Guest essay by Eric Worrall
People who believe they are on a mission to save the world frequently behave as if their great mission excuses their personal failings.
FIXING SEXISM AT THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
A sexist remark at a recent meeting prompted some soul-searching among the world’s top climate scientists. How can they prevent women’s expertise from being excluded?
SOPHIE YEO
At the recent meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the science body of the United Nations, there was an unusual announcement halfway through the week: a reminder to the scientists present that this was a meeting of experts, and that everyone’s expertise must be respected.
…
In one instance, Friederike Otto, an associate professor at Oxford University specializing in extreme weather events, was being introduced to a group of men. She’d said her name and where she was from—she was wearing her lead author badge—when one of her interlocutors asked who her supervisor was, implying that she must still be a graduate student. In fact, she’s deputy director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
As a young female scientist, Otto says she’s familiar with these kinds of insinuations, but this particular incident left her speechless. “I was just particularly annoyed by it, because it was at the IPCC meeting, at a lead author meeting, where clearly the setting is we’re all equal,” she says. “I should have asked him who his supervisor is.” In a subsequent email exchange between the two, Otto says, the male scientist was reluctant to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
…
Read more: https://psmag.com/environment/fixing-sexism-at-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change
In 2015, former head of the IPCC Rajenda Pachauri was forced to resign over allegations of serious sexual harassment.
Pachauri’s alleged misbehaviour obviously went well beyond the odd sexist comment. But the decision by people close to Pachauri not to speak up over the extended period of Pachauri’s alleged abuses should be a serious concern. Maybe people close to Pachauri didn’t value their female colleagues enough to put their own careers at risk, by publicly demanding Pachauri cease his alleged deviant behaviour.
I agree with the author that sexism exacerbates the risk of disregarding the contribution of colleagues who are the target of that sexism. But the alleged rampant sexism problem has deeper implications for the scientific integrity of the IPCC and other climate groups.
Sexism is effectively a nasty form of bullying. The kind of people who think it is funny to bully women for being female likely also have no qualms about bullying their colleagues over scientific issues – especially colleagues who hold unpopular scientific views. But then we knew that already from Climategate.
Snowflake in The IPCC? If you disagree with her Its sexual harassment and you are thrown out?. Perfect. What more can they politicize in the IPCC?
red on red. pass the popcorn.
Awe the sweet smell of liberals eating other liberals. Now if we can only get law firms to solicit law suits against other law firms we’ll have reached Nirvana.
That’s “Ah”, not “Awe.” Come to think of it, maybe both are appropriate.
Here they have extrapolated an entire pervasive culture of sexism from a single incident, but such is the nature of “climate science”. Imagine what they could do with a outlier tree ring study.
I hate to say it but man up. Scientists are supposed to disagree and feel free to do so. The political correctness police enforce consensus thinking. Remember they believe that climate change denial is by definition sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and evil. That is how they enforce silencing ideas.
The poor girl should have put him in his place and moved on. If you want to be a leading scientist you have to expect some slings and arrows
Isn’t sexism (or homo-sexism) a problem pretty much everywhere these days? It’s a great power card to play in my opinion. /s
Usual feminist, i.e. sexist, drivel.
We are told nothing about the circumstances just that a man “asked who her supervisor was.” No information on context, we don’t even know if the question was asked in English or if that was the questioner’s native language. As others have pointed out, almost everybody has a supervisor, and in her case it is the director of the Environmental Change institute.
The “implying that she must still be a graduate student” seems to be her interpretation of the question. Only the questioner know what he meant and the fact that “the male scientist was reluctant to acknowledge any wrongdoing” suggest that he did not intend to be insulting.
If the questioner had thought she was a graduate student, that would be based on age, not sex, and she is described as a “young female scientist.” I don’t know her age, but she does look rather young in comparison to the rest of the team.
BillP, whom are you accusing of producing “sexist drivel”? Eric Worrall? Surely we should be praising anyone who in any way casts doubt on the AGW conspiracy.
We are fighting for Truth: such weapons are justified. (see my comments further up the thread).
Initially the feminist drivel is from Friederike Otto, who made the allegation. I find it interesting that there is no mention of her challenging the man at the time but there is mention of her harassing him with e-mail later, it seems she was trying to get a written apology that she could use for some purpose. I wonder if she has form for this kind of behaviour.
If you are looking for a stick to beat the IPCC with, I suggest questioning their uncritical support for this dubious allegation of sexism. That is discrediting the entire organisation not just one person at a conference, who may have little to do with the IPCC.
It is also easy to draw parallels between uncritical acceptance of allegations of sexism and uncritical acceptance of claims that man made CO2 will cause catastrophic climate change.
I am afraid you will find women who behave the same to men. But you cannot call that sexism as only men can be sexist. Apparently.
You find it in financial services. You find it in medicine.
The common theme is not gender, nor is it politics (both right wingers and left wingers do it).
The common theme is narcissism/psychopathy, allied to power complexes.
An extreme need for power, allied to inadequacy rendering natural authority absent.
The UK Conservative Party has had it and so has the UK Labour Party.
Where is Pachauri when you need him for an explanation?
The Mafia are also sexist apparently. It is odd that the snowflakes haven’t picked this up yet.
Every girl on this planet is genetically programmed to deflect stuff like this, with a raised eyebrow or wry smile. They are The Moderators & Peacemakers. Hence why Easter Island went so badly wrong after Dutch sailors abducted many of the womenfolk.
I’d venture that what we actually have here is another James Hansen ‘Pants On Fire’ moment.
Esp: Throwing up chaff to distract from the fact that whatever (science) being presented is/was utter & complete garbage, the presenter knew it in their heart-of-hearts and, being ‘only human’, would give themselves away.
Unless, and a very real possibility, everyone was One Mile High on one mind-bending chemical or another. Sugar and/or booze.
Analyse:
Breakfast= coffee & croissant?
Mid morning snack= more coffee and biscuits/cake
Lunch= Pasta salad + soda-pop?
See all that glucose & sugar =dehydration headache, caffeine= bigger headache
Also= tiredness and irritability.
Possibly hung-over from the previous evening’s reception party?
Add in that this meeting (where?) was a a long way from home= jet lag (plus more dehydration= even bigger hangover) with wholly different weather (or climate haha), everybody is talking a ‘funny’ language and she’s travelling alone(?) etc etc etc.
But, NOBODY is going to admit to any of that.
Not just the IPCC, we all ‘have a problem’
A long standing oft retold ‘joke’ amongst The British concerning foreign holidays:
They say “Oh God, I need a holiday to get over the one I’ve just been on”
This one has Got The Lot
Take pity on the poor girl, or, do we acknowledge her ‘male equality’ and lecture her on the naivete of throwing herself into such a situation, as one might be told by reading any number of travel guides.
But this is politics – it’d be safer playing with matches in a dynamite factory
(Any closer to seeing why Western birth-rates have fallen off the proverbial cliff?)
…when one of her interlocutors asked who her supervisor was, implying that she must still be a graduate student. In fact, she’s deputy director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
As a young female scientist, Otto says she’s…
Er…nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with age….
It used to be the case that senior staff were very experienced, and therefore in their older years.
Nowadays people are not promoted on skill in their profession, which takes a long time to be developed, but rather on how woke they are, how supportive of multi-culturism, how closely they align with left-wing political values, and how little there is to be suspicious about in their track record. This supports the promotion of younger staff.
For example, anyone who held a senior position under the Bush administration is obviously tarred with the Republican brush. You need someone who ‘arrived’ during Obama’s time – which obviously limits the field in age terms….
How did she get to become a deputy direct of research at Oxford University , but could not be recognised at an international meeting of fellow scientists in her own field. Presumably she had previously given papers. At most scientific conferences that I attended , female scientists, being in the minority , were instantly imprinted on the minds of most of the (male) attendees.
I am reminded of Pauli’s put down ” so young, so unknown”.
Or people could, heaven forbid, just have slightly thicker skins, come back with a retort of their own, and move on with their lives.
The willingness of climate change zealots to be racist, in that they want developing nations to remain un-developed, should make it obvious that sexism would be a small step for them to take.
The basic attitude of most academics (by no means all!) is selfishness. Certain types of chauvinism enter in, particularly sexism on the part of both sexes. One wants the views of one’s own peers (men if a man, women if a woman, Communists if a Communist, and so on) to prevail and persuade. If one lets an outsider speak, that person may persuade; then views from the Outside have a power they lacked before. All of this is well known and easily understandable.
Within each large group (all climate scientists, for example) there are divisions: of sex, nationality, viewpoint, and so on. The largest group will try to enforce its view (if there is one) on the other groups. IPCC is obviously not immune to this. I don’t know how prevalent sexism is in the group, nor how much or in what ways it affects what the group produces. What I do know is that IPCC’s viewpoint discrimination, exercised and enforced to exclude consideration of outsider views, is a serious issue.
‘Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.’ Obviously, no one is in charge…
I think the question about her supervisor is not actually a “sexist” one or a sexsist remark.
In a high level komisariat cabal, a young new komisariat wanabe guard must face the protocol test by an old guard.
The test of credentials of trust and loyalty.
Generally the validity of such credentials is establish due to one’s long enough
“pristine” record activity or by the credentials of one’s handler.
This one young new cabal member was simply ask to provide her credentials as expected by telling about her handler.
From this angle, no any sexist remark, more like a normal komisariat protocol on establishment of credentials about the loyalty towards this given high level
platform.
If this so, she has failed very badly, when due to a lack of understanding has shown to be just a freelance lose canon, but not only…
also by publicly backfiring at the old guard, the new one has shown a very hot unstable and trustless temperament…….very very worrying for the old
guard of this IPCC komisariat.
Like a zombie or swarm triggered locust penetrating the safety shields 🙂
She has being positive tested for either brainless or mindless-swarming syndrome.
cheers
“In a high level komisariat cabal, a young new komisariat wanabe guard must face the protocol test by an old guard.”
In Chicago politics, the first question a new face is asked is, “Who sent you?”
Oh no! Trouble in Climateland? Pass the popcorn.
It is difficult to underestimate just how messed up long term extremism can make a true believer.
The anecdote high lighted here is old, has been retold ad nauseum, and tells more about the petty neurotic childishness of the self declared “victim”.
How about focusing on the real sexism, the attacks on women who dare think outside the consensus, by gangs of men who set out to personally and professionally destroy them?
“self declared “victim”
That is the game.
Who shall be victim of the moment.
I see a “Monty Python Argument skit ” here.
Best Victim campaign.
“I am the real victim”
“No I am..”
Proceed to argue from idiot authorities.
Rational skeptical people look for the humor in life. Humor helps keep perspective between the annoying and the truly bad.
Extremists have a self-performed humorectomy.
So for climate extremists, little is funny, and much is offensive.
And the lack of perspwctive means an innocent faux pas ss described in this,post is more important than the actual threats and real injuries done to women like Judith Curry, Jennifer Marohasy, and Susan Crockford, to name a few.
In a serious vein, more and more I see cases of something more than sexism, perhaps a high incidence of sexual aberrations of people in high places in policy and decision making. It seems few people would argue that elected politicians in governments which we are familiar are overendowed with sexual drive, to use a familiar term. In Australia we have seen much fuss about same sex marriage. That has brought a number of people out of the woodwork. The incidence of non-normal sex behaviour is increasing, or maybe the reporting of it is.
What bothers me a lot is the increasing incidence of it among people in high places. Earlier on this thread I noted Penny Whetton, who was both an IPCC senior author, represented Australia in Paris climatefest,and was the recipient of a sex change operation. The question arises about whether people undergoing such dramatic change can fully exert their minds on the social tasks about which they have struggled for seniority. A further question might be whether people who have spent a good part of a lifetime with severe sexual deformities of mind or body or both, have become overly aggressive in defending themselves from normal people and carry this extra agression into the greasy ladder systems of promotion and seniority. Or, can you get to the top of some fields and still be normal? Can you not get there if you are boringly normal?
In another area, our national broadcasters, ABC & SBS, seem to have this inverse viewpoint that means a speech impediment is an advantage for applicants for news reader jobs. Like, the world is cruel, it hurts people, but your ABC gives them jobs to heal them.
Do others have similar observations?
It gives me the shivering quite when Australians like me are represented abroad by politicians and unelected, appointed senior persons who have obvious challenges to be sexually normal.
Geoff.
From novelty, to noticeability, to notoriety, to network news, to the new normal.
Geoff, Power and perversion go hand in hand in most cases.
What gets me is that many of those who want to “preserve nature” are perfectly fine with those who want to take a knife to what “nature” made them.
Sometimes “snowflakes” are genuinely offended by innocent remarks. (Thin skinned)
Sometimes it’s a tactic.
http://changingminds.org/techniques/resisting/fake_anger.htm
The previous post is an example of being “offended” used as a tactic.(https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/20/friday-funny-colorado-snowflakes-fume-over-starbucks-mug-featuring-drilling-rig/ )
Nothing new there, the IPCC is a political organisation, politicians like to be macho men, no fear, strong men, aggressive, strong people … very aggressive people…
Hey, that sounds familiar…. You are not talking about inhabitants of my fatherland, some place called Monte Negro, … where the heck is that place anyway ?
Do I sound like a man who is about to start WW III?
Ok, I occasionally have strong views (It’s sun that done it, stu..d) , my graphs may look a bit aggressive with all those strong red colours, but staring WW III ! ?
p.s. the name of that tiny place is Crna Gora (two words!), the US and other mass media should learn to write it as ‘Monte Negro’ (pronounced as two words) and not as a single word Montenegro. (s/c)
vuk
Do not mean to upset you, but what is the Monte Negro language?
Meaning, how do you call your country, in your own language!
Ah, that is a tricky one, a dialect of a Serbo-Croat language is spoken there. In Roman times it was province called Diokleia, then Zeta (principality) until sometime in the 1400s, since then it has been called Crna Gora (literally translated Black Mountain)
Ok, Crna Gora is how you call your country in your own language,
where, supposing if I am not wrong, Crna means Black, in literal translation
, contrary to Dark as per possible interpretation of Negro!
Negro = Black in the Latin language, Monte Negro was the name given by the Venetian traders, Turkish invaders called it Kara Dag which is Turkic for “Black Mountain” see wiki; gora is also one of of two names for a forest in the local dialect.
Vuk
Please do not bit around the bush….
Negro = Black, neither in Latin or Italian does necessary mean Black in a proper literal translation, more likely it means Dark in the proper consideration of language and interpretation.
The Roman Emperor Nero, was not a Negro.
But my point made was more in the lines of, that if I supposedly am not wrong when considering the word “Crna”, does it clearly and literally translate to “Black”….!
six adjective gender inflections for the translation of ‘black’
singular: crn (m), crna (f) crno (n)
plural : crni (m) crne (f) crna (n)
Thanks vukcevic.
That what I was looking for, the proper meaning of the word “Crna”, as
in connection to “Negro” in accordance with “Monte Negro”.
thanks.
cheers
You are welcome.
That’s not all, each of the above 6 has another 7 case inflections, hence 42 different possibilities, but fortunately (for most adjectives and nouns) about half or more are written and pronounced in the same way.
With a language like that, it’s no surprise that the POTUS thinks we are aggressive lot.
cases are: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, Vocative and Locative.
The cognomen ‘Nero’ in the emperor’s name was an old Sabine name meaning ‘strong’.
WHO CARES?????
Off topic. But I have been getting phishing about winning an Amazon gift card when I open a WUWT article. I close down the page and come back and am able to read the article. Anyone else experiencing this?
I have seen them before on WUWT. I believe it is due to malicious ads on mobile browsers.
You need to clear your cookies, cache and browser history to make them go away.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/no-you-didnt-win-a-1000-amazon-gift-card-heres-why-you-saw-a-weird-pop-up-ad-on-rollcall-com
I haven’t but I only use a desktop. I also use programs such as Click&Clean and others to clean up when I’m done.