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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milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm
I might add that the proof is in the pudding. In the Western democracies (if such they were), eugenicists prescriptions were not generally acted upon, although Sanger’s advocacy of birth control eventually proved triumphant, after her eugenics campaigning faded.
By sad contrast, CACA advocates have managed to sabotage Western economies with windmills & solar panels bought from China while refusing to burn coal, or even export it to China. CACA has so far succeeded where eugenics failed.
Walt The Physicist says:
…the Great War changed science dramatically and created funding distribution machine.
WWI changed a lot of things. Following the war, it made clear that American soldiers would be willing to fire on peacefully demonstrating citizens.
That’s a hell of a precedent. More to come, I’m afraid.
Desperation has led to the nastiness…CAGW has fallen apart so they get more and more angry as ridicule and legal action is just over the horizon if the public wakes up. I have to say sceptical sites even this one do not feature enough empirical data from this and other Holocene’s to show how absurd the warmers are. Our Climatic Optimum as 10,000 years ago so cooling for a long time. If you then add a lack of warming in the Tropical Troposphere and no allowance of natural variability the whole thing becomes easy for the public to understand. Politicians like Kerry may be well meaning but he is in effect a “patsy”,
The debacle of the failed expedition to Antarctica that got stuck in the sea ice was laughable…..however they got away with it protected by blatant lies stating the increased ice was a sudden and recent event. We have even had more claims regarding that area this week. Both are easily dealt with by the empirical data from the satellites……it goes on and on.
Hit them hard and often and ridicule politicians and journalists……the climate will not be an issue at any election as the public have a shrewd idea what is going on. When Kerry states there are 500 days to save the planet he will be ignored.
For one thing Kerry, Hansen, Gore et al will continue to jet around the world…live in multiple houses and take their children or grandchildren in SUV’s….and Pachuari and Debden will do all they can to protect their “green” investments.
milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:20 pm
The quote comes from a transcription of the tape. Just because the tape never surfaced doesn’t prove he didn’t say this. Given his history it is in character.
The point is that climate change is a power grab and a redistribution of wealth scheme.
“milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm
I might add that the proof is in the pudding. In the Western democracies (if such they were), eugenicists prescriptions were not generally acted upon, although Sanger’s advocacy of birth control eventually proved triumphant, after her eugenics campaigning faded.”
Not sure what you mean by that. It “faded”, but it certainly took a long time ,and did some real damage, before it did. And I’d argue that mass, selective abortion of completely innocent human life is a repugnant successor – especially given that abortion “clinics” are often concentrated in poor, urban, minority areas. Eugenist Sanger would be proud.
A few nuggets the wiki link below…
“…Today eugenics in the United States is still officially permitted. Between 2006 and 2010 close to 150 women were sterilized in Californian prisons without state approval. Between 1997 and 2010, the state paid $147,460 to doctors for tubal ligations…”
“…The state of California was at the vanguard of the American eugenics movement, performing about 20,000 sterilizations or one third of the 60,000 nationwide from 1909 up until the 1960s…”
“…Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community.[6] By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States’ leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum..”
.. Public acceptance in the U.S. was the reason eugenic legislation was passed…
IIRC over 30 states eventually passed eugenics legislation – that’s fairly successful to me.
You are correct that Sanger’s birth control advocacy was more “successful” and, inevitably led to advocacy of widespread abortion – a logical consequence, as Griswold vs Connecticut immediately led to Roe v Wade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States
milodonharlani:
I am answering your posts at May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm and May 14, 2014 at 12:23 pm.
Thankyou for your information that
I did not know that.
But you support my substantive point when you write
True, and actions and statements about AGW from scientific institutions (including the RS) are also “not an action by the whole body”. How ‘green’ activists have usurped the institutions is related by Richard Lindzen in his paper which can be downloaded from here.
I again state that we need to understand there is nothing new in improper behaviour of scientists against colleagues. Scientists tend to form alliances to ideas and have often seen adherents to different ideas as ‘enemies’ to be destroyed.
And I stand by my assertions saying
You have replied
Yes, eugenics failed. But no, it is NOT true that “eugenicists prescriptions were not generally acted upon”: they were. For example, eugenic practices were not abandoned in Sweden until the 1970s.
This is a brief explanation of eugenics, its foundation, and its originator.
http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/whatisf.html
and this is one proposal for updated eugenic polices in the USA which was published in 1968
http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/primarydocs/orfofhh000068.xml
There is no agreed number for the children aborted by eugenic policies which were adopted throughout the Western world in the first half of the last century.
AGW policies (e.g. restricted or high-price energy supplies) have inadvertently killed many people (including here in the UK). Eugenic policies deliberately killed many people.
I repeat my opinion that we need to learn the warnings from the past and not deny them.
Richard
Growing up I idolized science and the age of reason. I was sorely disapointed when I realized Man had not progressed in thousands of years. Thanks to written language our ability to predict simple future out comes has increased but, unfortunately we are still the same beings that were burning witches and intellectuals on the same pole. Individuals can achieve greatness, but not much hope for mankind. There is a greater difference between one man and another than between most men and dogs.
Frodo says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:04 pm
The advocacy of Progressive Era eugenics & its power in the scientific world faded even before WWII exposed its logical conclusion.
But, yes, part of its program, ie abortion, has succeeded, but no longer advocated openly as control of people seen as unfit, whatever may be the effect in practice. Given the prevalence of abortion among the educated classes as well as the poor, however, Progressive Era advocates might regard its practice in the 21st century as dysgenic.
conscious1 says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:02 pm
Whether you or I consider the quotation in Kissinger’s character or not isn’t IMO the issue. Until a genuine source for the alleged quotation emerges, it must be considered fake. Of course I agree with you as to the nefarious purpose of CACA, but there is plenty of genuine support for that conclusion without resorting to fraudulent until shown valid “quotations”. I encounter phony supposed quotations all the time in historical research.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:07 pm
I don’t deny grievous errors by scientific establishments of the past. Nor do I deny that socialist Sweden & Nazi Germany perpetrated eugenics programs, but eugenics was not endorsed by the League of Nations, as CACA has been by the UN, nor adopted by most of the Western democracies until parts of its program were repackaged as abortion advocacy in the 1960s, helped along by advances in birth control.
The issue IMO is the extent to which CACA promotion by supposedly popular governments in the West may be unprecedented. I feel that it is, being akin to Stalinist Lysenkoism & Nazi racial “theories”. I say this despite knowing that the founding president of my undergrad university, Stanford, David Starr Jordan, was a prominent eugenicist.
channeling Alarmist Fantasyland “All scientist support the IPCC, only those mad deniers disagree. Their bonkers opinion is that there plenty of scientists who who are skeptical of alarmist catastrophe dogma, but that many are scared to speak up.
..Doh nutters, What evidence do they have for such a wacky conspiracy theory ?”
To: anyone with a sense of scientific independence and skepticism who has a long term relationship with Bengtsson; perhaps such as Hans von Storch, Marcel Crok, Axel Bojanowski, Simon Rozendaal, etc.
Please try to explain to Professor Lennart Bengtsson that, even though he has resigned his membership in GWPF due to “worry about my health and safety” from “an enormous group pressure” applied by the “world wide” “community” of climate science, there is a crucially important contribution he can still make to openly independent and objectively balanced science.
The important contribution he can make is to disclose the full details and exact context of the pressure exerted on him and full circumstances as to why he was concerned for health and safety.
Of course it must be stressed to Professor Lennart Bengtsson that that same world wide group pressure will likely still be applied to him to not reveal complete detail and full context of the pressure applied to him to resign under fear of health and safety.
Please discuss with Professor Lennart Bengtsson that intellectually each person has to draw a line somewhere in the spirit of the scientific process if one cherishes that spirit. It may sometimes be prudent to succumb to group pressure (?intimidation?), everyone has to make their own decisions based on their own set of circumstances, But it is something else not to tell the story of the group pressure (?intimidation?) . . . . that story is crucially important.
Thank you in advance to anyone with a long term professional and personal relationship with Professor Lennart Bengtsson who is willing to discuss this with him.
John
I’m fascinated by all these plugs for Joseph McCarthy. Boy does this give the whole controversy a Tweedledee/Tweedledum air!
Substantial members of the Right like Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham despised McCarthy. (See for example Burnham’s account in The Suicide of the West.) And serious (not flak) historians of a rightward bent like Harvey Klehr have pretty thoroughly debunked the claims of the McCarthy sect. (I think it’s Klehr who has posted the several versions of McCarthy’s lists on the Web along with the actual status of the persons named.)
For me, the most incisive observation was made by Stewart Alsop in his book The Center. Alsop was in the Senate visitors’ gallery when McCarthy made his maiden communists-in-government speech. Paraphrasing from memory: At one point an old white-haired senator heard a name that he recognized, a man he knew was not a communist. He walked up to the lectern and asked McCarthy for evidence on this point. McCarthy looked at him for a moment, then (more or less quoting Alsop) gave his nervous giggle and said, “Sit down, old man.” I think that incident tells you all you need to know about Senator McCarthy.
(But if you need more, check out the movie Point of Order.)
Coach Springer says:
May 14, 2014 at 6:42 am
That kind of behavior is the tip of the ice berg. What it is doing to real science is going on under the water, so to speak.
You mean like water polo? Anyone who has played it or watched it knows all the kicking and cheap shots to the crotch are below the surface.
milodonharlani:
Thankyou for your reply to me at May 14, 2014 at 1:22 pm. I provide this link to it in hope the link will encourage people to read it.
It seems that we agree in principle but differ in our opinions of which disaster is greatest; eugenics or AGW.
You think AGW is the greater disaster and I think eugenics was because it deliberately killed people. My point is that we need to recognise the threat of such ‘science-based’ ideas: they can be used as excuse to kill people and eugenics was used as that excuse in very many countries having a variety of governments.
As I have repeatedly tried to say, scientists are people with all the failings of people and they cannot be assumed to be saints. An idea is not divorced from moral and philosophical responsibilities merely because it is ‘science-based’. And it is immoral to impose ideas by force.
Richard
Ivan says:
May 14, 2014 at 7:13 am
So, we are supposed to sympathize with a coward incapable of living with the consequences of his personal choices?
Ahh… so doth complaineth Ivan The Anonymous. Like I said in another thread, comment boards bring out the puffed out chests among many that stand far behind the front lines.
It’s tough enough in a foreign language and culture – let alone having peers turning their backs. But, there is nothing to it, health comes first. At your service in this more welcoming, relaxed and inclusive environment favoring recovery.
richardscourtney says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:37 pm
We are in agreement about the perversion of science, even when genuinely well intentioned. The extent to which Progressive Era eugenics was well intentioned by the great & good is of course itself debatable. Socialist icon Jack London favored the extermination of Asians & Africans to help advance the cause of the white working man, for instance.
However IMO the deaths of most of the millions killed in abortions since the 1960s were not (publicly) justified based upon eugenics principles. To the extent that Nazi mass murders were, then you’d be right, but IMO that was plain, ancient tribalism dressed up in shiny new pseudo-scientific clothes, although the earliest Nazi “exterminations” of the biologically “unfit” were based upon eugenics. Even since the 1970s, I have heard US liberals argue for euthanasia of the sick & old drags on society. (Of course to end suffering, hospitals & hospices do practice euthanasia by morphine OD of the terminally ill, which is different, IMO.)
PS: You’re also right that personal animosity, petty jealousy & other unattractive human traits have been evident among scientists for centuries.
rw says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:31 pm
For whatever Joseph McCarthy’s flaws were the reason his name has iconic pejorative status, in particular left-wing circles, is because he was essentially correct regarding communist infiltration of of government and society. Many can dwell on his excess and personal flaws but that doesn’t explain the narrative hatred the term “McCarthyism” is suppose to invoke and the hypocrisy is stunning. There is no other culture in America today that is prone to jack-boot conformity, totalitarian inclinations as is found in left-wing culture and the AGW debate is a poster child of that culture.
So the first thing you hear when “McCarthyism” is gross historical hypocrisy. Consider how things were run in general during the dark ages of the 30’s and 40’s and try to differentiate Senator McCarthy and his tactics from many other wartime and New Deal conformity episodes. Consider FDR’s tactics in say the attempted personal destruction of Andrew Mellon through all manner of government corruption and abuse. McCarthy conformed to the times he existed. Where is the term “FDRism”? Again, it’s about selective and political use of terms and history.
I am old enough to remember watching the Army-McCarthy hearings (the subject of “Point of Order”) with my parents on our little black-and-white television. Joseph McCarthy may have been right about Communist and particularly Soviet infiltration into the American government, but if the Left had wanted a bogeyman, they could not have picked a creepier and more sinister bunch than Senator McCarthy and his assistants.
McCarthy (and his comperes in the House) were experts in the tactics of intimidation, to the point where anyone who might have had a taint of ‘Red’ in his past had to fear for his job—not just high-level State Department people but ordinary working stiffs, in and out of government. It was the tactics that gave ‘McCarthyism’ the foul odor it has today, the broad brush of accusation (“Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”), and the encouragement of reporting on your neighbor or co-worker, which ironically were close to the tactics of the secret police in real Communist states.
So Anth•ny is not wrong in comparing the tactics of intimidation applied by the Climatists against apostates from Global Warming dogma with ‘McCarthyism’. And that is why you’ll find faculty and students in major universities in the United States afraid to admit that they might have doubts about CAGW.
With John Whitman, I hope Prof. Bengtsson and those who know and value him will bring the miscreants to light who would shun and perhaps even threaten him. Nothing scares cockroaches faster than a bright light.
/Mr Lynn
I googled GWPF and on the first page is that piece of worthless human slime, Connelly, having a say. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/05/14/ha-ha-lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board-of-gwpf/
What an irksome, slimy, disgusting, piece of [self-snip] he is.!
“milodonharlani says:
May 14, 2014 at 1:56 pm
PS: You’re also right that personal animosity, petty jealousy & other unattractive human traits have been evident among scientists for centuries.”
Happens in other fields too, e.g. music – Hanslick, Scalieri, others ..castigated Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and others….there often were riots at premieres…
I guess that’s why “leading edge” is often termed “bleeding edge”…
When I was in Uni, there were some music students who would go to other students’ recitals or concerts just to hear them fail…sad….
In my book it’s better to win over a strong competitor than to “back in” or win by default….
I wonder if the GWPF position included a salary. If so, that is a taunt Bengttson’s accusers might have thrown at him. If so, it might have been a reason he resigned. (Future joiners might want to forgo getting paid.)
The targets of “McCarthyism” were often accused because they were members of what were later revealed to be communist front groups. But those targets had plausible deniability: they could say they were unwitting. So they shouldn’t have been accused–it was a smear. (Although if they were members of a dozen such groups, or an officer in them, that excuse be less plausible.)
I saw a few minutes of the Army/McCarthy hearings on TV at a friend’s home as a kid. His mom said, “He’s so rude.”
Jeff says:
May 14, 2014 at 2:25 pm
Being a genius or just gifted doesn’t make you any less human. Sometimes it makes you worse than you otherwise might be. Newton was probably doomed by his childhood to crankiness even if he had been an unhappy farmer rather than a lonely scientist, secret theologian & alchemist, biblical historian, bad teacher, good Mint chief & vengeful RS President.
This is terrible, terrible news. Like Connelly, many alarmists will find this funny or encouraging. Instead, it signals quite clearly their utter determination to stifle open scientific debate. There are plenty of people who believe in the dangers of AGW out there who could demonstrate very clearly that they have yet to jettison their principles by offering sympathy to Bengtsson, even if they disagree with him. Experience tells me that few, if any, will.