From Keith Kloor’s excellent article this past summer “The Science Police” which in my opinion is well worth a read.
In an ideal world, it shouldn’t matter. But in the zero-sum world that governs the climate debate, every blog post, every op-ed, every tweet, and every study tends to be viewed through an us against them lens.
As I was writing this article, one fresh illustration of this mindset jumped out at me. Clifford Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, recently posted an entry on his personal blog that was critical of a recent Seattle Times front-page article that attributed the death of a 72-year-old pine tree in the region to climate change. Mass methodically laid out why he believed this was incorrect. The article, he said, was another “unfortunate example” of the media “exaggerating the impacts of global warming.” (In case you’re wondering, Mass has often said that human-caused global warming is real, very serious, and should be tackled.)
Mass, like the climatologists at Real Climate, has made a hobby out of fact-checking the media. But whereas Real Climate has periodically trained its eye on science distortions occurring in the partisan political and media realm, Mass has focused on mainstream media hyperbole. This has not won him any popularity contests.
Just the opposite, it seems. Mass discussed the blowback he’s received in a “personal” note at the end of his post on the Seattle Times article.
“Every time I correct misinformation in the media like this,” he wrote, “I am accused of being a denier, a skeptic, an instrument of the oil industry, and stuff I could not repeat in this family blog. Sometimes it is really hurtful.”
Mass went on to discuss other experiences that included complaints about him within the University of Washington (UW) after he’d called out various hyped stories on climate effects. “One UW professor told me that although what I was saying was true, I needed to keep quiet because I was helping the ‘skeptics.’ Probably not good for my UW career.”
Ah, the climate wars. Such stimulating conversation.
It has never been a fair fight. Big Climate has ruled governments, the MSM, formerly-revered institutions, and various and sundry NGOs. The intent all along has been to not only lie, but to shut down debate and any voices daring to contradict Climate Scripture aka “the science”.
Fortunately, Skeptics/Climate Realists have had an ally in Mother Nature, the biggest badest so-called de*nigh*r of them all.
Vive ut discas, disce ut vivas
We obviously lack imagination.
Who knew that Monty Python(multiple spoofs) , Hans Christian Anderson(Emperor’s New Clothes) and George Orwell(Animal Farm,1984), are instruction manuals?
The creation of the UN IPCC is all you really need to know about “Climate Change”A.K.A Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Gang Green have been most useful allies in this argument from authority.
Being occupants of their own illusion and reality they seem free to invent truths that no one else can see.As Greenpeace recently stated in Canadian Court.
However as noted with herd beasts, mass hysteria or mob rule, mass enthusiasm peaks and then critical thinking slowly penetrates…individual by individual.
Sounds like Mass is finally starting to check his assumptions.
What was that Quote?
The concerned activist will do anything to save the world from environmental destruction.
Break the law,burn infrastructure, attack other people, spew hatred, rage and whine, anything to save the planet.
Except sign up for science courses and actually learn something about the subject.
One of the wildest aspects of this whole meme is being lectured with respect to “science” by persons completely oblivious in their personal ignorance of the scientific method, as they virtuously pronounce the credentials of the authorities they “believe”.
Human Nature at it’s best.
“Human Nature at it’s best.”
Human Nature at it’s beast.
I’m wondering why the news media are not trying to inject something about sexual harassment into hyped-up, false, climate-attribution articles. The topic seems to be all the rage now. Why not say that climate change is causing increased occurrences of sexual harassment by high-profile personalities? That’ll keep readers entertained by their own shock.
Have you seen the average climate ‘scientists’ ? Let us just Mann is a trend setter.
Although St Gore is supposed to have ‘wandering hands’
Robert Kernodle, they are. That is exactly what The Stranger did with Cliff Mass here: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/17/25572044/the-culture-of-harassing-and-demeaning-women-scientists
Not exactly: There was no accusation of sexual harassment. And he defended himself well against the smear.
By closing the thread, everyone should only understand that GW does not have to prove it is such a big threat, and there are enough signs of it. But we do not do the biggest mistake in this, but in not using new technologies like LENR.
None of that made sense, but thanks for stopping by.
Boiler plate: settled science
Science police = Torquemada
-dedicated to the truth.
Some of us have been saying for a long time that we are dealing with a real cult. I know it sounds like a joke, but it couldn’t be any more serious, by every definition and sense of the word, the hardcore adherents to CAGW are a cult.
From above…[Strong claims. Be aware you’ve made them in public. .mod]
I am going to try and remember that one…
Yes, a chilling reminder that our IP address is the only thing standing in front of most of us here that would prefer to post anonymously. Just imagine if your name, address and phone number were attached to each comment, and I am sure a lot of folk may say nothing or modify what they say somewhat. While we have relative freedom of speech and First Amendment laws now, just imagine what would happen if that changed in a few years under a ‘Retroactivity Act’ where anything you have said in the past could be held against you in the future. I am sure that day is coming, as it already has in many jurisdictions.
You can be 100% sure that all our posts and comments are being recorded by intelligentsia around the world, and those who can, are putting IP addresses to real names and locations. While I don’t care much anymore at my age (what are they going to do, burn me at the stake?) I feel a bit sorry for the younger generation that now have to go along with group think or are immediately ostracized from the tribe. Five-9-14 Eyes comes to immediate mind, since most of us are probably from one these member countries that all exchange intelligence with each other. And I am sure that russian trolls are here trying to influence things, or just sow general discourse as they do in every other political field around the world. Do you think they would leave the world’s most viewed climate blog alone? Mind your manners, and will also go a long way to making this a more civil and enjoyable discussion.
When Hot Air switched from screen name commenting to Facebook commenting, the discussions their basically shriveled up and died.
Except now there are countless fake Facebook accounts. And we don’t post here at WUWT from the Facebook comment plug-in. Probably a testament from the excellent moderating here, since this site is orders of magnitude above the mindless commenting on a lot of newspapers, even those who have switched over to the FB commenting connection. Why would I want to provide FB with all my comments and my identity and computer, literally?
Keith K is wrong about the early days being tough on climate scientists with partisan political and media pushback. The MSM has been almost fully supportive and most scientists and engineers were on board. I myself among a large majority believed the stuff before dirty linen began to be hung out that caused scientists from other walks to examine the data and shenanigans more closely starting about a decade ago.
The devastating effect described by Keith was from only a few well qualified sceptics who found things very wrong with how climate scientists had violated statistical principles in selection and weighting of proxy data and in statistical procedures. Sceptics also showed with actual data that many of the claims about frequency and intensity of storms, etc was wrong. Some papers were actually retracted or withdrawn as a result of well supported critiques. Others should have been. McIntyre and McKittrick by themselves were responsible for about half the damage done by sceptics. Along with Christopher Monckton (the Pause, climate sensitivity, etc.) I can see why the Team thought they were in a war of huge magnitude with this trio!
Critical blogs really came into prominence only over the past decade and the ones that did the other half of the ‘! “war” damage number only a few. This Blog has been awarded the best science blog on the Internet globally a number of times. This is where the premium peer review of CliSci has taken place and CAGW proponents have been offered space here to make their case, but they are terrified of a contest here. Individual CAGW proponent commenters are welcomed here and this is the most trolled site on the net. The modest number of such sites that out punch their weight by orders of magnitude, got massively more powerful with the Pause and Climategate.
If you ever really wanted to understand why climate science has become toxic and doomed you only need read the roundup from the activists on COP23
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/17/activists_condemn_failure_of_cop23_to
ASAD REHMAN makes it quite clear as far as they view it was the developed nations fault they setup a non binding agreement. The fact President Obama would not have been able to sign if it was binding should have been ignored and they setup the binding agreement. The fact most countries would not have signed under that arrangement just gets left out. So it doesn’t matter which side of US politics you sit it’s your fault as well.
Then we get to the real issue when DIPTI BHATNAGAR says this quote
That statement makes it clear we aren’t just talking about climate change they want world social justice.
Climate Science has now managed to get itself used as a pawn in a much bigger issue. You can see what happened Climate Science wanted support and it was easy to get it from developing nations via that mechanism.
Unfortunately for those in Climate Science that is a bridge to far for almost every Developed Nations. There will be a number of historic, religious and political reasons used but much of it is also simply self preservation. The captain of a lifeboat pulling up a shipwreck knows he can only save so many before his own ship sinks is the common metafor. The leftists may get squeamish about it but that is how it always plays out, the survival instinct is strong in humans.
And their “world social justice” is to justice what the French Reign if Terror was to orderly society.
This sort of thing has been going on for quite a few years.
It affects many different aspects of life.
See FZ ca 1966:
For some comments I just remind you, CAGW is a cult that has 196 states, except the US. Especially states like the Netherlands, which can be flooded half by the sea in the near future.