Princeton professor emeritus William Happer’s role in forming a White House climate security committee didn’t sit well with a number of media outlets, including The New York Times, which called the eminent physicist a “denialist.”
The headline prompted a backlash from those who object to applying a derogatory label associated with Holocaust disbelief to scientists and others who challenge worst-case climate-change scenarios.
Among those who bristled at the term was Roy Spencer, University of Alabama in Huntsville principal research scientist, NASA U.S. Science Team leader, and author of Amazon bestsellers such as “Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed on Global Warming” (2017).
“Journalists using the ‘denialist’ label demean their profession,” Mr. Spencer said in an email. “None of the prominent skeptical scientists I know deny some level of recent warming, or humans as a contributing cause.”
Including Mr. Happer. “I know Will,” Mr. Spencer said. “Dr. Happer doesn’t deny that increasing CO2 might have some small influence on climate.”
He continued, “The question is the magnitude of the influence, whether the benefits of more CO2 are being ignored, and whether reducing CO2 substantially might well impoverish humanity.”
…
Supporters pointed out that the 79-year-old Happer has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Science and the JASON group, and a stint in the Bush 41 administration as Energy Department director of energy research.
“I have gotten to know Will Happer well over the past several years,” said the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell. “He is a man of great integrity and high attainments. Calling one of America’s most distinguished scientists a ‘denialist’ is just stupid.”
University of Colorado Boulder senior research scientist Roger A. Pielke Sr. said the term “denialist” constituted a “pejorative in the context of climate science.”
“It is a blanket condemnation of an individual so as to avoid discussing the substance of a person’s views on the issue,” said Mr. Pielke, who holds a Ph.D. in meteorology. “It is intended to denigrate someone. It is equivalent to calling a person a ‘heretic.’”
He also defended Mr. Happer’s bona fides. “I have met Will Happer and his scientific credentials are solid. For those who disagree with some of his conclusions, rather than insulting him, the discussion should be on the specific scientific questions,” Mr. Pielke said.
Critics have argued that Mr. Happer has “no formal training in climate science,” as his Wikipedia page says, although most scientists identified as climatologists hold degrees in geology, meteorology, physics or atmospheric sciences.
“He has some expertise in infrared radiation spectra, which is of some relevance to climate science, but he does not have formal training in climate science (nobody does really, it’s not really an academic discipline),” said Judith Curry, president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, in an email.
Full story here
I would add that “climate denier” is against the rules of the Associated Press Stylebook. Clearly, NYT and Coral Davenport wanted to denigrate.
” Does not the left understand that science is, just like the law, an adversarial process”
Yes, except on one side are guardians of classic scientific methods while on the other side are ‘the fake-science’s climate pseudo-science talibans’ wielding their sledgehammers attempting to systematically destroy the treasures of the science built civilization.
If “griff” has nothing of substance to say, then just ignore him. Who cares?
I for one am very pleased that a real scientist is forming the committee. By “real”, I mean someone trained in a hard science like physics where the idea of hypothesis forming and testing are well ingrained. If you are trained in a hard science, it doesn’t take a big stretch to understand other branches of science enough to have a valid opinion. Maybe, just maybe, we will get an unbiased opinion from this committee.
Not that anyone whose mind is made up will agree if the opinion doesn’t suit their agenda.
I for one can be convinced IF I ever see evidence that is compelling when compared against counter-evidence. And believe me, the obviously biased adjustments to temperature data pretty much destroy that line of evidence from ever being compelling. Someone is going to have to explain to me how such a minuet amount of trace gas can account for such a huge effect, and this means explain it – not model it with a bunch of guesswork but explain it.
I am well versed in computers, programming, and models and understand what they can and cannot do. They CANNOT simulate climate change 100 years into the future based on what we currently understand in the behavior of weather. Period. (They could be right just by chance, but that’s not the same as being a correct model). When we can get 1 year weather predictions correct 95% of the time, then we can work on getting 5 year ones correct – and so on. It will take a lot of testing and learning about how the atmosphere (including the water cycle and relevant aerosols) really works. I doubt it can ever be done.
Judith Curry’s point is well taken. Climate Science is NOT an academic curriculum. Anyone can call themselves a climate scientist. Many of the consensus voting on the 99% of climate scientists believe that ”
global warming is real…” etc. are not in fact climate scientists. They may be working on one small corner of their academic specialty (medicine? zoology? microbiology ? geology ? … and have grants to for example, … study the effect of climate change on the gray back flat tailed rocky mountain
Coral Davenport very likely did not take a science or mathematics related class in college, and likely not in high school. Like most Times columnists they specialize in writing prose, crafting stories to appeal to their particular (liberal) audience written in a way to not cover all important facts and aspects of the issue but to make their liberal point. The Times must pay very well for this skill.
Coral Davenport Official Biography: Coral Davenport covers energy and climate change policy at The New York Times. She previously covered energy and the environment for National Journal, Politico, and Congressional Quarterly. She previously worked in Athens, Greece as a correspondent for numerous publications, covered the 2004 Athens Olympics, and contributed travel writing and restaurant reviews to Conde Nast Traveler and the Fodor’s, Time Out, and Eyewitness guidebook series. Davenport started her career at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts.
“… they specialize in writing prose, crafting stories to appeal to their particular (liberal) audience written in a way to not cover all important facts and aspects of the issue but to make their liberal point.”
That is, know-nothing wordsmiths.
Presstitution is the oldest occupation in the world.
They’re gardeners ?
( snark …)
You asked, “They’re gardeners ?” No. Whoreticulturists.
An even older joke from “I, Claudius”: his wife took the saying “while the cat’s away, the mice will play” to an extreme and (as this is a family-type website) engaged many partners while Claudius was out of Rome, and charged them for it (hilarious).
One professional lady of that type had to complain: “what you do for a hobby is my profession. My hobby is gardening”.
Current media strategy:
1) fire all older writers and editors
2) hire recent liberal arts grads who took one math class in first year
3) promote them with “senior” titles the move them to “senior” editor by age 30
4) produce clickbait
5) lost money due to changing media landscape
6) see #1
I’m a proud denier.
I deny that the world is flat.
I deny that thenworld came into existence only a few thousand years ago.
And I deny that human CO2 emissions are causing a catastrophic warming of the Earth.
Why do I deny these things. One simple word SCIENCE. I mean science that is the acquisition of knowledge through a process of theory and validation, not a “science’ that is the dissemination of unverified calculations and polls or percentages of so called “scientists”.
Increasing *or* decreasing atmospheric CO2 amounts will have no effect on humanity what-so-ever. It is simply a gas that causes a small delay in the dissipation of thermal energy in the lower atmosphere due to it’s relative density compared to water vapor.
What does and will continue to have an affect on humanity is the continued unabated destruction of the environment resulting in the devastation of natural niche plant life and obliteration of biomes by agriculture carried out on a California scale.
Without reigning in the super-massive abuse of the environment occurring in many nations the problems of environment are going to continue to get worse *in spite of any attempt to make them better by focusing on 0.5% of a fabricated problem to distract us*.
Plant trees not lawns. Get your local and state government to ban crops that require any kind of irrigation.
Get your local and state government to mandate the retention of storm waters. Teach science in school so that future generations can understand the fraud being perpetrated against those alive today.
Prjindigo: “Increasing *or* decreasing atmospheric CO2 amounts will have no effect on humanity what-so-ever. ”
CO2 is necessary and integral to the Carbon Cycle of Life. As such, CO2 is necessary and integral to human life. Decreasing atmospheric CO2 throttles the Carbon Cycle of Life and below some threshold it will no longer support human life.
And its effect is not due to density which sounds to me suspiciously like a Nikolov-Zeller theory.
I have concluded, based on observation, that climate scientists have had no formal education in science.
Well, “climate science” is like calling math and statistics “number science”.
I mean, if its physics, its physics.
If its chemistry, its chemistry.
If its geology, its geology.
The idea that one person would know enough of all three to be an UberScientist is pretty ridiculous.
Bit ironic that the NYTs calls someone a “deni*list” while they denied the Holocaust long after it was proven.
Back then the Old Grey Whore loved her some Uncle Joe, not so much the starving, by the millions, kulaks of the Ukraine.
The motto should be ‘All the News That’s Left to Print’.
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It is the New York Times who are the denalists. Denying the truth that the earth is entering a new ice age.
Climate Fraud at the New York Times by Tony Heller
The word the Times should have used is “contrarian.” It is nicely alliterative too.
Google/Wikipedia call this site a ‘climate change denial’ website.
I’m surprised Google has gone that far. I could understand if it returned WUWT if asked for denial sites. But does it actually freely label WUWT as such? If so, I’d like to to add them to my list of sinners.
I’ve long said that ‘denialist’ is Slithertongue for ‘denier’.
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Dr. Happer’s response to his critics: “They’re glassy-eyed and they chant”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/16/william-happer-on-climate-science-they-re-glassy-eyed-and-they-chant/
Davenport has been producing a litany of falsehoods about Greenland for years.
The woman knows nothing about science, history or environment, she’s an ideologue and a pure eco shill
I had a fulfilling 40-year career in NASA as an expert in computer modeling, but I fully understand a quote by John Tillman in https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/22/pushback-on-the-nyt-over-denialist/
“An important difference between programming GCMs (global computer models) and computer games is that the latter actually have some value and show skill.”
I participated in the successful modeling of some very sophisticated entities, such as the Space Shuttle, but in my opinion modeling the earth’s climate is absolutely an exercise in futility. It is perhaps the grandest wet dream of those who accept grant money from the government and the very divergence of results from the myriad extant models should be proof enough to stop such subsidies.
“Denialist” also sounds to me like bad grammar or at least ugly writing. I think the word they are struggling for is “Denier”. But I agree that using a label like that is deliberate and nasty propaganda. I have had a correspondence with the BBC about the same issue to little effect