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
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~sigh~
Does it matter what the truth was about Sen. McCarthy, does it have some relevance to the matter at hand?
What was the last time popular Dr. Mann has been forced to resign? Shame on the Big Oil.
I was drawing an important distinction. Bengtsson isn’t being hauled before a governmental star chamber because of his associations. That is what “McCarthyism” implies. The term used in the headline should have been “heresy-hounding”–these are spontaneous, social, bottom-up events. Actually, he is probably seen by his critics as worse than a heretic–as an apostate from the peer-reviewed club, for having gone over to the non-peer-reviewed demonic-d*n*alist GWPF.
Of course I am aware that the prevailing orthodoxy affects the governmental funding of research, as I have occasionally commented here. And it affects what editors and authors say too. Just a few comments above that one I had posted these:
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:01 am
Editors must have been aware for a long time that this shunning was inline for them if they published contrarian material. This could account in part for the paucity of explicitly contrarian peer-reviewed material.
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:04 am
PS: This pressure also partly accounts for the genuflections toward orthodoxy that implicitly contrarian authors make.
And so did Obama recently, in effect. But those were just words addressed against an entire bloc of political enemies. No governmental bigshot has been harassing Bengtsson by name, in the way that political leaders in the Fifties, and for decades earlier (and later) had been berating domestic communists as a group and individually of aiding communism or being communists–even though in many cases these guilt-by-association charges were flimsy (unlike the association Bengtsson has made with the GWPF). And even THAT was a lesser amount of pressure than being issued a congressional demand to appear and be grilled. (What’s the term for such demands? It’s not subpoena, but something similar.) I.e., “no governmental inquisition is involved.” Let’s save the McCarthyism accusation for later, when it might really be needed, and not dilute its effectiveness by crying wolf now.
Professor Lennart Bengtsson – perhaps the first victim of the true Climate Holocaust.
Now let THEM deny it.
Dear Friends in Skepticism,
To add to Mark Bofill’s comment, I would point out that the truth of what happened during Sen. McCarthy’s time is not relevant to the fact that the term “McCarthyism” has come to mean something in our culture. There was nothing wrong with our host using it in the post title to emphasize his point. The term is not just a propaganda tool of the so-called left in America today, but is used (or misused) by most people to mean something.
Let us keep our eye on the ball here. The scientist in question was given the full hate treatment that can only be summed up by very few terms … and “McCarthyism” is one of them.
Disclaimer: as a full on libertarian (Rothbardian type) I can see misuse of politics and political terms on both sides of the political division in modern America.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:03 am
You’re right about Newton, but wrong about “McCarthyism”. McCarthy himself was wrong to go after the Army (although it did include in its ranks Communist traitors) in the manner he did, but pro-Communists tried to tar all anti-Communists with the brush of McCarthy, who was actually rather late to the fight. The fact is that the FDR Administration was riddled with Communists (most but not all of whom were traitors), many of whom he brought with him from New York, including his wife’s young boyfriends & girlfriends. Truman himself said that if he could, he’d hang the traitor Alger Hiss, but didn’t because he didn’t want to give the Republicans more ammo.
A conservative foundation should get on this case and work their way along FOI requests to determine who, if anyone, organized this outrage. Start with Bengtsson himself (so he can turn over the emails without violating any misguided expectations of confidentiality) and then follow the message trail. The timeframe is very narrow so quick results should be possible.
rogerknights says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:55 am
======
I agree, this is more about “Crazy-Town Villagers” than crazy political beliefs.
Religious extremists do not like apostates…
From Wikipedia: “Certain churches may in certain circumstances excommunicate the apostate, while some religious scriptures demand the death penalty for apostates.”
I bet Judith Curry (motto: “What, me curry?”) has some interesting tales she could tell about pressure and its effects on relationships and careers. I’m looking forward to what she’ll say about this event.
If she went over to an explicitly contrarian organization, she’d surely draw worse effects, similar to the brickbats hurled at Bengttson. Perhaps this explains her lukewarmer stance.
Likely this pressure explains why few climatologists have rallied to her standard.
Bengtsson is a conflicted individual and I am sorry to see him knuckle under to mass hysteria. What he needs is to contemplate the basics and realize that these “colleagues” of his do not deserve the name of scientists but are just technicians working on their assigned part of the greenhouse warming fallacy. And a fallacy it is because no one, not even Hansen, has experimentally observed the greenhouse effect. He announced the detection of the greenhouse effect to the Senate in 1988 but he was wrong. What he showed to them was a rising temperature curve, from a low in 1880 to a high in 1988. That high peak, he told them, was the warmest temperature within the last 100 years. There was only a one percent chance that this could happen by accident. Hence, there was a 99 percent probability that this warming was greenhouse warming, thus proving that the greenhouse effect is real. But if you check the Congressional Record you find that he includes a manifestly non-greenhouse warming, from 1910 to 1940, as part of his 100 year greenhouse warming. Radiation laws of physics dictate that in order to start an enhanced greenhouse warming you must simultaneously increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This did not happen in 1910, ruling out greenhouse warming as its cause. The same conclusion follows from its sudden cessation in 1940 because greenhouse warming cannot be stopped without removing the absorbing molecules from the air. It follows that this particular warming period must be subtracted from Hansen’s claimed 100 year greenhouse warming. And more than half of the total warming for the entire twentieth century goes out with it. What is left of his warming after this amputation is a see-saw temperature curve of 25 years of cooling that is followed by 23 years of warming. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this will never prove the existence of the greenhouse effect. It follows that Hansen’s claim of having observed the greenhouse effect is simply false. But nobody has checked his science and he has been able to get away with this fiction for the last 24 years. As a result we now have the IPCC built up upon the belief that anthropogenic greenhouse warming caused by carbon dioxide from humans is warming up the world. But since Hansen did not observe the greenhouse effect, and no one else did either, this belief must now be considered pseudo-science. They rely upon the Arrhenius hypothesis that adding carbon dioxide to air warms the atmosphere by absorbing outgoing longwave radiation. But now we find that even this is not true because we have not had any warming for 17 years while carbon dioxide keeps increasing. This by itself is enough to prove Arrhenius wrong. But more direct evidence is available from Ferenc Miskolczi. He used NOAA weather balloon database going back to 1948 to observe the absorption of IR over time. And found that absorption was constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time went up by 21.6 percent. This is sufficient to prove the absence of the greenhouse effect and take the feet right out from under the anthropogenic global warming theory. And that makes the AGW into a pseudo-scientific fantasy. But how do we then reconcile all this with the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and absorbs energy? The answer comes from the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT). It differs from the Arrhenius version in that it applies to the more general case where several greenhouse gases simultaneously absorb in the infrared. In such a case an optimum absorption window exists that the gases present jointly maintain. In the earth atmosphere the gases that count are carbon dioxide and water vapor. Their joint optimum absorption window has an optical thickness of 1.87, calculated from first principles by Miskolczi. It corresponds to a transmittance of 15 percent or absorbance of 85 percent in the IR. When you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it starts to absorb, just as the Arrhenius theory says. But this will,increase the optical thickness and as soon as it happens, water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. This, and not the missing heat hiding in the ocean bottom, is why we have the warming pause today. It is completely parallel to the absence of warming for 61 years that Miskolczi found in the NOAA historic database. Note the contrast with IPCC. Their calculated temperature rise from carbon dioxide alone was not threatening enough so they added positive water vapor feedback to make it more dangerous. As a result, more than half, and possibly two-thirds, of the “greenhouse” warming they report is caused by nothing more exotic than water vapor. For Miskolczi on the other hand water vapor feedback is negative and its condensation prevents rather than increases greenhouse warming. This explains the current lack of warming but there was warming before the pause started. We have to conclude that any and all previous warming claimed to have been greenhouse warming is simply natural warming, misidentified by over-eager “scientists” anxious to prove the existence of the greenhouse effect. And these are the basics that Bengtsson should consider instead of yielding to a McCarthyist mob. There is still much detail to add to this and he might find it stimulating to get involved with that.
GOOD — FOR — YOU, Dr. Bengtsson. You did not resign because you wanted to — you were FORCED into resigning. A choice between either: ruining one’s health OR continuing in a largely impotent role on a board is no real choice at all.
Dr. Bengtsson has NOT GIVEN UP THE FIGHT FOR TRUTH, folks.
He has chosen to live to fight another day (and way). This is called “wisdom.”
***********************************************************************
Re: Stephen Rasey says: May 14, 2014 at 7:25 am
“‘one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect'”
Reading the document as a whole and
given Dr. Bengtsson’s clearly expressed position on the issue,
the logical conclusion is that he meant to say:
“One {must not} oversell the {conjectured} greenhouse effect {of CO2}.”
***************************************************
Finally….
Dear Dr. Bengtsson,
Pay no heed to those whose callousness and small mindedness allowed them to harshly criticize you above. You just walked away from one of your highest hopes and dreams. The anguish in your voice has not gone unnoticed. In the days to come, you will be in the hearts and prayers of many. You are not alone.
With admiration and prayers,
Janice
…. and a song:
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” — Frank Sinatra
Wipe away those tears and look up, dear Dr. Bengtsson. Pull back those shoulders, lift that chin, and, if you can, smile (like Frankie boy above).
TRUTH HAS WON!
The enemy is fighting a battle of attrition — they are on the run! And we will keep them there, on the farthest frontiers, screaming their nonsense for no one to listen to.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa!
#(:))
I’m not surprised.
“AGW Climate Alarmism”, and, from a broader viewpoint “leftist morality norms of all kinds of Political Correctness items”, have become the status of officially approved and more and more totalitarian ideologies in western societies; quite similar to “Communism” and “Fascism” in the 20th Century in some regions of the world…
Of course, there are no concentration camps or gulag systems for climate skeptics yet, but the atmosphere of intolerance and furious hate against dissidents of the official doctrine is pretty comparable already.
For instance: in Germany or Switzerland it is quite impossible to get a job as a science teacher in public schools, or as research scientist in public funded institutions if you are an openly declared climate skeptic, no matter how well skilled you are otherwise; and I know this by personal experience. Whatever next?
Well, in about 20 years, when climate reality will have proved the present “climate fascism” to be wrong, all these intolerant witch-hunters and storm troopers of today will just say “sorry, but we had only good intentions”…
A few more years of global cooling and the militant attitude of the AGW crowd will change dramatically. There will be much back peddling, but there are so many articles built on the foundation of bad science that it will damage the credibility of many of those individuals, perhaps for the remainder of their career. Especially if a cooling world causes food shortages in the near future.
William Connolley seems to think it’s funny. His response is amazing even though I’ve been aware of him for years.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/05/14/ha-ha-lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board-of-gwpf/
Gentle Tramp-
The problem is the deliberate mind arson via K-12 education ‘reforms’ coupled to higher ed shifts mandated by the UN’s Social Dimensions language in the Bologna Process. In order not to be caught out on the deceit surrounding AGW, we are extinguishing needed resources all these politicians, NGO and public sector bureaucrats simply assume will still exist to pay their pensions.
I have been working in recent days back in the 70s when what is now AGW was still known as the “global fairness revolution” and the only mention of climate was to call weather the world’s first indisputedly global phenomenon. Yes, that is going to be the ticket of a much better PR campaign for global redistribution than “Gimme.” It is interesting though that even back then everyone agreed that the key was to shift away from factual knowledge and the Newton-Cartesian view of science and to make new value and belief systems the point of all ed.
They have succeeded well even if few recognize the source. Must not then have respected dissenters effectively blowing the whistle on the scam when this “Fifth Try” at a a New International World Order believes it finally has the metaphorical wind behind its back. Whatever the actual weather.
LT says:
May 14, 2014 at 10:14 am
IMO impinging reality alone won’t end the madness. CACA advocates will make yet more excuses.
Only cutting off funding & redirecting it toward valid science will. You get what you pay for. Right now regimes are financing & promoting fraud on a global scale. Australia & Canada are leading the push back. If the US elects a GOP senate this year & president in 2016, there might be hope for a return to real science, but it will depend upon who be elected, even from among Republicans. They’re not all skeptics.
Mark Bofill:
At May 14, 2014 at 9:49 am you ask the important rhetorical question
Of course you are right: the history of McCarthyism is a distraction from “the matter at hand”.
My comment was intended to use Newton as example to show that the mistreatment of colleagues by scientists is not a new phenomenon. And I made the error of using the discussion of McCarthy as a link to that: obviously, I should have recognised that the link could not work here.
Richard
The real Witch Hunts occurred during the LIA, when 1000s of innocents were burnt at the stake.
Before jumping on board, I’d like to see some actual evidence supporting Lennart Bengtsson’s various claims. You know… the way one might demand supporting evidence if someone from the “other side” made similar allegations, before coming to any conclusions.
Like this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/04/journal-takes-lewandowsky-and-his-supporters-to-task-over-threats-over-retracted-recursive-fury-paper/
or this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/breaking-death-threats-against-australian-climate-scientists-turn-out-to-be-nothing-but-hype-and-hot-air/
Failure to apply the same degree of skepticism to claims from one’s own “side” is the hallmark of confirmation bias.
From these quotes it would appear that Prof. Bengtsson accepts the premise that anthropogenic CO2 is liable to cause catastrophic global warming. That’s the ‘consensus’ view, not that of a skeptic.
Prof. Bengtsson’s erstwhile colleagues should have welcomed his addition to the GWPF board, as a way of getting a fox into the hen house. But apparently they are so terrified that one of theirs would even go near a den of heretics that they reflexively ostracized him. Too bad Prof. Bengtsson doesn’t realize he’s now seeing his colleagues’ true colors. But then, maybe he does.
/Mr Lynn
Interesting. These people who reject Richard Feynman’s honest and objective approach to science, refer to those of us who are sceptical of theories that are not supported by data as ‘deniers’ (with the obvious read-across to Hypocaust deniers).
But now we know who the climate Nasties really are.
Latitude says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:23 am
oh yeah…..we’re really advanced
Shaman/witchdoctors made their claim to fame by promising to control the weather….
Best comment yet.
Sorry folks. Had to use hypocaust and nasties just to get through moderation.
Did Dr. Bengtsson receive actual threats of physical violence?