find that one for you if it doesn’t exist? I don’t appreciate getting the run-around.)