Uh oh, another “climategate” like moment is upon us as the law of unintended consequences kicks in. As Dr. Roger Pielke put it:
Appears that Bengtsson can play hardball too.
Plus there is an editorial by Dr. Matt Ridley saying “This bullying of climate sceptics must end“. Here is the front page of The Times for Friday May 16th, a link to the article follows.
Here is the full article:
Scientists in cover-up of ‘damaging’ climate view
Research which heaped doubt on the rate of global warming was deliberately suppressed by scientists because it was “less than helpful” to their cause, it was claimed last night.
In an echo of the infamous “Climategate” scandal at the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s top academic journals rejected the work of five experts after a reviewer privately denounced it as “harmful”.
Full article at: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4091344.ece
Ridley’s essay:
This bullying of climate-science sceptics must end
When did demonising your opponents become so acceptable?
Lennart Bengtsson is about as distinguished as climate scientists get. His decision two weeks ago to join the academic advisory board (on which I also sit, unremunerated) of Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation was greeted with fury by many fellow climate scientists. Now in a McCarthyite move — his analogy — they have bullied him into resigning by refusing to collaborate with him unless he leaves.
Full article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/thunderer/article4091200.ece
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This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But perhaps it is the end of the beginning.
Can I be the first person to say “BengtGate”
The discovery of gravity and the determining that the sun is a million times bigger than the earth proved “harmful” to the theory that the sun revolves around the earth.
Here’s what gets me… As humans, the rational reaction to such research (that AGW might not be nearly as bad as previously thought) should be: “Wow, that’s potentially great news! It would be a huge relief if we didn’t need to worry about the effects of putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. We need to explore this further.” But that’s anything but the reaction from the AGW disciples. Their stance clearly seems to be: “There is NO room for hope in this arena. We are set for disaster, and we will not hear anything to the contrary.”
I’ve made this analogy before… Say that “science” had observed a distant, approaching asteroid and calculated that it is extremely likely that it will collide with the earth in approximately 5 years – and would undoubtedly cease life on this planet as we know it. Then let’s say that some amateur astronomer came along and produced a set of calculations that said that this asteroid would actually miss earth by 500,000 miles. Wouldn’t “science” be very interested in understanding what this amateur did differently in his observations and calculations? Wouldn’t these scientists be HOPING that they were wrong, with such an imminent demise otherwise? Or would they be rejecting his claims out of hand, just because he had a different outcome than the orthodoxy?
Bengtsson’s rights have been violated and he has a case for the European Court of Justice.
Freedom of association is the right to join or leave groups of a person’s own choosing, and for the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of members.[1] It is both an individual right and a collective right, guaranteed by all modern and democratic legal systems, including the United States Bill of Rights, article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international law, including articles 20 and 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labour Organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association
Yes, in the Times to boot! Also, the long skeptic Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2630023/Study-suggesting-global-warming-exaggerated-rejected-publication-respected-journal-helpful-climate-cause-claims-professor.html
I am a lay person but I wonder why skeptics allow the argument to be characterized as between “scientists” and “skeptics”. Shouldn’t the argument be between “alarmist scientists” (if that is what they really are) and “realistic scientists”.
izen says:
May 16, 2014 at 3:58 am
There is a long history of AGW rejectionists getting their papers rejected from the leading journals because they are bad papers…
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define bad. Bad because they go against political correct beliefs, or bad because they are not based on observational evidence?
the problem is that political correctness has overtaken factual correctness as the norms of society. You cannot say or write anything that is politically incorrect, no matter how accurate of factual it might be. as a result science has become subservient to politics. scientific findings must first be politically correct, before they will be considered factually correct.
for example, imagine conducting a statistical study of population and finding correlations between intelligence and race or intelligence and sex or intelligence. such a study is unlikely to be published, no matter how solid the research, because it is not politically correct to say anything that contradicts racial or sexual equality.
because studies that are politically incorrect are unlikely to get published, this skews society’s beliefs, reinforcing politically correct beliefs, no matter how factually incorrect they might be.
When did demonising your opponents become so acceptable?
===================
Let’s be clear that even folks on the same side often attach monikers to others they disagree with. I’m a “fringe” skeptic as Anthony would say. Slayers are frowned on by many.
In the skeptic corner to be a proper skeptic you must first accept that CO2 will heat the open atmosphere (or the surface depending on which theory you listen to) and can only discuss the amount. Barring that acceptance you are a fill-in-the-blank.
Forshame…..the link asked me buy a a subscription AND I WON a new I-pad…..
omnologos says:
May 15, 2014 at 4:44 pm
First it was Delingpole. Then the Spectator. Then the Daily Mail. Then The TImes. The important aspect is that this stuff is now entering the journalistic narrative, otherwise dominated by planet-burning deathwishes.
========================================================
The Telegraph has also covered it. The Guardian and the Independent have nothing on it, which is no surprise as both publications are utterly fanatical about CAGW, nor has the BBC, to which the same applies.
Crispin Tickell (One of Principal Godfathers of the CAGW Scam )
Well T H Huxley was in many respects one of my heroes. Aldous was as well. In fact I think if anybody had any influence on me during my adolescence, it was Aldous Huxley. And I remember going to lunch with him and he asked me what essay I was writing that day for my history teacher. And I replied it was about the relations between the Pope and the Emperor. And he sort of took a deep breath, and for about 15 minutes he spoke about the secular versus the spiritual power. And I really sat back, staggered by what I heard, because he illuminated every aspect of this immensely complicated and still continuing problem, and I found it fascinating. When I sat down afterwards to try and write my essay, I was hardly able to write a word
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/11/climate-science-sociology/#comment-364124
Note Tension between Tickell and Wigley
Mike, Be aware that Tickell dislikes Tom Wigley; this isn’t hearsay – I know this for a fact. After Tom published that “delaying –emissions cutbacks – scenario” analysis in Nature, Tickell told me that Tom was irresponsible, & had damaged the likelihood of the cc issue being addressed seriously
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/24/who-is-on-which-side-in-the-climate-debate-anyways/#comment-369394
Should we be surprised at the tension between the secular power and it’s supporting “Priesthood”, or that the Priestly establishment will want to maintain its influence and Religious authority?
Recall Henry VIII schism with Rome, and also Henry II saying
“Who will rid me of this troublesome priest”
For people in England , there was always the real problem – do you obey the king or the pope ? In fact, this was rarely a problem as both kings and popes tended to act together as both wanted to remain powerful. On two occasions they fell out – one involved the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, and the other Henry VIII.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/thomas_becket.htm
Bengtsson has committed heresy and sacrilege, and the “Scientific Priesthood” (in sacred cloaks of climate crusaders) wanting to maintain their status/influence and “Religious Authority” and stay in favour with their secular benefactors, must excommunicate him.
This thread is a classic. Divergent sub-threads on McCarthyism and the apostrophe. No one yet had broken Godwin’s law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair,
It is difficult to get a climate scientist to consider something when his scientific grant funding depends on him denying it.
Summarising, the simplistic comparison of ranges from AR4, AR5, and Otto et al, combined with the statement they they are inconsistent is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.
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political correctness of the worst kind. the referee is complaining about the political impact of the paper. why would any impartial referee care whether the paper gave claims to “the climate sceptics media side”?
R. Crutcher says:
May 15, 2014 at 10:25 pm
Rod McLaughlin says:
May 15, 2014 at 8:23 pm
“Senator McCarthy had people imprisoned for their opinions”
Nonsense, McCarthy was US Senator not a prosecutor. He could not imprison anyone. I would hope the people on this blog would know the difference.”
McCarthy also turned out to be correct in the end despite the successful assassination of his name and reputation by the Left, which it turns out, did have a great deal to hide in those days, much like the Warmanistas of Climate do today. In the end, the truth will out.
http://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-Americas/dp/1400081068
Great post, RCase! I concur, and have felt the same way for a while now. Cretins like Mann and others are actually fervently hoping for disasters and more human suffering to happen, because it will be the best way to further their own careers and feed their massive egos. Narcissistic in the extreme – it’s a diseased outlook on life.
Speaking of the truth coming out, the ed crowd just finished a meeting in Oman and is now looking for this group http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/owg.html to begin finalizing the convergence of The Future We Want actual agenda. Scientists like Bengttson are an impediment as they make all these models to be a matter of physical science prediction. Instead of the social science transformation vehicles and redistribution schemes they actually are.
When McCarthy sought to raise the spectre of Communism, many of the adherents had less interest in the USSR than in transforming the West to the small c vision based on Marx’s human development model. The USSR may be gone, but the human development model remains more hoped for than ever, CAGW is just the obscuring means to get there without admitting it.
Where is the report that was suppressed?
After reading this reviewers comments http://ioppublishing.org/newsDetails/statement-from-iop-publishing-on-story-in-the-times, I strongly suggest Bergsson should submit to a real journal with qualified AGW unbiased reviewers
Mann
Climategate
Gleick
Cook
Bengtsson affair
Anyone see a pattern here?
You have very good thoughts, Robin, and I agree with a lot of the ASCII that you type. It happened before my time, but I think that many of the useful idiots McCarthy was trying to ferret out were just that – idiots (just like many Hollywood/Entertainment types nowadays) and held the false Utopian ideal of Communism – still very much alive today in movements like CAGW and others – not the brutal reality of its real world application in the USSR. People seem to never learn. There will never be a human utopia.
I do have one major bone to pick against you – I took a peak at your web page and I see that you are a lawyer. You know what Billy Shakespeare said about lawyers.
I think the good thing to come out of all of this is that Dr. Bengtsson’s paper will now have so much attention that it can be judged on its merits by a much larger scientific audience than if it were just quietly published by some narrowly-focused climate journal. So, I think this whole episode just backfired badly on the warmists…(heh)
I think the fact that Bengtsson is Swedish is also critical to why this was so abhorrent. Sweden is where the Human Dimensions component of the UN’s remake the West with the environment as the excuse juggernaut commenced in Stockholm in 72. It is where Bruntland was Prime Minister. As I explained here from the 1971 The New Totalitarians book http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/echoes-from-the-past-preparing-the-ground-for-social-engineers-requires-malleable-human-material/ Sweden’s use [of] education to change what students believe and value is now the model for the rest of the world.
Sweden’s IGBP was the center for using sustainability to gain the human development model throughout the rest of the world that is now nearing its apex as the post-2015 UN agenda. Sweden is where the Belmont Challenge research is invisibly centered as well as the Future Earth Alliance that succeeded the Earth System Science Partnership.
Swedes are supposed to be in the global change vanguard, not joining in the effort to restore sanity.
Reblogged this on Power To The People and commented:
Now the true aims of Alarmist Climate Scientists and other Government funded Green interests becomes clear. It is to censor, smear and denigrate anyone who dares to threaten the gravy train of tax pay dollars going down the toilet on Alarmist Climate Change research and wind turbines that don’t spin. This is what so called Climate “Science” and the so called noble goal of “saving the world” from man caused Climate Change has deteriorated into. A bunch of self serving money grubbers that could not exist without the use of other people’s money confiscated by the government. So anyone who threatens the lie that human use of fossil fuel is the primary culprit behind Catastrophic Climate Change must be stopped at all costs.