Dr. Roger Stritmatter writes:
For your information, I pass on this letter, which has just been sent to Anthony Brandon, WYPR station manager. If you think it is suitable, I would be glad to see it appear as a guest blog on Watt’s Up. Thank you for being such an important part of my education on this topic.
WYPR 88.1FM
2216 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
Dear WYPR:
As a sometime contributor and frequent listener to public radio, I’ve got a gripe. Having put off many times writing this letter, and knowing from experience how almost impossible it is to effectively negotiate the gauntlet of your phone-in process to make a live comment, I’m finally unable to keep silent any longer. Since some things that I am going to say may easily be twisted the wrong way by some, let me clarify something for the record: I’m writing this as a lifelong environmentalist and outdoorsman with a strong environmental ethic. Anyone who thinks to put me in another box is mistaken. My check from the petroleum industry never arrived, and I’m not an apologist for that dirty, violent, and hopefully moribund industry.
With that caveat, let me get to the point: today’s story on Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) has finally put my patience to the test. Yes, I appreciated a great deal about the story. Like many, I did not know that much about Humboldt – who he was, what he discovered or knew, or what a first-rate thinker and role model he was. I am grateful for the opportunity NPR stations provide content that can productively distract the thinking part of the American (and other) audience from the Donald show, with the rest of the crash cynical opportunists of the Church of the corporation Party of the holier rollers in big money. I will not be voting for St. Fiorini, Dr. Carson, or the man with the expensive toupe and the big ugly mouth, even if I might seem in this letter to adopt a perspective more associated with the “right” than the “left.” In fact I normally admire the way NPR covers controversial topics from a perspective of enlightened impartiality that strives to live up to journalistic standards of excellence, particularly when confronted with interviewees who say things like “this type of interview must end” simply because they lack the informed intelligence or the facts to convince anyone that what they happen to believe in is inevitable and sanctified by God.
There is only one issue I hear discussed on NPR that causes me to routinely turn off my radio because I have learned from experience that the coverage I am going to hear is more designed to scare me than to inform me. Let me explain by way of a single example. In today’s coverage you assure your viewers that the differences observed in the flower and fauna patterns of two Ecuadorian mountains, comparing Humboldt’s data to today’s, are the result of “global warming.” Now it should be obvious that Humboldt’s data set, assuming it withstands today’s peer review standards (which it seems to me, without close study, it probably does), is a great gift to humanity from a gifted mind. That is not the issue.
The unasked, but critical, question is whether those data are being used in a fully scientific way in the present.
I don’t think they are, at least in most discussions.
Let me explain why.
Anyone who has gained a position of authority on the topic of “global warming” within an organization of your type should know very well the history of the four major recent solar minima periods (from 1550 onwards), during which periods global temperatures definitely declined, often with catastrophic consequence, for extended years. There are other significant minima going backwards that are also relevant to this discussion, and surely we all know that if we go back far enough we will emerge on the far end of our current interglacial period and begin to ponder, little more than 12,000 years ago, a world with two miles of ice on top of what is today Manhattan. So let’s be clear. We had nothing to do with the fact that there’s no ice on top of Manhattan in 2015.
Since then the planet has also experienced (among others) periods of intense warming, such as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, c. 950-1250), when temperatures all over were even warmer than they became during the late 20th century (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/the-medieval-warm-period-in-the-arctic/). When one adds to this clear evidence for the coincidence between the flourishing of Minoan and Roman civilizations during earlier climate maxima of our interglacial era (http://www.dandebat.dk/eng-klima7.htm), it begins to become evident how poorly NPR, along with other media outlets, has really been about informing its listeners of the larger scientific context in which these issues deserved to be discussed. It is true that the fact of the MWP, being a scandal to modern “climate scientists” such as Michael Mann or Kevin Trenberth, has come recent under attack as an inconvenient truth. But numerous studies have confirmed, and continue to document, its existence, duration, and worldwide character (http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/medieval-warm-period-found-in-120-proxies-roman-era-similar-to-early-20th-century/), despite attempts of not-entirely-scrupulous revisionists to whitewash it out of history (http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/).
The particular cold snap we might wish consider in relation to Humboldt’s data set on mountain flora and fauna is the Dalton minimum (1796-1820). The previous minima were the Sporer (1460-1550) and — the deepest and most of all in recent memory — the Maunder (1645-1714). All these downturns in global temperature, punctuating our otherwise balmy interglacial, correspond to known periods of human misery. When temperatures go down, disease, starvation, crime and warfare all go up.
The Dalton should interest us immediately because of the close overlap in timing with Humboldt’s life; the episode is usually dated to have begun when he was twenty years old and ended when he was 44. According to the best information I can find, Humboldt’s data were recorded in 1802, six years into the minima.
This raises the distinct possibility that the alleged changes in the data set are not the result of “global warming” at all!
They seem just as likely, on the face of it, to be the result of the fact that Humboldt’s observations were made during a minima, and we are currently nearing the end (most likely) of a maxima. No coverage of “global warming” that is not informed in this manner about the history of climate, and especially its relationship to human suffering or ease (it starts to become apparent that what we really should fear the most is not an increase, but an unanticipated decrease, in world temperatures) is worth your viewer’s time and attention. When temperatures fall, crops fail, starvation strikes, and disease increases. People die in large numbers.
The truth is that the theory and science of “global warming” is a far more ad hoc and subjectively determined affair than NPR ever lets on. Many “climate scientists” were raised on computer models, understand little else, and in the dearth of their own experience ask us to put a faith in them that their own history of inquiry calls into question if not disproving once and for all. Even if one has by now given up counting the number of times the IPPC projections of runaway warming induced by the extension of trends from the 1990s coupled with unwarranted assumptions of positive feedback were wild overestimates that have been securely and repeatedly falsified by the facts (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/25/trenberths-ipcc-claim-of-no-predictions-by-ipcc-at-all-refuted-by-ipccs-own-words/), it might be worth noticing that, by many of the best models, there has been no statistically significant increase in global warming for 18 years and counting now (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/04/the-pause-lengthens-yet-again/).
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This is called by some “the pause.” Others, more plausibly in my estimation, call it the peak.
Now of course we all know that the western United States has been in terrible drought. I visited California, Oregon, and Washington this past summer and I’m very aware of the pain that is being inflicted in that region due to the current water shortage and attendant wildfires. If the proposed mechanisms by which Co2 emissions can produce changes in global climate were not in themselves open to so much legitimate doubt, one might be inclined to assume that such a mechanism is the obvious if not certain cause of the drought.
Unfortunately (or, depending on your point of view, fortunately….), there are other possible reasons for the problem. One is natural cycles of western US drought and rain, which we know have varied heavily over the last thousands of years. As one recent survey concludes, “A glance into the history of the Southwest reminds us that the climate and rainfall patterns have varied tremendously over time, with stretches of drought many decades longer than the one we are experiencing now” (http://origins.osu.edu/article/west-without-water-what-can-past-droughts-tell-us-about-tomorrow ).
Another clear contributing factor to the current California drought, as verified by NOAA (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/08/noaa-researchers-offer-new-insights-into-predicting-future-droughts-in-california/), is cyclical patterns of Pacific cooling and warming that function, so far as anyone knows, entirely independently of human activity, known as ENSO or El Nino Southern Oscillation.
A third possible variable, although under-studied from what I can tell, is desertification set in motion by chronic greedy over-logging of native timber, a process that seems to have very possibly altered the regional climates of the western United States, since trees store and release large amounts of water, and in the case of Redwoods depend upon, and probably help to create cycles of through their respiration, fog for a significant part of their own water supply. Such biotic processes, by which plants help create the conditions for other life by creating cycles of water flow that cannot exist without them, are well documented in other cases (see, for example, http://www.betterglobe.com/published.aspx/Public/PlantingTrees?aid; for a more critical view of what plants by themselves can accomplish, and suggestion that animals and plants together can modify climates to increase habitability and biomass, http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/seeing-drylands-trees-42998).
A recent spate of studies reports that a decline in California coastal fog now threatens the surviving Redwood populations of the state. These studies usually say that “global warming” it the cause of this decline. But desertification from over-logging, combined with the ENSO, seems like a more probable culprit. One recent study covered in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/2010/02/fog-decrease-threatens-coastal-redwoods/) reports that since the early 1900’s the California “temperature difference between inland and coast went down, mainly because the coast was heating up even faster than inland. That reduced the force to pull fog ashore.” But what would have caused coastal temperatures to rise faster than inland ones? Surely not “global warming,” which by definition cannot in itself cause differential warming patterns of this kind. The most likely answer should be obvious: logging off large tracts of the coast forests that cooled these coasts when they were still the homeland of Native Americans, before the great “log off” of the 19th and 20th centuries.
If deforestation is the cause, or, as is more likely, along with ENSO or other natural cycles, part of the cause, of the present drought (as was suggested to me this summer by a northern California colleague) then public resources should be allocated to reforestation, not into policies guided by the assumption that an excess of atmospheric Co2 can be blamed for the problem. Certainly it is a proven fact in other regions that reforestation can make significant contribution to pushing back deserts and creating local microclimates that support life by creating or enhancing water flows through local systems.
Such natural cycles are important to understand, if we hope to understand our own potential to disrupt them. That warming increases global atmospheric Co2 through known mechanisms is one of the most basic features of the natural system that we have allegedly disrupted. But if warming causes increased Co2, what causes the warming to begin with? In focusing on Co2 as the independent variable in the equation, today’s “scientists” would appear to have badly misconstrued the nature of our predicament.
My own evolution from “true believer” to global warming skeptic (please stop calling us “deniers”) started when I became aware that Al Gore, in his Inconvenient Truth, misrepresented the character of the relationship between Co2 and warming signals in the geologic record. Co2 is not the causal factor; in the record, temperatures start to rise or fall several hundred years before Co2 follows them in either rise or decline. This is not rocket science. We know why it happens. When temperatures rise, our oceans outgas Co2, just like a Coke bottle does when you remove it from the refrigerator.
Look, I have no doubt that humanity is capable of seriously disrupting natural systems. What we are doing in polluting our oceans with plastic right now is a good example. Our bees, and with them the entire history of flowered plants and therefore our own agricultural systems, are at great risk now from our corporate-industrial-agricultural practices, which have bred them to become dependent on artificial subsidies of antibiotics on the one hand, and threatened them with pesticide poisoning on the other. Our remaining rainforests are being logged at a precipitous rate, threatening the “lungs” of our planet. If we are not careful, and the nations of the world do not cooperate, we will add to these threats the irreversible overfishing of critical ocean species on which we now depend for food. To my way of thinking, it is shameful when poor science about “global warming” is allowed to dominate our public radio stations instead of programming that could help us to solve these and other real problems as well as contribute to a more scientifically robust debate about climate. NPR needs a higher standard of professionalism, one smart enough to know that there really is a vigorous and valid scientific debate about anthropogenic global warming, contrary to what Mr. Gore assured us at the same time he was misrepresenting the science.
A better science advisor than Mr. Gore (for whom I voted in two presidential elections) is the pseudonymous commentator Lone Pine, at topicx.com, who in a discussion convened — appropriately enough – in the Humboldt County forum on the topic, “What role do you think humans play in Global Warming?” (http://www.topix.com/forum/county/humboldt-ca/TK8OFVLNETQS2HSGA/p200) recently wrote:
Even small changes in the sun’s output are going to have profound influence on weather and crops on Earth, and on the advancement or retreat of glaciers, forests and deserts – perhaps even on trade, architecture, war, human population and the spread of disease. A resting sun – the current downturn is being called a “solar lull”– should be of far greater concern than the chance (and it is only just a chance) that idling SUVs and flatulating cows will alter the atmosphere and, indirectly, increase the frequency and intensity of severe weather.
When we last witnessed a solar lull of similar magnitude [compared to that we are now entering] (in the early decades of the 19th century), our planet had just finished a warming period not unlike that of the 20th century. The onset of what was known as the Dalton Minimum meant harsh, harsh winters in North America, Europe and Russia, along with some intense droughts and famines.
Some have even compared the slow cycles we are currently entering to the granddaddy of all solar lulls, the 17th century Maunder Minimum during which average Northern Hemispheric temperatures were nearly 2C below where they are now.
It seems unlikely temperatures will get as cold now as they did then, or for as long. In addition to greatly reduced solar activity, the 17th century also had more intense volcanic activity than any century since and more than any century dating back 1,000 years before it.
During the 1600s when the sun was weaker, there were also six “climatically significant eruptions” that expelled enough ash and particles to cause lower temps worldwide for a year or more – perhaps even for a decade in some cases.
Politicians and activists need to stop obsessing on manmade climate change and focus on what to do about three decades of COLD.
NPR listeners deserve a less emotional, less alarmist, and more scientifically nuanced discussion of the relationship between climate and human activity, one that starts from acknowledging the existence of very great and still poorly understood patterns of natural variation as well as admitting that numerous unresolved questions of scientific merit are raised by the dependence of “climate science” on assumption, unknown variables, and sometimes highly dubious methodologies. When you report that the difference between Humboldt’s data and today’s is a result of “global warming,” without even mentioning the distinct possibility that there is another cause for it, you are cheating your audience of something you should be defending: the right to consider real alternatives about how both science and politics might operate. I admit, when you look at the Donald Show, it is easy to think that those on one side of this question are the angels and those on the other side are crass opportunists taking handouts from the oil industry to support bad science. Sorry, it’s not so. Above all, we need a discussion that also contemplates the distinct possibility, now supported as likely by an actively growing number of informed scientific observers, that the real risk to the future we want for our children and grandchildren is not warming, but serious, widespread, and potentially disruptive cooling.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely Yours,
Roger Stritmatter, PhD
Professor of Humanities
Coppin State University
he destroyed the value of his tome with a very vitriolic, unnecessary barb.
I agree, but as others have pointed out. Leftists don’t listen to anyone they don’t consider to be part of the tribe.
He had to include that to prove his bona fides to his fellow travelers.
The fact that he probably believes the idiocy is just par for the course for a liberal.
I do not believe there are any scientifically literate people who have acquainted themselves with the evidence for and against CAGW who accept it as proved. The evidence is simply overwhelming against the hypothesis: like the moons of Jupiter are clearly seen orbiting Jupiter the global warming has clearly stopped while anthropogenic CO2 has continued to climb. We have a bunch of scientific illiterates who accept the word of credentialed ‘scientists’ who say CAGW is proved because they have married it and a far larger bunch of indeterminate scientific literacy who have embraced it for various reasons from personal gain to institutional gain to political gain to misanthropy. NPR is clearly motivated by institutional and political gain. Occasionally honest people get fed up with the nonsense and you get the Dr. Stritmatters coming out (excellent letter). Most people don’t give a damn one way or the other as one can see from the polls on the importance of CAGW . . . which is all you have to know to judge the effectiveness of the propaganda promoting the impending heat death of the world. It is the CAGW theory that is doomed.
As a long-time (long-suffering) NPR listener, I have noted with amusement how, over the years, their fundraising schemes have solicited support from donations. Until about 10 years ago, it seemed more-or-less confined to pledge-drives, where their radio “personalities” would suspend all regular programming for several days so that they could extol the virtues of public radio and take phone calls for pledges. They wanted only your money at that time. Those willing to donate large amounts would be recognized on-air, for their premium levels of support. Others are merely given “membership”.
Then they started getting creative: over the last decade or so, donors themselves are given air time to tell listeners how they have proudly donated their cars and their homes. “It’s quick and easy!” they tell us. Some have written codicils in their wills. In one bizarre commercial, an elderly couple announced that they were giving NPR their entire estate!
Waiting for NPR to escalate this to the next step has become a source of some amusement around our house. It may seem a bit strange to the uninitiated, but I’ll wager it won’t be long before someone offers to donate his first-born. Or perhaps his organs…
[No derision is intended toward Mr. Stritmatter. I respect his honest attitude and ability to see two sides.]
The author’s antagonism toward the oil industry (“hopefully moribund”?) might change in light of the “dirtiness” of the alternatives. High manufacture costs and inefficiency make solar, wind energy unrealistic alternatives. We can expect warming AND cooling trends in the future, and for both, we’ll need oil, coal, hydroelectric, and any other source we can exploit at low cost, and whose by-products we can mitigate through cost-efficient technologies.
Nothing wrong with writing a long letter. But now-a-days people only want to spend about 3 minutes reading a letter/article. Something like the 3 minutes TV sound bite limit we have become accustomed to?
Dr. Strittmatter, I appreciate your fairness in judging climate alarmism reportage at NPR. As for you political leanings generally, I suspect you’ve not studied politics, economics or history with the same critical eye. Maybe the ivory tower has sheltered you more than you realize.
I’d highly recommend to you the report on the “Sustainability” movement from the National Association of Scholars. It gives lots of ideas of how politics and climate alarmism is propagandizing, co-opting and brainwashing people involved in secondary education. The link to their report (a long slog, ~250 pages, available as free pdf downloads): https://www.nas.org/projects/sustainability_report
Maybe you can be a faculty voice at your school to slow such foolishness? And maybe you can even persuade yourself to vote against these totalitarian constituencies at some point in the future?
Here’s a link to the discussion and shorter executive summary report of the infection of sustainability indoctrination in university (mostly US, but inroads elsewhere), how the Kerry’s and Obama have cultivated and supported it, and, I believe, an excellent argument for removing much public funding from higher ed.
This is the method by which Climate Change as a movement and as a projector of future environmental threats has lodged on campus.
https://www.nas.org/articles/sustainabilitys_war_on_doubt
They stopped reading as soon as he referenced wuwt and Joannenova. Everyone knows you can’t believe anything from a BLOG. Well, except for the blog by the Adolph impersonator. That blog is nothing but lightness and truth. But that’s the only one, all other blogs are pure lies.
The left-wing bias on any NPR outlet is wired into its DNA. You caught them out on one big lie. How about the rest? Where did you pick up your simple-minded view of the oil industry? The Times? NPR? What exactly is it you know about the oil industry? What you’ve heard? Go solar, go wind?
Prof. Stritmatter,
As a person who occasionally gets a sceptic letter published in the local paper, you may want to think about being your own harshest editor and reduce your missive to three or at most four paragraphs. My guess is that your letter does not get read by the intended party but an assistant who classifies this as an “denier” letter, tells her/his boss and files it. Having said that, you may also want to have a quick read about the Palliser expedition and the conclusions he came to. Flora and fauna do influence local climate.
It is interesting that it appears to be Dr. Stritmatter’s extreme knowledge about “Global Warming” that allows him to transcend NPR’s leftist agenda on this particular topic. However, on the other hand he is apparently blind to the possibility that they are this way on every topic they broadcast…
I am thankful that the good doctor wrote such a sincere and authoritative letter to NPR. However, it appears he does not recognize the heart of the matter, which is that to the left, facts don’t matter, they are going to lie whenever they feel it’s necessary to advance their agenda, and even when it isn’t.
Long winded letters to the media or democrat politicians will have zero impact. They probably aren’t even looked at by anyone, let alone a decision maker, and certainly not past the first few lines. Better to vote with your feet and wallet…or ears in this case.
Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump come from the private sector where they accomplished economic goals by laying off and firing people. This may be a viable strategy for the private business world but it cannot be applied by an elected official.
I remember Ronald Reagan ‘applying that strategy’ very successfully against the union of Air Traffic Controllers. Would that more greedy public ‘service’ unions got that treatment.
NPR depends on donations from its listenership. A big portion of its listenership is intensely committed to the warming side. If NPR takes a more balanced line on AGW, or gives air time to contrarians (as it did to AW a year or two ago), the pushback will be strong–hundreds of letters. And that would only be the first pushback. The next would be an Internet-based movement to boycott donating to NPR. It would be successful enough to hurt. In addition, NPR’s brand would be damaged by all the disparagement it would receive.
All media have an additional problem in being balanced. If they attempt to be, they will be deluged with learned-sounding letters and emails pushing the warmist line. It would take a tag-team of contrarian experts to write rebuttals, working full time. The easier course is for them to keep their heads down.
If a cooling trend develops, or if renewable energy’s claims fizzle when really put to the test, and costs skyrocket, and the economy tanks, I think we’ll find that the media will be ready to be more balanced. I don’t think the media is as committed to CAGW as it now appears. They’ve mostly been intimidated.
Thank you Dr. Stritmatter for an overall very excellent and effective letter, but why must you disparage the industry that probably saved the whales as “dirty, violent, and hopefully moribund.” Do you wish to return to the era of whale oil lamps?
that tedious monologue totally reminds me of dan pearl trying to impress his captors.
it will make as much difference.
unfortunately, there will be no consequences and no lesson.
A picture is worth 2743 words:
Maybe I’m missing something, but is the temperature scale on that graph reversed?
[No. Note the minus signs. T is below zero. ~mod.]
From the NPR website:
“Public Radio and Federal Funding
Federal funding is essential to public radio’s service to the American public. Its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.”
(emphasis, NPR’s)
—————–
NPR is “government radio”. Some might make the case that the chief aim of the U.S. government has become; to increase it’s power over the citizenry.
That was the best essay I’ve ever read on the subject.
It is an unfortunate truth that until you hammer home some serious liberal credentials, no one on the left will believe your opinions to be derived from data rather than just being on the “other side” ideologically.
As far as the attack on the “dirty, violent” oil business, where I spent my career, well, I spent Christmas during the Arab embargo with the president of one of the major oil companies. He described the oil business as a “dirty, stinking business” and assumed the embargo would end in war. I myself wish we had a better way to provide energy. We don’t at the present time, but extracting and burning hydrocarbons is not without some major impacts.
Thanks for posting that. So much of what one sees here is laced with Obama hating, right wing baggage that it is hard to find something effective to pass on to the NPR PBS crowd.
Doug September 21, 2015 at 3:39 pm says:
“…I myself wish we had a better way to provide energy. We don’t at the present time, but extracting and burning hydrocarbons is not without some major impacts.”
Actually, we do if you really want alternate energy. It’s nuclear energy. I actually don’t want it because I want the good old fossil fuels to run our economy. Nuclear would eliminate all the idiotic emission controls and trillions spent on mitigation would become unnecessary. Unfortunately the environmentalists have blocked it off. Not only that but they are now trying to deny that the ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in warming even exists. What makes the current pause in warming so dangerous to them is that its very existence proves the impossibility of greenhouse warming. By now this hiatus is already 18 years old. What they don’t admit is that there was another 18 year hiatus in the eighties and nineties that IPCC successfully covered up with fake warming. Together the present and the earlier hiatus cover the bulk of the satellite era since 1979. No greenhouse warming took place during the hiatus which means that the period since 1979 has been greenhouse free. Which did not stop any of the emission control or mitigation projects during the 36 years of this greenhouse-free period.
‘Svante Callendar’ (a fake name if I’ve ever seen one) says:
A claim with no evidence. Global Cooling…&etc.
No evidence?? You’re obviously a noobie at this subject, and clearly you didn’t read the article.
There is a mountain of empirical, thermometer, and observational evidence confirming that the Little Ice Age happened — the LIA was the second coldest event of the entire 10,000+ year Holocene.
When the alarmist crowd is unable to produce any arguments to support their belief system, they make baseless assertions like ‘Svante’ makes above. Asserting there is “no evidence” when there is such a huge amount of evidence shows that Mr. “Callendar” is trolling. If not, he’s just a scientific know-nothing.
Hmmm. Sorry but I don’t think this letter is a very good read on alternate theories or whether or not CO2 is a worse one. It’s more like trying to throw everything on the wall in the hopes that some of it will stick. Yet another example of a lettered professor speaking outside his/her area of expertise or study possibly riding on his/her Ph.D. in whatever. I know amateurs who could easily write a more cogent and focused letter. This letter does not further the debate in the least and likely scores a point for the opposing side, since so much of his/her points can be debunked. My hunch is that it ended up in the round file. Where it belongs.
Still, it’s encouraging that a clearly dyed in the wool socialist elite has taken the time to learn a bit about climate and has seen some of the unscientific basis of the CAGW argument. I was impressed about the Humboldt data on flora and fauna and the likely correct interpretation of why the veg and critters were different than now. It sounds like an original thought and, if so, does him credit. At least there are a few socialists out there who insist on data and logic being king. All the other socialists also know this but the “agenda” is more important to them.
I note that the Courtney’s commenting at WUWT are socialists and very effective sceptics of CAGW. I think their making Margaret Thatcher the inventor of global warming (even if it were true) is a little too convenient as a tool to exonerate socialists who really have opportunistically glommed onto this ‘theory’ for completely ideological purposes. I’m sure these thoughtful gentlemen aren’t sceptics because they hate the inventor of it. I wonder if they know large numbers of socialists who believe as they do. I suspect not.
In Canada, we had a long serving ‘liberal’ government that became so ‘entitled’ to govern it slipped into massive corruption, consorting with mafia figures, handing out millions for services not rendered and taking kick backs to bankroll the party. Even honorable old guard liberals felt the party should spend some time in the penalty box after this all came to light. Re the present state of affairs in climate science, it is complete denial on the part of socialists who are honorable sceptics to think that the battle is not ideological. The left in the main is a disgrace and worse when one looks at the damage done to economies, the untold numbers of the poor that have suffered and died and will suffer and die for the “agenda”. Surely it is even more culpable a situtation when what are supposed to be the central constituency of the left should be the main victims.
I know there is some confusion in the political area. Certainly, there are those on the right whose stance is not well informed but arrived at because they oppose socialists and this is more true in America than in Europe where the Conservatives are still quite to the left of the Democrats! Essentially all of Europe is socialist. Probably Eastern Europe is more ‘Conservative’ than the others. At what point does an honorable socialist sceptic cease to be a socialist? It is essentially when they have become left behind by the mainstream socialists and find themselves in another party (perhaps one that used to exist before all this).
Kudos to those of the old socialist school who demand integrity, honesty and logical thinking in science and other spheres, but they mustn’t be blind. The erstwhile socialists should see that the ‘party’ deserves a turn in the penalty box and maybe worse. Could it be, we need a Donald Trump to put it right Prof. Strittmatter? Perhaps one needs hold his nose to vote wisely. Reagan got the same reception as Trump and he turned out to be a pleasant surprise to all.
I am not sure what to make of this letter. The impression it gives is that he can’t get over his guilt feeling about criticizing NPR that he otherwise admires. Understanding that the climate story is being manipulated is a step in the right direction but not too important if it does not lead anywhere. My approach would be to go further and unravel the background. Look at where that bias originates – the management structure and their outside connections and advisors. These are all interconnected and do bot exist in a vacuum. Try to put together a total objective picture, don’t feel guilty about it.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 September 21, 2015 at 6:06 am
O2 is discarded during photosynthesis but ask yourself; why do plants create sugars?
Perhaps, (in part) so they can oxidize them?
“I normally admire the way NPR covers controversial topics from a perspective of enlightened impartiality that strives to live up to journalistic standards of excellence”
This gentleman is clearly a victim of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. He clearly has done his homework with regards to AGW, so he immediately recognizes NPR’s poor reporting on the subject. On other subjects, however, he simply assumes “a perspective of enlightened impartiality that strives to live up to journalistic standards of excellence” from NPR, for no apparent reason other than he forgets what he knows about their mendacity vis a vis AGW.
We are not seeing the forest through the trees here.
1) Tax Payer funded NPR is being used as a propaganda tool of the political left.
2) NPR should be converted to a 24/7 call in talk radio show with a Left/Right/Middle line, and re-titled “The Voice of America” or “The voice of Freedom” or “Radio Free America.”
We simply can’t allow the left to use tax payer funded communication channels as their personal megaphones, same can be said about our schools and universities. We need to reverse the source of the lies, and use the same methods the left uses to promote these lies to promote the truth. EEOC laws used to prosecute universities that discriminate against conservatives is another solution.
Professor, edit thyself.
If the words are written rather than spoken, is the condition still called “logorrhea?”
@KaiserDerden
Did you notice the quote marks around ‘left wing radicals in the first sentence, and the implied sarcasm in the last sentence?