Tom Nelson points out quite an admission:
“Blogging is affecting me profoundly. Obviously, Mr. McIntyre has profoundly affected my life”.
That’s from this video:
The General Public: Why Such Resistance? (to global warming)
(February 25, 2010) Ben Santer, a research scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, discusses the recent problems with the use of the freedom of information act for non-US citizens to demand complete records, including emails, on scientific research projects. Santer posits that this is a dangerous dilemma that will ultimately inhibit scientific research.
This course was originally presented in Stanford’s Continuing Studies program.
The video and several key points of interest in the video follow.
Nelson writes:
The video is 1 hour 46 minutes long. The best stuff is around 42:30 to the end.
Santer uses words like harassment, frivolous, nonsense, hatred, bullies, “forces of unreason”, abuse, and McCarthyism. He’d like to get some support/protection from the Obama administration.
Santer at 1:26:37 “Blogging is affecting me profoundly. Obviously, Mr. McIntyre has profoundly affected my life”.
More interesting stuff from Santer re: establishing human culpability, professional PR help, and nearly two dozen workshops (funded by NSF?) bringing together climate scientists and the media
▶ Chris Mooney and Dr. Benjamin Santer on Communicating Climate Science – YouTube:
“[Uploaded Sept 2010] Climate Science Watch spoke with climate scientist Dr. Benjamin Santer and Chris Mooney, a science and political journalist and author, about how climate scientists communicate complex research findings to the public in an atmosphere of fierce politicization and competing demands.”
At 1:38, Santer says “I had always assumed that if the science was credible, we could just rest our case on the science. It was enough to publish high-quality papers, to establish some human culpability in observed climate change, and that ultimately that would be good enough, and that policymakers would take the right decisions based on the best available scientific evidence.”
At 11:08, Santer says Lawrence Livermore National Lab has a “high-quality very professional public affairs department. They’ve been extremely helpful in my interactions with the media…They’ve given me a lot of advice and guidance…I’ve been very grateful that I haven’t had to face this on my own.”
At 12:40, Santer mentions “series of workshops organized by Bud Ward, a journalist who’s brought together the leading climate scientists with people from the media world-newspaper editors, news anchors, TV weathermen and women…a series of probably nearly two dozen workshops organized that enable each side to understand the problems of the others.”
Thanks to a series of workshops funded by the National Science Foundation, journalists and climate scientists have been able to address these barriers and develop recommendations for effective communication. These highly interactive workshop dialogues formed the basis of a new resource guide on communicating about climate change for editors, reporters, scientists, and academics.
If one makes big accusations ( like AGW ), then they should not cry when we want to examine all the evidence and reasoning that went into it.
If Dr. Ben Santer is actually making remarks about talking to people in a dark alley; if he was the author of the infamous ‘beat the crap out of him’ email to Dr. Phil Jones … then there isn’t much to be gained from responding to him. In fact, we should pretend like we didn’t notice, and let him continue the ‘performance’.
Most scientist realize all-too-clearly, that to indulge tough-guy talk with the public is beyond stupid. The idea that (small numbers of) pencil-pushers and egg-heads are going to physically challenge (large numbers of) construction workers & military vets … indicates that Santer is laboring under a serious self-awareness problem, etc.
No wonder Lawrence Livermore PR are johnny-on-it.
Obviously, Lawrence Livermore is alarmed at Santer’s antics, and heading the dude off at the pass before he gets them all … dragged into a (political) dark alley.
“At 1:38, Santer says “I had always assumed that if the science was credible, we could just rest our case on the science. ”
Well, Ben, we completely agree: If the science were credible you could do that, indeed. Too bad that it isn’t and you can’t.
richardscourtney says:
…it is bad form to quote a self-professed communist…even when he is right.
I dunno Richard, I’m pragmatic enough to steal from their art when I think it’s effective:
The politicians have merely changed the world; the point, however, is to improve it.
Santer’s apparent hubris in response to being caught out leaves me wondering if there’s any credibility at all in academia. Disgusting.
A workshop is called a workshop because you don’t have to work and you can’t buy anything.
Chris Mooney, the deceptive political hack posing as a journalist.
Santer, whining about being caught lying.
Nothing new here except the appeal to our self-appointed Big Brother to turn lose the government to help make certain scientists he approves of are not bothered by pesky questions in the future.
Ben,
Have you entertained the possibility that you may just simply be wrong?
D
He’s just whingeing in advance because all his juicy research funding is coming under the chopper.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/the-coming-shape-of-2014/
Pointman
Why such resistance? Because the public isn’t as stupid as these people think we are. The GW crowd needs to cork it and go home.
Mmmmm…
There is a misguided belief that those who earn their living as research scientists have a sense of vocation that leads to total objectivity, regardless of the personal consequences.
In realty they are, too often, seekers after personal glory, competitive, bitchy, back stabbing, secretive and pretend to objectivity only in so far that it produces results that meet their, and their paymasters, predjudices and objectives.
Put simply, research scientists are not saints but human beings, like any others, fighting to earn a living and to further their careers.
Therefore, even if the infamous “97% concensus’ figure were valid, it would be a concensus of scientists who all share the above human traits and therefore could not be taken as objective proof of the existance of CAGW.
This may seem a cynical view but it is based on experience gained managing an international research programme many years ago and I doubt that today’s climate researchers, for example, behave any differently.
whoops – realty=reality
If you know the history here, Santer’s tropical troposphere temps were clearly off by a mile from the real data. Call it what you whatever you want.
The climate models have the tropical troposphere increasing at 0.30C per decade.
The actual trends are spectacularly low. Just 0.07C per decade in UAH and 0.107C per decade in RSS.
I mean it is only one-quarter to one-third of that projected. There is not a tropical hotspot, there is a tropical cooler-than-every-else-spot. Santer’s analysis is completely inconsistent.
Check out the up-to-date tropics troposphere temps versus the ENSO and the lack of any real warming trend.
http://s9.postimg.org/punbg644v/RSS_UAH_Tropics_1979_2013.png
Seek truth
The best solution for Ben Santer is to read, digest, and follow Richard Feynman’s 1974 Caltech Address “Cargo Cult Science”. Feynman highlights the importance of applying the highest levels of integrity in science.
Jesus’ statement “the truth will make you free” also applies to science.
I note that nowhere was there any acceptance that their so called objective science and models if implemented have incalculable economic effects and therefore peoples lives off the very people that fund them.. Arrogant, superior and damn right ignorant IMHO.
As for Chris Looney? Anyone noticed how young and cock -sure all these AGW fanatics are?
Louis Hooffstetter says @ur momisugly January 18, 2014 at 6:42 am;
What Dr. Santer is sidling up to here, intimating, is Scientocracy.
We have Democracy, Autocracy, Aristocracy, Theocracy, and several others. We don’t have Scientocracy, and all the data & anecdotes say it ain’t gonna happen.
Although Santer is clearly-enough a special, isolated case, as a visible emotionally unstable scientist, he is not isolated in his nascent perception that the acumen of scientists and the power of their methodology ought to translate into actual societal authority.
It is also clear enough that in the near-universal case, scientists inclined to this perception stop well-short of what is plainly its goal or conclusion. To actually ‘go all the way’ with this thinking illuminates confrontations & conflicts that inhibit ‘fully-blown’ forms of the affectation.
And Climate Science is not the only field that harbors the feeling that professionals in the discipline ‘really should’ wield more ‘actual authority’ than they are currently allowed. This is a process or shift that began in the late 1960s, and became the norm in various sciences & semi-sciences (and not in others).
There is an upcoming painful era, in which Science divests itself of this ‘implied-Scientocracy’ delusion.
Oops that was crap.
I note that nowhere was there any acceptance that their so called objective science and models which if implemented, would have incalculable economic effects and therefore on peoples lives; the very people that fund them . Arrogant, superior and damn right ignorant IMHO.
.As for Chris Looney? Anyone noticed how young and cock -sure all these AGW fanatics are?
What is it with the pro-warmist agitators that they are all running around now bleating to the first media they can find about how they feel ‘bullied’ by sceptics? Is it perhaps anything to do with the fact their CAGW religion is failing to perform as predicted? Are they seeking tea and sympathy with their common purpose chums in the ‘meeja’ long before what they now understand will the inevitable, unstoppable collapse of the entire CAGW edifice they have wasted so much money over so much time building up to fail?
Funny how spineless, uninquisitive media trolls are so willing to listen to the crocodile tears of these warmist dissemblers, yet never seem – then or now – to have the time of day for legitimate climate sceptics who were, almost from the very start of this wretched farrago, trying to warn a wider public about the organised scam slowly unfolding through every branch of government in just about every nation gullible enough to fall for the deception. The sums involved – basically stolen from the public purse for no good purpose – are mind-boggling.
When will ABC, BBC or any of the major media outlets start investigating The Greatest Heist of Modern Times? When will they actually start doing their job?
Diddums, Benny-boy. Your response to any criticism or disagreement appears to be some sort of threat. You’re a bully, and in allowing that to taint your professional life, you lose any credibility you may have had. Behave like a grown-up rather than a pocket money stealink punk, and people might actually have time for you. Otherwise you’ll reap just what you sow.
As for Chris Mooney? Hah! I assumed he’d tired of ending up with a wobbly bottom lip after saying something inane in public.
Does he have good days too. Or is this one of them?
John Norris says:
January 18, 2014 at 6:51 am
Ben,
Go write better papers. Steve will leave you alone.
well and succinctly said, John Norris.
The fallacy in all this is that “the smartest ones” should have the say-so for public policy.
Unfortunately, just because A is smarter than B does NOT imply that A’s ideas are correct.
Smart people have this tendency to value their abilities to such an extent that they are susceptible
to making really big mistakes, usually because they assume something that is not, in fact, true. In the case of climatology, a fairly primitive science that deals with a rather complicated system, it’s very easy to latch on to an easily understood phomenon (greenhouse gas warming) to explain most everything, including, in a bizarre fashion, cooling.
Poor Benny. He’s a legend in his own mind.
This is the same Ben Santer who instigated this infamous warmy catchy phrase:
1997: 2nd UN IPCC report – Scientists: a) no clear evidence of recent changes due to greenhouse effect b) no studies show man made climate warming c) uncertainites too big d) don’t know if/when a human effect on climate can/will be found.
Changed by UN’s IPCC scientist Ben Santer to – “… a discernable human fingerprint on Earth’s climate”. Hmm … 🙁
Phil Ford says:
January 18, 2014 at 8:10 am
“When will ABC, BBC or any of the major media outlets start investigating The Greatest Heist of Modern Times? When will they actually start doing their job?”
______________________
If past is prologue, then one could say: “they never have, they never will”.