From Climate Depot: Fired for ‘Diverging’ on Climate: Progressive Professor’s fellowship ‘terminated’ after WSJ OpEd calling global warming ‘unproved science’
Professor’s fellowship ‘terminated’ after WSJ OpEd declaring ‘the left wants to stop industrialization—even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false’. Prof. Caleb Rossiter: ‘Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.’
IPS email of ‘termination’ to Rossiter: ‘We would like to inform you that we are terminating your position as an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies…Unfortunately, we now feel that your views on key issues, including climate science, climate justice, and many aspects of U.S. policy to Africa, diverge so significantly from ours’
In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot, Dr. Rossiter explained:
“If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.’”
“I have tried to get [IPS] to discuss and explain their rejection of my analysis,’ Rossiter told Climate Depot. “When I countered a claim of ‘rapidly accelerating’ temperature change with the [UN] IPCC’s own data’, showing the nearly 20-year temperature pause— the best response I ever got was ‘Caleb, I don’t have time for this.’”
More here: http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/06/12/fired-for-diverging-on-climate-progressive-professors-fellowship-terminated-after-wsj-oped-calling-global-warming-unproved-science/
Lie with dogs, wake with fleas.
Nothing is efficient in Oceania, except Thought Police.
Sorry for the obvious bias in favour of posters called Richard but I greatly appreciate the debate here between Richard Courtney and Richard Verney. I agree with RC on the basic fact that few greens or progressives directly want to blight the lives of the very poor. The problem for most, as Thomas Sowell wrote two years ago, may be self-flattery:
We should check such beliefs against facts. Respect to Caleb Rossiter for doing just that.
Blacklisting leads to stoning as long as no one stands up to the progression of events and neglect.
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) receives 75% of its funding from private / family foundations. They are funded to express a certain view, not necessarily to seek the truth. But I have to say having your fellowship “terminated” has an ironic ring to it. Good for him for speaking his truth.
Jeepers, I never heard of the IPS. But while looking at some of the many articles on their website I saw this:
“…Janet Redman, director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ climate policy program, also in Songdo, noted that, “195 countries came together to create the Green Climate Fund in order to help finance the transition in developing countries from dirty energy development to clean energy, climate-resilient economies.”
Redman added, “Common sense says that financing any fossil fuels or harmful energy through the Green Climate Fund is totally inconsistent with what climate scientists say we need to do to avoid runaway climate change. This fund is so important precisely because it’s meant to support a paradigm shift to sustainable development.”…”
I would suspect that Janet Redman grew up on “dirty energy” like so many others commenting on the IPS site. They would deny the people in developing countries the same privileges (“harmful energy”) they grew up with.
In another article on this site, they don’t think the EPA has gone far enough:
“EPA’s Carbon Rule Falls Short of Real Emissions Reduction…”
The articles on this site read like the Huffington Post…
They think they are doing good work.
Worse than book burning too
Not a surprising, really. The CAGW position is so fragile that mere words can cause huge damage.
This story shows where the real money, outside of academia, lies, with respect to organizations like, IPS, Green Peace, Sierra Club etc… in funding climate alarmism.
Evidently the politically correct definition of “diversity” does not allow for *intellectual* diversity.
Richard Drake says:
June 13, 2014 at 5:44 am
——
Richard,
I’m with you fellers . . .
When in the “Vatican of Climate”; you better act like a Catholic—my analogy.
@- Richard Drake
“When an empirical study of the actual behavior of American conservatives and liberals was published in 2006, it turned out that conservatives donated a larger amount of money, and a higher percentage of their incomes (which were slightly lower than liberal incomes) to philanthropic activities.”
Do you have a link for the study that made this claim?
I have a suspicion that it was the study that counted donations to their church as philanthropic despite the fact that most of that is used to pay administrative expenses of their church.
Jim Ryan says:
June 12, 2014 at 9:24 pm
So, Rossiter is willing to call IPS corrupt only when they cut him off the payroll? Was it corrupt before that, did he notice the corruption and blow the whistle on it, or did he participate in the corruption as its employee?
There is no injustice in cutting him off the payroll. He was paid to advocate a certain position, truth be damned, and he stopped doing his job.
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You are completely unreasonable. You don’t know if he was paid. You don’t know why he was a fellow there. So many scenarios are possible. For instance, he may have believed in their charter until he started to realize their charter was flawed and openly spoke out about the flaws. You are flat wrong in your assertion. He was dismissed after he spoke out, not prior.
James Delingpole has made a comment in Brietbart London
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/06/13/Climate-McCarthyism-claims-yet-another-victim
IPS is a left wing organization. Caleb Rossiter was paid to push the company line. He failed. He got fired.
I have no problem with that.
If you are a salesman for Ford and you tell people a Volvo is better, then you should either learn to lie or go work for Volvo.
‘My wife-beating husband is complaining that I told the papers about his wife beating’.
The answer is pretty simple: don’t tell the papers about it, leave your husband. Find a better one. Be happy.
Try a better organisation, mate.
Another day, another victim of discrimination and oppression with no repercussions. This behavior perpetuates itself unchallenged.
izen:
Nope, secondary source only. You’d need to ask Tom Sowell. I have no idea how donations to churches were treated, or whether the symptoms cleared up when they were. 🙂
Institute for Pre-Determined Policy Conclusions would be truthful. Their current title is misleading.
Advocating for an officially designated energy policy for the US designed to at least sound moderate and for economic opportunity of underdeveloped regions sounds pretty moderate. You might want to reflect on whether you are an extremist if you can’t be associated with someone who thinks like that.
Mary Brown says:
June 13, 2014 at 7:02 am
IPS is a left wing organization. Caleb Rossiter was paid to push the company line. He failed. He got fired.
I have no problem with that.
If you are a salesman for Ford and you tell people a Volvo is better, then you should either learn to lie or go work for Volvo.
++++++++++
The bigger point here is that in the advancement of an ideology, people should be fired for seeking truth in. Focusing on this alone is not incorrect, however, it’s shallow.
And your analogy is terrible. And that he should learn to lie is a sad recommendation. He was not batting for the other team, he was seeking truth. He may have believed in other charters within the organization.
IPS couldn’t allow any of those donors to become disaffected because of Rossiter’s column. It had to get rid of him to forestall any disaffection and keep the gravy flowing.
Kudos to Richard Courtney for at least trying to understand the other side, and making at least a little progress. The direct path from cheap energy to compassion for the poor that is so obvious to the right appears quite tortuous to the left. The left believes that what the poor need is to be able to take home more than the 15-20% of the wealth they generate that capitalism currently provides them. That social justice thing again that causes the right to reflexively fly into a rage. The goal of the left is to push the global economy towards sustainability sooner rather than later, and that is seen as a moral imperative. You will perhaps notice, if you have the faculties to do so, that this connection between sustainability and morality must be first twisted into something unrecognizable to the left before it can be assailed. Now ask yourself, why do you need to do that? What does that say about you?