Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Our betters at the so-called “Scientific” American magazine have decided to lecture us unscientific Americans on what is real science. The occasion was a retweet by Representative Lamar Smith of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee of a link to an article entitled “Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists” by my mad mate James Delingpole. The article opens by saying:
Global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year – the biggest and steepest fall on record.
But the news has been greeted with an eerie silence by the world’s alarmist community. You’d almost imagine that when temperatures shoot up it’s catastrophic climate change which requires dramatic headlines across the mainstream media and demands for urgent action. But that when they fall even more precipitously it’s just a case of “nothing to see here”.
The cause of the fall is a La Nina event following in the wake of an unusual strong El Nino.
Now, for me that’s pretty weak tea. It’s made up of those ugly things called “facts”, not much to dispute. But boy, it got the members of the Committee into a royal snit. Fortunately, we have our betters at “Scientific” American to jump into the breach and save us from foolishness. They have published the “9 Best Reactions” to Delingpole’s article.
Now, in general “Scientific” American articles go unread and unnoticed by me. They gave up on science years ago. But this one has a surprise in it. Among the “9 Best Reactions” is this one:
Peter Gleick
This is fake news, bad science, and basically, crap, from the House Science committee.
![gleickpic[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/gleickpic1.jpg?resize=184%2C184&quality=83)
For those who have forgotten, Peter Gleick committed wire fraud and circulated forged documents in order to push his radical brand of climate alarmism, and was caught with his hand in the cookie jar up to his elbow. It was so bad he was forced to quit his job in disgrace. For more of the ugly story, see here. And the best part? Among his other positions, at the time he was the Chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task Force on Scientific Integrity. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. Needless to say, he had to quit that position as well) …
However, he never did say one word of contrition for his actions. And why should he? The rest of the craven see-no-evil section of the climate science establishment certainly did not do one thing to punish him for his shocking scientific malfeasance. He still gets invited to the conferences. And now, Scientific American is quoting him as though he were either an honest man or an honest scientist.
Peter Gleick is neither.
I do love that his wonderful scientific tweet, carefully selected by “Scientific” American, contains in it nothing scientific of any kind. No facts. No pointing out of errors. No claims of scientific inaccuracy. It is nothing but a rant about “fake news” … man, if there were ever someone you’d think could recognize fake news from across the street it would be the Prince of Scientific Forgers, Mister Peter “It’s real, honest it is” Gleick himself. But noooo … the news he thinks is fake is actually real, and vice versa. Shocking, I know …
What do we have to do to rid the climate science field of these crooks? Does it take an oak stake through the heart at the crossroads at midnight to keep people like Peter Gleick from springing to life again? In any other field, committing scientific forgery and mail fraud to advance your bogus scientific claims would get you laughed out of town, if not ridden out on a rail … but in climate “science” it gets you an honorable mention in “Scientific” American and an invite to chair an AGU session. Go figure.
Finally, if Peter Gleick’s meaningless rant is one of the 9 best responses to James Delingpole’s article, I’d say James won that battle hands down.
Anyhow, go Lamar! Their heads are exploding, keep up the tweeting!
And Peter Gleick … some of us haven’t forgotten what you did. You can run, but you can’t hide from your own past. Whenever you next choose to crawl out from under your rock, you can expect the spotlight of your past actions to shine on you once again.
Best to all,
w.
AS ALWAYS, I request that if you disagree with someone, please QUOTE THEIR EXACT WORDS THAT YOU DISAGREE WITH, so we can all be clear on the exact nature of your objection.
UPDATE by Anthony. Willis put this photo of Dr. Peter Gleick, posing as a windmill in his office, as “featured image” but it was cropped by the system. Here it is in full:
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Scientific American lost it back in the 1980’s with their very over the top anti-Strategic Defence Initiative series. Apart from the anti-Star Wars hysteria, they also ran an article on how bad it would be if the Soviets targeted nuclear power plants with ground fused hydrogen bombs. Nastily political then and now.
They also lost their credibility back then with National Enquirer type scare articles about pollution and fisheries. Actually, that is an insult to NE as I first learned about the discovery of Megamouth (shark) there. These type of articles obscure real problems so even if they were correct crying wolf gets a different result as the old adage says. There are wolves out there.
I believe it was the National Enquirer that broke both the Monica Lewinsky and John Edwards love child stories. Back when the so called MSM refused to touch either.
The NE was lambasted by the MSM for both, right up to the time when both stories were proven to be true.
Some 30 years ago, Scientific American had a brief editorial that native tribes were not violent until Europeans arrived.
The next edition condemned it and apologized. Why was it published in the first place?
At the time, there were interviews with recent graduates in journalism about why they took the course.
“To change the world.”
Not to report.
Explains a lot–particularly as with today’s combination of big government, MSM and the Democrat Party. The movement was out to establish a one-party system. The big promotion involves two examples of supreme audacity.
That there is a national economy and it can be managed.
That a committee can manage the Earth’s climate.
Over the next few years both can be seen to fail.
The reality is that as long as university professors pontificate their political viewpoints ( often entirely outside their field of expertise) to classrooms full of mediocre minds without regard for teaching or demanding any rigour in thought, this type of intellectual corruption will keep popping up. It mostly is created and sustained in the social “sciences”, where the same lack of rigour leads to garbage papers that can’t be replicated and yet pass peer review and affect their relevant field of study. The same lack of intellectual depth prevents these very useful idiot pseudo-intellectuals from imagining that they only possess an opinion and have no right to indoctrinate their defenseless young students just to inflate their own sad egos. The world would be better off if 90% of these social poseurs were kicked out to try to survive in the real world.
Not a single one of the people who are waxing so elequent about the evils of fake news and cherry picking, can be found over on the article about the LA times making up a story about sea level rise.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/04/another-phony-l-a-times-florida-sea-level-rise-acceleration-article/
The sudden concern for accurate reporting of temperature at SciAm is touching. Unfortunately, there have been far too many media articles over the past couple of years hyping new records, ‘tipping points’, ‘1.5C to be breached soon’, all without mention of ENSO. Not apparently deemed fake news by the media’s self-styled elite. The gentlemanly approach to this sort of Lie Machine approach was tried in 2012 (Mitt Romney) without success. As they say, “you reap what you sow.”
No news of La Niña as of yet. The cooling is not related to a La Niña, but to the passing of El Niño.
Usually people get El Niño/La Niña backwards. El Niño is a planetary discharge of heat that makes it from the ocean through the atmosphere. La Niña is a planetary recharge of heat from solar energy to the ocean. The first is accompanied of increased cloud cover and convection over the ITCZ, while the other is accompanied of decreased cloud cover.
No La Niña means that the Earth is absorbing less heat over the tropical band and it might anticipate less global warming over the coming years.
Endless unrepentant mockery. Warm and fuzzy emotional satisfaction is what alarmists and boosters seek through their moral peacockery. They need to be provided with a different emotional outcome; embarrassment, shame, intellectual inadequacy, hypocrisy, etc. Humour is an excellent arbiter of truth.
This is all just too hilarious. I’ve also been noticing how the left has become very interested in the Constitution now and also with the Trump/ Carrier deal they seem to be so interested in govt not interfering with the free market. The problem they have is that real, actual science uses debate and data to come to a conclusion. Most of my idiot lefty friends have never even done basic science or engineering, yet they constantly appeal to authority with their web links and quotes. They are incapable of understanding basic science principles thanks to the education system in the US. There is hope now. To quote a favorite movie of mine “Condolences, Mr. Lebowski. The bums lost.”
Central Chile, as you must know, is having a chilly spring, so it’s participating in the global cooling of the land. The Southern Cone of South America is one of the few large temperate zone areas of the SH, along with southernmost Africa and the southern roughly 60% of Australia.
Over two-thirds of earth’s land is in the NH, with over 90% of its people. As above, NH temperate zone area dwarfs that of the SH. I haven’t computed or looked up the exact figures, but just a glance at a globe shows this striking fact.
I sometimes wonder what it means that so many CAGW believers act like they want it to be true. That they would be personally devastated if the world weren’t coming to an end. How does an otherwise mentally healthy individual get emotionally invested in their own destruction?
“How does an otherwise mentally healthy individual get emotionally invested in their own destruction?”
Read “Seductive Poison”, by Deborah Layton: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple.
I read it recently, and saw a lot of similarities to CAGWarming people…
If the apparent warming was indeed as catastrophic as claimed, wouldn’t these activists be happy that temps have dropped so fast?
The fact that Nick Stokes, Gleick, et al react with dnial of observable facts rather than relief tells me this argument has NOTHING to do with the earth’s temperature. Fo whatever personal reasons, these people have attached their egos to a side of an argument and they will twist their brains into what ever shape is necessary to protect themselves.
The fact that none of these alarmists react to what to them OUGHT to be positive news, reveals much about what motivates their arguments. I find myself reacting to them less with anger, and more with pity as this saga plays out. Watching Nick’s truly convoluted “wonder if Willis actually believes this” genuinely leaves me feeling slightly ashamed to watch someone embarrass themselves in public with such ernest conviction.
You might be on to something there. Personally, I feel torn or that we are in a lose-lose situation. I hope it really does continue to warm a little, as the IPCC says up to 1.8C increase is beneficial. But if it does, these fools will upend the whole world economy and substitute some eco-Socialist dog’s breakfast of failure and misery.
Griff December 5, 2016 at 4:42 am
Are people really that dense? Delingpole pointed out the lack of media comment on the short-term drop to highlight the CHERRY PICKING THAT NORMALLY OCCURS! He was saying, hey, you cherry pick any warm year and blow it up to Thermageddon™, but when a cool year occurs you say nothing!
There is one of those things that we call a “clue” in the title of the Delingpole piece, Griff. See if you can figure out what it is. Because if you think James is cherry picking, you definitely need to work on your reading comprehension …
w.
” . . .but when a cool year occurs you say nothing!”
Seems speculative since we haven’t had a record cold year (per the NOAA data set) during Delingpole’s lifetime.
Seems speculative to call any year a record of any kind, from the limited collective experience of Homo Sapiens.
Only warm weather qualifies as climate.
Let’s see, Gleick, Gleick, sounds vaguely familiar, oh yes, here he is: Gleick, Peter. Definitely on the list of not-to-be-forgotten global warming wolfcriers:
…
Gelbspan, Ross
Gleick, Peter
Gore, Albert Jr.
Guardian, The
Hannah, Darryl
Hansen, James
Harrelson, Woody
Hawking, Stephen
Hayhoe, Katherine
Henn, Jamie
Huffington, Arianna
Jones, Phil
Jones, Van
Jones, Xiuhtezcatl
…
All on that list are thermofobes.
H/T to Ferdberple in an earlier comment. I just couldn’t help myself ferd! lol
I find it interesting how many people who are old enough to remember what Scientific American used to be like are disappointed with the ‘newer and better’ SciAm. The sentiment about the decline in quality and reputation has been around a couple of decades, yet the editors are either oblivious or choose to ignore the criticism. I guess as long as they can keep making payroll, it serves their purpose. However, I know a great many people who used to subscribe and dropped their subscriptions years ago. It is a shame what has happened to the magazine. The country is relatively scientifically illiterate and it formerly did a great service to provide scientific knowledge to both laymen and scientists interested in what was happening outside their area of specialty. RIP SciAM!
100%
I stopped subscribing to Scientific American and Science News about the same time, and for the same reason.
This was many years ago and climate change was a brand new subject, and I kept noticing that these publications kept printing stories that *assumed* AGW was occuring at the time of publication. Since I’m a science oriented personality, who requires proof in order to believe in something, I realize there was something missing from all these articles and stories: PROOF. I looked for proof in every article written and never saw it, and have not seen it to this day. But these publications acted like it was already here, and I would get disgusted every time I would run across one of these articles, to the point that I finally got so disgusted I stopped reading them all together. I got to feeling if I couldn’t trust their word on the climate, then what else couldn’t I trust them on. The scientific method was completely blown up by these publications. And they are not alone by any means, sad to say.
Assuming is not scientific proof. That’s all they were doing was assuming. That’s all they are doing now.
But all the authorities in the media assured us it was “safe to assume” and “err on the side of caution”.
I remember Gleick admitted to the first 2 charges, but not to the forgery. What exactly did he forger in the Heartland documents that he stole??
Do some research. It is all here on WUWT.
If you know the answer according to your research, why not just say it. I did my research and I think I found that he said $20,000 contribution instead of $12,000 for climate change…
Is that it? – there are many links, but none spell it out…
I think I get the propeller-head, but the balloons? Hot air?
Even funnier than Nick’s knickers in a semantic knot is Katherine Hayhoe complaining (in the 9 best reactions) about “false news” or “the truth”. Given she’s made a career out of false news, its not surprising she can’t recognise the truth when she sees it.
To put the ‘dangerous AGW’ panic in perspective:
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2015/10/Global-2-copy.jpg
Oh look – here comes dbstealey with his meaningless graph.
How about this one then….
Oh, and good luck with it if the heart monitor in A&E has the y-axis set at the same resolution as your graph.
There is a reason why we need to zoom in, especially when you consider that the difference in global temp into/out of an interglacial is only of ~10F.
Nice spliced chart…
http://i65.tinypic.com/2s1nq80.jpg
ToneB,
Are you arguing that there is no correlation between rapidly increasing CO2 and temperatures? That appears to be the case. An exponential growth in CO2, leading almost to a doubling, doesn’t appear to correlate with anything other than the long-term internal variability of temperature. That is, any recent temperature changes are really indistinguishable from noise. One can’t argue that the recent temperature increases are unique because paleo-temperature data of similar temporal and temperature resolution are not available. Your claimed 10F temperature coming out of a glacial maximum hasn’t resulted in any catastrophic changes (except for the poor ice worms). At what temperature does improved biological conditions cease and start to be detrimental? What objective evidence do you have for a critical change-over temperature?
You complain about an inappropriate vertical resolution, and then come back with an inappropriate horizontal resolution graph (If you are trying to establish that the Industrial Revolution is responsible for warming.). Has it crossed your mind that gaseous diffusion through the ice along crystal boundaries can invalidate any assumptions about apparent constancy of CO2 prior to the Industrial Revolution? As to temporal resolution, approximately 10″ (or more of dry snow) will compact down to about 1″ of ice. As snow compacts, it is quite porous, allowing exchange of gases with both the atmosphere and snow/firn at lower levels. I’m sure that any CO2 peaks are smoothed out, giving rise to smoothed values.
stevekeohane and Clyde,
Thanks for pointing out the unacknowledged splice in Toneb’s chart, which is almost as misleading as this bogosity:
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5123/5304093969_dc21d0f5d1.jpg
Here’s another chart, corroborating the one I posted yesterday. It was also produced using NASA/GISS data:
The alarmist crowd is still trying to keep the public frightened. But people are getting fed up with their ‘climate’ scare, for the same reason that the villagers stopped believing The Little Shepard Boy Who Cried “WOLF!!”
After being lied to for decades, the general public is fast losing interest in the ‘carbon‘ false alarm. And once the public turns, it will never again buy into their self-serving ‘climate’ carp.
Statute of limitations for wire fraud is five years.(đá nhân tạo)
That gives the new Administration time to initiate a criminal investigation. One would think a criminal, like Gleick, with a possible federal prosecution hanging over his head, would stay quiet; hoping people will forget him, for one more year…đau lưng dưới
Not now! It’s time to take the genuine climate criminals off of the streets!!
wooden stakes don’t work … you have to draw and quarter them, then burn and bury the separate parts in different States during a full moon to be sure 🙂
Thank you, Willis, for reminding us of the past actions taken by that fraudster Gleick. I do believe the pendulum is swinging… just hope it doesn’t stall.