Over the weekend Dr. Roger Pielke Junior let it be known on his Twitter feed that he’s had it up to his “keester” with certain climate activists, especially the ones that are harassing a former associate of his, simply because that person IS a former associate.
It’s pretty ugly and it underscores how climate zealotry has gotten out of control. I myself have been at the receiving end of some of this to the point where I have had to increase security at my home and at my business.
I’ve also had to increase my personal security due to the fact that on occasion, due to the fact that I’m a well known local person and recognizable due to my exposure on radio and television, I am occasionally accosted in public over my stance on climate. But my issues pale in comparison to what Dr. Pielke writes of.
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/483249583699787776
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/483249938235543553
And this is what I consider to be the quote of the week:
http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/483252448480751617
When I think of “obsessed and malicious” in the context of “climate scientists”, this image immediately sprang to mind. This was from AGU 2013, where a session about “climate scientists under attack” was mainly just a big whiny gripe about FOIA requests.
The irony of this photo is that one of the people on that panel has been launching lawsuits against climate skeptics, yet I don’t know of a single climate skeptic that has launched a lawsuit against any climate scientist, other than a countersuit to force the issue into court, rather than let it be drug out for years as some sort of slow motion financial punishment.
The other irony was that sitting in the front row listening to how these folks tell their stories of how they have been so “horribly abused” by climate skeptics questioning their science, the “climate antichrist” (me) sat there quietly and listened, not disrupting, being careful not to appear threatening in any way. I asked no questions, and left the meeting quietly.
In addition to the regular attacks that we get daily of climate skeptics just being stupid, paid for shills, etc. we occasionally get wild claims that climate skeptics should be put on trial, imprisoned, or even killed. There is also an undercurrent of climate ugliness that pervades in social media. I’m not talking about the obvious rants such as climate skeptics are shills for “big oil”, I’m talking about when unscrupulous people bring your family into it.
There’s just no excuse for this sort of stuff:
I have blurred out the name which happens to be the name of “Goddard’s” son. I’m not going to add to the damage by allowing the name here.
Thankfully, upon being challenged on this ugliness, Mr. Venema apologized and retracted his Tweet; he says it was a re-tweet, but even if it was, re-tweeting something so obviously ugly and stupid puts his motivation into question.
The whole episode is odd, because on one hand Mr. Venema is preaching for tolerance and restraint, and more civil scientific discourse, and then we have an “off the rails” moment like this coming from him.
We all have our moments where our judgment lapses, but this suggests to me that the inner id of some climate activist folks is saying that they know better than we do how to live our lives and raise our children, which is often more the characteristics of a religion, than a science.
Maybe this inner conflict is why some climate activists play dress up Nazis, though, it isn’t always so ugly, sometimes they dress up as superheroes.
I prefer to remain anonymous for the safety of those loonies who would seek me out to do harm. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, don’t want to clean up the mess, and I don’t want to deal with the paperwork :o)
We should all keep in mind what being a vocal global warming skeptic can mean to your personal as well as professional life.
I am not sure I could withstand being subjected to these kinds of attitudes and threats.
This is what a commenter on Steven Goddard’s site had to say about Goddard’s last experience:
A reminder for those who question how rough it is out there:
Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Inquisition. Following a papal trial in which he was found guilty of heresy, Galileo was placed under house arrest and his movements restricted by the Pope. From 1634 onward he stayed at his country house at Arcetri, outside of Florence. He went completely blind in 1638.
Those who support the CAGW scare are acting eerily similar to those who participated in Galileo’s trial:
NASA’s James Hansen has called for trials of climate skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.”
RFK, Jr. called coal companies “criminal enterprises” and declared CEO’s ‘should be in jail… for all of eternity.”
Former Clinton Administration official Joe Romm defended a comment on his Climate Progress website warning skeptics would be “strangled in their beds”.
Eco-magazine Grist called for “Nuremberg-Style trials for skeptics”.
Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be thrown “into jail.”
The Weather Channel’s climate expert called for withholding certification of skeptical meteorologists.
The U.N.’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer: “ignoring (catastrophic anthropologic global )warming would be ‘criminally irresponsible’”.
U.N. official says it’s ‘completely immoral’ to doubt global warming fears
Michael T. Eckhart, president of the environmental group the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), to Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI): “It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America.”
UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland: “it’s completely immoral, even, to question” the UN’s scientific “consensus.”
And, finally:
Dr. Tim Ball, a former professor of climatology discusses the heavy price paid by scientists who publicly question the CAGW dogma: “I’ve often thought if I had to do it again I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “Until you have experienced, like some are having with the IRS attacking them in the U.S., you cannot relate to other people exactly what it’s like when you are sitting in your little condo and you’ve spent all of your savings on legal fees. And (when there’s) a knock on the door at 4 o’clock on a Friday and your wife starts crying because she’s afraid it’s the sheriff delivering a legal summons. People have no idea what that’s like. I’m not sure that I would do it again. I’m almost at the point where if the world wants to be fooled, let it be fooled. I’m not going to fight for it again.
I am not smart enough to know if Tony’s work on the temperature record will end up being totally valid, partially valid, of major or minor importance, but I support his efforts, and he knows it.
I do know that the illusion of Catastrophic Anthropologic Global Warming, which is only supported by computer models that have been shown to be critically flawed, whose core assumptions have been shown to be invalid, needs to be questioned.
Twitter usually notifies you if you were mentioned in a tweet (and you have that kind of notification turned on), if it was a retweet then Mr Goddard may well have received a notification about the original tweet so he would have an indication as to the veracity of Venema’s claim.
Alternatively, it was a direct message sent to Venema, in which case the phrasing is “peculiar” unless the text was edited before “re-tweeting”.
Alternative 2, it was a retweet of what was in his head, then he had second thoughts about it.
The disturbing family member reference is, um, disturbing.
They want to play dirty, play dirty back!! Dr Pielke Junior should Name and Shame THEM!! publicly??
V V,
You seem to have earned your reputation in many places and many times from what I understand.
But it is good to offer at least some civility and at least a perfunctory apology.
As to the comparisons of AGW fanatics and CO2 obsessives with political disasters of the early 20th century…..if a shoe fits and all of that. You might consider it as an opportunity for a teachable moment.
H.R., after taking personal defense training I know what you are saying.
Greg says:
June 30, 2014 at 11:11 am
While that might be true on your planet, I’m sorry you value your own opinion and those of others so lightly.
It’s not true in the slightest on my planet. There are many people who comment here whose opinions on a host of subjects I find to be very worthwhile and valuable.
w.
I know that there are a few here who have gripes about Victor Venema. And occasionally he may have his off the rails moments. I know he has taken some potshots at Anthony I consider to be unfair. But he is no worse than most and better than some. At least he advocates rapprochement. I can say that he has always treated me courteously, even though I am given to taking unseemly swipes at his own work regarding homogenization (which he helped test).
Eric Worrall says:
June 30, 2014 at 7:57 am (Edit)
Yes, quite.
Brian R says:
June 30, 2014 at 9:40 am
It can’t be said that only one side has cornered the market on intolerance.
But it can be said that only one side is demanding that the world surrender its liberty, prosperity, lifestyle and, in all too many cases, literal lives to catastrophic projections of a “climate science” based on rampant statistical jiggery-pokery, computer models which have never demonstrated the least bit of predictive skill, and the pronouncements of climate advocates and NGOs who are accumulating wealth beyond the dreams of avarice from the looming panic that they themselves have generated, while simultaneously generating personal carbon footprints larger than towns and cities.
Then, if you have the patience to sift through their epic plans to “solve” this “crisis” ,which doesn’t really appear to exist, you will find, somewhere in the fineprint back pages, that even if we stipulate to all their BS, and everyone on the planet, except for they and their cronies of course, carried out their obligations to the letter for the duration, the situation that would result would be so insignificantly different from what would obtain if we did absolutely nothing about the Demon Carbon that we are decades away from having an adequate technology to even measure it.
I’m sure you thought your attempt to create an aphorism of moral equivalence was quite clever, but it really was seriously lame
This is not surprising, the left has alway taken their views to extremes, they have killed millions when they are unimpeded. To them the end alway justify the means. After all they are saving the world, country, or creating social utopia in their eyes. Even when the extreme left flies off the rails the middle left never apologize, or will admit they were wrong.
There’s intense precedent for going after kids in how long time skeptical publisher of Access To Energy, Art Robinson, with three kids in graduate programs for nuclear engineering had their appointments attacked after Art ran for congress:
http://oregonstateoutrage.squarespace.com/home/2011/3/18/please-help-osu-moves-to-stop-joshua-robinsons-phd-work.html
“Reese told Joshua that he, Reese, had revoked Joshua’s privilege to pass through the control room and revoked Joshua’s privilege to work in or even be present in the reactor bay where his apparatus is located.”
Thank you Even Jones, I appreciate that, especially coming from you.
You and the other people working on the surface stations put in a lot of work to come up with new arguments. That is a reason in itself to look at the results seriously. (I wish we had similar projects elsewhere.) It is interesting to try to understand the results. New interesting arguments make it easier to stay civil. Responding to a string of old arguments or pure hostility in a friendly manner is harder. Twitter is a fast medium, it invites to make mistakes and scientists are also normal humans.
I am sorry about the above incident, especially as I had the feeling that WUWT was becoming more friendly since Anthony Watts asked people to show their best side.
I saw/read the twitter exchange Venema writes about above. Clearly it was a rude exchange. When things get heated up you occasionally lose control. That is my guess as to what happened. But that is no excuse for what was done.
Much of our personal information is available online. If I participate in the climate debate with my real name, is it right for some one to use it to search for information about family members – which would also be available online freely – and use that information against me, even rhetorically? I don’t think so.
“Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.” ― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
“The whole episode is odd, because on one hand Mr. Venema is preaching for tolerance and restraint, and more civil scientific discourse, and then we have an “off the rails” moment like this coming from him.”
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In a nutshell – the Liberal Left preach tolerance and at the same time are hugely intolerant of those who have views other than theirs. Rank. Venema and his likes are vile to behave in such a way, just vile.
RP Jr says “I learned this weekend of a senior climate scientist harassing one of my former students – just because of that fact. WTF?”
Mr Pielke, you have to name and shame. It’s no good here saying “a senior climate scientist”. Name him/her. There is nothing as cleansing as bright sunlight.
As a general point, the AGW machine is ugly, well-funded and ruthless. Yet honest principled people such as RP Jr are not playing the same game. I’m not saying that sceptics of whatever flavour should get down and dirty and fling mud like they do, but on the other hand it’s no good saying “a senior climate scientist” because the Queensberry rules prevent you from anything else.
Name names so this can be stopped.
Keith Sketchley says:
June 30, 2014 at 8:54
…
Of course in the US you can easily get a concealed-weapong permit.
_______________
Actually, I believe Anthony resides in a state where that is not a possibility.
@richard Howes – it is legal in every state, however some (like our host) states are very difficult.
“Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.”
Can we add a corollary? How about:
“No one is a scientist who has a policy of lambasting people who are skeptical of his favorite theory when that theory obviously has not been confirmed by the evidence.”
“Anything is possible says:
June 30, 2014 at 9:33 am
And Willis wonders why a lot of posters prefer to remain anonymous…….
Brian R says:
June 30, 2014 at 9:40 am
It can’t be said that only one side has cornered the market on intolerance.”
It takes (me) great willpower to refrain from replying in kind with insults when someone calls me a liar or worse. I find that posting my real name
acts as a control, keeping me from making ad hominem attacks in kind, and embarrassing myself.
@ur momisugly Keith Sketchley says:
June 30, 2014 at 8:54 am
Nice theory you have there. Clearly you don’t live in the People’s Republic of Maryland…
May I suggest as an occasional reader that contributors should identify their expertise as this will have a bearing on their viewpoint. I notice that Naomi Oreskes initial contribution to the 97% of scientist claim came from someone qualified in the History of Science. My own part time interest concerns past climates of the Holocene in Europe. So my qualification is in Prehistoric Archaeology. Edinburgh ( the first climate scientist I came across was F E Zeuner of the Institute of Archaeology, London University). If we don’t know peoples’ academic background we cannot assess their credibility. So from this you can see I don’t know much about climate science but I can assess credibility to an extent.
Greg says: “I like Tisdale’s pointing out that El Nino / La Nina is not a symmetrical oscillation and thus can be a _cause_ of inter-decadal variability, not because some untrained guy with rudimentary data processing capabilities suggested it using a “real” name, but because I think the argument has merit, _despite_ the author’s personal history.”
I give Bob Tisdale credit not only because “because I think the argument has merit” but because he does have a background in Engineering in fluid dynamics. The very discipline that qualifies him to investigate ENSO. Please don’t refer to people as untrained unless you are certain that is the case.
Once again Bob, if I’m wrong please correct me.
Tell me Venema what would you do if you had the power to get it your way?
I don’t believe for one minute that your excuse is real.
Green is the colour of your kind.
I also add that I respect Bob’s combative, but still courteous style of responding to critics.