First, here is a letter from Harold Ambler which went ignored, he writes:
When I found a rather major error in a New York Times article about climate change, I took the trouble to write the editors. I did so via two channels. One of the two ways was sending a letter to the editorial page editors; the other was writing the Times‘ public editor. As I have not heard back from either, I have decided to publish my own letter below. I will add that it has been my experience that if I don’t hear back quickly from editors then I don’t hear back from them at all.
Dear Editor:
There is a tendency among those declaring the seriousness of global warming to equate small pieces of the climate puzzle, when those pieces support a narrative of disaster, with the whole picture, but this is neither good science nor good journalism.
In the Jan. 15 online edition Jada Smith falls prey to the temptation: ”With record-breaking global temperatures in 2012, severe droughts and several storms and hurricanes on the East Coast, some members of the American clergy are saying that human decisions that contribute to the extreme weather associated with climate change can no longer be left in the hands of politicians.”
The year 2012 was not a record-setting one for global temperatures. The United States, 1.5% of Earth’s surface, did experience record temperatures, and indeed clicking the first link for “global temperatures” brings one to another Times article about the American record.
The United States is a wonderful country, but it is not the world.
Harold AmblerEast Greenwich, RIp.s. The global temperature ranking for 2012 is available here:
Second, Ambler adds today:
Sunday, January 20, 11:43 a.m. EST, update: Andy Revkin kindly took the time to make sure the right set of eyes fell on a third letter I wrote, and the Times has fixed the piece and issued a formal correction. To Andy I offer my sincere thanks. With my book focusing in part on a century-long habit of promulgating climate fear at the Times it is gratifying to have the paper catch an accurate glimpse of its own reflection in the blogosphere mirror, if even for a moment. By the way, a screencap of the original article with the mistake is below (beneath that the original blog post can be found).
Read his entire post here: New York Times Sets Bar Just a Little Higher for Climate Misinformation
Here’s what the NYT eco-reporter, Jada F. Smith, added to the end of the story:
An earlier version of this post misstated the nature of a temperature record set in 2012. It was the hottest year ever in the United States, not in the world as a whole. (Global temperatures were the ninth or 10th hottest ever, depending on the basis of the measurements.)
Kudos to both Harold Ambler and Andrew Revkin for working to fix this bit of unwarranted alarmism. I have to laugh though, reading the article, because it clearly links climate alarmism and religion together. The photo that was widely distributed of the “pray in” march is hilariously iconic, worthy of some of the parades seen in San Francisco.
Leading the religious parade at the front is NASA GISS Dr. James Hansen, who’s “got the whole world in his hands“.
Carrying a beach ball-sized Earth, Hansen led the interfaith protesters the two blocks from the church to the White House. Others carried banners saying “God calls to us all: Heal the Earth.” The march along wet streets was silent but for a small troupe of Buddhist drummers.
“We have a dream that our president will understand the intergenerational injustice of human-made climate change,” Hansen said when they arrived. “That he will recognize our duty to be caretakers of creation, of the land, of the life on our planet. And that he will give these matters the priority that our young people deserve.”
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/01/15/2591369/climate-change-activists-turn.html#.UPwo3KxZO20#storylink=cpy
As Steve McIntyre once quipped, Hansen clearly has a “Jor-el” complex, and it seems to be worsening:
It’s as though Hansen, who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, has a Jor-El complex: Jor-El being familiar to young boys of a certain age as Superman’s father who (per Wikipedia):
“was a highly respected scientist on the planet Krypton before its destruction. He foresaw the planet’s fate, but was unable to convince his colleagues in time to save their race. Jor-El was, however, able to save his infant son, Kal-El, sending him in a homemade rocketship to the planet Earth just moments before Krypton’s demise.
It is worthwhile to go back and review McIntyre’s essay from 2007:
Hansen and the “Destruction of Creation”
Maybe when things get ‘really desperate’ NASA’s Dr. James Hansen will send Scott “super” Mandia off in a rocket ship?
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eric1skeptic says:
January 20, 2013 at 5:25 pm
“james griffin, the current . . . ”
Holocene
It helps to know what such terms relate to and how they are formed. A useful start is to say such terms have not been based on climate and a casual reference to Holocene being an “inter-glacial Holocene” is a mis-direction of sorts. The names relate more to life forms – that is, what lived when. The names of the not to distant past are not very helpful in this respect. They are Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene. The root ‘cene’ means recent (new) while the prefix for each is ‘More’, ‘Most’, and ‘Entirely’, giving More recent, Most recent, and Entirely recent. The Holocene is generally stated to have now existed for 11,700 years. If we could travel back in time to that point we should not encounter living things that are greatly dissimilar from those we recognize today.
The above is the major problem with the term “Anthropocene” that is supposed to reflect human influence on the atmosphere so significant as to show up in the lithosphere. That neglects the fact that human influence shows up in the lithosphere before Drake drilled that first oil well in western Pennsylvania. And are there many really-really new life forms that characterize our time. Okay, Robby the Robot. What else?
Investigators in other fields have appropriate naming conventions – think Epipaleolithic versus Neolithic. If there is a name needed, go in this direction. Perhaps Plastiolithic [see The Graduate].
I got Mann to correct his facebook “about” page today!!!!
I commented on this story [1] indicating that his “about” page was misrepresenting him as it stated he was “Co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”. A few hours later my comments are deleted but his “about” page was changed to state ‘Contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize”.
But congrats to Harold Ambler on getting a correction, I’m still working on getting PBS to correct a statement Dr Collins made in the NewsHour program that Anthony appeared on.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/476037815785759
Re grants to States and Universities, If your credit cards were maxed out would you not use some discretion as to how you dole your $$ out for things that are not necessities? This administration has no concept of cutting spending until the borrowing limit is addressed. Instead they threaten to cut Social Security and Military pay.
Possibly they need some help on establishing priorities.
On the Hansen photo, I misread the banner, at first glance, as “Heat the Earth”. My bad.
For me the Rapture can’t come soon enough, so that we finally can get rid of these mis-believing lunatics…
Being an Australian of the very old school we aknowledged rank through earned respect then they were our mates and we would follow them to our death. This Hansen person would have an extremely hard time getting me to address him as sir let alone Dr, my god, of all the use full idiots ever created this fool takes the cake.
Also on that word *ever* : A hundred or couple of hundred years is not ever and they know using that word is lying at the time they use it.
***
paul says:
January 20, 2013 at 10:08 am
an environgelic movement
***
I was thinking another kind of “movement”….
Nice to see Hansen now envisions himself as the green MLK, with his “dream”. On this day, worth wondering what MLK would have thought about making energy more expensive for the poor.
– – – – – – – – –
It is legend in history that righteous calls for good action emanate from religious groups. That kind of thing is not surprising news even when a former** science leader of NASA’s GISS is the religious protesting group’s leader.
What is disturbing for me is that a supernatural being is believed to support just one highly uncertain thesis out of many in a healthy ongoing scientific dialog . Does it seem just one step out of the Dark Ages . . . maybe only a blink from the Dark Ages?
** he is, as seen from his claims, no longer scientific in any objective way.
An often relevant quote from ‘The God of the Machine’ by Isobel Paterson,
The potential of stelf-regulation by the science community is perhaps the litmus test of our reported departure from the Dark Ages.
John
Oops, a spelling correction needed in the final paragraph of my comment on January 21, 2013 at 9:04 am.
Here is the correction:
John
Give James Hansen a break. He is known to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
REPLY: I doubt that, and you have provided no reference to back it up. if you have such a reference, provide it – Anthony