Guest essay by Russell Cook
Although I am no more than an ordinary citizen, my email address book reads like a “Who’s Who” list of skeptic scientists and speakers. Among them, I’ve had the privilege to exchange emails with Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Do just a basic internet search for nothing more than his name and you see why he is disgusted by those saying his work is tainted by industry funding.
Here, rather than having a written-out guest post, Dr Soon suggested I could place two videos featuring him, followed by a specific comment question he wants to pose to his accusers, along with a statement from a fellow skeptic scientist, Dr Richard Lindzen. He felt this would collectively encapsulate the fatal weakness accusers show when they resort to charter assassination in order to avoid debate on the science of global warming.
The first video Dr Soon suggested was of his hour long 4/2/2013 University of Minnesota presentation, where he said at the outset that science should not be subjected to what he calls a strange and ugly political interference, pointing out that no amount of money can influence his opinion. Then he devoted the remainder of the presentation to his detailed scientific analysis of the global warming situation – very humorously, I should add.
View that video in its entirety, and you easily see why the woman in the following short confrontation is as foolish as she is. This confrontation occurred at the end of Dr Soon’s similar presentation at the University of Wisconsin on the following day – you see the identical slide of a comical-looking car behind him in each.
Despite all his material questioning the validity of man-caused global warming, the woman completely ignored it and instead launched into a much-repeated talking point about Dr Soon being ‘paid over a million dollars by Exxon’, followed by the question, “Why should we trust someone without credentials in climate science whose work is only funded by coal and oil industries?”
Dr Soon’s response is fabulous, transferring the burden of proof right back onto her about the assertions she made, chastising her for her rudeness in being unable to engage in debate.
The comment he wished for me to put here sums up his frustration with this woman and other like-minded critics:
Does this educational lecture really go out of the boundaries of reasonable discussion of the scientific and related socio-political issues on CO2 and climate?
Answer: no, it does not, and this illustrates the entire problem involving people on Al Gore’s side of the issue. The woman accusing Dr Soon of industry corruption could not bring herself to refute anything he said or engage in actual debate on his specific topic points. She instead inferred that money influence had tainted what he said so badly that none of it was worthy of consideration, which crumbles to dust when she and other accusers fail to prove that industry money was given to skeptic scientists in exchange for laughably and demonstratively false fabricated papers, reports or assessments.
Folks on the Al Gore side, in other words, have the situation preposterously backwards: they first should shoot down what skeptics say with superior scientific reasoning and analysis, and then nail the coffin shut by proving precisely how skeptics put out fabricated material bought by ‘big coal & oil’. The woman in the second video could not meet either challenge.
Dr Soon wanted to bring up one other point, a declaration made by a fellow scientist who questions the idea that greenhouse gases are the primary driver of global warming, Dr Richard Lindzen. It’s only four paragraphs, unequivocally stating “My research has never been supported by any industrial source.” This poses a massive problem for Ross Gelbspan, who has become rather famous over the narrative that Lindzen “charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services.”
My thanks to Dr Soon for providing Dr Lindzen’s financial declaration. It’s worthy of its own blog piece here, exploring Gelbspan’s narrative of what Dr Lindzen would charge, compared to what he actually received.
One final point: a June 2011 Reuters article is often cited by critics of Dr Soon as proof of his industry corruption. What they routinely fail to mention is the last sentence of the article where Dr Soon said:
“I would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research.”
After an especially egregious version of this oft-repeated accusation against Dr Soon appeared in the UK Guardian newspaper, he responded with this firm letter-to-the-editor, concluding with the same plea as what he basically had for the critic at his University of Wisconsin presentation.
More perspective and less prejudice, please.
Steve McIntyre says:
July 26, 2013 at 11:52 am
The real scandal is the failure of NSF and similar agencies to fund Soon.
The pathetic truth is that funding in science, the NSF is a good example, is driven by scientific fads. The justification for either granting or denying funding is that the foundation does not want to “waste” funds on “unproductive” lines if inquiry. The very fact that a term like “unproductive” can appear in a grant refusal is evidence of a predetermined position on the research outcome. This attitude is pervasive. It is not limited to climate science but affects every phase of research from archaeology to zoology.
I must say that one of the most amusing days of my adult life occurred when I was accused, after expressing a somewhat skeptical view of AGW, of being ‘in the pay of tobacco interests’.
The reason that this was so funny was that for 10 years, I worked for a cancer research organisation (well the two predecessors of what is now one) and have never been funded one cent by any lobbying organisation of any kind.
I guess I didn’t put my CV up on a blog post – I never realised that it was required.
The relevant bit for climate topics would be: ‘spent 15 years experiencing mountain weather in Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, Wales, England and Scotland. Became expert at predicting timings of powder snow falls in the Alps weeks to months apart, for the sole purpose of avoiding bad ski-ing conditions on my winter holidays.’
Of course, experiencing horizontal spindrift, rain, biting winds, hacking open ice in a frozen river to get drinking water, safely leading people down a gorgeous black ski run at 3.30pm after waiting for 4hrs for conditions to become perfect despite badgering from punters to go earlier etc etc is no substitute for running computer simulations with ill-selected parameters.
It does, however, provide a wealth of experience, examples, patterns, deviations from stated norms, life-enhancing events etc etc which impact upon one’s ability to evaluate critically whether the systemic components of particular models mimic well the known characteristics of certain systems where my knowledge is more than merely rudimentary.
I assume anyone can have insight into climatology and I don’t think that a BSc either enhances or precludes that possibility. The most wise woman I met in the UK worked as a washing up lady in Oxford and one of the most puerile and idiotic did a PhD with GlaxoSmithKline. I have also met many incredible women with PhDs, so please don’t say I can’t handle bright women. I’ve just met a few very bright, emotionally stunted women too. One of the best academic professors I ever met started life as an apprentice in an aerospace firm and only graduated into academia in his 40s. He didn’t have an undergraduate degree but his insights into metallurgy were astonishing. He didn’t learn them from books……
The crux in navigating your way through tough complex situations is to ask every time what is being asserted, what evidence backs that up and what other explanations might there be. Are the measurement technologies suitable, is there any basis for artefacts and, if there is something strange about the data, what is it??
Most seminal observations in science are about noticing the unexpected.
If there’s one thing I’d like the whole world to learn to be good at, it’s to trust what they observe and be ready to accept the novel and unexpected.
Once again, that’s not taught in books and only comes from observing things, having an open mind and being ready to see the significance of what you observe.
I’m with Dr. Soon. Let it be know that I, John West, do not like the IPCC either.
Russell Cook –
You misunderstood –
There are apparently two CFACT organizations
I thought it was from the Conservative one – but no – it’s CAMPUS or Collegiate
I watched the video to the end and there was a note to follow the DENIERS
When I watched the video through YouTube you get what I posted
THOSE IDIOTS WERE PROUD of the harrassment of Dr. Soone
Believe it or NOT – they thought that video was a win for THEM
JohnB – U of MN Allum
I also misunderstood – The video is PRESENTED by something called “PowerWatch” go to youtube and check it out for yourself
CFACT is a WIN
“PowerWatch” is a FAIL
as I may have been – apologies for my confusion too
JohnB
I think his data could be explained better by making sure the audience knows what data is plotted on a graph. If they are unaware of what the x and y-axis represent, then they will find it difficult to understand, and may switch off.
Still confused it’s PolluterWatch – go to the YouTube host to confirm
Meanwhile taking millions from the Rockefellers is OK by the green propagandists… Case of pot (version Pol Pot) calling the kettle black…
This man is a genius.
Just decided who should be my third nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, with Watts, for his team’s attempt to produce high-quality climatic data, & McIntyre, for his group’s statistical analysis of “settled, consensus climate science”. For his unsettling the anti-scientific, anti-human consensus & liberating climatology from government & media control, Dr. Soon, representing his colleagues & collaborators brave enough to speak truth to power from the belly of the Beast.
Three is all that are allowed to share a Nobel. This trio would help restore the lost luster of the awards, especially Peace.
Precisely how much money has Al Gore received from his CAGW activities? Is the questioner concerned over that? Or Mann, Jones, or Hansen? How much government funding is dependent upon CAGW? And if your presumption is that government must be pure at heart, then you cannot decry the military-industrial complex because that too is simply government. It’s sad that so many can remember that latter part of Eisenhower’s brilliant speech and none can remember this part:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
Or maybe Dr. Baliunas, since my compatriot Pamela Gray feels that Dr. Franklin was slighted posthumously.
I wish that Dr. Soon could have responded that the temperatures were NOT going up, and have not for some decade and a half… while showing the satellite data chart. He was really taken aback by the warmists. I wish I were in that audience, as I would have put those folks back in their place.
I should have finished… it seems that the audience was friendly to him, in that they applauded. However, it’s sad that barely anyone in the room could offer anything scientifically cogent to dispel the woman’s position as well as that reasonably guy who thought temperatures were on the rise. Based on that Q&A session, it does not look like he’s good in a debate that gets ugly.
Bobl – interesting tactic and it sounds as if you have had some success – Well done.
I think the believers fall into two categories
Gullible people
Sour people who prefer to be dishonest than admit to teh public they were wrong.
The first sort need patience and kindness, the second need to be publicly shamed. The difficulty is often knowing which is which, but by and large the first are the foot soldiers and the second are the generals.
Julian in Wales says:
July 26, 2013 at 6:48 pm
“…the first are the foot soldiers…”
+++++++++++
Well said Julian. In that context, there is another useful term… “useful idiots”
Terri Jackson says:
July 26, 2013 at 10:37 am
Your citing of Dr. Christy’s work is apt. In fact, to the extent that there is any signature or fingerprint in the modern warming period, it isn’t of CO2.
The best defense is a good offense. As Willie hints in the video it is the “consensus” scientists who are not independent. They are funded by the government, which is the epitome of politicized funding. Every dollar of the 100+billion in taxpayer funding for climate research has been channeled through the funding bureaucracy that Al Gore created during his eight years as Bill Clinton’s “climate czar.”
The bias that Al Gore built into the bureaucracy remains completely intact. Subsequent presidents are only allowed a couple of political appointees at the head of any bureaucracy. Bush’s science appointees didn’t even have the power to stop James Hansen from violating the most basic agency rules about how he is and is not allowed to speak for the government. Bush did not have the tools to even BEGIN to change the priorities of Gore-created climate bureaucracy.
The primary directive of this bureaucracy has been to fund only those researchers who support the CAGW line. Any researcher whose evidence or reasoning contradicts the “consensus” alarm is blackballed, as Willie (and many others) can attest. Even as established a scientist as Lindzen can’t get his research published through normal channels.
Anyone who is concerned about the corrupting effects of politicized funding should be alarmed at the current thoroughly politicized system of taxpayer funded climate science, which is in fact how the current phony scientific “consensus” was created. Political hacks have defunded everyone else. But instead of recognizing this blatant corruption, other political hacks, like the girl in the video, insist that everyone who is not bought and paid for by the politicized funding (any truly independent researcher, like Willie Soon), should be shunned and ignored.
She pretends to be concerned about the corrupting effects of politicized funding but is actually a rabid enforcer of the existing regime of politicized funding, a veritable brown shirt, issuing ad hominem attacks on one of the only independently funded researchers around. That she can be sincere in thinking that she is crusading against politicization, while trying to shout down anyone who is not on the taxpayer funded gravy train, is quite amazing. Through self-lobotomization this girl has managed to reduce her moral IQ to zero, or perhaps one should say that she has managed to get it all the way down to negative 70. Her position in the morally backwards direction is not COMPLETELY without the services of instrumental intelligence, so -70 (borderline retarded) sounds about right.
A note on republicanism: the inability of the elected head of the executive branch to change the direction of the bureaucracy violates the Article IV section 4 guarantee to the states that they shall have a republican form of government. Federal law, where it is empowered by the Constitution, is superior to state law, so the republican guarantee implicitly guarantees to the states that the federal government as well as the individual state governments will be republican, which means first of all (paraphrasing Alexander Hamilton’s remarks to the NY constitutional debates) that the people must be able to “throw the bums out.” Thanks to the failure of the Supreme Court to enforce this most important guarantee we now have no power to throw the bums out. Through our election process we can only throw out a few political appointees, not the vast body of bureaucrats, no matter how strongly these bureaucrats resist the will of the electorate.
JohnB says, July 26, 2013 at 5:39 pm “…. Still confused it’s PolluterWatch … ”
Apologies myself, I didn’t catch that you were repeating top comments out of the shorter Youtube confrontation. Al Gore’s random followers do sometimes show up in these WUWT comment sections thinking they can gain points by hurling the old worn out Gelbspan/Gore ‘big oil’ accusation. Yes, PolluterWatch deludes themselves that their confrontation is some kind of a ‘win’ when it clearly is not, especially in light of the absence of the full context of the presentation. Which is why Dr Soon asked me to place the CFACT Collegians one (connected with CFACT http://www.cfact.org/cfact-programs/collegians-for-a-constructive-tomorrow/ ) before the confrontation video from PolluterWatch.
No worries, ignore the challenge I had for you, but feel free to apply it to anyone who hurls the ‘big oil funding’ accusation. Or, for your own curiosity, trace any accusation narratives you find and see if your are able to corroborate what I’m detailing at GelbspanFiles.com. If more people take into consideration how we have every appearance of Al Gore and crew seeing a need to quash skeptic criticism all the way back in 1992, then more people will demand to know why the mainstream media never checked the veracity of it.
I and my wife had the good fortune to hear Dr. Soon speak at USC a couple of years ago. The audience was mostly academic types that were very civilized and polite. What I was struck by is how well he was accepted by the many professors present. But I was surprised by their willingness to speak privately on the subject of AGW but their fear ( I do not use that word lightly) of speaking publicly on the matter. The politics of grants kept them silent, I asked them. They did not want the eye of the camera on them. Dr. Soon has shown true bravery in the face of extreme political pressure. The politics of AGW has most certainly harmed many of our academic institutions and our personal freedom to speak without reprisal on most assuredly academic subjects.
@Alec Rawls –
Yes, true representative democracy in the US is on its deathbed, in the face of der Fuehrer and his satraps’ assault on liberty, on the economy, and on science with hardly a whimper from Congress or the courts. What a bunch of invertebrates we have “representing” us in the government.
Two hundred years ago this sort of behavior by the federal government would have brought on a new revolution. Maybe that’s what’s needed today, to relieve society of the burden and the evil of these people.
As for that “woman” – I hesitate to apply a term normally used for human beings to that sort of an australopithecine retardate, to that person – she is indeed a classic example of ad hominem and the use of irrelevant ststements to try to discredit someone that doesn’t buy the feces she and her kind spew. So what if Dr. Soon did get oil and coal company funding? All that deserves is kudos to the energy companies funding him, because even more than serving their own interest, they would be serving the national interest hugely.
Dear Dr. Soon,
Your excellent presentation refuting the propaganda of the IPCC was clearly within the “boundaries of reasonable discussion” of CO2 science and politics. It was thorough and accurate and presented with an engaging, refreshingly dynamic, style that most of your colleagues would envy. Don’t lose that Chinese accent! It is charming and, incidentally, will make your audience listen more attentively (it is for this reason that American TV ads often use actors with British accents).
Suggestions:
1) Accept speaking engagements to forums open to the general public ONLY if there will be a host or emcee present who agrees (and is competent, a Mario Lento!) to run interference for you with such obnoxious members of the audience. You are a world class scientist. Mudwrestling with fools is not your job.
2) When there is no one to run interference:
Respond to all ad hominem attacks by:
a. Ignore the bogus question posed.
(There is NO POINT to debating it, not even with a quick retort like, “So what? What is your point?” Since there IS no good point, it’s a waste of time to refute it. True believers WILL not be convinced. Those whose opinions matter to you know the truth. Remember that and be at peace.)
b. (1) Ask, “Do you have any questions about my presentation this evening?”
(2) If they refuse to promptly ask a legitimate question, IGNORE THEM and
(3) go on to another questioner.
(4) If you encounter such a question again, Repeat (1) – (3).
**********************************
You have a teacher’s caring heart. That will make it hard for you to resist apparently innocent, young, people like that whining female cult member or what appear to be honestly ignorant simpletons like the con artist man after her. Cons are GOOD at deceiving. A wolf in sheep’s clothing does not look like a wolf. It looks like a sheep. He or she will sound sort of sleepy or earnestly concerned, and helpless, and simple. They are not. And, if they are, i.e., if they are innocent, brainwashed, dupes, that is NOT your problem. If your conscience bothers you about not trying to help them to understand, just remind yourself that there are MANY avenues available to them to seek truth. When people really seek the truth, they find it. The need is NOT (necessarily) the call (to help them).
You also have the noble desire that all of us have to defend our honor. Let others do that for you, if the public record needs to be corrected. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEFEND YOUR HONOR. It stands for itself. Again, those whose opinions matter to you KNOW.
You are, personally, a delight, Dr. Soon. You are obviously WELL-qualified to speak on this topic! You are, as others have pointed out, a Hero for Truth in Science. You and Dr. Murry Salby in his speech in Hamburg on April 18, 2013 (you would LOVE it — it’s on youtube) are true heroes.
Gratefully yours,
Janice Moore
Hey, Chad! LOL, there we were enthusiastically typing away at the same time! Hope all is well with writing, publishing your book, and your music. Wasn’t Dr. Soon’s enthusiastic speaking style wonderful?
And, (@ur momisugly Chad W.) that young woman was, indeed, repulsive. Innocent or not, cult members are pretty obnoxious until they are deprogrammed.
Terri Jackson says:
July 26, 2013 at 10:37 am
no warming for at least 16 years. the change has more do do with the declining solar irradiance with the current solar cycle 24 having around 60 sunspots ,half the number expected.(see Dr Abdussamatov Polkovo astronomical…
Actually solar irradiance has not declined as Abdussamatov will have it. In fact, TSI is at present the highest it has been since accurate measurements started in 2003.