A WUWT reader from NCAR sends this but wishes to remain anonymous. I verified the IP address as coming from NCAR. Bold mine.
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Hi Mr. Watts,
I come to your website nearly every day. Working here at NCAR, we rarely ever get to hear the other side of the CAGW argument, so I greatly appreciate your balanced and very informational website. I’m a young scientist and am too afraid to speak out at work, because I fear repercussions. Anyway, I thought you might be interested in reading an announcement for a seminar coming up soon here at NCAR. It came in our “Staff Notes” that everybody here at NCAR receives every day in our inbox. Some of these folks are getting really bitter that they are losing ground in this all-important argument.
Speaker: Thomas E. Downing, CEO of the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership
Date: January 7, 2014
Time: 2:00pm
Place: FL 2 Room 3107
Title: Change-making in the Adaptation Landscape
Abstract:
Action on climate adaptation, a wicked problem, requires navigating a landscape that is only partly known, using wayfinding aids that are problematic at the best of times, in company with often recalcitrant partners. Beginning with this metaphor, Tom Downing traces recent thinking and emerging prospects for climate change adaptation. He draws upon a toolkit that spans theory of change to multi-attribute metrics. Case studies from Africa and Latin America illustrate key principals of practice.
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Here’s the actual announcement from NCAR:
http://www2.ucar.edu/for-staff/daily/calendar/2014-01-07/ral-seminar-series-change-making-adaptation-landscape
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2013. The year CAGW was discredited.
2014. The year climate science grows up.
Hoping.
“Principals” should be “principles” in the abstract for Downing’s talk. I know it’s a little thing, but it always makes me wonder what else was done sloppily. And there’s an irony here; “principles” would be objective standards and measures that define and enable the scientific method, but instead we get personalized ego-driven agendas from the Climate Change bosses, or “principals.”
Dear Young Scientist from NCAR – be afraid, be very afraid – they might catch you with the WUWT ip address in your web browser history!
How can it be that in the “land of the free” people are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs?
Having just recently visited the US and stood in the room where Thomas Jefferson and his associates drew up the Declaration of Independence – I am very sad when I contemplate this state of affairs.
Has any actual “climate change” been measured in the last 50 years at all? Other than normal droughts, floods, heat waves, cold snaps, etc. Is climate change just something they fantasize about or has there really been some, somewhere, that both sides could agree upon having happened and persisted?
James from Arding says:
December 31, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Dear Young Scientist from NCAR – be afraid, be very afraid – they might catch you with the WUWT ip address in your web browser history!
How can it be that in the “land of the free” people are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs?
Having just recently visited the US and stood in the room where Thomas Jefferson and his associates drew up the Declaration of Independence – I am very sad when I contemplate this state of affairs.
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Yes, it is sad.
PS “Gunga Din” is not my real name.
They don’t have a clue what bitter means. Wait until they’ve lost the argument and the politicians are on the hunt for the guilty.
I used to work at NSF as an IT Security Officer. NSF allows all employees to sit in on presentations of research results from grants by NSF. It’s a science geeks dream job. I sat in on presentations of research in to Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the occasional AGW related research. I sat in on a presentation by a ‘junior’ scientist about his research into temperatures in Antarctica. His conclusion was that over all temperatures were falling. He concluded his presentation with, “I know this isn’t more senior scientists are saying so I must be wrong.”
At the NSF, even down to the support staff levels, we were given clear indications that we had better believe in ‘Climate Change’, being skeptical was not acceptable because they were doing ‘good work’ and ‘helping humanity face this crisis’. Expression of skepticism was not welcome.
I’m a young scientist and am too afraid to speak out at work, because I fear repercussions.
Says it all really, same as when Caspar Amman(?) refused to write a joint paper with Steve McIntyre because it would be “Bad for his career”.
This is the true problem with this area, step out of line & you’re career’s behind you.
When a religion, such as AGW, fails to attract adherents and remains well outside the mainstream of a culture’s mores, the few that hold onto the religion become bitter and closed off from society while the more realistic and better grounded of that belief system look to slowly split from Al Gore’s church.
Uh – oh. Seen a lot of this …
“Action on climate adaptation … in company with often recalcitrant partners.”
Mr Downing, the reason why many of us are recalcitrant is that we have been working on climate adaptation for decades, and have made substantial progress: fewer deaths, reduced destruction following extreme climate events. Real events, that have happened in the past and will happen in the future. Yes, we get annoyed when newbies turn up to teach us how to suck eggs.
We are truly living in an Orwellian world and that’s what I find more alarming that the so called CAGW claims.
The UK is at the same point and is going for ‘let’s pretend we’ve won the science battle and act as if everyone’s behind us but don’t want to act’. This report is a good primer on where they plan to go next.
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/1536844/J1530_RSA_climate_change_report_16.12_V51.pdf
To be fair on the authors, they are finally admitting that the public have gone off the boil and try to work out why. Denial is mentioned as a wider problem than us naughty, oil funded deceivers. They too use the words wicked problem but in fact it’s ‘super-wicked’.
Unfortunately much of their cunning plans can be countered with a simple ‘no’.
‘Let’s assume CAGW is real and talk about solutions’…’no’.
‘We must stop investing in fossil fuel companies’…’no’.
‘Stop listening to merchants of doubt’…’Hell no!’
OMG Anthony it will take a NCAR security wonk about 5 minutes to trace this brave kid – the admission of viewing your site regularly, the use of department assets to contact you, and the content of his email, will be enough.
My day job is software development, so I know what I am talking about.
When science mixes with politics or religion, an explosive, unstable soup results. A mixture of all three explodes on its own sooner or later. This explosive reaction is catalyzed by money, so removing its inflow will render the soup mostly harmless and ready for recycling.
“Action on climate adaptation … requires navigating a landscape that is only partly known, … Beginning with this metaphor, {If-I-Can’t-Imagine-It-It-Isn’t-Possible-}Tom Downing {whines}… .”
To remove that last, pitiful, little bit of ground from beneath you, Climastrologist Downing…
check this out: REALITY
December 17, 1903 — Wright Brothers’ First Flight
(may want to mute monotonous music)
History of Flight — “Hold on Tight to Your Dreams” (ELO)
(excellent music)
“There is actually a very useful lesson to be learned from the above:
… given the technological changes in only 45 years (from
the Wright brothers’ first passenger flights in 1908 to the B-52 in
1952) {to presume that humanity will not develop the technology
necessary to adapt to climate change (no matter what causes it)
demonstrates a laughable ignorance of history.}”
(Anonymous WUWT Science Giant and yours truly)
Remember copper wire… ?
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaaaa!
#(:))
{re-posted from here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/15/over-half-the-usa-covered-in-snow-the-most-in-11-years/#comment-1505414}
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Hang in there, O Anonoymous One — as Gunga Din said, there are MANY on WUWT in exactly your position (and some are no longer “young”). You are in excellent and sympathetic company, here.
It is very wise to keep anonymity. Certainly, my openness about my views has been an obstacle in getting jobs. But, on the other hand, I doubt my personality helps either.
Also my lack of comprehension is a weakness – I can’t distinguish between “Action on climate adaptation, a wicked problem, requires navigating a landscape that is only partly known, using wayfinding aids that are problematic at the best of times, in company with often recalcitrant partners” and slippery waffle.
Is the action “a wicked problem” or is it the climate adaptation?
Are these the “best of times” and how would we now? Is this a call to do nothing until those times come or to recklessly abandon the precautionary principle and plough on regardless?
Are the partners recalcitrant because of the certainty over the way or because of the certainty over the speed?
This is not a clear abstract. Is the thinking as muddled?
For those for whom English is not their first language, “anonymous. (and for my pride, of course, lol) NO, it was not Freudian, lol, for our informer is definitely not annoying… . I-take-that-back. Climastrologists, on the other hand, are SUPER-annoying.
I am so happy to be an AGW infidel!
“Action on climate adaptation, a wicked problem, requires navigating a landscape that is only partly known, using wayfinding aids that are problematic at the best of times, in company with often recalcitrant partners.”
Adapting to a 2 deg C rise in a 100 years (assuming that would happen)? That’s a problem? What?
The trouble is that the science related to climate is under the control of government funded agencies which have come to be directed by apologists for the populist governments of the day. Riding a wave of enthusiastic zeal for ‘humans must stop destroying the earth’, (whether or not they are in fact doing so), governments formed in the image and likeness of the voters who put them in power, have appointed directors who follow along with the politics of it all at the behest of their political masters. That is a difficult train to get off!
It may be that this general scheme of things is reasonably normal in the political administrative sphere which is, theoretically at least, engaged in implementing the will of the constituency.
BUT science is not about politics or populism or fashion or social benefit or….whatever. Science is about discovering and promulgating the best understanding of “the world” that it is possible to achieve.
That may or may not be in accordance with the will of the people; in fact there might be very little sympathy for the truth. Nevertheless it is the duty of the scientist to ensure that the truth prevails.
Mr. Clark, weather has events. Climate doesn’t.
I read the abstract and couldn’t figure out what the guy was saying.
“Case studies….” = anecdotal material.
Steve from Rockwood, yeah.
I couldn’t understand what he was saying, either, but I also couldn’t tell if that was deliberate.
He might have been trying to say all things to all men.
Fool or knave? False dichotomy, of course. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Gamecock says:
December 31, 2013 at 3:34 pm
Actually, climate has about as many models as weather has events. The latter are manifestations of nature; the former? Not so much.