Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell demonstrates what a biased journalist he is.
My first impression was to ignore the request for interview from Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell last week, after all, RS has pretty much blown what credibility they had after making a terrorist bomber a front page teen heartthrob.
But, I said to myself, “it’s my duty to reach people I might not ordinarily reach”. So, I responded in good faith. In exchange, I got slimed by Goodell.
Here’s the email exchange I had with him:
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thanks for this.
Jeff Goodell
Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone
518-xxx-xxxx
@jeffgoodell
My view is that AR5 is going to stillborn, mainly because it is already outdated by new science that won’t be included.
There have been 19 separate peer reviewed papers published in climate sensitivity to CO2 by 42 scientists since January 1, 2012 all describing a lower climate sensitivity.
There have been recent revelations in journals (Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Xie Nature 2013 and de Freitas &McLean, 2013 International Journal of Geosciences) that demonstrate ENSO (El Niño) in the Pacific is responsible for the 15 plus years of global warming slowdown known as “the pause”. These two papers strongly suggest natural variability is still the dominant climate control.
Then there is the lack of reality matching what the climate models tell us, such as this leaked graph from an AR5 draft:
Original from AR5 draft: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc_ar5_draft_fig1-4_with.png
Annotated version: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc-ar5draft-fig-1-4.gif
All this while global CO2 emissions have been growing steadily. The lack of temperature match to models, “the pause”, combined with these new ENSO findings tell us that global warming has gone from a planetary crisis to a minor problem in a Banana Republic where only a few vocal science rebels are arguing for immediate intervention.
The costs of mitigating the perceived problem are also staggering compared to the benefit, as the 50:1 project demonstrates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5Lda06iK0
best regards,
Anthony Watts
Editor, WUWT
530-xxx-xxxx
—–Original Message—– From: Jeff Goodell
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2013 10:41 AM
To: awatts@xxxxx.xxx
Subject: Rolling Stone inquiry
Name: Jeff Goodell
Email: jeffgoodell@xxxxx.xxx
Message: Hi Anthony
I’m a writer for Rolling Stone, working on piece about upcoming IPCC report. I’m checking in with a few people to get their views on how they think it will be received. Thoughts?
Thanks
Jeff
Time: September 3, 2013 at 10:41 am
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And what did I get for my effort? A single word. Here is the paragraph where I appear:
But, of course, this is nothing new. In 2007, when the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report, it was also nearly certain that human activity was heating up the planet, with grave consequences for our future well-being. And six years before that, when the IPCC released its Third Assessment, scientists were pretty certain about it too. But phrases like “high confidence” in warming do not, to the unscientific ear, inspire high confidence in the report’s finding, since they imply the existence of doubt, no matter how slight. And in the climate wars, “Doubt is what deniers thrive on and exploit,” says Bob Watson, who was head of the IPCC from 1997 to 2002. The final report has not even been released yet, and already prominent bloggers in the denial-sphere, like Anthony Watts, are calling it “stillborn.“
(added) What is most galling, is that Goodell asked me for my opinion prior the release of the IPCC AR5 report, then chastises me in his article for giving it. Whatta guy. (/end add)
Meanwhile, full quotes exist in the article from Naomi Oreskes, Rajendra Pachauri, Bob Watson, Anthony Leiserowitz, Ben Santer, blogger Joe Romm, and last but not least the anonymous tweeting person(s) behind Organizing for Action, the successor of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Besides giving liberal use of the word “denier” in the most derogatory way possible, the article also mentions “Why the City of Miami is Doomed to Drown“. Where he fantasizes about the year 2030.
Read it all here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warming-is-very-real-20130912?print=true
I suppose it’s par for the course from people that can’t tell the difference between water vapor from cooling towers and “carbon emissions”.
The stupid, it burns! http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-denier-elite-20130912
My single word with a “denier” label to my name is what I get for talking to “The Delinquent Teenager” crowd as if they were adults I suppose. I suggest that anyone who encounters Jeff Goodell in any future interview request, simply not respond – he’s shamelessly biased, fine with hatefully labeling people he doesn’t agree with, runs in the company of fools that can’t tell pollution from non-pollution, and now proven himself to be not worth the effort.
UPDATE: Shortly after I wrote this article, Goodell took notice on his Twitter feed, and shortly after that, the erroneous caption was replaced along with a different photo of the same power station in Germany, but with no explanation as to the error. Here’s what it looks like now:
As long as they spell your name correctly you win. Simple, but true. How many people will see your name and google it? How many will come here and read? How many will then watch the 50-1 interview with you? If the answer to any of the above is one or greater you win.
Anthony, I am not sure that cooling towers are not contributing to global warming if the makeup water to the towers is from no or slow to recharge aquifers. This is especially true for recirculating mechanical draft evaporative cooling towers where the effluent is water vapor and aerosols. The heat removed from the process streams is transferred to the atmosphere in the form of latent heat in the effluent from the cooling tower.
Since the water from no or slow to recharge aquifers is not in equilibrium with the atmosphere the heat is added for one cycle. Since the industries using cooling towers operate 24/7, the heat is therefore added to the atmosphere continuously. The amount of produced ground water from no or slow to recharge aquifers amounts to about 1000 cubic km3 per year including cooling towers and irrigation for food and fodder.
It most certainly is not carbon dioxide emitting from mechanical draft cooling towers but I do believe that it does add heat to the atmosphere.
Who knows, maybe just one RS reader will be curious about Anthony and come to this blog. That one person tells another, who tells another…
The irony here though is that it is going to be stillborn !!
When you’ve got an effectively infinite supply of pearls, why not cast a few fistfuls before the swine?
After all, some of ’em might well choke….
IMHO Rolling Stone stopped actually rolling years ago. – it has gathered so much moss over the recent years the moss has turned to a thick layer of Peat!
None of us really have to convince the alarmists anymore. We can ignore them. The current weather records are already proving them wrong and will continue to do so for decades to come. Those alarmists who remain unconvinced as things cool down will be ignored and marginalized within the very near future. Magazines like the Rolling Stone will simply move on to other “causes” as they slowly discover that no one is interested any longer in the “grave consequences” of global warming.
Additionally, all the IPCC can do now if they stick to the same meme is to embarrass and discredit themselves. It all will happen soon enough. We can have complete confidence in it.
The BBC and the Guardian here in the UK like to use cooling tower steam to scare people.
As for Rolling Stone.
OT. When I were a lad, R & B meant Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. WTF is it now?
A leopard cannot change its spots, a tiger cannot change its stripes, and these people cannot change who they are.
I’ve been thinking about it and cooling towers may actually remove a small amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. Any CO2 that dissoves into the water is likely to precipate out by reacting with the pH contol agent.
How’s that for ironing?
Bart says:
September 12, 2013 at 1:12 pm
….. ….. ….. Some years from now, when the entire fiasco has met its timely demise, it will be included in the case file which discredits the doomsayers, and ensures we will never have to endure such a debasement of science again.
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Bart, you are a good soul, but science will be debased in exactly the same way – again – whenever a group think “Ah – an iron rice bowl! (With gold plating for me!!)”, and can get enough politicos [Politics is the second oldest profession, I understand, and is closely allied to the only senior profession] to also see jam and Nobels in the offing.
Auto, in a particularly realistic frame of mind
If you can see it as steam you’re looking at teeny tiny liquid water droplets. As in clouds and fog. If it is water vapor it is colorless, odorless, and tasteless and you can’t see it.
Look at it this way Anthony. You might have a smaller audience than Rolling Stone but the sum of the IQ numbers at WUWT is far greater.
What kind of man would freely choose to hang the albatross of “propagandist” around his neck? Never mind that he does not understand what Anthony told him. That excuses nothing. He did not have to insult Anthony with the “D” word. He did not have to treat Anthony as a type rather than as a person with a unique and valuable perspective.
No more counterculture heroes like Hunter Thompson at Rolling Stone. Nothing but brats these days.
If it’s any consolation, Goodell could have written exactly the same thing about you without making any contact at all, and with equal justification. So he needlessly wasted his time. Unfortunately, he also wasted yours….
JFD says:
September 12, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Anthony, I am not sure that cooling towers are not contributing to global warming
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Cough. The planet is cooling.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/12/no-warming-left-to-deny-global-cooling-takes-over-cet-annual-mean-temperature-plunges-1c-since-2000/
I guess Anthony falls under the ‘propogandists’ moniker. There is no periodical more biased than Rolling Stone. And they think they’re hipster rebels.
Ian L. McQueen says:
September 12, 2013 at 1:40 pm
How about wet steam and dry steam? And superheated steam. All those are generally treated as forms of pure water. Wet steam has water droplets. Dry steam is either saturated, where any cooling will produce droplets, or supersaturated, where substantial cooling has to occur before droplets appear.
Mixed with air, I suppose the same terminology works, but after the battle years ago over CO2 frost and phase diagrams, I’m reluctant to expound on that. Power plant turbines generally don’t want air in their superheated steam, cooling towers are designed to use air to remove waste heat.
Oops – I meant to include http://www.tlv.com/global/TI/steam-theory/types-of-steam.html
@Allencic and others on the water vaopr issue.
It starts out as water vapor in the evaporative process, turns to cloud sized micro droplets through the accretion process on the way up the tower, making it visible, then turns back to colorless water vapor through further evaporation.
The net product of cooling towers is water vapor, not “carbon emissions”.
We wonder how others could be so oblivious to 15 years of convincing, authentic data that includes temperatures not warming, global climate models all too warm, vegetative health and crop yields/food production exploding upwards, Antarctic ice not melting, oceans barely rising, violent tornadoes decreasing, hurricanes less frequent, polar bears flourishing………just to name a few.
There are many reasons. One of which is that global science religion is being in indoctrinated into our young people from the earliest age. My 2nd grade grand daughter’s science book last year, taught the children about CO2 pollution, global warming and man made climate change. They are being brainwashed from that young age, all the way to higher education, where most environmental science classes in college finalize the brainwash.
Brainwash victims process all new information based on the assumptions that they think were obtained from being educated about man made climate change and CO2.
Items that confirm this assumption are stored as knowledge in their brains. Things that contradict this assumption are discarded as garbage. The reality is that even when the evidence is lopsided to the side that contradicts, they will choose to believe what their brainwash tells them is the truth.
We think that the truth busting out from every aspect of climate science has got to overcome this. I’m very hopeful but this thing is like a religion.
How many people believe in God and will always believe in God without the concrete scientific evidence to prove it? This is why it’s based on and called “faith”. In religion, faith is everything.
Once people develop “faith” in something, it’s incredibly much more difficult to talk them out of it then it was for them to initially accept it.
To millions of people, climate science is based on faith.
It’s especially frustrating when we try to talk authentic science with someone that believes in this faith. Even worse when that someone has the ability to influence many others by sharing their faith in man made climate change.
Eventually, the worlds climate “snake oil” salesman will be forced to retreat after being bombarded with too much irrefutable, real world data that they run out of ways to twist and spin it to support concepts that have been debunked for some time now.
It seems like we should be on the verge of that right now. However, would we expect President Obama to come out before his 2nd term is up and announce that the latest data suggests we should not act so hastily?
Instead, he will continue on the same path and those that already agree with him, will have the minds that readily accept his words and discard those that contradict it.
Anthony, all we can do is act with integrity and do our best to treat others with respect, while being honest with them. How they respond is on them.
At least you have a forum by which you can reasonably reply.
What a bunch of whackos at that magazine. I wouldn’t have agreed to talk to them.
Good on you, Anthony! As another commenter said, one person may look you up. An enquiring mind may just check out what you’re saying, its all worth it.
“My first impression was to ignore the request for interview from Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell last week,…”
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Sorry, can’t resist…..
You need to listen to that voice in your head.
Its hindsight is 20/20, especially after the fact 🙂
Rolling Stone has changed the photo and caption, but without any note of the change.