Earlier, I had mentioned Assistant Professor Lawrence Torcello’s despicable climate ugliness and offered some links to addresses on where to complain to. Monckton took the lead on that. I urge others to write such factual and courteous letters.
14 March 2014
The Provost and Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs
Eastman Hall
Rochester Institute of Technology
New York, New York, United States of America
asenate@rit.edu, stp1031@rit.edu
Sir,
Breaches of Principles of Academic Freedom (Policy E2.0) and of the mission statement of the Institute by Assistant Professor Lawrence Torcello
Principle of public law relied upon
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States applies to all. It says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Principles of private law relied upon
The Institute’s policy on academic freedom applies to all faculty members, including Assistant Professor Torcello. The Institute declares that its policy is “guided” by the principles of academic freedom promulgated by the Association of University Professors in 1940, and, in particular, by the third such principle:
“3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”
The Institute’s mission statement includes the following paragraph:
“Respect, Diversity and Pluralism: Provides a high level of service to fellow members of the RIT community. Treats every person with dignity. Demonstrates inclusion by incorporating diverse perspectives to plan, conduct, and/or evaluate the work of the organization, department, college, or division.”
Alleged breaches of the said principles of law
On 13 March 2014, Assistant Professor Lawrence Torcello published a blog posting[1] entitled Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent? at a tendentious propaganda website, “The Conversation”. In that posting, he committed the following breaches of the Institute’s policies:
1. Mr Torcello describes himself as “Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology” and makes no effort to comply with the explicit requirement of the principles on academic freedom by indicating that he writes neither on behalf of the Institute nor in his capacity as an assistant professor there but as a private citizen.
2. Mr Torcello offends against the requirement of accuracy stated in the principles of academic freedom in that his posting falsely said “the majority of scientists clearly agree on a set of facts” about “global warming” on which they do not in fact agree. Mr Torcello links his cited statement to a reference to three papers each claiming a “97% consensus” to the effect that most of the global warming observed since 1950 was manmade. However, as Legates et al. (2013)[2] have demonstrated, a review of 11,944 papers on climate published in the 21 years 1991-2011, the largest such review ever published in the scientific literature, had marked only 64 papers, or 0.5% of the sample, as explicitly endorsing that proposition. Though it may well be that 100% of scientists publishing in relevant fields accept that – all other things being equal – our returning CO2 to the atmosphere from which it once came will be likely to cause some global warming (though the record amounts of CO2 we have emitted recently have not caused any warming at all for up to 17 years 6 months[3]), legitimate scientific doubt remains about the quantum of future global warming that may be expected, with an increasing body of peer-reviewed papers moving towards a climate sensitivity of only 1-2 Celisus degrees per CO2 doubling[4], and the IPCC itself drastically reducing its predictions of global warming over the next 30 years.
3. Mr. Torcello offends not only against the Institute’s requirement to treat every person with dignity, including those persons with whose views he disagrees, but also against the Constitution’s assertion of the right of free speech, which includes the right to fund those who wish to exercise it in opposition to what he falsely regards as the prevailing scientific opinion, when he says: “We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus” – a “consensus” which, as the three papers on the subject that Mr Torcello has linked to his posting define it, does not in fact exist.
4. Mr Torcello offends against the requirement of accuracy stated in the principles of academic freedom in that he links the statement in his posting that “public uncertainty regarding climate science, and the resulting failure to respond to climate change, is the intentional aim of politically and financially motivated denialists” to an allegation, long demonstrated to have been fabricated by one Peter Gleick, a climate change campaigner, that the Heartland Institute had circulated memorandum stating that Heartland intended to persuade schoolteachers that “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science”. In the interest of accuracy Mr Torcello ought to have made it plain, but did not mention at all, that Gleick had been suspended from his post at an environmental campaign group for several months as a result of this incident, in which he had corruptly posed as a member of Heartland’s board so as to obtain access to its private documents, to which he had added documents of his own when the private documents he had obtained proved to be disappointingly innocent.
5. Mr Torcello shows no respect for Constitutional freedom of speech, or for the principles of academic freedom for those with whom he disagrees, when falsely alleges that all who fund those who dare to question what we are (inaccurately) told is the “consensus” position on global warming are “corrupt”, “deceitful”, and “criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life”.
6. Mr Torcello, in perpetrating his me-too hate-speech about the alleged “loss of life” from “global warming”, fails yet again to comply with the requirement of accuracy in the principles of academic freedom, in that he departs from the “consensus” to the effect that a global warming of up to 2 Celsius degrees compared with 1750, or 1.1 degrees compared with today, will be not only harmless but net-beneficial to life on Earth. He also ignores the fact that the very heavy additional costs of energy arising from arguably needless subsidies to “renewable” energy systems make it impossible for poorer people to heat their homes. These energy price hikes may, for instance, have contributed to the 31,000 excess deaths in last year’s cold winter in the UK alone – 8000 more than the usual number of excess winter deaths.
7. By looking at only one side of the account, and by threatening scientists who disagree with him with imprisonment for criminal negligence, Mr Torcello offends fundamentally against the principles of academic freedom that he will himself no doubt pray in aid when he is confronted with the present complaint, and against the principle of tolerance of diverse opinions – including, horribile dictu, opinions at variance with his own – that is enjoined upon him by the Institute’s mission statement, and by common sense.
The academic senate will, no doubt, wish to consider whether Mr Torcello is a fit and proper person to hold any academic post at the Institute, and whether to invite him not only to correct at once the errors of fact that he has perpetrated but also to respect in future the academic freedom of those with whom he disagrees as though it were his own freedom – a freedom that, in his shoddy little posting, he has shamefully and ignorantly abused.
Yours faithfully,
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
[1] https://theconversation.com/is-misinformation-about-the-climate-criminally-negligent-23111
[2] Legates, D.R., W.W.-H. Soon, W. M. Briggs, and C.W. Monckton of Brenchley, 2013, Climate consensus and ‘misinformation’: a rejoinder to ‘Agnotology, scientific consensus, and the teaching and learning of climate change’, Sci. & Educ., August 30, DOI 10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9.
[3] Least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomaly dataset, September 1996 to February 2014 inclusive.
[4] See e.g. Lindzen, R.S., and Y.-S. Choi, 2011, On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implications, Asia-Pacific J. Atmos. Sci., 47:4, 377-390, doi:10.1007/s13143-011-0023-x.
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Lawrence, reading your penultimate draft of “The Trouble with Pseudo-skepticism” proves that you are entirely ignorant of climate science. That is a shame because there are so many interesting things to learn. But thanks to misinformation from consensusists you think that denialists are pseudo-scientists and climatologists are the true experts who know the climate. And this makes us deniers “pseudo-skeptics” whose opinions are pseudo-scientific in nature. I hate to tell you that the only pseudo-scientists in the climate field are true believers in the existence of AGW, that nefarious anthropogenic global warming. Supposedly it is caused by this greenhouse effect that Hansen told us about in 1988 when he spoke to the Senate. First, it may surprise you, but there has been no warming of any kind for the last 17 years, despite the fact that there is more carbon dioxide in the air than ever before. This immediately tells us that the consensusists’ theory of greenhouse warming simply does not work. If you have heard of IPCC, it was established the same year as Hansen spoke to the Senate. They are all upset now about that “missing heat” and are looking for it everywhere, even in the ocean bottom. Seventeen years is two thirds of IPCC’s existence but they have kept quiet about it as much as they could. Fact is, this lack of warming makes our century entirely greenhouse free. The twentieth century did have warming and records show that it came in two installments. The first twentieth century warming started in 1910 and stopped in 1940. It raised global temperature by half a degree Celsius. The second warming started ion 1999, raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius in only three years, and then stopped. This adds up to 0.8 degrees Celsius for the whole century, the same as Hansen is using in his PLoS-One article. But was this natural or greenhouse warming? To tell the difference, you must know the radiation laws of physics. These laws require that in order to start a greenhouse warming you must simultaneously increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is necessary because the absorbency of a greenhouse gas for infrared radiation is a property of its molecules and cannot be changed. To get more warming, give more molecules. Fortunately we do know what has happened to atmospheric carbon dioxide thanks to the Keeling curve and its extensions by ice cores from Antarctica. Checking these data it turns out that there was no change in atmospheric carbon dioxide either in 1910 or in 1999. Hence, all warming during the entire twentieth century was natural warming, not greenhouse warming. This makes twentieth century also greenhouse free. And with both twentieth and twenty-first centuries greenhouse free it follows that there has been no greenhouse warming since the year 1900, and probably also since before it. Hence, we can state that there has never been any anthropogenic global warming within the last two centuries. And this makes belief in the existence of AGW nothing more than a pseudo-scientific fantasy. You, Lawrence Torcello, have thrown in your lot with these pseudo-scientists by not bothering to learn real climate science. But being an educator as you are you should know that it is never too late to learn. I recommend a book called “What Warming?” available from Amazon that will put you on the road to recovery from your pseudo-scientific delusions.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I need accurate answers to exquisitely technical and complex scientific questions, I generally high-tail it to the nearest Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Now THERE’S a guy who knows with absolute certainty whether system feedback to CO2 forced warming is positive or negative!
Good for you, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
oldspanky says: “If we write great prolix screeds modeled on his we’re just gonna get ignored.”
In academia, prolix screeds are their most important product. If you speak, you must speak their language.
asybot says: “…my dialogue with one of them ended when the last answer I got was that I had a comma in the wrong place.”
Oh, the horror! But no surprise; you were in a nest of grammar/climate Nazis.
@Paul Thomas –
How is it criminal to be skeptical of a theory that cannot survive the average person’s simple look out of the window?
The answer: For the religious fanatics that are global warming alarmists – heresy is a crime. We skeptics are Galileo, they are the Inquisition.
We skeptics have to remember that we are dealing with unreasonable and fundamentally mean-spirited people here.
pottereaton: “You are obviously in the minority here.”
The irony of your comment will be appreciated here more than almost anywhere else.
Monckton of Brenchley: as an acronym “MOB.” How ironic: the Mob is after Torcello.
Judith Curry observes:
Christopher, comprehensive, erudite, apposite and heartfelt, as always. Your ability to focus attention on the all of key issues and to do so in the context of your intended audience’s value system is par excellence.
As for the many whiners and whingers; they remind me of bullies sniggering behind a bike shed. One hopes they will eventually become sensible adults. Their sniggering in the presence of your stuff is beyond ignorance.
Thank you, Lord Monckton, for taking the time to write the letter and make a formal complaint. As an ‘ordinary person’ (not a climate scientist, not a scientist at all – just a plain old graphic designer) with deeply held misgivings about the entire CAGW phenomenon still running rampant and unchecked across the UK (my home) and the entire EU, I appreciate your continuing efforts to hold to account those who wish to preach the politics of hate against any who dare disagree or take issue with them on the matter of CAGW.
Even in my unremarkable little efforts to counter the dominant climate narrative I have found myself banned from at least one web forum for having the temerity to take issue with those who insist CAGW is a ‘proven fact’ or that the so-called ‘consensus’ is not only real, but beyond any criticism. Incidentally, I was banned for posting a screenshot of the GISS graph that Lord Monckton recently had posted here, showing the 17.5yr ‘pause’ in global temperatures.
I was accused of posting ‘a fallacy’ and banned. This is where we have come to: recorded, observable scientific facts are branded ‘a fallacy’ and dismissed out-of-hand because they don’t fit the agenda. It’s just so depressing.
The answer: For the religious fanatics that are global warming alarmists – heresy is a crime. We skeptics are Galileo, they are the Inquisition.
This statement leads me to believe that you know little about either. Can’t we just move on with the topic at hand without a reference to the Galileo canard?
@oldspanky:
March 14, 2014 at 5:59 pm
Right. Consensus and all that. Whatever.
Let’s see your letter. You’re the expert. Show us how it is supposed to be done. You’ve been carrying on now for a while. If you are going to be patronizingly critical, you need to put up or shut up.
If it’s good, I will tell you it’s good. You might even influence the power that be at RIT.
Who says all academics are absolute. They think they are but the big wide world they operate in sees them as people in Ivory towers, who are not in touch with the rest of humanity. I’ve met some quite weird ones in my time at University. And a few who really took a dislike to me for some unknown reason. Once they put us on online studies, it got worse. I had one lecturer when I was an external student, but went into lectures. He said to me when I changed my status to internal, “Oh I can’t knock you any more?” Thanks, prof?
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton. Good article.
Assistant Professor Lawrence Torcello certainly appears to have violated the policy on academic freedom of the Rochester Institute of Technology.
For those of you who have sent letters of protest, or are considering sending same, I think that the proper person to send them to is:
Dr. Jeremy Haefner
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
7000 George Eastman Hall
6 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623-5604
(585)475-6399
(585)475-2094 TTY
(585)475-7396 Fax
jahpro@rit.edu
@Yorek –
I stick by the analogy of Galileo vs. the Inquisition, unoriginal or not – it expresses the case most appropriately. Having studied both the Inquisition and global warming alarmism at length, I can assure you of the many commonalties of mind, spirit and morals between Torquemada and people like Lawrence Torcello.
And I’ll take it a step further: it is we skeptics who hold the moral high ground here. Alarmists seek to violate rights and take the fruits of people’s labor for their own perverse purposes; skeptics seek only to slow and stop the new Holocaust that is already underway at the behest of alarmist thinking: carbon taxes and the ethanol program, the greatest killers of innocent people in recent times. Global warming alarmists already have the blood of millions on their hands; skeptics are fighting to top the carnage wrought by carbon policies.
And nothing can [stop] the hypocrisy of prominent alarmists, with their enormous “carbon footprints,” their profiteering off people’s fears, and their suckling at not only the nipple of Big Oil billionaires seeking to make money off carbon credits, but an even bigger money tit than that – government.
Whereas we skeptics are mostly just loners acting on our own and paying for out efforts out of our own pockets.
It is obviously you, Yorek, who does not understand the commonality of religious repression with global warming alarmist repression.
“stop the carnage, not top it – my bad typing
A lesson, writ large, for pacifists. Do *not* any longer discourage war against mere posturing wannabee bullies. Attack vector bliss. Win already, fags.
jorgekafkazar says:
March 14, 2014 at 5:46 pm
asybot says: “…my dialogue with one of them ended when the last answer I got was that I had a comma in the wrong place.”
Oh, the horror! But no surprise; you were in a nest of grammar/climate Nazis.
—————————————————————————————————–
That is a guaranteed 20 years in prison according to their models.
The wonderful thing about America’s very broad interpretation of 1st Amendment rights to free speech, is that even hate speech is protected (Brandenburg v. Ohio).
America’s broad protection of free speech in no way condones hateful rhetoric, but rather allows a free, just and open society to quickly expose ignorance, racism, bigotry and tyrants and for these miscreants to suffer the societal consequences for holding such abhorrent ideologies.
The US Constitution does not protect citizens from being offended, conversely, it assures them that they will be offended and often, which is great.
In many ways, I’m delighted to see fools like Assistant Professor Torcello practice free speech and expose their ignorance and desperation, because it’s further evidence that CAGW is quickly reaching the beginning of its demise.
Once CAGW is officially thrown on the trash heap of failed ideas, Torcello’s reputation and academic career will end up in the same trash bin, and rightfully so.
Samurai: Good post. Although I will take issue with this: “The US Constitution does not protect citizens from being offended, conversely, it assures them that they will be offended and often, which is great.”
Unfortunately, atheists are now being protected from being exposed to Christianity. Apparently they are reduced to quivering, jelly-like masses every time they see a cross or listen to an invocation to God.
It’s pathetic, but it’s “the law.” Of course the law is now being used to stamp out the free exercise of religion as formerly guaranteed in the 1st amendment, but no matter. The offended must be coddled, protected, indulged, and accorded rights the rest of us are not privy to.
Well just remember being found guilty of being a heretic in 15th – 16th centuries, you were burned at the stake. Yes the various inquisitions had hidden motives anyway, usually greed.
These idiots who promote aggressive and punitive measures against those who offer their opinions that contradict alarmist predictions are whistling in the wind. Not only very rude and childish especially from an academic who prides him/her self on higher education standards, it is laughable. I pity their poor undergrads. And post grads especially sitting their higher science degrees.
You’ll be suggesting next that America stop funding the overthrow of governments around the world that it doesn’t like and supporting dictators that kill their own people but are subservient to US interests.
Dominance dungeon monotheism is the lifeblood of the American Power Centre and it amazes me that anyone expects Americans not to reflect that.
The whole ethos of American Power is against decency, freedom of expression and democratic self-determination.
It is about private wealth controlling power absolutely.
Lord Monckton has several points amiss.
Firstly, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not apply as he seeks to apply it here. The First Amendment prevents the US government from creating laws that abridge (prevent or restrict) the freedom of speech by citizens. The professor at issue is employed at Rochester Institute of Technology, a privately endowed university. It is not government-run. (per the university’s website, http://www.rit.edu). Even if the First Amendment applies, there are several types of speech that can be restricted, and are restricted by various laws. Among these exceptions to Free Speech are defamatory speech, obscenity, child pornography, inciting to riot, death threats, blackmail, solicitation to commit crimes, and perjury. Nothing that professor Torcello wrote on the referenced web-page falls into any of the exceptions, not even the death threat exception.
It may be that Monckton is offended that Torcello advocates a charge of criminal negligence for those who fund research to show that climate alarmism is unfounded. Merely being offended by another’s speech. actions, or writing is not actionable under the Free Speech clause. Even if Torcello is wrong on the matter of a scientific consensus existing, as Monckton asserts, Torcello has the right to express his views. Those who fund research into climate skepticism also have the right to spend their money on that research. Those who perform the research into climate issues and conclude that alarmism is unwarranted certainly have the right to express their findings, whether in print or by speech.
Secondly, the alleged violations of the principles of academic freedom by Torcello may be properly reviewed by a board, or academic senate. One hopes that the members of that board will review the facts and determine what, if any, violations occurred. It is likely that the only violation would be a failure to properly state that the opinions voiced are Torcello’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rochester Institute of Technology.
Thirdly, Monckton wrongly alleges that Torcello engaged in hate speech. On the evidence presented, there is no hate speech because that is a very specific crime that involves, in California for example, speech or action motivated at least in part by plaintiff’s characteristics such as gender, race, religion, and a few others. One’s views on climate alarmism are not on the list of such characteristics.
Fourthly, Torcello made no threat of imprisonment for criminal negligence for scientists who disagree with him. A careful reading of the referenced website and the post thereon shows that Torcello wrote “ought to be considered criminally negligent,” and “. . .criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities. . .”, and one more. That last one is “we know them to be not only corrupt and deceitful, but criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life.”
[snip: no need to go there. ~ mod.]