Climate McCarthyism: “Are you now or have you ever been a climate skeptic?”.
Hans von Storch reports on an email that I also received today, but held waiting on a statement from The GWPF. Since von Storch has already published the email, breaking my self-imposed embargo, I’ll add the GWPF statement when it becomes available.
(GWPF statement Added below) Update: statement from Steve McIntyre added below.
von Storch writes:
In an e-mail to GWPF, Lennart Bengtsson has declared his resignation of the advisory board of GWPF. His letter reads :
“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.”
I am reproducing this letter with permission of Lennart Bengtsson.
Source: http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.nl/2014/05/lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board.html
==============================================================
Statement from the GWPF:
Lennart Bengtsson Resigns: GWPF Voices Shock and Concern at the Extent of Intolerance within the Climate Science Community
It is with great regret, and profound shock, that we have received Professor Lennart Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from his membership of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.
The Foundation, while of course respecting Professor Bengtsson’s decision, notes with deep concern the disgraceful intolerance within the climate science community which has prompted his resignation.
Professor Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from our Academic Advisory Council was sent to its chairman, Professor David Henderson. His letter and Professor Henderson’s response are attached below.
Dr Benny Peiser, Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Resigning from the GWPF
Dear Professor Henderson,
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.
With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson
Your letter of resignation
Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation: it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.
David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council
=============================================================
Statement from Steve McIntyre:
This is more shameful conduct by the climate “community”.
As a general point, it seems to me that, if climate change is as serious a problem as the climate “community” believes, then it will require large measures that need broadly based commitment from all walks of our society. Most “skeptics” are not acolytes of the Koch brothers, but people who have not thus far been convinced that the problem is as serious as represented or that the prescribed policies (wind, solar especially) provide any form of valid insurance against the risk. These are people that the climate “community” should be trying to persuade.
Begtsson’s planned participation in GWPF seemed to me to be the sort of outreach to rational skeptics that ought to be praiseworthy within the climate “community”.
Instead, the “community” has extended the fatwa. This is precisely the sort of action and attitude that can only engender and reinforce contempt for the “community” in the broader society.
======================================================
Wikipedia says:
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means “the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
This sort of witch hunt for the imagined sin of being affiliated with a climate skeptics group is about as anti-science (to use the language of our detractors) as you can get.
I keep waiting for somebody in science to have this Joseph N. Welch moment, standing up to climate bullies:
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Nothing will change in the rarefied air of climate debate unless people are allowed to speak their minds in science without such pressure. The next time somebody tells you that “science is pure”, show them this.
=============================================================
ADDED: Before this event became known I had planned this post for later today, it seems better suited and relevant to include it here – Anthony
=============================================================
An early rational voice in climate skepticism, Bengtsson in 1990: ‘one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect’
Guest essay by Marcel Crok
Lennart Bengtsson recently joined the Academic Council of the GWPF. This generated quite some attention on blogs and in the media. I interviewed him, but also Hans von Storch on Klimazwiebel, Axel Bojanowski had a story in Der Spiegel (English version), and there was an article in the Basler Zeitung.
Bengtsson emphasized that he has always been a “sceptic”. In the interview with me he said:
I have always been sort of a climate sceptic. I do not consider this in any way as negative but in fact as a natural attitude for a scientist. I have never been overly worried to express my opinion and have not really changed my opinion or attitude to science.
We all know that in climate discussions climate scientists are quick to say “we are all sceptics” so such a remark says little about Bengtsson’s exact viewpoints. The renowned Dutch science writer Simon Rozendaal then sent me a copy of his interview with Bengtsson published on 27 October 1990 (!) in the Dutch weekly Elsevier (for which Rozendaal still works as a science writer).
We can now confirm that Bengtsson was pretty “sceptic” in 1990. Here is the full translated Elsevier article:
A cool blanket of clouds
Climate expert Bengtsson puts the threat of the greenhouse effect in perspective
Next week, a large conference on the global climate will be held in Geneva. The most important topic of discussion: the greenhouse effect. Many hold the opinion that our planet is warming by the increase in carbon dioxide and that a climate disaster is looming. Maybe so, says Lennart Bengtsson, Europe’s most important climate scientist. Or maybe not. Bengtsson doesn’t actually know for sure. It could go either way.
Lennart Bengtsson is so far not daunted by the looming climate disaster. He frowns when looking at the tierische Ernst with which the rest of the world embraces the prediction that the planet warms due to the increase in gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). ‘It would become serious if the atmospheric CO2 concentration would decrease. Thanks to the greenhouse effect Earth is a habitable place. Were its concentration to decrease, then mean temperatures would plummet far below freezing. That really would be a catastrophe.’
The Sweed, who appears and talks like Max von Sydow, is director of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast in Reading (United Kingdom), which supports eighteen European national weather centers like Dutch KNMI with computer models and simulations. Soon he will become director of the Max Planck institute in Hamburg and thereby will be in charge of Europe’s most important greenhouse effect computer model. ‘Until now the greenhouse effect research has concentrated in the United States, but Europe is advancing.’
There is something strange about the greenhouse effect. Many scientists babble and publish about it, but few really understand its ins and outs. Most of them treat assumptions as were they facts. Suppose that it would become two degrees warmer, how much higher would the Dutch dikes have to become? Or: suppose that we want to reduce CO2 emissions and still maintain economic growth for not so strong economies of Poland, Greece, and China, how much would the emissions of the wealthy Netherlands have to decrease? For the question whether the underlying assumptions are actually correct, one has to ask climate experts like Bengtsson.
He emphasizes that the greenhouse excitement is founded in computer simulations. And that computer generated models are not complete nonsense. ‘If for example such a model starts with a globally uniform temperature, then within a few months of simulation one would start to see the tropics warming and polar regions cooling. Remove the Amazon and after some time it reappears due to the torrential tropical rains. Such general characteristics of the global climate are part of the models.’
However, the models provide insufficient insight. ‘They are too coarse. While weather predictions nowadays have grid sizes of 100 by 100 kilometer, climate models work on a 500 by 500 km grid. In addition, models have problems with clouds. They are not able to predict what effect clouds have and they cannot distinguish between high and low clouds, yet we know that this differentiation has important consequences.’ Many other important aspects are lacking. Some of those cannot be incorporated simply because they are not well understood. ‘For a large part of the emitted carbon dioxide we do not know where it stays.’
FLUFFY TUFTS
Would there be no clouds, everything would be simple. ‘With a clear sky, increasing carbon dioxide or methane would lead to a reduction of heat radiation from the earth to the atmosphere. In addition, water vapor would amplify the so-called greenhouse effect. If temperatures increase, more water evaporates and water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.’
However, clouds do exist. It is these fluffy tufts that diminish much of the commotion surrounding the climate disaster. Clouds cool because they reflect sunlight. On the ground we notice this when we’re in a shadow. At the same time clouds warm because they prevent heat radiation from directly escaping to space: ground frost nearly always occurs under cloud free conditions. The simple question as to whether clouds cool or warm the Earth was until recently unanswered, and this says a lot about the current state of meteorology.
Among climate experts the opinion that clouds cool Earth is gaining ground, Bengtsson observes. ‘There are recent satellite observations, as reported in the scientific magazine Nature, showing that clouds reduce the greenhouse effect. In particular low level clouds are efficient cooling agents.’
Theoretically, the greenhouse effect could even cause a cooling rather than a warming of Earth. ‘The cooling effect of clouds is five times as strong as the temperature increase due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2.’ There is even an amplification of this feedback. Bengtsson: ‘If it gets warmer, clouds become whiter and thereby reflect more solar radiation.’
Such feedbacks are hardly part of the computer models that predict the warming, according to Bengtsson. ‘Almost no model is capable of dealing with the behavior of clouds. The models builders claim they do, but when we redo the calculations that turns out not to be true.’
There are other problematic issues. Were climate to really warm, snow and ice would have to melt. That would result in additional warming because white surfaces reflect more sunlight. ‘This additional warming is not present.’ Maybe the largest omission in knowledge about climate are the oceans.’ In most models it is assumed that the ocean is fifty meters deep, which is an average. But there are parts of the oceans that are several kilometers deep. Those would slow any potential warming. You could hide thousand years of warming in the ocean.’
The one small meteorological detail from the enormous amount of uncertainties, ambiguities and question marks that has become better understood is that an increase of CO2 and some other gases potentially has a warming effect. And that is what politics is focusing on right now. Bengtsson: ‘What happens in the Atlantic Ocean could have bigger consequences, but nevertheless all attention is focusing on the greenhouse effect.’
GREENHOUSE MAFIA
Bengtsson believes that climate experts should not pretend to be more knowledgeable than they really are. ‘In case of the greenhouse effect there is an interaction between media, politics and science. Every group pushes the other groups. Science is under pressure because everyone wants our advice. However, we cannot give the impression that a catastrophe is imminent. The greenhouse effect is a problem that is here to stay for hundreds of years. Climate experts should have the courage to state that we are not yet sure. What is wrong with making that statement clear and loudly?’
The excitement of the last weeks has moved everything into high gear. A United Nations committee (the IPCC) has released a report at the end of August which suggests that there is a broad scientific consensus about the existence of the greenhouse effect. This already has had political ramifications in many countries. For example, halfway October hundreds of Dutch politicians, experts, civil servants and industrialists have been discussing in Rotterdam themes from the 1960s like whether and how the Netherlands could lead the way (again). And early November there will be a global conference in Geneva about the global climate.
Bengtsson thinks that the IPCC has been particularly actuated for political reasons. ‘The IPCC prediction that with a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere the temperature on Earth would rise by two degrees should be taken with a grain of salt.’
Due to the lack of understanding a thermometer remains crucial. And it is not pointing in the direction of a doomsday. ‘The temperature over the Northern Hemisphere has decreased since about 1950. In some countries the eighties were very warm, but there are countries where this is not the case. On Greenland there is little to be seen of the greenhouse effect. It has been very cold during the last couple of years.’
‘If you talk to the greenhouse mafia about these observations, they provide some answers, but those are not real. There is no proper support for the claim that the greenhouse effect should already be visible. It is sometimes stated that the Southern Hemisphere is warming. But there are so few observational sites over there that it is very difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about the temperature in the Southern Hemisphere.’
Bengtsson is not the only climate expert who thinks that much of the excitement about the greenhouse effect is undue. Many of his colleagues have been rather uneasy about what happened after they opened Pandora’s box. They have become afraid, now that politicians, camera crews, pressure groups and environmental departments worldwide have thrown themselves at the climate disaster, to openly state that what they have declared may have been a bit premature.
Bengtsson: ‘Many of us feel rather uncomfortable with much of what has been claimed about the greenhouse effect. No one had been talking about it because temperatures had been slightly on the decline during the last 30 years. Only after Jim Hansen of NASA had put the issue back on the agenda after the warm summer of 1988 has it become part of the political agenda. In itself there is no problem with that. Looking hundreds of years ahead the greenhouse effect could become a serious problem. Some policies are obviously a clever thing to do: save energy, become less dependent on oil, those are good ideas. But one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect. There are many environmental problems that are much more urgent like that of the sulphur dioxide in Eastern Europe.’
Marcel Crok operates two websites, De staat van het klimaat (The State of the Climate), and Climate Dialog, which recently had an excellent discussion on the Transient Response of Climate Sensitivity. I recommend adding it to your bookmarks – Anthony
UPDATE2: David Rose sums it up succinctly with a reference to Monty Python –
@RogerPielkeJr No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. But in climate science and policy, its successors are thriving.
— David Rose (@DavidRoseUK) May 14, 2014
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:07 am
But this is hardly McCarthyism–no governmental inquisition is involved. It’s just groupthink-plus-PC-ism.
==========================================================
/pedant, you forgot to add. You seem to ignore the crap that governments various have also thrown at skeptics. James Gordon Brown, Crasher of Economies, Thrower of Nokias, pronounced us to be Flat Earthers.
Just the term HUAC sets me off. The name was (and is) The House Committee on Un-American Activities – HUAC was a vastly successful rewrite of the name by the media – done I am sure out of concern for our liberties.
Now that we have avowedly marxist members of the various cabinet posts in the Federal Government, how many of you still stick to the belief that more is truly better where the Government is concerned?
Expose yourself.
He said he was worried for his own health and safety. That’s good enough reason to resign. It’s his choice not yours.
A good day for the Climate Inquisition, but a bad one for science.
Just another instance of why no one should confuse climate science with real science.
beng – McCarthy was indeed right. McCarthy may have been the greatest American ever. We must pray hard for more McCarthys.
Steve from Rockwood:
Historical revisionism seems to be popular in this thread. Mostly, it consists of people trying to pretend McCarthyism was somehow right and/or justifiable. But at May 14, 2014 at 8:52 am you make a point about a British historical character when you ask
Newton would have resorted to nefarious behaviour, and he did.
He was the successor to Hooke as President of the Royal Society (RS). Upon taking office Newton destroyed all Hooke’s papers which were stored with the RS. And Newton’s comment that his scientific advances were because he “stood on the shoulders of giants” was aimed at the short-stature Hooke.
Denigration of colleagues by scientists is not new.
Richard
The intellectual fascism that is happening is the biggest threat to freedom I have witnessed in my 61 years. It is a well conceived plan that is being directed at the highest levels of the global elite.
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
– David Rockefeller
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991
What has happened to Bengtsson is sad and quite frightening. I’d like to believe it triggers a wave of revulsion in the wider populace but I think instead it is proof that the “fix is in.” Such a rapid and apparently widespread application of intolerable pressure points toward a coordinated response, directed by a decisionmaking entity with a command-and-control infrastructure that resulted in a significant number (dozens?) of peers, funding sources, customers (journal editors, boards) not just giving him a fishy look at the faculty tea, but aggressively threatening him. That’s not a flash mob; that’s enemy action.
When an adversary reveals its intention and capability so openly, it suggests either confidence or desperation. I am afraid I have to favor the former interpretation.
Please disabuse me of this pessimism.
When you sleep with wolves expect to be bitten.
The GWPF could have rejected his letter of resignation and posted a very strong message to its members. It apparently doesn’t stand for much and is emblematic of the Problem.
GWPF members and their board should be ashamed of their current stance.
I think some of the witch hunters have convinced themselves that “thermal runaway of the circuit” is actually possible if not probable in the case of Gaia. It drives them to madness and thence into bullying and persecution of those who are not like minded.
Ivan says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:13 am
What a despicable comment.
Ivan, you made the personal choice of posting that comment. I don’t see why anyone would sympathize with you if the general WUWT population elected to crucify you on this thread for making it. You might be lucky, I’m not at all sure most of the commenters have a taste for that sort of thing.
Ego needs to drive truth underground. There is nothing so dangerous as an underground. The gulags were full of the best artists and scientists.
I guess this story was “unexpected”, because I don’t see a lot of Warmer Trolls yet. 😉
Andrew
I am sure a great many of the objections to Lennart Bengtsson were emailed from [star] dot edu addresses. I can equally state that every single one of those organizations have codes of professional conduct and that in the vast majority those codes have been violated by this behavior.
Im not surprised. He isn’t the first to be pressured and ostracized for daring to question the new religion
“Kev-in-Uk on May 14, 2014 at 7:03 am
I’m with those who say ‘name and shame’ – or at least to ‘out’ the threats and the manner in which they were received/perceived. This type of treatment is intolerable and must be stopped.”
Totally agree. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Indeed, these creatures cannot abide exposure. And since I believe (do read Eric Hoffer’s classic “The True Believer”!) that Bengtsson will not be readmitted to the fold of the faithful sheep, he has little to lose by exposing those who pressured him to resign. At a minimum, he should post verbatim the threats and opprobrium he received, with a “non-attribution” that may allow others to expose these thugs and cowards.
History, like science, must reflect the truth.
The McCarthyism meme is a good example of our brains on propaganda.
(my bold)
http://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-Americas/dp/1400081068
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/mainstream-media-try-to-burn-a-book/
I haven’t read “Blacklisted by History,” but I have read From Major Jordan’s Diaries
Wherein we learn that Harry Hopkins, and others, conspired to give the Soviets not only our nuclear secrets, but even treasury plates for U.S. currency.
As I’ve said here before: Read it, and weep.
–sp
Idiot. If all the skeptics surrender, we won’t have anyone in their ranks to restrain them from ludicrousity. If they no one stands to oppose them, their views will dominate. We’ll be the laughing stock of future generations who practice science. They’ll say we practiced climate science with the the equivalent of “rolling the bones” but with incomplete digital models.
In the United States, it is a federal crime to oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person that impacts his Constitutional rights, such as Freedom of Association.
See Title 18, US Code Section 241, which states in pertinent part:
“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same. . .”
Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment for up to 10 years, or both.
dbstealey says:
May 14, 2014 at 8:09 am
The GWPF must now vet candidates more carefully. Only those with the moral courage to resist the attacks should be considered.
As for Dr Bengtsson, he needs our support. Richard Courtney said it very well:
AGW-scaremongers will gloat at Bengtsson “surrendering”. We need to provide him with support and understanding.
_____________________
Worth repeating.
If you do not understand the language of the vikings, use Google translate.
The link below is the first time I noticed Bengtsson in Swedish opinion.
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2011/12/17/moren-har-gjort-sin-plikt-moren-kan-ga/
Since then I have kept an eye on him and the people and organisations he mingle with.
Read what I quoted above from his article in Energy & Environment. (2006)
First, before 2000 his was “skeptic”
Then, for 10 years he was “alarmist” (He is responsible for Sweden’s aggressive official view)
Now he is said to be “skeptic”
To me he as an opportunist and propagandist (nuclear is low carbon), and I have no sympathy for him.
John Daly, McIntyre, McKitrick, Pielke Sr are the heroes. Bengtsson does not fit into there team!
Bad Andrew says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:09 am
I guess this story was “unexpected”, because I don’t see a lot of Warmer Trolls yet. 😉
Andrew
______________________
Dollar to a donut that they are watching, but silent. They know full well that this behavior is reprehensible, yet it furthers their cause, so they let it slip past without comment.
Oldseadog wrote: “I wonder how, or even if, the MSM will report this.”
They will say that Bengtsson is a racist. That is all.
and I wish I was joking – I’m not.
Why do I keep thinking about a:
Klimat Konsensus Komunity ?
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:03 am
Steve from Rockwood:
Historical revisionism seems to be popular in this thread. Mostly, it consists of people trying to pretend McCarthyism was somehow right and/or justifiable.
________________________
I’m sure you must be right, Richard. After all, McCarthyism is a purely leftist propaganda description which ignores the work of Sen. McCarthy as he unmasked some number of Communists working in secret within the US government.