by Judith Curry
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. – Lennart Bengtsson
The GWPF has announced that Lennart Bengtsson has announced his resignation from the GWPF Advisory Council. From the press release (which I received via email):
GWPF Voices Shock and Concern at the Extent of Intolerance within the Climate Science Community
It is with great regret, and profound shock, that we have received Professor Lennart Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from his membership of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.
The Foundation, while of course respecting Professor Bengtsson’s decision, notes with deep concern the disgraceful intolerance within the climate science community which has prompted his resignation.
Professor Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from our Academic Advisory Council was sent to its chairman, Professor David Henderson. His letter and Professor Henderson’s response are attached below.
Dr Benny Peiser, Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
The text of Bengtsson’s resignation letter:
Dear Professor Henderson,
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.
With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson
David Henderson’s response:
Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation: it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.
David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council
Die Klimazweibel has a post on this, read the comments. Pielke Jr states:
For experts in the climate issue, there is enormous social and peer pressure on what is acceptable to say and who it is acceptable to associate with. My recent experiences are quite similar to Bengtsson’s:
http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_25395242/extreme-weather-censors
Unfortunately, “climate mccarthyism” is not so far off. It has been practiced for a while:
http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_mccarthyism_part_i_joe
The main problem here is not that people have strong views or call people names. It is that the elite in this community – including scientists, journalists, politicians — have endorsed the climate mccarthyism campaign, and are often its most vigorous participants.
Over the long run, of course, good science will win out and policy will muddle through. In the short term however, the community will continue to do itself a lot of damage.
The climate issue is coming to represent a globalized version of the US abortion debates. I tell my grad students that there is no use for policy analysts in the abortion debates. I should follow my own advice!
Also of interest, Marcel Crok refers to a 1990 interview with Bengtsson, excerpts:
Bengtsson believes that climate experts should not pretend to be more knowledgeable than they really are. ‘In case of the greenhouse effect there is an interaction between media, politics and science. Every group pushes the other groups. Science is under pressure because everyone wants our advice. However, we cannot give the impression that a catastrophe is imminent. The greenhouse effect is a problem that is here to stay for hundreds of years. Climate experts should have the courage to state that we are not yet sure. What is wrong with making that statement clear and loudly?’
Bengtsson thinks that the IPCC has been particularly actuated for political reasons. ‘The IPCC prediction that with a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere the temperature on Earth would rise by two degrees should be taken with a grain of salt.’
‘If you talk to the greenhouse mafia about these observations, they provide some answers, but those are not real. There is no proper support for the claim that the greenhouse effect should already be visible. It is sometimes stated that the Southern Hemisphere is warming. But there are so few observational sites over there that it is very difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about the temperature in the Southern Hemisphere.’
Bengtsson is not the only climate expert who thinks that much of the excitement about the greenhouse effect is undue. Many of his colleagues have been rather uneasy about what happened after they opened Pandora’s box. They have become afraid, now that politicians, camera crews, pressure groups and environmental departments worldwide have thrown themselves at the climate disaster, to openly state that what they have declared may have been a bit premature.
Bengtsson: ‘Many of us feel rather uncomfortable with much of what has been claimed about the greenhouse effect. No one had been talking about it because temperatures had been slightly on the decline during the last 30 years. Only after Jim Hansen of NASA had put the issue back on the agenda after the warm summer of 1988 has it become part of the political agenda. In itself there is no problem with that. Looking hundreds of years ahead the greenhouse effect could become a serious problem. Some policies are obviously a clever thing to do: save energy, become less dependent on oil, those are good ideas. But one cannot oversell the greenhouse effect. There are many environmental problems that are much more urgent like that of the sulphur dioxide in Eastern Europe.’
UPDATE: GWPF has a new press release on this, with the following statement:
Professor Bengtsson wrote in his resignation letter: “I have been put under such an enormous group pressure from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable. It is a situation that reminds me [of] the time of McCarthy.”
He told The Times that the strongest opposition had come from the US. “It was the climate science community in the US which took this very negatively. I think the reason is the very loaded atmosphere in the US… they would like to do something very substantial about climate change.”
JC comments. I will have much more to write about this in a few days. For now, I will say that I deeply regret that any scientist, particularly such a distinguished scientist as Bengsston, has had to put up with these attacks. This past week, we have seen numerous important and enlightening statements made by Bengtsson about the state of climate science and policy, and science and society is richer for this. We have also seen a disgraceful display of Climate McCarthyism by climate scientists, which has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails. And we have seen the GWPF handle this situation with maturity and dignity
I’m only a bird in a gilded cage.
===========
The Mark Steyn quote about his reasons for taking on the battle against the Mannian Commisars is more apt than ever, now that we are hearing that the most ferocious attacks were coming from the CliSci “community” in the USA.
This episode puts Judith Curry’s courage and determination in a bright light. Despite the mockery she gets from certain squalid trolls here, what she does is impressive and most laudable.
Even Mark Steyn, quite familiar with campaigns to enforce political correctness in various fields has been “stunned” by the degree of enforced conformity in climate science. He will now need to revise his last comments to take account of this new episode in rigidly imposed Orthodoxy. Steyn writing BEFORE the news of Bengtsson’s recantation:
Yeah boy, I really want to be invited to the group that did this to Lenny.
/sarc
Ya listening, Mosher?
These actions confirm the demise of an unholy alliance of the world most powerful leaders with those who had a working knowledge of the world’s most powerful source of energy – neutron repulsion in cores of the atoms used in atomic bombs.
Their goals were noble – to save the world from nuclear annihilation – but they chose the wrong means to achieve those goals – deceit.
Their misjudgment – in choosing to oppose truth – is a common human error. The damage of that error to society would only be increased by public retaliation, as this alliance collapses before an even more powerful force – truth.
Thank you, Professor Curry, for your courage and skill in helping bring this nightmare to conclusion.
Skiphil,
Saint Judith she is.
In defense of Mark Steyn,
He has loudly defended the expressions of opinion, and expressed the same opinions, that have got people killed by islamists; defending the cartoons of allah, defending Salmud Rushdie and Theo van Gogh, condemning honor killing, etc.
The climate debate is a puppy tussle, compared to the real dog fight in this world.
Forgiveness and healing from the trauma of Climategate emails may be aided by sharing:
a.) Aston’s warning on 12 Dec 1922 of the danger of transforming Earth into a star by uncontrollable release of nuclear energy [See page 20, last paragraph of Aston’s Nobel Prize Lecture]:
http://veksler.jinr.ru/becquerel/text/books/aston-lecture.pdf
b.) Information on uncontrolled chaos in the closing days of WWII
_ 1. Allied atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
_ 2. Japan exploded an atomic bomb off the east coast of Konan, Korea; http://tinyurl.com/my5zsty
_ 3. Stalin’s USSR troops captured Japan’s atomic bomb facility and took scientists and technicians to Russia; http://tinyurl.com/n3agdan and
_ 4. A young nuclear geochemist took secret possession of Japan’s atomic bomb plans . . . http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2170881.stm
FEAR of death forged the alliance of world leaders and scientists that Climategate emails exposed in Nov 2009.
full disclosure.
name the emalers
Unless the bullies are called out by name for their misbehavior, they will only grow bolder.
HR | May 14, 2014 at 8:20 pm |
Agreed. But also name the supporters.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/03/lennart-bengtsson-speaks-out/ had 374 comments when I checked now; ONE was critical of Dr. Bengtsson, and it was so mild and sudsy as even the most sensitive could barely take offense.
373 in 374.
Plus the full support of the entire GWPF.
And Dr. Bengtsson still chose to withdraw over the vast armada of negativity he’s been exposed to.
I’m expecting a heck of a stack of email, vile and obnoxious and explicitly threatening, as evidence of Dr. Bengtsson’s martyrdom.
Because.. I’m dubious of the merits of these claims.
And really, how terribly insulted you who supported Dr. Bengtsson must feel, if it turns out he walked away over anything less? I mean, does _your_ support count to him for nothing?
Thanks for giving more evidence that my assessment of you, that you’re a nasty, diseased little person, was well founded. You suck.
What is your point, Bart R?
michael hart | May 14, 2014 at 10:26 pm |
My point is, without evidence, I am firmly skeptical.
The claims made sound like they demand a police investigation of stalkers.
Absent evidence, I call sham.
Bart R stumbles over the body, but can’t find evidence.
========
Bart R,
Perform some research here:
Announce here that you are willing to politely and constructively engage in discussions with the GWPF, and say that cooperative persuasion is what is necessary to convince the non-consensus 3% to agree with the 97% consensus.
Wait one day.
Google your moniker (the web name you use here).
You should be regarded as a hero.
Thanks,
Jim Zuccaro | May 14, 2014 at 11:21 pm |
But.. I’m not polite.
I’m not constructive.
And I have zero interest in fruitlessly attempting to ‘negotiate’ with propagandists, political lobbyist and marketers who have no intention of being persuaded of scientific fact against their monetary interests.
I have zero interest, too, in my moniker, or in heroism, or in regard.
But thanks for the advice.
Bart R,
“But.. I’m not polite.
I’m not constructive.
[etc]”
Bart. So who are you speaking to? Who’s minds’ do you want to change?
Jim Zuccaro | May 15, 2014 at 1:39 am |
I’m not responsible for minds.
People are responsible for their own minds, and the changes to them.
Writing is most often a reflex of the same sort as leads to scratching of itches, and generally for similar causes.
The GWPF irritates me. It offends like a rash, or a pimple.
I know it’s not good to scratch at such infectious things, but do you know anyone who never scratches at irritants?
Barty has dropped all pretenses of respectability. What a little punk.
Punk is a worthless person. There’s a different word for someone with negative worth such as Bart… malignant.
Bart R,
You are only scratching at itches?
You are very energetic. But your energy is only because of a mosquito bite? So you are only writing to scratch some small itch?
You don’t have a bigger purpose?
Really. Do you want to make a difference? Do you want to change my mind? (If you don’t really care, then you are just scratching some skin that you know that you shouldn’t scratch).
Thanks,
Jim Zuccaro | May 15, 2014 at 2:32 am |
Looking just at the remarks in this thread, how many respondents show no pretense of politeness, have never been constructive (except in the sense of constructing fallacious arguments), could never persuade with such tract and bile, and show hypocrisy with every line to such degree that one can be safe in concluding they would never be persuaded by science or reason?
I’ve been around academia a lot of years, far more than most. What Dr. Bengtsson describes in his claims sounds more than fishy, but utterly absurd. Academics — especially in Europe, and especially those with seniority — have impressive protections against outrages, and petty flare ups between colleagues are commonplace enough that one flip-flopping publicly because of some unpleasant friction for a few days or weeks has revealed far more about his own character than that of his detractors..
IF THERE WERE ANY, WHICH WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE OF FROM DR. BENGTSSON.
Given the overwhelming cheerleading from GWPF supporters, the groundswell of which has been visible across Dr. Curry’s blogroll, Dr. Bengtsson’s resignation is more than a little suspicious for the reasons given, absent full disclosure of all Dr. Bengtsson’s communications.
Not that I care to read Dr. Bengtsson’s emails, but I know people here with nothing better to do than read other people’s email.
Barty the troll awakes with a conspiracy ideation. Something suspicious here. The old Dr. Bengtsson and the CEtc. denizens are in cahoots. You people are shameless. And this kind of foolishness get’s you no closer to meaningful mitigation. You are failing the planet. Dopes.
Don Monfort | May 15, 2014 at 10:29 am |
Far simpler, sockpuppet, is that Dr. Bengtsson was expecting rewards for bringing the prestige of his name to the GWPF, and upon arriving found the rewards too small, and thus withdrew using the cover of some inflated swell of opposition.
However, the tone of arguments you, sockpuppet, have made repeatedly in the case of others is that you must see every email, note and scrap of code before you believe anything said by an academic. Your double standard in this case betrays that you are simply fastening on it as a way of spinning up yet more propaganda points.
Which we must, by your own sockpuppetish standards, believe until such time as you give up all your emails and notes for scrutiny.
Alarmist Rule #1
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/14/lennart-bengtsson-resigns-from-the-gwpf/#comment-556052
To Bart at 9:55 PM:
Why should we name Bengtsson’s supporters? So that Joe Romm can publicly slur them? So that those who might work for a US government agency can be negatively dealt with, like Hollywood writers were blacklisted back in the day of McCarthyism?
If McCarthyism is running rampant, you don’t want to give the character assissins innocent targets. And if you think that this Administration wouldn’t quietly go after employees guilty of incorrect thoughs, it turns out that senior IRS officials knew that right wing groups were being selectively picked out and denied their rights back in 2011:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/irs-knew-tea-party-targeted-in-2011-91214.html
I have voted Democrat far more often than I have voted Republican, but when you use the IRS to harm political enemies, it is no different that what Richard Nixon did.
So, no, don’t name supporters of Bengtsson, not as long as McCarthism is rampant in the climate change community, the Joe Romms of this world, and within the US Government.
Actually it is different. Nixon only threatened. Obama actually did it. But racism will prevent any action.
John | May 15, 2014 at 12:36 pm |
Wow.
Just wow.
Climategate is McCarthyism. The rabid persecution of Michael Mann for just doing Science is McCarthyism. The complaint that some measurement or code or notebook somewhere has not been submitted for perusal is McCarthyism. When the question was asked, “Why should I share my data with you, when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?” it was asked by an innocent scientist of a McCarthyist.
The GWPF’s standard of conduct, its very mission statement, is on its face McCarthyist: witch hunting for any sign of weakness to exploit, relevant or not, to oppose action on AGW by any means.
So do I fear being a McCarthyist by calling for a list of Lennart Bengtsson’s supporters alongside his supposed detractors?
No, I do not, because the absurdity of that claim falling from the lips of people who have been practicing that philosophy unashamedly and at the extremity for so long is utter hypocrisy.
If Dr. Lennart Bengtsson has felt persecuted for joining a “registered educational charity” — for Pete’s sake, can no one detect TAX FRAUD when it is so blatant in the UK?! — to lobby government to enact laws in direct opposition of the evidence of mainstream science, then really, how is that a surprise to him?
Was he not aware that he’d be joining the likes of Lords Monckton, Lawson and Ridley in a political enterprise headed by experts in social manipulation like Benny Peiser?
And really, recall the list of GWPF academic advisors:
Professor David Henderson (Chairman)
Adrian Berry
Sir Samuel Brittan
Sir Ian Byatt
Professor Robert Carter
Professor Vincent Courtillot
Professor Freeman Dyson
Christian Gerondeau
Dr Indur Goklany
Professor William Happer
Professor Terence Kealey
Professor Anthony Kelly
Professor Deepak Lal
Professor Richard Lindzen
Professor Ross McKitrick
Professor Robert Mendelsohn
Professor Sir Alan Peacock
Professor Ian Plimer
Professor Paul Reiter
Dr Matt Ridley
Sir Alan Rudge
Professor Nir Shaviv
Professor Philip Stott
Professor Henrik Svensmark
Professor Richard Tol
Dr David Whitehouse
That’s over two dozen academics, at least a half dozen of which are top rank heavy hitters. It would be sheer academic suicide to conduct a pogrom against Bengtsson such as he describes, for merely joining those ranks.
So on its face, Bengtsson’s claim is so suspect and remarkable that we must have substantially more than just his version of the story.
Just curious. When did debating an opinion become persecution?
Bart R
So you’re default position is to think he’s lying? Interesting.
He’s at the U. of Reading. Presumably somebody might be able to do a FOIA on him to view the emails he’s likely too much of a gentleman (or scared) to make public himself.
HR | May 15, 2014 at 5:28 pm |
Default?
No.
What Dr. Bengtsson has claimed is so out of the ordinary, that on its face it is too dubious to credit, but so spectacular that it must not be out of hand dismissed, either.
Let’s face it, if any scientist claimed they had to resign over a public matter because of fear for their safety, why wouldn’t everyone have an interest?
Bart,
Congrats on your success at looking like an idiot. Exactly why would Bengtsson make this up? Publish or perish still holds. Hell, how often have we heard the phrase “peer reviewed” science in this debate? People telling you they will pull out from collaberative efforts is a serious threat.
Bart,
The only person who thinks Michael Mann has been rabidly persecuted is Michael Mann. And apparently you.
Having prior service and family members and friends who have deployed into combat theaters, Mann’s comparing himself to someone who puts themselves into harms way to protect others is rather insulting. What is really ironic is his penchant to attack people who question him on his work. Little Mike is the one most resembling a rabid creature.
His idols apparently are Mikey and Chakragore. To each their own.
timg56 | May 15, 2014 at 7:24 pm |
You’re not the only guy who’s had family in harms’ way.
However, if you’re a guy who can’t see the one-sidedness of your own views, it’s hardly surprising you think you are.
One single person resigned as co-author rather than be associated through Dr. Bengtsson with the GWPF. That’s hardly a threat, a pressure tactic, or McCarthyism.
I doubt you’d co-author a book with Jane Fonda.
That’s a good one, barty. Dr. B. got nothing to worry about, cause he’s got a couple dozen other heretics on his side. The only problem with your disingenuous BS logic bartski, is that the elderly Dr. B can’t run as fast as the others. He’ll burn first. Well, maybe they get him and Dr. Dyson at the same time. Save on wood and emissions.
Don Monfort | May 15, 2014 at 7:51 pm |
For those who have trouble telling, _that_ would be an example of ad hominem, using a property of the person to argue the case.
For further example, I might point out Ian Plimer’s unlikely to outrun a 79-year-old Swede.. and I suspect Dyson’s not the slowest of the bunch, either.
You suffer under the misconception that everyone is arguing a case, barty. I was just ridiculing your two dozen other academics foolishness. I will point out that you admonished my alleged ad hominy and then proceeded to propose an argument about the relative physical abilities of some of the other heretics. You don’t realize what a talent you have for self-parody, bartski.
You are a sad case. Unlike joshie and the rest of the nameless troll clowns, you appear to be someone who has actually accomplished something in life. Is trolling this board the way you want to go out?
PS: Little willie is another sad case that comes to mind. He seems to have been a man of substance, before he got mixed up in the climate wars. It’s too bad you boys didn’t hold onto your dignity, as Pekka has.
Bart,
Thanks for the chuckle. You referring to the one-sidedness of one’s view is the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.
Except in this case I’m more like the stainless steel spoon on the counter.
timg56 | May 16, 2014 at 12:52 pm |
Lack of self-awareness is a key defining quality of those suffering delusion, oh stainless steel spoon.
I make no effort to be fair, or balanced, except that I show that I can stretch those muscles and actually see more than one side of an argument at a time without becoming hopelessly lost in empathy.
For example, I can picture myself in the position of a far right wing octogenarian with seniority, who after a lifetime of cushy academic positions wonders if he can find the support of others of like mind for his views about all those thrice-cursed Leftists. I can empathize with such a man’s disappointment on joining, say, the GWPF, to find that they’re nowhere near Right wing enough, too tolerant of others with differences, too willing to listen to Greens and other inferior peoples. Now, caught in a trap, forced to face humiliation because of the weakness and scheming of other, lesser minds, would I not be forced to make a grand statement of how unfair the world has been, to save face, to point out the faults in others for having tricked me to this plight?
Can you put yourself in the shoes of others half so sympathetically?
See that’s why we need UNtopia – Minnesota. Webby can re-educate them.
In academia there is no protection from your peers. If you don’t tow the line bad things start happening. Your grants get cut off, you lose positions on influential committees for no apparent reason, your adjunct positions are not renewed and your publications aren’t published. Yet when it starts happening everyone will nod and frown and say the proper condolences to your face while they use anonymity to hide their real actions. We like to think scientists are above this kind of petty machination but they aren’t. They are ordinary human beings and the anonymity of peer review makes blacklisting and black balling all too easy. You always tell an academic because of the number of knives in his back.
It’s “toe the line”.
Where do people get this “tow” from? As far as I can recall, “toe” was the way it was always written until a bunch of semi-literates started writing blogs.
The expression probably comes from ferocious 18th century Royal Navy discipline, with sailors standing to attention with their toes on the line between the planks, while bad tempered officers look for an excuse to have them flogged or keelhauled.
Doesn’t that sound like the pressures that Bengtsson faced?
RoHa
In the Navy we believed that ‘toe the line’ came from old-style boxing matches where the two pugilists started from a position where both stood on the same line.
Tom Fuller,
There are two figurative lines there. The pugilists were separated by a rope ‘line’ that they ‘addressed’ (toed to and faced to), and all ‘blows’ or hits had to be above the waist-high rope ‘line’.
‘Toed the line’ to start the fight, and all hits had to be above boards (above the rope, to be fair hits).
Quite right tumbleweed. These people in private industry have no idea what it takes to survive in the cutthroat world of academia. People with jobs in the private sector are soft and spoiled. They are used to a pampered and protected corporate lifestyle. None of them would last five minutes if they were to resign from their safe positions in industry and try to get a real job as a tenured academic.
Ian H,
What you say.
I wish I knew what it was like to earn money in the “private industry”.
I hate that they keep academics away from the gravy-train.
Toe the line, toed the line, towed the line. This might have been from ‘Toe[s] to the line’
I can imagine that ‘toes to the line’ could quickly become ‘Towed the line’.
The ear ‘hearing’ in my imagination can make the connection.
The homonym evokes another image of servitude. The language responds to the image.
===========
Toe the line literally means to assume a designated position i.e. a line on the floor with your toes touching it. Anyone who’s been in the military knows that. Figuratively it usually means a party or group line. For instance toeing the DemocRAT line means supporting abortion, g-a-y marriage, global warming pseudo-science, redistribution of wealth, etc.
‘Tow’ is even more active servitude than ‘Toe’. But I like ‘Toe’, it’s traditional. This discussion is always amusing when it comes up, as it does, often.
============
This was the day “science” fell out of “climate science”.
The alarmists have, however, scored an own goal: they have revealed their bully boy tactics. The next time someone cites the “consensus” they will be countered with the fact that the “consensus” wa manufactured at the end of a metaphorical baseball bat.
I hope we do find out who the bullies are. They need to be exposed, vilified and then shunned by anyone who has the slightest scientific or moral integrity.
Uh huh. Their bully boy tactics as you put it have been on display since climate-gate. If anything, it’s just going to get worse before it…what? Gets better? Maybe, maybe not.
I see violence in the offing. And not the metaphorical kind you mention above. It strikes me as virtually inevitable that some lunatic will pick up a gun and take a shot at some climate “denier” for the “good of the planet.”
More drama! A shoot out at the ACO2 corral.
Go to google scholar. You’ll find his co-authors. Ask them if they terrorized Lennart.
Saying some like (I don’t like the GWPF and I will not write any more papers with you) is not terror. It’s something a co-author would have every right to do. He’s not endangering Lennart’s job in any way at all.
He said US. Schwartz is from the US. Who likes him? A commenter hear named Steven, who often comments very interesting things on ocean heat transport. Capt. D likes Schwartz. Schwartz writes papers that are problematic for true believers. Has not lost his job; publishes lots of papers; is a very respected scientist.
Pathetic, JCH.
==========
Truly a pathetic post JCH.
There is nothing pathetic about it.
You’re a lyncher. That is pathetic.
The new article linked to today clarifies Bengtsson’s resignation circumstance, and it bolsters my initial hunch. This was all about a US co-author who works for the US government who dropped out, and that co-author had every right to do so, and anybody who thinks he does not have that right is, well, fantastically misguided.
We seem to be missing most of our usual gang of alarmist trolls this morning. Must have stayed up late last night celebrating the coal mine disaster in Turkey.
It would be useful if Bengtsson were able to be more explicit about the pressure he received, but bullies seem to be on both sides. Michael Mann has apparently received death threats as well as political persecution from Cuccinelli, at least.
It’s definitely a very charged environment for climate scientists to be working in, whichever hypothesis they favor.
There was no “persecution”. There was an investigation. Those who claim the former are merely being hysterical as they can produce no evidence of any persecution. Or even Harassment.
Pathetic,and at the same time, sadly, so predictable. Heretics have always been severely punished by the true believers. Diversity of thought isn’t politically correct. Voltaire has been dead for some time….
It’s not about heresy and belief, it’s about science, and what can be established as factual.
Senator McCarthy was a lightweight compared to these Global Warmng Mullahs.
p.s. Whatever one thinks of him, McCarthy was going after actual spies commiting espionage on behalf of the USSR. Michael Mann & company are treating harmless thoughtful people as though they are far lower than spies for the USSR at the height of the Cold War. But then, to Commisars enforcing climate orthodoxy, any serious dissent or disobedience must be worse than espionage.
Global warming is all about politics. Period. The actions of the left-wing climate alarmists in the US are no different than the actions of their political activist brethren. If you disagree with Obama and his friends, you are slandered as bitter, mean-spirited, hate-filled, racist, sexist, homophobic terrorists who want to deny medical care to the poor, starve kids, kill seniors, and rape the environment. The slanders are constant. And it goes well beyond slander. Speak out and the IRS, EPA, DOJ, BATF will descend on you to use the awesome power of the government to harass, abuse and intimidate you.
What happened to Bengtsson is just like what happened to conservatives filing for 501(c) 4, or the nuns who complained about Obamacare, or the Koch brothers. If you don’t toe the left’s political line, they will use anything and everything available to them no matter how immoral in their efforts to destroy you.
They are morally retarded indeed.
1984 + 30
No pause in that trend.
========
At CA, Nick Stokes wrote: “He took a political stand which was unpopular with his colleagues.”
Politics, it’s all about the politics. Bengtsson thought he was a scientist doing science, but Nick’s alarmist friends let him know forcefully that science has nothing to do with it. All politics, all the time. Of course, politics is the process by which we decide who gets to have a monopoly on violence.
Yup. Much better to suck up to Barry like Buffet and GE.
stan –
+1000
They have no morals whatsoever.
jim2, I recently read a Buffet quote (in print, can’t put my hand on it) that the only reason he invested in wind power was the handsome subsidies, drop those and he’s out of there.
How can anyone be surprised by these tactics. I see it every day on TV , in print and on the internet. It is despicable and beyond defense. The cause may be important but to what price. Regimes in other countries and in other centuries felt their cause was also important. Thankfully they are no longer with us.
What tactics? His colleagues setting him straight on the reputation of the organization he had just joined?
I wonder how you (and Judith) felt about all the threats other climate scientists have been getting, back years ago.
Yeah speak up, pudgy. Don’t let that box of donuts distract you from defending the means of consensus building in global warming pseudo-science.
..and one of the main culprits in applying these tactics [ Appell ] shows up on cue – good timing David.
yes, many can remember how dishonest David Appell & company were about the alleged “death threats” that turned out not to exist….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/28/paging-david-appell-and-nick-stokes-again-time-to-fess-up-and-apologize/
and in any case, random angry emails from the great unwashed do not compare to an aggressive campaign by allegedly professional scientist to ostracize and ruin one of their own.
I think David just called Professor Lennart Bengtsson a fool in need of being set straight. “Setting him Straight”? sounds a bit homophobic, David.
Apple So much group pressure he was concerned for his health. The fact you seem to be condoning this pressure says everything anyone needs to know about you.
David Appell: I hope no one ever sets you straight against your will. It is frequently done in concentration camps, where a very persuasive equipment is available.
David-
You are rationalizing and not very well at that. All you have to do is look around any day, any place at your climate cataclysmic comrades to see this stuff goes on. And after that look in the mirror. It won’t be long before the warmists will be starting burn the book clubs. To keep warm, of course.
David Appell, it is regrettable that anybody on either side feels threatened. But it happens on both sides, and obviously the threats from the climate community have more teeth. Teeth not to be ignored.
Tyrannis rex jaws, and maladapted to the modern intellectual climate.
===========
Roberto –
==> “David Appell, it is regrettable that anybody on either side feels threatened.”
I agree. But it is also meaningful to know what was the cause behind someone feeling threatened before making analogies to concentration camps and N*zis and McCarthyism.
What was it that made Bengtsson feel threatened? Was it because colleagues told him that they felt his stance had damaging implications globally, and thus would not co-author with him in the future? Was it because he got emails threatening him harm? What was the nature of the threats?
I wonder if Ben Santer threatened to beat the crap out of Lennart?
http://www.climatedepot.com/2010/10/26/flashback-laugh-riot-climategates-ben-santer-who-threatened-to-beat-the-crap-out-of-pat-michaels-now-claims-concerns-about-his-own-physical-safety-santers-email-santer1llnlgov/
What goes around comes around.
The herd of alarmists goes over the cliff, seeking evidence. It was under their feet all the time.
========================
David Appel,
“I wonder how you (and Judith) felt about all the threats other climate scientists have been getting, back years ago.”
The same threats as are made now? So that is justification?
This is what Appell and others in the Klimate Konsensus Konspircacy call a death threat:
Joshua and David Appel, your line of reasoning is really repugnant. The gentleman felt threatened. Isn’t that enough? To great fanfare he joined the GWPF. Do you think he would leave shortly afterwards without cause?
As someone who has been on the receiving end of such harassment, including phone calls to my employer at the time, I know that this happens. You can sit here on this thread and try to pretend it doesn’t happen, but a whole lot of people know that you’re full of it.
Prall and Schneider targeted the victims. Lewandowsky provided the labels. Peter Gleick showed you could get away with murder. So this is not a surprise. But it is still repugnant.
charles the moderator,
said
” This is what Appell and others in the Klimate Konsensus Konspircacy call a death threat:
I wouldn’t piss on Michael Mann if he were on fire.”
That can’t be true…? (is it?)
Tom Fuller’
“Peter Gleick showed you could get away with murder. So this is not a surprise. But it is still repugnant.”
Peter Gleick did not murder anyone.
There was no murder in that situation. Other words are better.
David Appell, it is no fun on either side facing a howling mob hurling nothing but abuse, mockery, threats, and calls for pure loyalty to “our side” and “the good guys”. Seriously, in person it is like a physical shock to the system.
I would hope that nobody who posts here is carried away into such traps and saying such things (hint, hint). However amusing it may be, it doesn’t help any chances for dialogue.
David takes a few tokes from his global warming bong and joins the thread.
What is it about this topic that causes you to lose all good sense?
Joshua and David Appel, your line of reasoning is really repugnant. The gentleman felt threatened. Isn’t that enough? …
Ask the supporters of Tawana Brawley.
Who threatened the supporters of Tawana Brawley?
JCH,
Skiphil wrote:
yes, many can remember how dishonest David Appell & company were about the alleged “death threats” that turned out not to exist….
“Death Threat Captured on Video”
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2011/07/death-threat-captured-on-video.html
As I’ve written at Bishop Hill, what we are seeing here is “science” as a community acting to re-enforce social boundaries between the legitimate “insiders” in academia and those outside who are thus deemed “illegitimate”.
By effectively drawing a line around academia and calling it “science” and persuading all the press, politicians, etc. to see those inside as legitimate to speak on subjects like climate and those outside as therefore illegitimate, it means that no matter how qualified or experience we skeptics are, that we will always be deemed as illegimate.
However, that only works as long as people believe the boundary around “science” is real and meaningful. What Lennart Bengtsson did, was to show that the boundary is illusionary – that it is made of glass – and by breaking down that boundary he not only legitimised the GWPF, but he also showed that there was no intrinsic reason why academics should be listened to any more than any other groups …. like e.g. skeptics.
That is why it was so important for those insiders to re-enforce the boundary by this concerted campaign of attacks.
It’s the same psychology of gang culture. It’s very similar to inter-union demarcation disputes (in this case we skeptics are being told to clear off their lawn because we are dabbling in areas which they consider to be “their” domain).
And the kind of psychological reaction to “territorial” disputes is as old as when we came down from the trees. Chimpanzees engage in these boundary disputes, gorillas.
The Chimpanzee behaviour is particularly nasty – combining as a group to target individuals, particularly mothers with young and then devouring the young. This is really what we are seeing, but in a much less extreme version: very ancient behaviour attacking those who break the taboos and cross the boundary to the “enemy” troop.
They maintain their 97% by deciding who gets counted. Their numbers are getting smaller, but their 97% will never decline.
If they can kick the people out who start to disagree, fast enough, their % may even go up.
Their numbers are getting smaller, so it should get easier to find, and kick out, those who become skeptic.
More and more Scientists and Engineers and Metoroglists and People of every background, who are skeptic, AND HAVE BEEN SKEPTIC, and have not spoken out yet, will increasingly join THOSE OF US who believe the People in the Consensus Kingdom, all, have “NO CLOTHES ON”
The people who are skeptic of Consensus Alarmist “so called” Science, should and, I think, will, speak out.
In this 2013 paper, Bengtsson finds a lower bound for equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.0 +/- 0.5 C:
“Determination of a lower bound on Earth’s climate sensitivity,”
Lennart Bengtsson and Stephen E. Schwartz, Tellus B 2013
http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/33753/1/Climate_Sensitivity.pdf
David Appell,
Which makes it that much more striking that your Climate Commisars are trying to destroy him. He doesn’t seem to have some cavernous scientific distance from the mainstream but maybe thinks that uncertainties are larger and/or policy recommendations have been badly formulated??
For that he must be ostracized from the “community” of climate science he has served and worked in effectively for 50+ years!!
What is your point?
Mark Silbert
David Appell doesn’t have a point.
It’s just a waffle intended to side step the issue at hand here: Bengtsson’s resignation from GWPF.
Max
Stephen E. Schwartz is one of Bengtsson’s co-authors. He writes exactly what he wants to write. His papers have angered warmists. He hasn’t lost his job. He continues to publish a lot of very sound papers.
I rather doubt he would be part of a disgraceful arm twisting. I would not be surprised if he objects to aspects of the GWPF, but I do not know that for sure.
So who is he talking about, and why no evidence? It’s just his assertion.
No, the climate community is not ostracizing him, they are taking him back.
He is one of ours, you can’t have him.
In this 2013 paper, Bengtsson finds a lower bound for equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.0 +/- 0.5 C:
Which is why, if you actually believed what you say about science, having him at the GWPF would have been a good thing. He would have been a voice supporting the importance of AGW.
Instead, at the slightest hint he might stray from the orthodoxy, you declared that he needed to be “set straight” and was hounded, not for what he said, but rather for associating with the wrong sort of people.
Guilt by association is the opposite of science. You have just proven yourself completely uninterested in scientific inquiry.
Not that it comes as a surprise.
It’s the Global Warming POLICY Foundation. Policy debate would still be relevant and necessary even if the sensitivity was unanimously agreed to be 5.0 +/- 0.01 C.
JCT:
“So who is he talking about, and why no evidence? It’s just his assertion.”
Not only his assertion. His assertion backed up by his reputation.
You believe him, or you don’t. I don’t know what camp you fit into.
If you do not believe him, then you have to have a compelling reason for why such a dramatic statement and action would be taken by Bengtsson.
If you do believe him, then why cast doubt on his statements?
Neutral is not believable, given your post.
So, JCT, which camp, and why are you demanding proof?
Reblogged this on CraigM350.
Climate McCarthyism is a very accurate term. It is truly a sad day when Lysenkoism claims another victim. Perhaps more saddening is the fact that the scientist sheep do not realize how they are destroying their own credibility, not the skepticism which is critical in any scientific field.
Climate Science is being made an oxymoron by those who have rejected science for their cause.
Will the same sort of pressure be brought to bear on the people who are advising the APS on CAGW?
There is nothing new here with this story…
Again, many good scientists and professionals have had their careers harmed over the last two decades by this agenda based movement called AGW. We must acknowledge and remember them at moments like this…
Pingback: Climate Fascists | Jay Currie
This is beyond disgraceful. It makes one feel debased by even trying to debate the issues with such misanthropes. Let’s hear from a few alarmists that abhor this type of behavior and mistreatment of an icon.
I’m listening!!
You’ll get only crickets. Alarmists are people of the left. It’s all about the politics. Ethics and morality are defined as that which aids the lust for political power. Nothing else.
“There are no morals in politics.”
‘This is beyond disgraceful. It makes one feel debased by even trying to debate the issues with such misanthropes. Let’s hear from a few alarmists that abhor this type of behavior and mistreatment of an icon.’
Would Tweets like these fall into that category:
“Groups perceived to be acting in bad faith should not be surprised that they are toxic within the science community. Changing that… (1/2)”
“… requires that they not act in bad faith and not be seen to be acting in bad faith. (2/2)”
@ClimateOfGavin!
Hear ye the gospel and bow before it!
Abhor what behavior? Is there an email we can read? Maybe the hacker can find the evidence.
Sorry you’re so bitter, JCH, such that you’ve stopped up your ears to the testimony.
========
–> “This is beyond disgraceful. ”
Wow. Beyond disgraceful. That’s bad. Can you describe what it was, at least in some detail, just what it was that was beyond disgraceful? Help me to share in your outrage.
There are merely people here, not miracle workers that can educate you when all your teachers failed.
JCH
Ohh please. The man said he was pressured and he was concerned about his health and safety. You have stuck your head in the sand and thrown in dissembling on top of it. Accept that this kind of bullying and strong arm methods are done every day by the warmists.
Praising the meat before passing the Lord.
=============
Did you believe the climate scientists who said they had received death threats? LMAO. Somebody asked for evidence. Perfectly reasonable.
Oh pleezzz. Lol.
–> “Ohh please. The man said he was pressured and he was concerned about his health and safety. You have stuck your head in the sand and thrown in dissembling on top of it. Accept that this kind of bullying and strong arm methods are done every day by the warmists.”
First, bullying, while certainly something I think is condemnable, is a far cry from McCarthyism. Second, I think that before throwing around terms like “McCarthyism,” we should know what kinds of pressures he was subjected to.
Did colleagues write him letters, and say that they felt that his stance had dangerous global implications, and therefore did not want to continue collaborating with him?
As to whether that is bullying, is perhaps debatable. But it certainly is not the equivalent of McCarthyism.
So if you have some evidence of him being subjected to something tantamount to McCarthyism, tell me so I can join you in your outrage. What is your evidence?
I have known people who’s lives were affected by McCarthyism. I have known people who’s lives were affected by Nazism. I think these kinds of accusations should not be made lightly. To do so, IMO, is exploitative of serious issues.
–> “Ohh please. The man said he was pressured and he was concerned about his health and safety. You have stuck your head in the sand and thrown in dissembling on top of it. Accept that this kind of bullying and strong arm methods are done every day by the warmists.”
First, bullying, while certainly something I think is condemnable, is a far cry from McCarthyism. Second, I think that before throwing around terms like “McCarthyism,” we should know what kinds of pressures he was subjected to.
Did colleagues write him letters, and say that they felt that his stance had dangerous global implications, and therefore did not want to continue collaborating with him?
As to whether that is bullying, is perhaps debatable. But it certainly is not the equivalent of McCarthyism.
So if you have some evidence of him being subjected to something tantamount to McCarthyism, tell me so I can join you in your outrage. What is your evidence?
I have known people who’s lives were affected by McCarthyism. I have known people who’s lives were affected by Naz*sm. I think these kinds of accusations should not be made lightly. To do so, IMO, is exploitative of serious issues.
Honey, this is a serious issue.
=========
Not only that, whose lives were affected also.
Why is it serious, kim?
Because Bengtsson was upset?
Ok. That makes it serious.
Does that make it serious at the level of McCarthyism? Of terror? Of Goebbels?
Do tell, what makes it serious at the level of McCarthyism? Of terror? Of Goebbels?
I have been asking for a while now. I’ve asked a number of people.
No answers.
Not a one.
A number of responses.
But no answers.
Why is that?
‘This’ is climate, in all its scientific, political, social, financial, moral and the rest of its many-branched ramifications. So you wanna act dumb.
Go ahead, what else is new.
=======
@kim – it is the only thing he does well.
Joshua, McCarthyism had little to do with McCarthy until he joined a campaign that was already long in progress and used professional shunning, warnings of investigations, and other tactics to unearth Soviet agents and their fellow travelers – who were actually bent on helping the Soviets win the Cold War.
In this case, the pressure and threats are aimed at an scientist who disagrees with political orthodoxy. If anything, it is much closer to Lysenkoism than McCarthyism, since McCarthyism dealt politically with political beliefs, whereas Lysenkoism cast a political pall across every scientific field in the East Bloc. Any scientist who disagreed with Lysenko’s theories (even scientists in unrelated fields), faced a loss of status and position, investigations, and even a trip to the gulag.
The little troop of troll baboons demand evidence from the intimidated victim. Hey, maybe the Koch bros. paid him to make this up. If he really was under assault from the climate alarmist mob, he would point fingers and name names. In other words, jump from the frying pan into the fire.
Joshua, please go straight to hell. I was working for a solar power company and my boss got two phone calls saying I didn’t belong in the renewable energy industry because of the book I wrote with Mosh about Climategate. A bit player with a self-published book that supported climate science while criticizing some idiots who didn’t know stats or ethics. If they did that to me, I am happy to surmise they have bigger sticks to wave at name players.
I guess Joshua and his pals won’t be satisfied unless the victim provides a detailed description of the rape with accompanying photos, preferably in HD.
Lennart brought it on himself. No way should he wear dresses so skimpy.
==============
JCH
RE: “Did you believe the climate scientists who said they had received death threats? LMAO. Somebody asked for evidence. Perfectly reasonable.”
Did you bother to check into the details of the alleged death threats? Calling the material death threats is analogeous to calling a kitten a saber toothed tiger.
Josh,
I’ll agree that you have a point about the labelling – i.e. McCarthyism. But it a point at the fringe, not the core of this discussion. Do you really want to weigh in on the side that thinks this episode involving Bengtsson is nothing worth noting?
That was the point. Waiting for evidence of water in the pool before jumping off the high dive.
tim –
–> “Do you really want to weigh in on the side that thinks this episode involving Bengtsson is nothing worth noting?”
I have weighed in saying something quite different (although folks like Fuller and many other of my much beloved “skeptics” can’t bother to actually read harder before attacking me). That Bengtsson would write a letter such as he did, merits “concern,” IMO.
As for the incident being worth noting, I think that it is worth noting for a number of reasons:
(1) It may well be evidence of tribalism among “realists” ( high likelihood there).
(2) It may well be evidence of reprehensible behavior by “realists” (I have yet to see any actual evidence of such. What we may know is that at least one scientist indicated that based on Bengtsson’s association with the GWPF, he would no longer co-author with him. I don’t consider that to be reprehensible).
(3) It is clearly evidence of tribalism among “skeptics” who have made all sorts of absurd analogies to justify the need for victimization. I think it is telling that “skeptics” will stoop to exploiting “reign’s of terror,” or McCarthyism, or fundamentalist Islam, or Stalinism, or Lysenkoism, or Naz*sm, etc., to score points in the climate wars.
(4) It is clearly evidence of Judith and the gang being willing to throw out any attempt at establishing consistent criteria to use in evaluating the climate wars – for example, criteria related to tribalism, or activism, or vitriol, or free speech.
It is worth noting that it is same ol’ same ol’.
Tribalism – that’s your argument? With the usual bit of Judith pony tail pulling.
You don’t need much more information than the fact of a distinguished scientist receiving what appears to be considerable negative feedback on a decision he made. Feedback within a very short period of time. That alone should raise questions. Yet you would rather beat your same drum and in doing some convince yourself that there is nothing of interest here.
Show me evidence of reprehensible behavior, tim, and I’ll join you in your outrage.
But I won’t join you in “alarmist” drama-queening in the name of self-victimization.
Sorry. I just don’t roll that way.
Anyway, I’m out. My sponsor from Troll’s Anonymous called – and he’s pissed.
Have a nice time drama-queening boyz. It was nice while it lasted, but I’ll have to catch you on my next release from rehab.
Man, step #8 (making amends to people I’ve harmed) is going to be a b*tch).
Joshie rolls with a silly wobble and always veers hard left. Very predictable. And extremely tedious.
Josh,
my outrage?
Exactly what outrage is that? Once again you show that honest discourse is not your aim. I haven’t shown the least bit of outrage. In fact, I agreed with you on the point of over reacting. My divergence was with the centrality of that point to the core issue. And that issue is how some people reacted to Bengtssons association with a particular group. And that reaction is disturbing. How disturbing can be a matter of opinion. Dr Bengtsson could have overreacted. He could be a drama queen. He could be weak willed. Any of these factors could be reasons to dilute the level of disturbing. But lacking evidence of any of these conditions the reasonable person takes Dr Bengtssons comments at face value.
So assuming we are reasonable, there is still a fairly wide spectrum in how disturbing one might find this. One can withhold judgment until they know more and counsel others to do likewise. Or they can feel outage. Neither is out of line. Trying to say that nothing is disturbing or trying to distract attention away from the whole affair, particularly when you fabricate stuff, marks you as dishonest.
What is going on now including this latest on Bengtsson has the “feel” of an organized propaganda campaign the likes of which harken back to Dr Goebbels and Willi Münzenberg. In this re, Alan Leisher head of AAAS issued a letter to members yesterday (also asking for donations) which said inter alia:
[quote] Based on the evidence, about 97% of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is happening. Yet a large fraction of this country’s population and policymakers can’t seem to accept the fact that the climate is changing. It’s time to shift the debate from whether human-caused climate change is happening to what we can do about it.
We need to make it clear that scientists believe that doing nothing now is extremely dangerous and could result in abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on future generations. And we need your help.
As you may know, AAAS recently launched a new initiative to expand the dialogue on the risks associated with climate change. At the heart of the initiative is the “What We Know” report, an assessment of current climate science and impacts that emphasizes the need to understand and recognize possible high-risk scenarios.
But to have the greatest impact, we must do more than issue a report. We must continue to get the word out about the urgency of this issue. Will you join us?
As members of the science community, we need to change the conversation from whether the earth is warming to just how we are going to work together to alter the course our planet is on. We have to reach out to the American people, to policymakers, and even to other countries about what science is showing about the dangers of climate change and the severe outcomes that could occur through inaction or continued resistance to change.
I count at least seven statements by Leisher that do not represent the views of qualified critics with bone fides including those of participants in Curry’s blog. I would counter that those of us who do not blindly accept the climate protagonists story line to restructure the world economy need to do more than yelp on blogs like Curry’s. There needs to be more of a grass roots and intelligent response to get our views across!
It’s more like a bunch of chimpanzees hooting, howling and thrashing about the trees intimidating one of their number who has “defected” to the other side. When he gets back to the “troop”, the big cheese will beat him up in front of all the rest of the troop, he’ll submit gracefully to the treatment, and then once its been established that troop members don’t ever cross over into the territory of the other troop — he’ll be left alone.
Based on the evidence, about 97% of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is happening.
97% of the Climate Science Consensus Clique do agree. Their numbers are getting much smaller every day. They do keep up the percentage by kicking our all who express doubt. 97% if a small group that is getting rapidly much smaller will lose this disagreement.
Mother Earth is on the Skeptic Side and her vote counts more. It has “not warmed” counts a lot more than “well, it should have warmed.” It will warm, someday, we hope, because we are betting everything you have on that.
Interesting that you mention Leshner, he was at my corporation within the last few years, giving a general talk to our technical community on science encouragement and communication. He then brought up climate change he challenged any deniers in the audience to speak-up, saying that he can usually find one or two. When nobody took the bait, he went on too describe people who disagreed with him on the topic as kooks and tin-foil hat types (i’m paraphrasing).
I didn’t speak up. I consider myself a lukewarmer. I knew he wasn’t looking for a fair or nuanced discussion, he was looking to out someone. I didn’t want to be blacklisted. There are many true believers in my company who would not accept any view in conflict with the cause. In addition we are poised to profit from many of the supposed climate solutions. So I kept my mouth shut. He came across as a real bully in my opinion.
What is being done is same as Russians and Chinese communists brainwashing and rehabilitation of people that do not follow the line. There are two layers of this going on in climate science. 1) the consensus as we learned from the East Anglia – gate emails punish scientists by barring them from publishing in scientific journals; 2) in the US right now there is a coordinated effort led by the Obama administration to use all the usual tactics to surround and conquer + flooding the country with public opinion campaigns (check the front page NYT daily feature articles on climate change related). Robert Lifton studied American prisoners of war extensively and outlined the kind of process (torture) that Bengtsson and others like him should expect to encounter
:
1. Assault on identity
2.The Establishment of Guilt
3.The Self-betrayal
4.Breaking point: Total Conflict and the Basic Fear
5.Leniency and Opportunity
6.The Compulsion to confess
7.The Channeling of guilt
8.Re-education: Logical Dishonoring
9.Progress and harmony
10.Final confession
11.Rebirth
12.Release
Communists describe this as “the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through ‘mental healing’.” http://www.alor.org/Library/BrainWashing.htm
Divine right rer rule
and decide who is in and
who is goddam out
H/t Church of Climatology..
While the resignation of Lennart Bengtsson from the GWPF is regrettable, I think our hostess has summed it up very succinctly:
Looking forward to her new post on this topic.
Max
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
=================
Climate science might qualify for science again if it breaks up in to lots smaller pieces.
I mean, the pieces might. The whole thing won’t.
Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
====================
There are now two strands to “science” – the one is a social construct or a name for a group of people. You enter this group by submitting yourself (or through a paper) to the power and authority of the group. Once you’ve past this initiation you are then a member of the “science” tribe and can call yourself a “scientist” and expect any journalist or politicians to humbly accept any daft comment you care to make (which doesn’t contract a more senior member of the tribe).
Then there is what I call “Skeptic science” – that is science based on popperism, evidence, hypothesis testing, – all the good stuff we skeptics call “science”.
You can draw a venn diagram of “science” and “skeptic science”. Everyone who calls themselves a scientist is in the area of “science” – but only some of them are “skeptic scientists” – and indeed, there are many outside academia or otherwise areas known as “science” who are “skeptic scientists”.
Lennart Bengtsson was mostly certainly in the overlapping area. Someone like Mann, is clearly known as a “scientist”, but is clearly not a skeptic scientist.
I wonder if anyone here, who is so concerned about the “Climate McCarthyism” can actually tell me what sorts of abuse Bengtsson was subjected to. Why, more specifically, would he have been unable to continue his normal work if he had remained affiliated with the GWPF? Why would have caused him to fear for his health and safety?
What kind of abuse was he subjected to that equates with McCarthyism?
I mean surely, Judith and my much beloved “skeptics” must know in some detail. Was it that he received nasty emails? Some sort of threats? Perhaps he was accused of fraud? Torturing data? Do, pray tell, what do you know about the abuse he was subjected to? Surely, as “skeptics,” you must know, because surely a skeptical person would expect to have some information about the abuse he received before claiming that his treatment was tantamount to McCarthyism.
I mean surely, you must know. Right? Otherwise one might think that as with holocaust denial, and hand-wringing about a loss of free speech, you are holding a serious issue like McCarthyism hostage to score points in the climate wars.
Step forward my much concerned friends and tell me some details about the abuse, so I can join you in our outrage.
Heh, Bengston’s scream isn’t enough for Joshua, he wants details of the torture.
==============
Is it torture, kim? How do you know? Tell me so that I can share in your outrage.
Instead of reveling in your glee?
I agree Joshua. It’s not like his freedom, career and reputation are threatened. The guy had to know he would stir up a stool-storm. He couldn’t stand the heat and left the kitchen. The accompanying drama borders on hysterical.
Got a sock in your potty mouth, Horwad? C’mon. Be yourself so I can get your ass banned again.
I actually don’t know, Howard. I wouldn’t assume that if he suffered some sort of abuse, he deserved it.
I would like to know, however, what kinds of abuse he was subjected to that earns so many certain descriptions from self-described “skeptics.”
“Terror?” The man was terrorized? He was subjected to treatment that is the equivalent of those who were attacked by McCarthy? Really? I have known people that were targeted by McCarthy. Hundreds of pages of FBI files.
Is this really something that justifies these kinds of characterizations, or is this just more climate wars drama-queening?
I will wait for someone to give me something solid. If it isn’t forthcoming, than these folks should be ashamed to call themselves “skeptics,” IMO.
Do you also insist on lifting the lid at a closed casket funeral just to see what the corpse looks like?
Odd kind of voyeurism there, son.
Kim kertain. And as usual, not even remotely sceptikal.
-> “Do you also insist on lifting the lid at a closed casket funeral just to see what the corpse looks like?”
Well, actually, no I don’t? How is that analogous to asking people on what basis they start throwing around phrases like McCarthyism, or “terror,” or “beyond disgraceful,” or Nazi analogies?
What information do you have about the abuse he suffered? Tell me, so that I can join you in your outrage. Or is it that you actually don’t know? If it is the later, do you call yourself a “skeptic?”
Well, actually, no I don’t? How is that analogous to asking people on what basis they start throwing around phrases like McCarthyism, or “terror,” or “beyond disgraceful,” or Goebbles analogies?
What information do you have about the abuse he suffered? Tell me, so that I can join you in your outrage. Or is it that you actually don’t know? If it is the later, do you call yourself a “skeptic?”
I agree that McCarthyism shouldn’t be thrown around. McCarthy was absolutely on the right track. Had he been allowed to continue, we in the US probably wouldn’t have had to suffer under the sorry excuse for a President we now have.
Ironically, Joshua shouts that it isn’t McCarthyism and then demands we name names.
The irony is lost only on him.
Funny. A representative of a group that labels Skeptics as ‘Deniers’ wants skepticism, a group that can’t provide actual evidence wants evidence.
Would he be happy with a computer model predicting catastrophic academic harassment as imminent unless we act now?
At least that might be considered consistent…
Joshua,
I agree with your comment about McCarthyisn. McCarthyism is very much too pejorative a word to use in the climate debate. The criticism of someone is nothing like the firing, and the black-listing, that person. I can’t see that anyone in the climate science world has had that happen to them.
“I wonder if anyone here, who is so concerned about the “Climate McCarthyism” can actually tell me what sorts of abuse Bengtsson was subjected to.”
I wonder how many, who now ask for evidence of foul play, had also asked for similar evidence from Hansen when he claimed to be ubduly silenced.
Perhaps FoMD can tell a wondering world, eh Climate etc readers?
Josh, please list the “warmers” who have lost their jobs by pushing the hockey stick and CAGW……now list the other side.
Alarmist rule #1 – Always accuse your enemies of your own sins to deflect attention from yours.
Evidence: Mann’s statements about Dr. Curry, and his current law suits.
Evidence: David Appell’s claims of death threats – none found.
Evidence: Peter Glieck’s fraud with Heartland documents.
etc., etc.
I have no idea what Dr. Bengtsson was subjected to but it must have been pretty bad; otherwise, why would he react that way? Do you have some reason to doubt the treatment he received was truly menacing? And if he has overreacted, or fabricated events, why haven’t those who did contact him taken issue with his characterization of their correspondence and set the record straight? You don’t believe it because you don’t want to believe it.
The dare not, the cowards, all. And they’re horrified at the fools pushing disclosure here.
===========
Joshua, you want to know what kinds of abuse Bengtsson was subjected to. What we have is Bengtsson’s words:
“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety….I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”
Bengtsson apparently is highly regarded (or was) in meteorological circles. So we can chose to believe what he says, or not.
I chose to believe him. It certainly fits with my own, much more limited experiences if you happen to respond, even among friends, with a politically incorrect response. I wrote about that experience on Judith’s blog about 10 months ago. That is part of why I believe Bengtsson, that normally intelligent people are acting like zombies, attacking friends when they actually haven’t read the science. It is very tribal right now.
Well, Joshua. You have to read his email he sent around. People, colleagues from all over the world abused him by telling him their opinions what they think about his political statement and decision to join the GWPF. And some told him, they don’t want to be affiliated with him on the same paper anymore. He was being tortured with free speech. As we know that is equivalent to McCarthyism.
@jan
McCarthyism
Mc·Car·thy·ism
[muh-kahr-thee-iz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1. the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.
2. the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
learn it.
John –
–> “I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. ”
Yes, if you see no limit to what will happen, it would make sense to be reminded of McCarthy.
But let’s take one particularly prominent aspect of McCarthyism:
People where forced to answer questions about their beliefs before government and private industry panels. What do you see in the climate wars that is similar? Perhaps when someone like Judith or RPJr. or John Christy, are invited before government panels to express their views voluntarily? Do you not see a fundamental difference?
Here’s another particularly prominent aspect of McCarthyism:
What do you see today that resembles that aspect?
Here’s another prominent aspect of McCarthyism:
What do you see happening today that resembles that aspect of McCarthyism.
It is possible to protest against tribalism in science without exploiting disgraceful events of the past through analogies. And certainly, even beyond that, it is a stain on the label of skeptic to do so without any effen evidence.
Joshua, it isn’t that complicated. When people think of McCarthyism, they think of people being blacklisted.
My mother was very liberal, but was never involved in anything that would get her called before any body of any sort. Nonetheless, many people actually stopped talking and socializing with her, simply because she was outspoken in her views at a time when such views became suspect. She was in fact ostracized among a number of people for her political beliefs.
What happened to my mother was painful, but not anything like what happened with Bengtsson, who suffered both personally and professionally, and in a very public way.
When people use the word McCarthyism, they aren’t drawing an exact parallel with events 65 years ago; they are saying that someone has been blacklisted in ways that are harmful both to a number of individuals (those that are blacklisted) and to society (because it speaks of huge intolerance and of dark suspicions of those with a different viewpoint).
I’ll add to this so that you understand where I’m coming from: Rush Limbaugh also blacklists entire groups of people with his remarks and beliefs, he is a large part of our political intolerance in the US. But just because he does it, doesn’t mean we should. Someone needs to uphold standards of tolerance of dissent, and the ability to be agreeable while disagreeing. Bengtsson’s example shows that the left (climate alarmists) are acting very much like Limbaugh.
John at 8:41 pm
Not at all.
The features of McCarthyism was the prevelance of anonymous sources making allegations were even the details of the alleged transgressions were often not revelaed to the accused.
B. took a public position, and it seems that some of his colleagues have,very openly, told him very directly, what they think about that.
Calling this “McCarthyism” is some of the dumbest gibberish the ‘skeptics’ have ever produced – which is saying something.
Evidence: David Appell’s claims of death threats – none found.
“Death Threat Captured on Video”
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2011/07/death-threat-captured-on-video.html
As stated, none found.
And now we know who: US climatologists, which of course begins with our modelers at Columbia, Penn State, MIT, Texas at Austin, Colorado, U C Berkeley, etc. and a cadre of influence peddlers, Silicone Valley billionaires and their lobbyists in Washington DC.
“Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.”
This is the pressure to remove non-compliant editors and dissuade reviewers. This was McCarthysim then as it is now. The only thing that kept the viciousness hidden was the acquiescence of the “Silent Majortiy” into keeping their mouths shut. The heinous crimes of slander from the House of UnAmerican Activities was supported by liberal notables like John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey amongst others.
Today our McCarthyites in Climate Science are in the public eye as well as working behind the scenes to impose what can be popularly characterized as the “black hand” of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island fame.
I regard these characters, these climate scientists who have the insider’s ear in Washington DC and the President of the United States, as despicable individuals.
I am awaiting the Margaret Chase Smith’s and Edward R. Morrow’s of modern times to speak against this, what has become, the Reign of Terror with all its horrific attributes.
For our hostess; even a tenured position is no longer safe as College and University Presidents, their Boards and Provosts are not immune to political hacks and those who populate the press, news media, consultants and talking heads with their vitriol.
Obviously I have my dander up.
RiH008 –
–> “Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.”
Is that it? Withdrawal of support and withdrawal from joint authorship is the equivalent of McCarthyism? Is that your argument? Really?
Gee, I guess joshua has no clue on what McCarthyism is – http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/hintergrund-und-analyse/Der-Ueberlaeufer/story/17338168
–> “…Reign of Terror with all its horrific attributes.”
Reign of terror? Really? That does sound bad. What kind of terror was Bengtsson subjected to?
Joshua
“Reign of Terror with all its horrific attributes.” Is the general.
“Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.” Is the specific.
The Reign of Terror began long before Climategate email release with the specific pressure to get fired journal editors who allowed the publication of research that ran contrary to the insider’s clique’s orthodoxy.
The specifics to Bengtsson are the people who were collaborators on research grants and research in particular who felt compelled to withdraw their specific activity with regards to Bengtsson as he had taken a position which may criticize the orthodoxy.
These are powerful behind the scenes behaviors. These people who did this are vile individuals. The demonstrate a lack of integrity. Their work is suspect. What data did they leave out that was not supportive of their views?
Your questions show you have little insight and a profound ignorance of history of Climate Catastrophe and its similarity to McCarthyism.
RiH008 –
–> “The specifics to Bengtsson are the people who were collaborators on research grants and research in particular who felt compelled to withdraw their specific activity with regards to Bengtsson as he had taken a position which may criticize the orthodoxy. ”
So if a colleague of mind does something that I think has dangerous implications on a global scale, and as a result, I write to them and tell them my opinion, and tell them that I won’t continue to collaborate with them in the future, and you think that is tantamount to dragging them before HUAC, blacklisting them, and imprisoning them based on sometimes completely unsubstantiated claims about their political beliefs?
Do you call yourself a skeptic?
Joshua
Vile people do vile things which reflects upon their integrity and the work they do.
You ask:
“So if a colleague of mind does something that I think has dangerous implications on a global scale,”
If you were to act alone. If you were a person of integrity. If you were a collaborator on a specific project and someone on the team would join a group with which you didn’t agree, you have defiled you honor, integrity and pledge to the project because you have judge others, not on their work product, but so ephemeral a straw, you didn’t like what the other may say. You have judged, just as McCarthy judged as fellow travelers those with whom you had previously worked and encouraged, you have denigrated them for their thoughts. Your opinion of what constitutes “dangerous implications” reads directly from the HUAC transcript. You lack a historical perspective, much the pity. You are destine to follow in the path of those whom history has judged as wanting. Your arrogance to believe you know what constitutes “dangerous implications on a global scale.” OMG
Let us not fergit
the road ter consensus
is paved with the bodies
of the heretics of yester-year.
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society
Beth
Thank you for the link allowing me to re-read Freeman Dyson’s 2007 essay on striving to be a heretic.
I am sure others in diverse fields of endeavor concur with the spirit of the song popularized by Frank Sinatra: doing it “My Way.”
Mandating a consensus in a complex and emerging science like climate reflects the bureaucratic mindset of government thinking and problem solving. There is a reason why “heretic” has a religious connotation.
Western academia’s bizarre science of global warming has made the all too easy journey from superstition and ignorance to a war on reason.
Sad story, another illustration of the bad twist of the climate debate.
Pr Bengtsson can be sure that the scientific community around the world is, broadly speaking, on his side.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that Climate Science is evan aware of The Rules, never mind the obvious fact that it is so clearly experienced in applying them.
At least Professor Bengtsson is now familiar with Rules 5 and 12, up close and personal.
Heh!
Judith writes:
Hear! Hear!
When one considers the 5th (and/or lower) rate “alliances” such as that revealed by Mann and Lewandowski last November – and the unfathomable silence of “the community” in the face thereof – compared to the totally out of proportion pressures that were obviously exerted on Bengtsson whose own views (since at least 1990) have not really changed in the intervening years is (IMHO) indicative of a huge credibility chasm (i.e. well beyond a mere gap!) in the “community”.
It also strongly suggests to me that, with sincere apologies to Shakespeare, to coin a phrase, “Something is rotten in the state of climate science”.
To be honest, I had never heard of Bengtsson prior to his now short-lived “defection”. But that’s my problem, not his. Like many, I suspect, I certainly would have hoped that the courage of his obviously longstanding convictions would have helped him to, well, sustain his alliance with the GWPF.
But one can never really know how the pressures that have been brought to bear on an individual can affect him or her and the choices s/he might make. However, he is of a different generation and culture; so I do not fault him for the choice he has made.
My only hope would be that one day, in the not too distant future, he will be able to summon the courage to speak out, again – and name the names of those whose (IMHO) unconscionable actions have obviously adversely affected his choices.
–> ” But one can never really know how the pressures that have been brought to bear on an individual can affect him or her and the choices s/he might make. …”
True. But one can really know what those pressures were. You seem mightily outraged. Surely, then, you must know what those pressures were. Please, tell me so I can share in your outrage.
Yawn! Alas, it seems that the J-troll has embarked on yet another of his inane campaigns to divert and disrupt intelligent discussion amongst the grown-ups here.
What a silly, juvenile, attention-seeking twit he has turned himself into, eh?!
Yet he asked a rational question as to what kind of abuse Bengsston received that caused him to resign.
Or is it all smoke and mirrors.
I think all the drama queens need to put up or shut up.
Answer the question.
Would it really matter to you, Bob? Would you shun the defenders of your faith for blackballing a defector?
J-troll fan, bob droege wrote: May 14, 2014 at 11:31 pm
Oooh, look folks! Another little dictator-wannabe heard from! But that aside …
Mr. Droege, apart from your appalling lack of manners, what is it that makes you so sure that I – or anyone, for that matter – am obliged to “answer” the J-troll’s attention-seeking and diversionary “questions”?
In the absence of any rational explanation, grown-up readers may well conclude that both you and he are handicapped by inadequate reading comprehension skills. It is most unfortunate that – handicapped or not – you seem to share an inability to comprehend, for example:
Then again, Mr. Droege, perhaps you, and/or your stalwart little J-troll buddy in customary attention-seeking diversionary mode, would care to enlighten us as to the appropriate formulation for letters of resignation – and/or responses thereto.
Hillary: Joshua is expressing the traditional male adult view that does not get the vapors over an emotional incident that has all the indicators for a hysterical over-wrought reaction to hard-ball politics. Please stand aside, sweetie ;^) while the men ask the hard objective questions to figure out what is actually going on.
In published journals we have a thing called peer review, I suppose it might be understood that this is to prevent the publication of unfounded speculation and opinion in the journals.
GWPF is both the Global Warming Policy Foundation as well as a new entity, the Global Warming Policy Forum, the split being designed to allow an unfettered disinformation campaign without the need to disclose sources of funding.
All we have heard so far about the terror attack campaign against Bengtsson is that at least one of his collaborators does not want to co-author with him due to his alignment with the GWPF. Looks to me like integrity means something and I applaud the peer pressure put on Bengtsson not to associate with the climate disinformation squad.
Furthermore, I found this gem on my daily blog reading
“Decent people all over the world should find all conceivable legal tools to physically liquidate ultra extreme fascists who authored the disgusting article on this blog and who have intimidated the Swedish scientist. Apologizing the reaction by the climate fascists is unforgivable and as far as I can say, William Connolley and the cripple on this blog should get a death penalty.”
Pretty vial stuff, remember to keep your computer logins secure lest someone post in your name. Not playing the but mommy they did it too game cause I have not seen the first foul.
Now I ask for evidence that Bengtsson has received similar treatment.
I see Marc Anthony giving his famous speech while Ceasar and I are having a few drinks.
Howard –
Gotta say, I don’t see what gender has to do with it. This thread is a Godwin-a-polooza (a quick perusal returns analogies to McCarthy – the most favored – and we are told was a “lightweight” in comparison), Goebbels, Sandinistas, Nazis, terrorism, Stalinism, Russian and Chinese communists, Lysenkoism, etc., full of pearl-clutching, drama-queening, and hand-wringing from fainting couches about events that apparently not one can even describe in any detail, and only a tiny % has been done by females.
I highly doubt that you’d ever find a thread so full of “alarmism” in a vacuum of information from a group of females. Females are generally more practical than that.
I notice that still, not one person has come up with any details about what is so “alarming.”
This thread is a prize-winning example of why I love “skeptics” as much as I do. Seriously hilarious.
Howard –
Gotta say, I don’t see what gender has to do with it. This thread is a Godwin-a-polooza (a quick perusal returns analogies to McCarthy – the most favored – and we are told was a “lightweight” in comparison), Goebbels, Sandinistas, Naz*s, terrorism, Stalinism, Russian and Chinese communists, Lysenkoism, etc., full of pearl-clutching, drama-queening, and hand-wringing from fainting couches about events that apparently not one can even describe in any detail, and only a tiny % has been done by females.
I highly doubt that you’d ever find a thread so full of “alarmism” in a vacuum of information from a group of females. Females are generally more practical than that.
I notice that still, not one person has come up with any details about what is so “alarming.”
This thread is a prize-winning example of why I love “skeptics” as much as I do. Seriously hilarious.
Remember Hal Lewis?
~Hal Lewis (UCSB Professor Emeritus writing APS President Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, 6 October 2010)
It’s a peculiar situation. Bengtsson has done the bidding of the climate politburo, but by acknowledging that it was their disgraceful behaviour that forced him to do so, he has all but vitiated their efforts. Unless the gauleiters of climate orthodoxy are so suffused with hubris that they see no injury to their cause from his revelations, Bengtsson would appear to have burned not one, but two sets of bridges. Someone’s being very naive here.
Judith, why not write to the GWPF offering to take his place?
Martyr complex much?
Feel the nails.
==========
Bart
Three words is about all that should be used in trying to defend the indefensible. Any more and you will display for all to see what king of human being you are.
Heh, King of the Unclothed.
==========
Just when I try to shove the shiv, my finger slips.
Upset you are not able to add more wood to the pyre?
Those who rejoice at the torment wrack their souls tortuously.
====================
Lol. Are you ever genuine? Praying for those poor abandoned Russians. Making hay that day; making hay today.
The Russian ETF, RSX, is the best performer in my portfolio lately. Like Putin or not, he will be sure Russia gets its share. Unlike Barry, who bows to anything that moves and gives away other peoples money as he draws yet another “red line.” What a loser.
Rejoicing at the ant ridden, worm boweled picnic; it itches, and it stinks.
============
If you can’t prove global warming via science, do it by intimidation. IMO, this incident just proves they don’t have a case for catastrophic global warming. These idjiots are just trying to get more of the taxpayers money. Idjiots.
Is not the actual objective to diminish the credibility of the GWPF itself?
Bengtsson himself is just by-catch.
People ought to recall Matt Ridley’s surprise at finding himself made a science heretic himself, as explained in Ridley’s lecture on “Science Heresy (October 31, 2011), at the Royal Society of Arts in Edinburgh. (In print at Bishop Hill, via podcast at rsa.org, and long excerpt at Jonova.)
His point: good science that does not fall prey to pseudoscience NEEDS its heretics to keep it honest, and in order to not succumb to the universal human foible of confirmation bias.
L’affaire Bengtsson reminds us all of the enormous power of institutionalized science Orthodoxy, as well as the great courage required to oppose it.
Thank you, Dr Curry.
Politically biasing scientific peer review & publication
Bengtsson now exposes explicit corruption of the scientific method by using political bias to prevent publication of his paper. James Delingpole reports:
Climate-McCarthyism-The scandal grows
Wonderful to see the alarmists beclowning themselves in such typical fashion. Did anyone here have a scintillas of doubt that would be the case Even Joshua’s taken a break from his recent stay at troll rehab to weigh in with his usual inanities…
Is there something about climate alarmism that once embraced, makes a person nasty? Or is personal nastiness some sort of sina qua non for the embrace itself?
Because it really seems to be the case that a person can’t make the considered judgment that global warming is the most important problem of our age requiring trillions of dollars in mitigation, and still remain a decent human being.
sorry “sine”
PG calling somebody nasty. Precious.
Yes, perhaps, but I still think they’re pretty good rhetorical questions..
JCH holds nasty cards up his sleeves, in his pants pockets and behind his ears. Fold, me boy, fold.
=========
With kim it’s always one sided. He’s not genuine.
There is not a nasty bone in my body. Still married to my college sweetheart. Two great kids. One matched to one of the three best teaching hospitals in the world. I take care of my 90-year-old mother, who requires 24-and-7 care. Three years running, not a single day off.
Up yours, kim.
I don’t believe you JCH. Any anonymous fool can claim to be a saint.
I’m at a table across the room. I’d need a long spoon to sup yours.
=============
No, David, both true, and they are among the only reasons I listen to him at all.
===========
JCH,
There is quite a bit of over egging the discussion here and I haven’t seen anything to persuade me that you not having a nasty bone is untrue.
But I have seen evidence that you have several bones which are true believers. They probably are not idiot bones, but their faith makes them appear to be.
“I take care of my 90-year-old mother, who requires 24-and-7 care.”
Then how is it you waste yours and our time here?
Stick Granny in front of the TV?
Andrew
It amuses me that so much of Venona is undecrypted, yet we have storytelling like the recent West debacle. Have we a Dead Sea Scrolls-like situation? It seems that the thrust isn’t so much about historical revisionism, but rather sustenance of a modern day narrative.
Don’t bother trying to decrypt that; it’s a bit opaque to me too. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
==================
It didn’t look like a good match in the first place. He said he regretted the politicization and so joined a political group(?). I think he sees now why this was not good for someone who isn’t into the politics of the issue and just wants to talk about the science. GWPF is not the place for that, because it taints your credentials as a non-partisan scientist. It was his mistake to so publicly take sides in partisan politics, and he has now realized it was better not to. This was about the GWPF, not him. He might have been naive. Reading the rhetoric around the subject, he could have figured out he was jumping into hot water, but it seems he didn’t take the temperature and was genuinely surprised by how hot this subject is at the political level, especially in the US. In Europe organizations like GWPF don’t count for much, because the skeptical view has almost no sway in the corridors of power, so maybe he thought it was harmless, but in the US it means a lot more, being a well funded part of the Republican platform not to support any climate policies.
And if his co-authors want to remain apolitical they would every right to stop publishing with the guy. That is not McCarthyism. It’s not terrorism. It’s exercising professional judgement, which is their right.
The content of these communications is unknown. They could easily be completely free of nasty.
Heh, who needs the communications of the parties? The words of the thrilled alarmists are damning enough.
===========
Yeah, scientists have no business acting as advocates!
Oh…wait…uhhh…we mean….
There are some scientists, and it is a minority, who want to be advocates, and everyone knows know who they are because it is a deliberately public position. Seems Bengtsson didn’t want to be after all, but maybe he thought about it for a while, or didn’t realize that joining GWPF made him one by default.
JCH said “And if his co-authors want to remain apolitical they would every right to stop publishing with the guy. That is not McCarthyism. It’s not terrorism. It’s exercising professional judgement, which is their right.
The content of these communications is unknown. They could easily be completely free of nasty.”
You are amongst those seeking evidence. But you also claim it is professional judgement. You know this how? Because you were presented with evidence? Oh, wait. No. You weren’t. And yet you feel qualified to offer an explanation…without the evidence.
Points for consistency: No evidence–>Baseless Claim.
Hey! Even I could do that!
The insurance companies wait for no one.
If not settled out of court, this will be an interesting topic to follow.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2014/05/14/stories/1059999532
Insurance company sues Ill. cities for climate damage
Evan Lehmann, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Ok.
Since no one has come forward with any, you know, actual information about what abuse Bengtsson was subjected to – let me speculate.
Suppose he got a raft of emails where people said that they actually supported his views, but they were going to withdraw from authoring work with him in the future because they were being pressured to do so.
While it still wouldn’t be the equivalent of McCarthyism, it would certainly be disturbing.
Does anyone have evidence of something like that happening? What is it that actually happened that has folks so outraged? Why won’t anyone tell me? Obviously, being “skeptics” and all, you must all know. Why are you keeping it a secret?
I’m sorry you don’t appreciate the irony of comparing this with McCarthyism.
==========
Joshua, as you’ve repeated several times, it seems that no one here knows the specifics. In his brief resigation letter, Bengsston did not name names or give specifics. But the thrust of the letter is that the pressure he was put under was “unbearable.” Without knowing the man or his tolerance levels, I don’t know what he considers unbearable, but I think that it is not unreasonable to conclude from how he expressed itself that he came under pressure which was intense, persistent and unconscionable. He sounds as if was in shock when he wrote the letter.
Perhaps specifics will emerge, perhaps not, as he would be risking the incurrence of further wrath. But I think that there is sufficient in his letter to justify concern here.
You are wrong, kim. I think that throwing around accusations of McCarthyism without evidence of McCarthyism is absolutely ironic.
It’s the kind of irony that often makes climate “skeptical” websites iron-a-palooza. Where’s the Chief of unintentional irony?
Nope, Son; read up Venona.
========
Faustino –
–> “I don’t know what he considers unbearable, but I think that it is not unreasonable to conclude from how he expressed itself that he came under pressure which was intense, persistent and unconscionable. He sounds as if was in shock when he wrote the letter. ”
That is all fine. But we don’t know what it was that he considered to be intense, persistent, and unconscionable. Was it because colleagues wrote to him and said that they wouldn’t co-author papers with him as long as he remained affiliated with the GWPF? Would it be unconscionable if a colleague of his felt that his association with that organization had dangerous global implications, and as a result, they did not want to maintain an collegial relationship with him as long as he remained so affiliated?
Unconscionable? I don’t think so. I think that would be a case of someone exercising their rights to act on their beliefs just as Bengtsson did when he joined GWPF.
So while I find it disturbing that he would be so upset, without knowing the nature of the pressures he was subjected to, comparing it to McCarthyism is entirely unskeptical. What I described would not, remotely, be comparable to McCarthyism. And in fact, I would be far more disturbed that people would exploit the suffering relate to McCarthyism to score points in the climate wars.
–> “Perhaps specifics will emerge, perhaps not, as he would be risking the incurrence of further wrath. But I think that there is sufficient in his letter to justify concern here.”
Sure, concern is merited. I wouldn’t argue otherwise. My point is that these accusations of McCarthyism, and “terror,” and concentration camps, and Goebbels, are also concerning – given that it certainly seems that they are being made with no, zero, nada, zilch, niente, bubkis evidence to justify the comparisons.
I’ve read it, kim.
And I have known people who were accused w/o evidence. I know people who were persecuted for their political ideology.
And, I’ll link this again as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_Scare
And once again offer this quote:
Defend that to your heat’s content, kim. And then climb on your moral high horse. I always loves me some irony.
Joshua you provide an excellent example of a denial.
Joshie- I doubt you’ve even gotten out of the pumpkin patch.
Joshua gives evidence of having read the undecrypted Venona, and understood every word.
=========
Joshie has nothing but complaints about “skeptical” websites. But here he hangs bombarding the place with his inane loquacious smarminess. Judith should have kicked your silly ass off here long ago.
Of course nobody has any evidence of anything other than the startling letter of resignation , you already know that so go lurk under your bridge and wait for billy goat gruff to come along!
People may wish to comment on the weather or the football ,but on here it is what is happening on Planet Climate, so there is obviously going to be some speculation about what has happened. I would not think it is going to be very long until we have some revelations ,but then again if the Professor is so scared, it may be he will not reveal anything. You of course would prefer the latter option.
The more interesting question to me ,is why do you feel the urge to be the attack dog of warmistas ? As you say there is no evidence of anything other than the known facts , so what is your motivation for being here?
I find your presence disturbing , you being the self elected critic of nothing .
I look forward to my next visit to the USA , where I suspect a new question may be ..Are you now or have you ever been a member of an Anthropological Global Warming Skeptic Group?
Joshua | May 14, 2014 at 10:21 pm | Reply
A whole couple hours have passed since you made your petulant demand for evidence. Now you display the patience of a child too.
You’re a real tool. A walking talking dickhead.
Joshua, at 10:21 you say: “Since no one has come forward with any, you know, actual information about what abuse Bengtsson was subjected to – let me speculate.
Suppose he got a raft of emails where people said that they actually supported his views, but they were going to withdraw from authoring work with him in the future because they were being pressured to do so.
While it still wouldn’t be the equivalent of McCarthyism, it would certainly be disturbing.”
First, how can someone other than Bengtsson come up with actual information as to what he was subjected to? I take what he personally said as what he was subjected to. What he personally said is at the bottom of this reply, and it goes much farther than your speculation. Note that he worries about his health and safety, in addition to enormous group pressure.
Your speculation is that he got a lot of emails from people who said that quietly support him but have been pressured into withdrawing from co-authorship. If that had been the case, I feel pretty sure that Bengtsson would have told us that there were lots of closet supporters.
And, if that was all the “pressure” that he got, I doubt he would have resigned. Further, I agree with you that if that was all that happened, then it wouldn’t have risen to McCarthyism, but would nevertheless be quite disturbing.
Let me also speculate as to what sort of pressures Bengtsson received. Perhaps he will tell us more, but until he does, here are some of the things that I suspect happened: he was told that he wouldn’t be invited to speak at conferences any more, to become part of any panels, (and yes, to co-author papers). It likely was implied that, regrettably, he would be increasingly and publicly treated as and referred to as someone who is a bit too old, no longer things as clearly as he once did, too bad about the old man. His colleagues would have little to do with him henceforward: he would be shunned by many of his colleagues and friends.
That sounds a lot more like McCarthyism than your speculation does. Let’s hope Bengtsson can tell us more, so that neither of us have to speculate as much.
For reference, here is what Bengtsson’s said he was subjected to:
“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety….I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”
Suppose he got a raft of emails where people said that they actually supported his views, but they were going to withdraw from authoring work with him in the future because they were being pressured to do so. …
Then that would be reprehensible.
That’s why you wait for evidence.
Barty, Joshie, David and JCH are treating this like they treated the pause…err…hiatus..err non-warming. The first phase….there is no pause. Second phase….not much of one. Third phase…..well see, there are these other forcings that hide the warming and the warming took a deep dive and now lives with the fishes.
They will follow the same steps here. Tonight they are in denial. Tomorrow it will be minimizing the problem. The next day it will be that all the guilty parties will fess up and say “The Devil made me do it”
What are you babbling about? There is still no empirical-statistical evidence for the alleged “pause”/”hiatus”/”stop”, or whatever you want to call it, of global warming .
Trenberth and Jones disagree with you. So does the data – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss-land/from:1997/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2014
Looks like janny p p is still stuck in the first phase: denial.
Just a friendly reminder: the pause is killing the cause.
This must be why Montfort and his likes never have to offer anything else than some blubber about “denial” and similar ad hominem, and never present the empirical statistical evidence for the alleged “pause”/”hiatus”/”stop” of global warming, asserted by them.
It it really was as clear as they pretend to be, why do they notoriously refuse to show the statistical metrics based on which it could be shown that there was “pause”/”hiatus”/”stop” of global warming?
Jan Perlewitz: What are you babbling about? There is still no empirical-statistical evidence for the alleged “pause”/”hiatus”/”stop”, or whatever you want to call it, of global warming .
That may be your take on the substantial statistical evidence, but most of the mainstream climatologists promoting AGW are busy developing explanations for the “pause”; such as a dramatic switch (with no substantiated mechanism but several hypotheses, obviously ad hoc) at about 1998 whereby the atmospheric CO2 started to warm the deep ocean instead of the troposphere and surface.
Jan,
People who want to argue over terminology such as the “pause” are missing the point. Simply put, the models and the empirical data are diverging. Doesn’t mean warming has stopped. But it is a pretty good sign that the models are nowhere near as accurate or capable of projecting changes in the climate system as some people keep claiming.
timg56 on May 15, 2014 at 8:09 pm:
I am not arguing over the terminology. I do not care much whether it is called “pause”, “hiatus”, or “Mr. Smith”. I am asking for the emprirical statistical evidence.
So, please tell me what data from the models and from measurements were compared and based on what metric and criteria have you determined that the models and the empirical data were diverging in a way that it would scientifically justify the conclusion, which you are asserting here. Or in what scientific publication can I find this?
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
Of course the problem could be subjectively choosing the wrong freakin’ solution from a family of feasible solutions because they have not the slightest freakin’ clue.
e.g. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long or http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.abstract
philjourdan May 16, 2014 at 8:34 am:
What are these data supposed to show? They don’t show anyhing. Where is the empirical statistical evidence? Where is the comparison with the models? Ever heard of confidence intervals? Statistical significance tests? Probably not.
Sorry Jan, but models do not matter. Data does. If your models do not agree with data, your models are wrong, not the data. The data shows you are wrong.
It does not have to show anything else. It is data. And that is called science. Not mysticism.
Generalissimo Skippy on May 16, 2014 at 3:26 am
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
I know this paper. I consider the methodology and the arguments presented in the paper as flawed. Why?
The authors claim an “inconsistency” between observations and models, since the surface temperature data (HadCRUT4) had a trend of 0.14 deg. C/decade and the simulated ensemble mean over the models, calculated from the grid boxes of the models where observations exist (which is flawed in my opinion, since excluding of mostly the high latitudes from the model data may emphasize a warm bias in lower latitudes in the models making them appear warmer than they are, but a possible cold bias of the global observations data set is not excluded in this way) had a trend of 0.3 deg. C/decade between 1993 and 2012. For the period 1998-2012 the values were 0.05+/-0.08 and 0.21 deg.C/decade, respectively.
Nature provides only one single realization of many possible realizations of temperature variability over time from a whole distribution of possible realizations of a chaotic system for the given climate conditions, whereas the ensemble mean of models is an average over many of the possible realizations (117 model simulations in this case). Each individual model simulation can be considered as a single realization from the distribution of all possible realizations. How is it scientifically justified to claim an “inconsistency” between a single realization and the average of many realizations, just because one single realization, the one from Nature, is different from an average of many realizations? One can see rom Figure 1 in the paper, that a few of the individual model simulations show about the same trend values as the trend from the observation.
If the models were perfectly able to simulate the probability distribution of the population of possible realizations in Nature, so assuming the models were flawless, and the one realization from Nature, which we know lies itself in the tail of the probability distribution of Nature realizations, then this realization will also lie in the tail of the distribution simulated by the models with necessity. According to the (flawed) logic in the paper, an “inconsistency” between Nature and models would have to be diagnosed, which is a logical contradiction to the assumption.
I do know understand what you mean with “choosing” a solution.
Jan P Perlwitz on May 16, 2014 at 10:48 am:
It was supposed to say “I do not understand …”
Nice Jan,
Borrow a page from David Appell’s playbook and act like you’ve never seen information. Even the MSM has discussed the divergence between temperature data and model projections. You are saying you haven’t seen a single presentation of this? Where a plot of temperture against those of various model outputs shows temps plodding along while the majority of the models race upwards?
timg56 wrote on May 16, 2014 at 12:42 pm
Did I read this correctly? Did you just say “MSM”? You are directing me to the media where I should inform myself about scientific evidence regarding statements about scientific questions? Really!
I do not consider the media a reliable source at all for getting properly informed about science or scientific evidence for claims made. In contrast, you seem to think that claims must be true, if they were even made in the mainstream media.
Jan P. Perlwitz: I consider the methodology and the arguments presented in the paper as flawed.
Fair enough. We all find flaws in the various papers. Hardly a one can be said to be perfect. But is it a sign of “bad faith” for others in the field to disagree with your evaluation of this paper?
philjourdan wrote on May 19, 2014 at 11:05 am:
So you are asserting, when you have data based on measurement these data can never be wrong. Is this correct?
Please state your criteria and the metrics which you apply for such a statement.
You showed following graphic to support your assertion:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss-land/from:1997/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2014
What would have to be fulfilled so you would accept a statement to be right that the models agreed with the measurement data? Only if there was a point-by-point 100% match between the climate model data and shown observation data?
So what are you demanding? That models which simulate a physical system must be perfect, i.e, perfectly reproduce observation/measurement data w/o any allowable range of discrepancy, before you would accept any prediction or other conclusion from model simulations as a scientifically valid one?
Really. Observation data are always right. Statistics don’t matter. Developing scienctific criteria for how to assess theoretical understanding or models in comparison to observations/measurements doesn’t matter.
You have a quite absurd understanding of science.
Jan, with all due respect, I have to wonder the same. I provided links to 2 NASA papers showing that GCM regional results are drastically wrong, and the only reason the results are as close as portrayed, is that they are averaged globally.
I also show that actual surface measurements give a far different view of surface temps than the published global temp records. At a minimum they show that temp trends have not been uniformly global, so while you could make a case that CS is high in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s much much lower in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere, again how can it be called global warming when it’s not actually global. And the sheer lack of temperature sampling in the past makes any trend derived from these measurements suspect.
Lastly, I spent over 15 years supporting simulations, much of which was explaining why the simulator gave results that did not match the expectations of the user. While I see value in GCM’s, making policy that will have a multi-trillion dollar impact from them is absurd, unless one is clueless or has an agenda.
Data cannot be wrong. However the interpretation or the collection of data can distort it so that it is no longer correct. Then it is not data.
For a model to be accurate it has to at least give the semblance of mimicking reality. The models are not correct even if the impending El Nino pushes temperatures up. Why? Simple. The models do not model a stair step temperature rise. That is not to say they cannot be changed to account for it, but at present they do not. They do not allow for long periods of basically stagnant temperatures.
Think of it as a broken clock. It tells the correct time twice a day. And if the temperatures stair step up again, the models will be close (but not accurate in any case). For the models to be useful, they should forecast trends more often than once every 20 years.
‘Witch-hunt’ forces out climate scientist
Heh, your article fades out just as it gets to the US Government scientist. Oh, the teases.
==========
Not to beat a dead anti-anti-communist horse, but McCarthy was proven essentially right in his claims that agents of the Soviet Union were present throughout the US government in the 50s, including at the highest levels.
The only victim of hysterical conspiracy theories were conservatives who fought the left’s attempts to support an existential threat to the west.
But then, demonizing your opponents is a long standing and explicitly endorsed tactic of the organized left.
Gary M
The Soviet Union at the time of the 1950’s was mysterious which enhanced it allure. The USA had many of its warts on display with the emergence first of the conflict and then legitimacy of a Jewish presence and then the foothold gained by blacks for a place at the table of abundance. Many people thought a collective society with a strong central government was the appropriate evolutionary system in man’s progress to it own humanity.
Unfortunately for the book club set, the counsel on world affairs participants, those who were educated and destine to carry the intellectual mantel, the blinders came off slowly, painfully, stunned by the brilliance of the light of day, the fall of the Berlin Wall, no more mysteries, no more “yes, buts..” there were spies who revealed secrets for which people in distant lands died. And, in the end, the “Containment Policy” proved more correct than any other government policy of appeasement much to the chagrin of academics from the highest places. John Foster Dullas, Dwight David Eisenhower and not Adele Stevenson had the best approach.
So yes, Joseph McCarthy articulated a reality and then proceeded to destroy people’s lives as carelessly as any Stalinist.
Its how one goes about inquiring about the truth. Just as then and is now. Climate Scientists are engaged in Climate McCarthyism. It is really about how one goes about maintaining one’s integrity in a conflicted world.
McCarthy was an appalling lout who was right. The climatariat don’t have the excuse that they are addled by drink…and they are wrong to boot.
George Kennan on Containment not War. A fascinating study
of the battle of opposing political system.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/11/quick-study-george-kennan%E2%80%99s-cold-war-policy-containment
mosomoso,
An excellent summation of the McCarthy phenomenon.
He was substantially right, but also an arrogant blowhard of a senator. (OK, maybe that’s redundant.)
Good for him, we’ll take him back even with the “greenhouse mafia” slur.
As if he’d come back to the likes of you. Sorry, all your grace are belong to us.
=============
Still trying to get a real live scientist on your side eh Kim.
Looks like this one got away.
Make hum an offer he can’t refuse.
Warn your kids about bullying on the internet. Don’t tell them that adults do it too, business as usual in certain cliques.
Bengtsson has pimples? Send money for his health care.
=======
A conspiracy to intimidate, threaten, or oppress that restricts a person’s Constitutional right to freedom of association can result in criminal prosecution in the United States, and a federal prison sentence of up to ten years for the conspirators. I do not know that that is what occurred in this instance, nor do US laws apply in the UK where GWPF is located, however such a stern penalty should give others pause.
see “Prosecuting Those Who Force a Scientist to Resign: Is Intimidation Free of Consequences?” at
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/prosecuting-those-who-force-scientist.html
OK, Federal scientist pens billet doux to Bengtsson. Well, you brought up the Federal Pen.
========
Sounding more and more like Stephen E. Schwartz, though he has also worked with GA Vecchi and CW Landsea.
Or it could be a Gavin Schmidt type, lol.
Since we’re hallucinating on adrenalin, maybe pressure reads like this
Dear Lennart,
I cannot in good conscience write a paper with a somebody who is a member of the GWPF. Best of luck with your new endeavor.
US scientist who works for the US government
Wow, dripping with threat and intimidation.
The civil rights conspiracy statute requires proof of both an identifiable Constitutional or federal statutory right, and specific intent of the conspirators to deprive the victim of his federal right. It was passed to aid implementation of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The primary concern was voting rights of recently freed slaves, and the Democrats then newly formed auxilliary, the KKK.
I don’t see any real likelihood of prosecution in this case though. And I think that’s a good thing..
First, this administration would never prosecute anyone acting to further its energy control agenda, as you suggest.
Second, proving specific intent to deprive Bengtsson of his right of free association (or any other federal right) would be problematic. Application in this context could criminalize all sorts of legitimate speech, from consumer boycotts to political campaigns. Did those who pressured the NBA to force that progressive nut case Donald Sterling out of the NBA commit a crime?
Third, I am not sure you could define ostracism and withdrawal of co-authorships as threats or intimidation for purposes of the statute.
More importantly, the last thing skeptics need to do is join progressives in criminalizing speech.
Gary I think it’s a freedom of religion issue. Specifically Bengtsson wanted to be free of the misanthropic cult “The Church of Carbon Sin” and they conspired to not let him out.
Gavin demands faith in consensus
Science as McCarthyism : “Another scientist gets blackballed for his skepticism about global warming.” By Rupert Darwall
JCH,
Collaberation in publishing is important, and publish or perish still holds. You can try to down play it all you want. Only shows you would rather turn your blind eye to the situation than give up on your belief system.
It somehow doesn’t surprise me that a lot of skeptics defend red-under-the-beds McCarthyism, because it is those same people that accuse almost all the scientists of being in a global socialist plot instead of just presenting their scientific results.
Is the conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories:
a cognitively dissonant;
b infinitely regressive;
c a little from column a and some from column b?
You make it sound Jim that the agenda and political association of the “consensus” are beyond question. That’s nonsense of the first order.
Do you see the impact in a U.S. society has only 7% GOP representation in say “journalism”?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/just-7-percent-of-journalists-are-republicans-thats-far-less-than-even-a-decade-ago/
That included David Brooks and who knows how many other false flag GOP members in the poll.
Where is there a poll of climate scientists and their political coloring? It isn’t “conspiracy theory” or a “plot” Jim D, it’s pure human nature in a deeply polarized society with dozens of intricate self-segregated political enclaves. All of the most active green activist warmers are deeply left-wing in culture, tone and messaging. Many radically so.
For all of flaws of Senator McCarthy you miss the most important part of the story, he was often correct. There were communists all through the FDR/Truman administrations and in many social and commercial enclaves. The smear use of “McCarthyism” is quite hypocritical considering FDR interred people without trials, directed branches of government to destroy individuals who were symbolically and politically important (Andrew Mellon quickly comes to mind), stacked court appointments and whose entire presidency garnered class war mob hatred as a driving policy (any reminders of something more recent Jim D???).
I suspect many climate scientists would just outright light at this point if surveyed but a serious attempt should be made. AGW is an outgrowth of the “Che” tee-shirt, Earth Day Green crowd of the 60’s. That is the “consensus” and the bully and thug tactics are directly related.
GS, the difference is that I don’t think they are conspiring to have that socialist-takeover theory. They each individually have that ideation by their own declarations on these pages and I am pointing that out. Surely you have noticed them too.
cwon14, the conspiracy theory about the 97% having a political agenda doesn’t hold water when many of these scientists are either politically to the right, or not at all political. You have painted them all with a convenient brush for your theory, but that doesn’t work with any knowledge of the many individuals in this 97% who only want to talk about the science, and the explanations of past and current climate and how it can change in the future. Politics-first skeptics do a lot of projection of their own motivations onto the scientific community, thinking that every scientific idea has some political idea behind it.
Skeptic science, i,e, the “science” we skeptics mean when we say “science” is the scientific results, it is hypothesis testing.
In contrast, when the media, politicians and many many academics talk of “science” they mean a group of people, almost entirely academics and the rules of this club is that you can only get in if submit to other members of the club and get them to sanction your membership (which comes by getting papers and grants).
So it is a “social” plot – it’s something I call “consensus science” – science by committee. It isn’t what most skeptics were taught as “science”.
Jim D says,
“the conspiracy theory about the 97% having a political agenda doesn’t hold water when many of these scientists are either politically to the right, or not at all political.”
What a naive view of politics!
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
You have your sides backwards. You and your ilk are defending McCarthyism. You seek to excuse it with lame excuses and evasion. If you were indeed pro science, you would condemn, unconditionally, the treatment. It matters not WHAT was done, only that suppression of science has been done.
yet you excuse it. The New McCarthy.
‘I received emails from colleagues all over the world telling me it was a “questionable” group.
‘But what made me the most upset was when a colleague from the US resigned as co-author of a paper, simply because I was involved. … – Lennart Bengtsson
Note how far he has backed off.
When a famous trainer was helping make a movie about Australia’s equivalent to Seabiscuit, the director asked him if it would be somehow possible to recreate a realistic Melbourne Cup with all the horses finishing exactly as they had done in the original race in the 1930s. The horse trainer and his mates had a good laugh before giving a definite yes. Seems they’d had plenty of practice at that sort of thing.
I think we can say from Bengtsson’s experience that it will always be possible to have 97% of scientists holding to some consensus or other. The trick will be not to laugh.
Coming after Professor Emanuele’s of MIT admission that Climate science from the 19th century was behind the IPCC’s work, it is perhaps understandable why so many attacked Bengtsson.
There is of course the knee-jerk reaction of many of a certain kind of skeptic to make Dr. Bengtsson into some kind of counter consensus hero, similar to the Dr. Curry treatment. A little critical thinking for a moment. He hasn’t revealed much, doesn’t discuss what the AGW movement is directly linked to as an agenda and speaks in the same sniveling terms of the events at hand.
Rudolf Hess flies to England.
He’s born in 1935 and he sights concern over his career? He’s 79 years old and is known worldwide in part for his conformity to AGW advocacy as weaseling and vague as that may have been over the years. He “regrets” politicization? He’s seen and actual been part of the consensus crime spree of the later 20th century to date and this is all he wants to fess up to? Everyone is now in a hurry to forget he’s a perpetrator with a long history of looking the other way (at best), of false equivocation of who was the bully and thug in science and most importantly the underlying political agenda that is a 200 kilo anvil around his neck. An underlying global statist control agenda he likely sympathizes with to this moment. None of that is renounced or even acknowledged to exist. Shouldn’t he apologize for general political thuggery of the “consensus” as far as he has contributed support in the past? Shouldn’t the Greenshirt global agenda of AGW be acknowledged in direct terms as he has only witnessed the growth and machinations over what 50+ years??
His resignation is of course gutless, he’s still a member of the same mob even if he left the consensus bunker for what….two weeks? He doesn’t want the noise so other people are standing up to Soviet science standards brought globally to try to protect his freedom as well as anyone else’s. They told him to resign and of course he did, another AGW advocate point scored.
If they were real defectors the would renounce the whole AGW, globalist, central planning agenda beyond the mere tactics that are causing his trepidations of the moment. Their conformity is intact, they never directly acknowledge the underlying political purpose of the AGW meme from inception so it’s really more a case of dropping the burdens of forced servitude of being expected to be green activists rather then contrition for what the AGW movement truly represents. Oh, it’s a crack in orthodox. It’s a positive but this sort of skepticism is miles from the actual truth that as it turns out many skeptics and warmers right here on this board will be upset to be reminded of.
Maybe more will come but somehow I doubt it, he’ll have green advocacy expectations for his contribution muted. His peer perpetrators told him to jump and he asked how high. Exhausted and burned out Greens aren’t exactly the same as repentant and ultimately somewhat reformed ones. If they are still obfuscating the central political purpose of climate agenda science through abstraction they are still serving a purpose to that agenda.
This might all make more sense if Bengtsson hadn’t been talking about the “green mafia” since 1990. I haven’t seen any of the discussion about him claim any recent conversion to skepticism. From what I have read about his position over the years, he sounds like a typical lukewarmer.
The only recent change I see is his joining GWPF. A certain amount of dissension within the “scientific” discussion is tolerated. (From recent discussion about the “pause” and ENSO, I am beginning to believe there is much less consensus among the consensus than most believe.) But associating with heathen apostates cannot be countenanced.
But I will say I find it naive for him to be surprised by the reaction he got to joining the GWPF. Members of the tribe are always so shocked when they find themselves on the receiving end of what they have seen others endure for decades.
This is what progressives do, and have been doing for decades.
It’s about expectations Gary, I hear what you are saying but if the best that is going to be achieved is insider (left-wing) in-fighting while continued mythology that the broad AGW movement is “scientific” (which it isn’t) then little progress is made.
Getting hate from your political peers who think you’ve gone soft has nothing to do with free-speech or the politically misaligned pejorative “McCarthyism” which is term fraught with illogical thinking and social bias to begin with. Despite all his flaws and excesses Joseph McCarthy happened to be on the right side of history and often accurate in his general assessment regarding communist social infiltrations. so when liberals such as Dr. Curry use the term it certainly sounds hollow and twisted.
This is about liberal orthodox, a thousand light-years from “McCarthyism” in any fantasy form you might choose.
Of course this slanging match happens because of the on/off nature of climate change. which is perfectly predictable from 20th century physics. Whether you are a believer or sceptic depends on which era of climate you look at. For example, the singularity of 1940 separates two different eras. 1910 to 1940 is a warming era, whereas 1940 to 1970 is a cooling era, all of which is very confusing to the oceans which have a very long memory.
See my theoretical model underlined above.
This is quite extraordinary. It seems these turn of events will have more impact, since bad news is always good advertising!
There are not many forums where opposing viewpoints on global warming /climate change can be disseminated effectively. And while I appreciate the effort made by “free market” think tanks /institutes (such as Heartland) to give skeptics a platform, I also think it’s very sad that it is left to these types of organisations (which I don’t really rate at all, but really enjoy watching credible scientists like Lindzen give talks…..)..
It just goes to show, that these days, the appearance of authority is rated more highly than the science at issue, GWPF no exception.
Ummm… After all the breathless press releases for each “it’s worse than we thought” climate science paper, after all the “we are all going to die” editorials by enviro-wacko-advocate/scientists, and after all the obvious efforts to silence and/or ostracize ANYONE who disagrees (eg the UEA emails, or Judith’s experiences), it would be shocking if Bengtsson did not suffer the consequences of a climate fatwa. Public defunding is the only solution to this problem… have Bengtsson provide a list of names, and either pull their public funding, or fire them if they work in a public institution. Nothing else is going to stop this obscene behavior… nothing.
What a great opportunity.
GWPF is a think tank. It has some baggage. fine
hmm.
Time for a different kind of think tank
Science Advisors:
Lennart Bengtsson
Steve McIntyre
Judith Curry
Hans Von Storch
Policy Advisors
Roger P Jr
Ross McK
Tol
Communications
Marcel C.
Now all we need is money.
Steve,
+1.
If you are serious, I can contribute some low $ four figures to the cause.
Steven,
No joke. What you say is brilliant. I’d give to it what I could. With no expectations. Let them say what they think is science. Chips fall where they may.
Thank you, Mosher.
Best idea you have had. I am sure support would be overwhelming.
Tanks for the tinking, moshe. With funding, how would your committee function better than it already does without funding?
================
@Jim
Thanks, I’ll need to talk to some folks and see what is involved
@kim
Tanks for the tinking, moshe. With funding, how would your committee function better than it already does without funding?
Think of it as sanctuary.
Right now if you oppose ANY tenet of the consensus, even the political tenets, you are classed as a denier. with no place to go, people stay in the
tribe.
Next, GWPF is tainted, as is heartland, cato, you name it.
Heh, moshe, ‘sanctuary’. How about a big hotel in Lebanon? You’ve already mentioned three bombed out castles.
==========
”
Now all we need is money.
”
And science.
And more cow bell…
Well, the alarmists have Ft. Knox and Blue Babe’s oxbell; they just thought they had science.
==============
Mosher, good idea. Don’t forget John Christy, Nic Lewis, Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, among others. When you think about it, there are a lot more solid scientists that have braved the slings and arrows of Joe Romm and his ilk, to put their own understanding of science before the community.
Best idea Mosh has had in a long time, and that’s really saying something. Why can’t we just put you in charge?
@Reverend
think tanks dont do science. they assess science and position science and frame science.
As it stands climate science needs a re framing.
@John, I would add Nic Lewis
The others have too much baggage. Sorry. doesnt mean they are wrong.
I’d like to add Lomborg, but there too.. baggage.
Steven Mosher | May 15, 2014 at 1:36 am |
If you’re serious, and you almost always are, might one suggest addition of at least some of the reasoned voices Dr. Bengtsson listened to when he withdrew from the GWPF.. on the fair guess that some of these reasoned voices were actually being reasonable in the same way as you’re being reasonable.
Also, you might want to consider putting McIntyre into a separate category of Statistical Advisor, and expand that, and fill the void to boot with some of your colleagues from BEST.
There are other names I’d recommend, but I doubt you could get them to commit the time.
Interesting that steven can’t think of including anyone that disagrees with him about climate change (and that he wants to include tribalists).
As a result, his think tank would result in zero change.
Just more same ol same ol’
Joshua | May 15, 2014 at 8:17 pm |
Mosher’s making a fine distinction about baggage that you might not fully apprehend, as you’re not a Black Hat marketer or habitue of that world.
He’s been very careful to prune the GWPF list of those most likely to let zealotry overrule good message control. This is a sage move.
And absent these voices, the GWPF would implode like one of those burning paper bags left at people’s doors on Devil’s Night.
Oh. Wait. Those don’t so much implode. Still, be entertaining to watch.
http://onthinktanks.org/2013/09/12/how-did-leading-us-think-tanks-fare-in-2012-analysis-by-numbers/
Aim high.
Bart –
==> “He’s been very careful to prune the GWPF list of those most likely to let zealotry overrule good message control. This is a sage move.”
Zealotry is relative. While none of them are among the most likely, Ross labels and editor a “groveling, terrified, coward. Stevie Mac makes accusations of “cleansing” and makes analogies to child molesters. Tol is very concerned 24/7/365. JPJr. calls people liars and impugns their ethics (with weak tea plausible deniability). Judith and Hans seem to me to match your description – I have no idea about Marcel or Lennart.
This fits well with the current US commencement season with highly interesting speakers hounded from appearing.
I have read all the comments in sequence on this thread.
Taking the resignation reasons at face value, some of you ought to be ashamed at your lack of outrage or concern as to what has happened. Whether the eminent scientist concerned is a sceptic or a warmist, that the pressure they received was so severe that they had to recant their position is surely lamentable and disturbing?
Why not condemn unequivocally the group think, the assumed moral and ethical superiority and the arrogant utter certainty of their case that has meant that his colleagues have presumed to bully this man into telling him how he ought to think and to get back in line?
This is disgraceful behaviour by parts of the climate science community which should be condemned outright.
The motto of the Royal Society is ‘nobody’s ones word is final.’ It seems that in the case of climate science that belief is thought to be outdated and it is thought acceptable to bully those that retain their scientific scepticism.
Whatever ‘side’ you are on and whether the scientist concerned being vilified is a sceptic or a warmist this sort of bullying should be condemned.
I am at a climate conference this afternoon at Exeter University. It will be interesting to see if it is a topic of conversation.
tonyb
When it comes to high-tech lynchings, I never take anything at face value. I should probably be more reckless and join in on the fun of hanging the potentially innocent by the neck until their reputations are damaged significantly, but there something about damaging the potentially innocent that bothers me, and I am not really deeply ashamed that it does.
You do not know what the co-author who works for the US government said to him. Maybe he cited a federal regulation that he thinks prohibits him from working with a policy lobbyist. Maybe he was wrong about the regulation applying. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Nobody knows what was actually said to Bengtsson.
This aspect of science is actually very old hat. Democracy is a disaster as far as I’m concerned but unless there is a better, I’m sticking with it, as I am with science…
Perhaps there are not enough “mavericks” (see Climate Etc.)? Last discovery that really made a difference is probably Penicillin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Florey
80 million lives and counting (and yes, the big pharmaceutical companies rejected his science, primarily because flemming’s group only had incomplete structure of molecule).
Science is always a battle, and so it should be. The good fighters are remembered. The really awful fighters (in terms of science) like Mann are forgotten in time….
JCH takes rationalization to new heights. He can’t bring himself to look at the bigger picture.
What big picture? Lol. It’s a big fake picture.
A very good candidate to be the mysterious co-author is Stephen E. Schwartz. He works for the government. He has written a paper with Bengtsson. His scientific work has been very problematic to climate scientist advocates. He writes exactly what he wants to write. He has not lost his job. He publishes a lot of papers.
In your big picture this guy does not exist, so there is something very wrong with your big picture.
Excellently stated.
“Why not condemn unequivocally the group think, the assumed moral and ethical superiority and the arrogant utter certainty of their case that has meant that his colleagues have presumed to bully this man into telling him how he ought to think and to get back in line?”
That’s what’s most “revealing” about this episode. Not the persecutory aspect, which is mild compared to real McCarthyism, but “the arrogant utter certainty of their case.” They see themselves as faultless crusaders for a cause. They haven’t bothered to read anything but straw-man versions of the contrarians’ case, but they think the know it all, and that there can’t possibly be any “bugs” in their program. E.g., quoting “Latitude”:
“A forthcoming paper published in Progress in Physics has important implications for the ‘basic physics’ of climate change. Physicist Dr. Pierre-Marie Robitaille’s paper(s) show the assumption that greenhouse gases and other non-blackbody materials follow the blackbody laws of Kirchhoff, Planck, and Stefan-Boltzmann is incorrect, that the laws and constants of Planck and Boltzmann are not universal and widely vary by material or different gases.”
Oopsie!
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JCH
Reread the resignation letter. He is not talking merely about ‘a co-author’ is he? He is talking far more widely. Here is part of the text
‘I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.’
All the intellectual and moral gymnastics in the world will not disguise the unvarnished truth that this man was -in his view-intolerably bullied by those he had previously seen as colleagues. I condemn this bullying from whatever ‘side’ it emanates. Will not the warmists on this blog do likewise?
tonyb
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I find this story really sad. Michael Mann describes in his book the harrassment he recieved from the sceptic (denier, whatever you want to call them) side of the climate argument. And now I read that the sceptics are outraged that the same tactics are being used on another scientist.
Is this kind of abuse allowed only when it is directed against someone that you do not like (“you” meaning anybody)? I have read lots of nasty words in this blog directed at others. What is the difference?
rmdobservations
Personally, I deplore vilification and demonisation from either ‘side.’ I hope you do as well.
tonyb
climatereason Yes, I like civilised debate.
Better reread Mann’s book. I think you misread it.
Michael Mann has a persecution complex. He wants to position himself as a brave warrior, standing in the front line where the battle is hottest, placing himself at risk. The guy should have enlisted.
“We have also seen a disgraceful display of Climate McCarthyism by climate scientists” – JC
So anyone who disagrees with Bengtsson should just shut the hell up?
Go free speech!!
And the poor precious petal has had a week of negative feedback? Oh my, ‘Climate McCarthyism’ indeed.
Imagine if he’d been subject to ongoing harassment and vitriol for years, he might know what Michael Mann feels like.
And maybe now that Judith is so so exercised by such things, she might have more insight into the obsessive behaviour exhibited by ‘skeptics’, and herself, towards Mann.
Will she now de-cry that ‘McCarthyism’?
” And we have seen the GWPF handle this situation with maturity and dignity”- JC
LOL!
A greater display of PR spin you’ll never see.
Why else the multiple ‘press releases’ over such a petty thing. They’re trying to milk it for every bit of publicity they can generate.
Micheal
I think you will find that most people will condemn the hounding of anyone wether it be Phil Jones, Mann or in this case Bengtsson. Those that are responsible should be named and shamed. Just because Mann has been hounded for years does not make it right that Bengston is getting the same treatment now. Time to stop the vitriol, name calling and get back to polite debate.
“I think you will find that most people will condemn the hounding of anyone wether it be Phil Jones, Mann ” – Jack.
Looks like most poeple don’t hang out here.
So who was arrested Michael?
Or are you just whining because you think only one side has the right of free speech and the rest of us should STFU?
Michael – this isn’t about free speech. Lennart Bengtsson’s detractors have exercised their free speech – no one has shut them up AFAIK. But the free speech “issue” is nothing more than a Red Herring. The real issue is what this exercise of free speech says about those who exercises it against Bengtsson. The issue is the sorry state of “climate science” as illustrated by this incident. Bengtsson should just go postal and name everyone who acted against him and exactly what they did or said. That would be an appropriate use of free speech IMO, and might even do a modicum of good for climate science.
Jim,
“acted against him”?????
You mean, told him the GWPF was “questionable”
Poor petal!
ClimateTreason has a nice ring.
Maybe Joshua Troll Gollum would like to claim his precious?
This is a sad day for everyone ,I do not think there will be winners only losers . Those Alarmists who are currently ecstatic about this situation may live to have the smile wiped from their faces.One can only hope.
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/05/mccarthyism-my-foot-stoat-has-story.html?showComment=1400136030423#c1487360911034584445
Luboš Motl: May 15, 2014 at 4:40 PM
Decent people all over the world should find all conceivable legal tools to physically liquidate ultra extreme fascists who authored the disgusting article on this blog and who have intimidated the Swedish scientist. Apologizing the reaction by the climate fascists is unforgivable and as far as I can say, William Connolley and the cripple on this blog should get a death penalty.
Louise
Very silly comment at a particularly nasty blog.
Death threats are “silly” whereas poking fun is “nasty” – strange set of values you have there.
Funny old world, when a blog that uses hate speech in it’s title description complains when it peretuates a negative reaction from someone. When that is obviously what it set out to do. Don’t see much fun to be had there. You reap what you sow.
Louse
A stupid comment by Lubos Motl
tonyb
A self-aware internet mourns the disinformation of a Connolley. He is dead, but not yet buried.
================
Connolley pours the juice of cursed hebernon into the internet’s ears.
=============
Louise, by providing the entire site you have inadvertently made the opposite point you have intended. The consensus view has the power and the skeptical view does not. Skeptics are vulnerable to intimidation due to the location of the power. When the skeptics start pulling the strings then your intended point would be valid.
Louise, I think most people know Lubos is often over the top and in this instance should be called on it.
You calling his comment a death threat is also over the top.
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@ rmobservations et all
Lost in the rush to ‘condemn the hounding’ of folks, whether they be Bengtsson, Mann, Jones, or whoever is the fact that the hounding of Bengtsson and the ‘hounding’ of Mann et al are in no way equivalent.
Mann et al are being ‘hounded’ for two major reasons: fraudulent manipulation of data to produce ‘results’ that would support political actions advocated by fellow ‘progressives’ and conspiring with other prominent progressive climatologists and organizations to suppress conflicting data by trashing, personally and professionally, and blackballing the scientists who collected and attempted to disseminate it. In other words, for doing, repeatedly, to other scientists what they have demonstrably done to Professor Bengtsson and are attempting to do to Dr. Curry.
Professor Bengtsson (and Dr. Curry) are being ‘hounded’ for questioning the catechism. Their scientific judgement may in fact be in error. Or not. I wouldn’t know. The difference is that unlike Mann et al, their ‘errors’, if any, have not been arrived at through fraudulent manipulation of data to support a preordained conclusion.
Either way death and rape threats are not okay.
These are not the reasons. For them to be the reasons they would have to be true. These are just libelous accusations, the usual smear and conspiracy fantasies coming from AGW-deniers who have lost the scientific debate a long time ago. It’s their last resort, since they don’t have anything else left. They are desparate.
lolwot,
inserting your head up your own anal oriface is not rape.
It is impressive at times.
Hard to understand how Jan can have that opinion. The emails revealed by climategate are very supportive of what Jan call libellous accusations. Phil Jones was acutely embarrassed about what those emails revealed about his actions. But some people are just shameless…
Maybe Judith is better situated to learn more about what has actually happened here, and hopefully enabled to share what she learns.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
QUESTION I Can scientists really bring scientific opprobrium upon themselves by posing skeptical assertions and questions like:
• “Determination of the dangerous level of global warming inherently is partly subjective.”
• “Expected human-caused sea level rise is controversial.”
• “Humans may adapt to shifting climate zones better than many species.”
• “Evidence for widespread drought intensification is less clear and inherently difficult to confirm with available data.”
• “Global climate fluctuates stochastically.”
• “That task [of CO2-removal] is made easier by the excess CO2 in the air today, which causes vegetation to take up CO2 more efficiently.
• “That path [of prudence] requires policies that spur technology development and provide economic incentives for consumers and businesses.”
• “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”
ANSWER I No scientific opprobrium is associated to the above skeptical statements (which are quoted from Hansen et al. Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’ (2014)).
———
QUESTION II Can scientists really bring collegial opprobrium upon themselves by ill-advisedly allying with secretive organizations that embrace anti-scientific agendas in service of Big Carbon special interests?
ANSWER II Definitely ‘Yes’ … and deservedly so!
———
SUMMARY Lennart Bengtsson made some ill-advised decisions that he now has reversed.
It’s not complicated, eh Climate Etc readers?
Fan
So you think it is OK for those in the climate community to harass and bully climate scientists who they think are stepping out of line by following the Royal Society Motto that nobody’s word is final?
I am surprised and disappointed in you bearing in mind the moral dimension you often try to introduce.
tonyb
That moral dimension is just a suit of clothes the members of the committee share when it’s necessary to dress up.
========
“the moral dimension”
Only works one way with the estimable Fan. He’s in favor of “more discourse,” but only the right kind if discourse. He advocates for more courtesy and respect, but only accords it to those he agrees with. According to Fan, it’s self-evidently moral to do whatever has to be done to mitigate the coming clime-ageddon….an eventuality that looks increasingly unlikely to anyone paying attention… forgetting there’s a human price to be paid by those least able to bear it.
Professor Bengtsson is 80 years old, and obviously frightened and appalled at his treatment at the hands of the climate mullahs Putting myself in his shoes…I’m 63 and the clock is ticking ever faster these days..is not difficult.
Show some compassion, Fan. It won’t hurt.
Shame, shame on Fan. He wallows in the weeds, being totally incapable of seeing the larger picture.
Fan is a hypocrite and moral fraud, with name-calling, insults and personal attacks hidden behind multi-colored links and glyphs.
Ya know, a valid consensus would not need all this ponied up bullying. This extreme reaction is merely a reflection of its hollowness, falsity, and weakness.
Small comfort, but some comfort, for the bullied.
==============================
My fondest with is to live long enough to see the inevitable backlash.
You are it, pal, and you have all the cards. Play well.
==============
There is no need to resign for, for example, Rajendra Pachauri, Qin Dahe, Thomas Stocker, Matthew Collins, Reto Knutti, Gunnar Myhre, Drew Shindell and many others in the IPCC staff. As I point out in my “Refuting …” document:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4r_7eooq1u2TWRnRVhwSnNLc0k/
they must: either justify scientifically their claims or make public rectification of IPCC’s scientifically inappropriate claims.
And a clear message to those inglorious “colleagues” that were withdrawing their support to Lennart Bengtsson: please read my “Refuting …” document and if you need more details to reconsider your position in the climate change debate … we can exchange some emails.
Climate onion:
In German an e after an i makes the i long, Zv-ea-bl, not Zvibbl.
And a Zwiebel is an onion.
(I suppose Zwei Bel would be 20 db.)
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In an interview with the Daily Mail, Bengtsson has provided slightly more detail about the unconscionable behavior from his colleagues that apparently warrants comparisons to concentration camps, rape, torture, fascism and more around here:
“I received emails from colleagues all over the world telling me it was a ‘questionable’ group.
But what made me the most upset was when a colleague from the US resigned as co-author of a paper, simply because I was involved.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2629171/Climate-change-scientist-claims-forced-new-job-McCarthy-style-witch-hunt-academics-world.html
Yesterday at six o’clock
I went to Sennet Square.
==================
Whoever it was, he has every right to drop out as a co-author.
And you have every right to ignore the screams of Kitty Genovese as well.
But I would not brag about it.
You want a world where a scientist is forced to put his name next to a scientist who is a member of a policy group to which he objects? That would be coercion.
If the US co-author’s communication was polite, Lennart has wildly exaggerated the situation.
A pretty sorry affair, but characteristic of the times.
We have also seen a disgraceful display of Climate McCarthyism by climate scientists, which has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails.
That to now the only evidence of this is from Bengtsson’s uncorroborated and potentially self-serving account appears to escape Professor Curry.
Since people raced off into speculating the worst, what may actually be going on here is calculated bullying of the co-author and an evidence-free smearing of US climate scientists.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
How amusing you still miss the irony of his use of ‘McCarthyism’.
==========
Bullies never recognize bullying. They think it’s normal behavior.
Astute observation. Reminiscent of the apologists for the treatment of Bengtsson.
The strange resignation of Wolfgang Wagner as editor-in-chief of the journal Remote Sensing is Indirect evidence of climate McCarthyism. He resigned after there was a furor when the journal published a skeptic’s paper.
Wagner supposedly resigned because the paper was flawed and he had allowed the paper to be improperly peer-reviewed. However, neither of these statements is actually the case. The paper was peer-reviewed by qualified reviewers and accepted according to ordinary procedures. There’s been no effort to have the paper withdrawn, as could be the case if it really were flawed. As far as I know, no papers have been published refuting the discovery of the controversial paper.
The real “flaw” in the paper is that it gave support to skeptics by pointing to a possible natural contributor to climate change. And, the real problem with the peer-review process is that reviewers weren’t selected from the climate “McCarthyite” camp, who would have prevented the paper from being published. See http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/02/journal-editor-resigns-climate-sceptic-paper
Just like the talking points sent out each morning by the Parties, I see the warmists in unison have gotten theirs. Lets use the phrase in all its iterations to say there is no corroboration. That will work nicely until this thing dies down. You have all followed the instructions very nicely. Just like the good soldiers you are.
“Bullies never recognize bullying. They think it’s normal behavior.”
My personal experience indicates otherwise. I was probably 11 or 12 and pushed around a nerdy kid who likely reminded me of the things I despised in myself at the time. I didn’t hit him, but I did shove him a couple of times.. I felt guilty at the time…that is even as I was doing it….and it remains a source of shame for me to this day. .
I think most bullies fully understand what they’re doing, and on some level dislike themselves for it. Otherwise, I doubt they’d be bullies in the first place. Of course, there are true psychopaths who take pleasure in causing other people pain, but that’s a small minority I would say.
I guess googling is a learned trait that some have never bothered with – http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/hintergrund-und-analyse/Der-Ueberlaeufer/story/17338168
David in Cal,
Yes, the disturbing case of Wolfgang Wagner and the journal Remote Sensing does come to mind. Not only did Wagner feel pressured into resigning as the editor of the journal, but he found it necessary to issue a groveling public apology to TRENBERTH of all people, who had nothing to do with the journal, the reviews, etc. How bizarre.
The situation in climate science is aptly described by Oxford physicist Jonathan Jones:
Jonathan Jones on the Remote Sensing brouhaha
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I don’t get it. The science is settled as agreed by 97% of scientists and the solution is stop burning fossil fuels and trying to survive on a windmill and solar panel on your house that generates enough electricity to power your laptop for a day. Why are we still spending billions for additional research to tell us….. that the science is still settled?
”
JC comments. I will have much more to write about this in a few days. For now, I will say that I deeply regret that any scientist, particularly such a distinguished scientist as Bengsston, has had to put up with these attacks.
”
Well then – I suppose you’ll be at the front of the line apologizing to Dr. Mann and Dr. Pachauri?
Deep regrets noted.
”
We have also seen a disgraceful display of Climate McCarthyism by climate scientists, which has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails. And we have seen the GWPF handle this situation with maturity and dignity.
”
The level of hypocrisy here is highly entertaining – but not at all surprising.
At least you didn’t go straight for the Godwin.
This particular victimization narrative is turning out to be a source of even more pearl-clutching hilarity than the “Sacking of Salby”!!
Meanwhile, in the real world:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature13278.html
This is non-stop hilarity from JC.
Just a short while back we were treated to the spectacle of Judith’s glorious defence of free speech….for the right of trashy tabloid gutter ‘journalists’ to allege deliberate scientific malpractice, sans evidence.
Now, scientists expressing their views, rather mildly on evidence to date, about a public matter (Freeze Peach anyone???)……are McCarthyists.
The stoopid is astonishing.
You should stop demonstrating it then – http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/hintergrund-und-analyse/Der-Ueberlaeufer/story/17338168
And I did not see anywhere that Dr. Curry called for censorship of any of the mental midgets heaping scorn on Dr. Bengtsson.
”
I deeply regret that any scientist, particularly such a distinguished scientist as Bengsston, has had to put up with these attacks.
”
Oh the humanity!
Oh the Very Serious Concerns we have!
http://www.thegwpf.org/is-michael-mann-delusional-or-a-deliberate-liar/
http://www.thegwpf.org/dustbin-rajendra-pachauri-climate-report-nobel-peace-prize/
You were saying something, Dr Curry?
Hah, hah. Michael ‘Piltdown’ Mann & Rajendra ‘Oo Kooka Choo Choo’ Pachauri Vs the Field. Step right up, punters, there’s gold in them thar thrills.
============
One needs never apologize for the truth. JC has not even spoken ill of either. Perhaps you want to go on a world tour apologizing for every maladjusted uttering of a demented mind in the direction of another human being.
I recall a very interesting episode here, when one of the more noxious ‘denizens’ advocated physically assaulting climate scientists. This was brought to Judith’s attention, who dismissed complaints about this incitement to violence because other ‘denizens’ thought it amusing.
But by all means, let’s now clutch our pearls, mount our moral high horses and gallop around like chooks with out heads cut off, over some mild rebukes such as “silliness”, and “questionable”.
Most posts to come?
Can’t wait.
We are all sure you book marked the comment and response. So you should have no problem producing the link.
Reverand and the talking donkey,
I take it you haven’t heard of the saying about being careful of the company you keep. Pachauri and Mann are not exactly shinning paragons. Of science or anything else, except perhaps self-advancement.
tim,
what are you babbling about?
He told The Times that the strongest opposition had come from the US.
“It was the climate science community in the US which took this very negatively.”
This is a repulsive!
Please name names in the USA who sent you a threat!
We promise you, the vermin will be exposed to rot in the light of day.
Please name names in the USA who sent you a threat!
Finally, a request for evidence. Though it sounds something like my relative’s favorite saying. He’s a judge. “Bring the guilty bastard in here so I can give him a fair trial.”
Exactly JCH — its intended both ways.
Give us proof and we will bring them before a court for trial.
This behavior is Not tolerated in the USA!
I find it patently absurd to consider any USA Scientist would make threats against anyone. Yes, we have a few who are way out in left field but even they aren’t vermin.
This strikes be as NGO shill activity.
We need names and proof to act.
Here’s another irony: the more this episode is publicized the uglier it will get. We do all remember McCarthy, each in our own peculiar way.
================
Kim,
Unlike Dr. Curry, I do not feel the GWPF handled this situation with proper due-diligence. They should have rejected Dr. Bengtsson’s letter of resignation and sent a very strong message to its membership. They should have also investigated any threats and acted responsibly.
If this is occurring, what evidence is there it will not continue?
The board and membership of the GWPF should be ashamed of their current stance in this matter!
Bengtsson’s not the first, nor will he be the last, martyr.
=============
Face it, tyranny can’t help but create ’em. It’s machine-like production, an assembly line.
========
kim,
The board and membership will either stamp out or allow the tyrannical influence. If they allow it, kiss the GWPF goodbye as it will no longer stand for anything other than the negative influence.
Note: my comments are based on what is being reported. I do not have any evidence indicating the Board of the GWPF is not acting on threats to one or more of its members. I hope they are taking the situation seriously!
John McClure
Very good points. We need some hints as to the source and substance of the threats or language. Then the science community as a institution can work to move back to the ideals of issue discussion and evidence.
The climate gate e mail gave a realistic exposure of malfeasance and even though some editors were fired it dis infected the use of e mails to slander innocent sciencists trying to investigate a complex and poorly predicted system like the climate.
Scott
There is serious rot. Feel the tremors shuddering through the structure. The edifice is collapsing of its own weight, fat, rich, and unreliably underpinned.
===========
Scott,
The GWPF needs to determine any threat to Dr. Bengtsson’s health and safety. They then need to file criminal complaints against the individual or individuals responsible for the threat(s).
This is an international incident involving a distinguished scientist who is 79 years of age.
There should be a zero tolerance policy for this kind of nonsense.
John,
Yes….unless it’s directed at ‘consensus’ climate scientists, who as Judith has told us, ‘bring it on themselves’.
Again, link?
Michael | May 15, 2014 at 6:31 pm |
John,
Yes….unless it’s directed at ‘consensus’ climate scientists, who as Judith has told us, ‘bring it on themselves’.
========
Michael,
There is no question that some of the ‘consensus’ climate scientists like to fan the flames and lob comments into the twitter mill or onto the web. One assumes they do so to encourage a reaction.
There is also no question that Dr. Bengtsson made some very pointed comments in his interview with Door Crok on May 1, 2014. Interview comments which Dr. Curry reported in the “Lennart Bengtsson speaks out” article on May 3, 2014. One assumes he did so to state his position regarding his appointment to the GWPF board and one assumes he anticipated a reaction.
But, threats to someones health and or safety is a serious matter. This constitutes a criminal act which should never be tolerated. It doesn’t matter which side of the debate someone represents. It should Never be tolerated!
The idea that Scientists are threatening one another is insane.
John McClure wrote on May 16, 2014 at 10:51 am:
Exactly. Thus, who is supposed to believe that Lennart Bengtsson was threatened by other scientist? Are other scientists supposed to have told him that they are going to beat him up? Or what? And there is nothing in Lennart Bengtsson’s statements on the GWPF thing, according to which he was actually threatened by other scientists.
Thus, the real question is what is the interest and purpose behind it, which people are pursuing, who are spreading the rumor, here and elsewhere, that Lennart Bengtsson was threatened by other scientists?
Jan P Perlwitz,
I agree which is why I stated that the GWPF should determine the threat to members and if necessary act on it with a criminal complaint.
Or, as I initially stated, Please name names in the USA who sent you a threat! This would be easy to address via the FBI as its an international issue.
He clearly stated:
“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety.”
This could be interpreted to mean, based on stated threats “will even start to worry about my health and safety” or based on the language used to pressure him he “will even start to worry about my health and safety”.
Either way you look at it, it constitutes either a current threat or a perceived future threat to health and safety.
Someone is eventually going to raise this issue so I may as will state it. Does Bullying by the ‘consensus’ community constitute a criminal threat?
Someone is eventually going to raise this issue so I may as will state it. Does Bullying by the ‘consensus’ community constitute a criminal threat?
s/b
Someone is eventually going to raise this issue so I may as will state it. Can Bullying by the ‘consensus’ community, in this case, constitute a real or perceived threat to health and safety? If yes, isn’t this a criminal act?
The fact that the US “scientists” were the villains is key. This is politics. There are significant elections coming up this fall in the US and Obama has decided to make global climate change/stasis/weirding/warming an issue because every other issue is bad for him.
Real scientists saying real science is not part of the plan. The low-info voters are being told that if they vote for the Democrat there wont be any storms anymore.
Of course it’s all just lip service. The actions speak louder than words. Here’s a liberal columnist for the Washington Post on the subject: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-contradiction-of-obamas-climate-policy/2014/05/06/b607e154-d560-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c_story.html
This sort of tripe from journalists along with much of what passes for science from “climate scientists” is nothing more than Climate Porn.
I hadn’t heard of Bengtsson before he joined the GWPF. Then all the hoo-ha about that. Now all the hoo-ha about his resignation.
Standing back a moment, what we have is a question: is global warming anthropogenic, and is it dangerous?
It’s just a question like any other, such as how did life arise, and does neo-Darwinism adequately explain how it evolved? Or, does HIV cause AIDS? Or, are galactic red shifts always due to recession? Or, can consciousness emerge from matter?
And yet, with all these questions, and others I could mention, even asking them can be dangerous to careers, in some cases not only those of scientists. With all of them, there is a conventional view that one questions at one’s peril. With all of them, there are substantial numbers of the general public who don’t hold to convention, and not entirely negligible numbers of scientists who don’t either (maybe appreciably more than we know, because it’s hardly in their best interests to voice contrarian opinions).
In an ideal world, there’d be no harm in asking these kinds of questions. The fact that there is, is what tees me off more than anything about the lamentable state of affairs in the purportedly “modern” world. I think it’s actually to some degree still mediaeval in its attachment to doctrine (be that correct or incorrect).
I don’t know with certainty what the answers to any of the questions are, but like anyone else, I have my opinions. And, I enjoy having my independence: being able to look at the questions and assess the evidence for myself. Thankfully, things aren’t so bad yet that anyone can stop me doing that. I’ll only really worry when they *can*, though I’ve no doubt that some see an ideal world as being one where they could.
Here’s a newsflash: never in the memory of man has anyone been able to stop people asking questions, not even the most repressive regimes of whatever political stripe. The Berlin wall fell pretty abruptly, and it’s not impossible that the orthodoxy about global warming will suffer a similar fate. We shall see, because if it’s true that it’s a latter-day version of Tulip mania, nothing can or will stop that being revealed.
Bengtsson seems to have been very naive about what he was getting into: that’s the only way I can grok his apparently genuine shock at the response he got. Meanwhile, I’m here watching the hoo-ha and am unutterably depressed that asking questions and holding contrarian views isn’t as unremarkable as breathing, and isn’t actively celebrated as a mark of a healthy society.
If climatology is seen as heavily politized (and who can fail to notice that these days) then talented students will choose other fields and funding will dry up. This trend is not good for the science of climatology.
So was the co-author who resigned right to disassociate himself from a policy lobbying group?
“So was the co-author who resigned right to disassociate himself from a policy lobbying group?”
No idea. Go debate it.
But it’s clear that Bengtsson resigned from GWPF over a host of reactions from many if his colleagues, not just one event.
In the modern era everything has speeded up. For instance, with global warming alarmism the hoax was debunked in a matter of years instead of the 50 years it took to debunk the Piltdown Man hoax (and another 50 years to uncover all of the participants in the hoax). And, we are witnessing the fall of Western civilization in our lifetimes.
The hoax has been going on for 30+ years and it has not been “debunked” in the MSM, and in some area’s its stronger than ever…
It just occured to me that Dr. Bengtsson is in an unique opportunity to “leak” his recent emails, thereby exposing the belly of the beast. Of course, if he were to do that, he would single-handedly bring down those in the US leadership positions to the same level as the other bullies in the play yard. I suspect he would not do this willingly because of the extreme backlash he would experience. I think he has a serious ethical problem — tell what he knows, or keep his mouth shut so he can continue to partake in the banquet.
This is all political – no science to be found in this event.
Yes, he may have damning evidence. He may also have emails that are perfectly free of anything damning at all.
What extreme backlash? If he has emails that are damning, why would there be a backlash? If somebody threatened him, wished cancer on a his children, etc., that is reprehensible. Why would there be a backlash?
What we know is his co-author resigned in a communication. If he was ugly, that would be reprehensible. If he was perfectly polite, that would not be reprehensible.
Jest a tetch
That politesse
The whip end
Of the lash.
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Great idea. It would rival climategate.
This guy is incredibly naive if he didnt expect a huge backlash, as well, why not just withdraw due to health or something unless he wants the spotlight.
IMO, if anything the attacks he would have faced are tamer than others before (such as JC)have because more people realize this whole GW thing is a big turd…
More Climate Porn from John Kerry and the French pornographers.
From the article:
…
Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed French foreign minister Laurent Fabius to the State Department in Washington on Tuesday to discuss a range of issues, from Iran to Syria to climate change. Or, in the words of the foreign minister, “climate chaos.” Kerry and Fabius made a joint appearance before their meeting, and the foreign minister warned that only 500 days remained to avoid “climate chaos”[emphasis added]:
…
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/french-foreign-minister-500-days-avoid-climate-chaos_792736.html
Jeepers. Appell and co. are handing GPWF and all opponents of AGW the biggest propaganda victory one can imagine. Do they not understand that non-partisan non-scientists will not trust any science that comes out of a group that crushes dissent?
Here is what Appell and co. _should_ have said: “This sounds awful; I hope it isn’t true. I am totally against twisting scientists’ arms, certainly in what they can publish, but even in more peripheral issues such as joining policy groups. I call on other scientists to oppose this kind of thing as well; it is completely unacceptable.”
Just as I said after climategate: AGW supporters do not seem to grasp the harm they are doing to their own cause. The minute we see you as politicians is the minute where we stop believing in your science.
Don’t stop your opponent when he is about to not take Vienna.
===============
OT, but this is long overdue. I hope, but don’t have a lot of it, that this will take hold in the US.
From the article:
…
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc is already getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search engine after Europe’s top court ruled that subjects have the “right to be forgotten,” a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The world’s No. 1 Internet search company has yet to figure out how to handle an expected flood of requests after Tuesday’s ruling, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the record about the issue.
The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects the region’s 500 million citizens, requires that Internet search services remove information deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” Failure to do so can result in fines.
…
http://news.yahoo.com/google-gets-down-requests-european-court-ruling-source-183010113–sector.html
I’m reminded of the idea that the dawning of machine consciousness will be mourning lost data.
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Oh, dang, ‘the mourning of lost data’ is much better.
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Personally, I think the dawning of machine consciousness will be the regretting of messy art.
==============
@ jim2
“OT, but this is long overdue. I hope, but don’t have a lot of it, that this will take hold in the US.
……..requires that Internet search services remove information deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” Failure to do so can result in fines.”
You may want to re-think this a bit after it occurs to you that the progressives are the ones responsible for this decision and will be the ones making the judgement as to what is ‘inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant’. Think campus ‘thought police’ on steroids.
Bob, these take down notices are from the individual whose information it is. I guess there is alway room for abuse when government is involved, but it appears to be a step in the right direction.
Who are liberals to invoke the muddled pejorative “McCarthyism” when it is their political culture objectively that demonstrates the most totalitarian inclinations certainly through much of the 20th century to present?
“Stalinism” would be far more politically accurate to the tribe involved here. Then again, Dr. Curry is all for obfuscating the political I.D. of the broad AGW movement as a rule. So she wants to talk “free-speech” and “academic freedom” but the tool nature of core AGW advocacy and how it works most days for most people isn’t going to be labeled. This sort of thing is routine in academics, government, journalism and Hollywood. It’s about liberal/leftist orthodox political correctness and they want to act surprised after lifetimes of exposure? “McCarthyism” is so bogus and politically misrepresented it’s deceptive. So find a left-wing pejorative if you want to assign it to a left-wing movement and culture which of course is what the AGW movement is.
We’re of course heading to an inside the margin, inside the tribe, “spat” that isn’t going to represent academic/social reform in the least. Dr. Curry and to some other degree perhaps others like Dr. Bengtsson are in conflict with the extremity of consensus leadership and advocacy. More false choice dissent. Think of how everyone below are treated, routinely. Neither of them are going to speak honestly about greenshirt authoritarianism in the first person and we’ll be back to Italian Flags in no time.
Digressing to 1970’s rationalizations for example that there are really a dozen other “good” reasons to support a carbon tax aside from mythic co2 forcing isn’t going to cut it. Dr. Bengtsson conformed, sent his warning not to be bothered but isn’t going to represent a serious problem to the AGW agenda. These are just insider (leftist) squabbles not serious introspection about what the AGW actually is as a movement.
cwon1, greenshirt authoritarians is an apt descriptions of the AGW leaders.Their behavior reminds me of the 1930 Germany brownshirts who used baseball bats to break typewriters of journalists who opposed the fascists.
Why is anyone shocked.
The consensus is socially constructed and socially maintained.
The truth is socially constructed and socially maintained.
Sometimes that construction depends upon reasonable argument,
sometimes ridicule, sometimes threats of banishment, sometimes threats to livihood, threats of violence, sometimes violence, sometimes ultimate sanctions:death.
The set of tools used to modify the behavior of those who cross the thin green line is large. In this case it looks as though they have used a proportionate response. They could have sent Santer after him.
For those of us who realize that the principle issue is power, this episode is just standard operating procedure.
Bengtsson was invited!
So if Steve were in fascist Germany he’d seek an invitation from the SS so he could try to talk sense to them as an accepted insider.
Funny stuff, Mosher. Sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Write that down.
Ask him what that feels like?
ask Goddard or tallbloke to invite you,maybe they need another keyboard jockey or maybe you guys could play video games.
re; video games
When in Rome. The whole edifice of global warming science is built upon computer models complete with oodles of video animation. Not everyone can sex it up well as Schpielberg’s climate propaganda flick “Avatar” but they try.
re; video games
When in Rome. The whole edifice of global warming science is built upon computer models complete with oodles of video animation. Not everyone can sex it up well as
Schpielberg’sCameron’s climate propaganda flick “Avatar” but they try.Steven maybe take some Marxism to heart and don’t accept an invitation from any club that would have you for a member.
That’s Groucho not Karl of course.
“The truth is socially constructed and socially maintained”
Nope. The truth is not constructed or maintained. It just is.
Andrew
Heh, the ongoing revelation of truth reveals the social constructions and maintenances to be as fleeting as wisps in the willows.
========================
Clue to Springer.
There were no climate models in 1850, or 1896 or 1938.
history keyboard jockey.. hey you can do that. its called reading.
Mosher, if you took a poll here I don’t think you would find find many who are shocked, or even surprised. As you say, it’s SOP. Beating up on an 80 year old distinguished academic, who has slightly strayed from the reservation, is to be expected of the climate alarmist mob. He was going to be on the Academic Advisory Council, for chrissakes. How much harm could that do to the cause? We shouldn’t even be having this discussion. Whatever happened to academic freedom?
Academic freedom and individual freedom are both being suborned by the government.
Ya Don,
Im just amused at the way people dial up the rhetoric.
Of course now a door has been opened.
It seems some people are exercising their academic and free speech freedoms. That’s a good thing.
Ah, let the old feller go where he wants to go. He was too long with the wrong crowd. He’ll just want to talk adaptation and resilience and white elephants generally. They’re just a different flavour of expensive, these lukies. The spending won’t stop till we get down-and-dirty skeptical.
Give me foundational skeptics, who caught the foul whiff of politicised climate way back when Schneider was a coolist.
There shouldn’t be a GWPF because there shouldn’t be an IPCC. Let me have skeptical skeptics about me, skeptics full of the true, the blushful skepticism.
It might be worth considering that long before the current brouhaha regarding Dr. Bengtsson, he had long ago shown his honesty as a scientist in not necessarily adhering to the alarmist party line. One thorn in the side of the alarmist position is the intense warming that occurred in the 1920s while CO2 was still quite low. This warming was as intense as that of 1976-1998, and coincided with El Nino dominance.
As Bengtsson et al. (2004) said:
“The huge warming of the Arctic that started in the early 1920s and lasted for almost two decades is one of the most spectacular climate events of the twentieth century. During the peak period 1930–40, the annually averaged temperature anomaly for the area 60°–90°N amounted to some 1.78°C. Whether this event is an example of an internal climate mode or is externally forced, such as by enhanced solar effects, is presently under debate … It was a long-lasting event commencing in the early 1920s and reaching its maximum some 20 years later. The decades after were much colder, although not as cold as in the early years of the last century. It is interesting to note that the ongoing present warming has just reached the peak value of the 1940s, and this has underpinned some views that even the present Arctic warming is dominated by factors other than increasing greenhouse gases.”
Bengtsson et al. (2004) suggested that “four possible mechanisms, individually or in combination, could have contributed to the early twentieth century warming: anthropogenic effects, increased solar irradiation, reduced volcanic activity, and internal variability of the climate system.” They concluded: “It seems unlikely that anthropogenic forcing on its own could have caused the warming, since the change in greenhouse gas forcing in the early decades of the twentieth century was only some 20% of the present.” However, in considering anthropogenic effects, they dealt only with greenhouse gases, and did not consider the deposition of BC. They pointed out the uncertainties in reconstructing past solar irradiance, and they dismissed volcanic activity as the cause of this warming. Therefore, they sought an answer in terms of the atmospheric flow pattern that drives ocean circulation and results in the advection of warm water into the northeastern North Atlantic. Johannessen et al. (2004) concluded that the warming of the 1920s and 1930s was due to “natural fluctuations internal to the climate system.” Reductions in albedo due to decreasing sea ice induced by wind changes were attributed as the cause of this early warming. However, they claimed that more recent warming in the 1980s and 1990s was due to greenhouse gases. However, Polyakov et al. (2003) concluded that the Arctic is subject to natural oscillatory variations the principal driver for climate change, and that “[greenhouse] warming alone cannot explain the retreat of Arctic ice observed in the 1980s–90s.” Their final conclusion was:
“The complicated nature of Arctic temperature and pressure variations makes understanding of possible causes of the variability, and evaluation of the anthropogenic warming effect most difficult.”
Bengtsson, L., V. A. Semenov and O. M. Johannessen (2004) “The Early Twentieth-Century Warming in the Arctic—A Possible Mechanism” J. Climate 17, 4045–4057.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/breaking-the-climate-mafia-strikes.php
My bold. Priceless. More at link above.
JCH, the backlash for ‘leaking’ the emails is from the establishment. They will see this as an attack on their speriority to guide the CAGW meme. The emails will, if they caused Dr.Bengtsson to relinquish his position with GWPF, justify his decision and place the US leadership squarely in the bad light of world-wide scutiny. Their actions will be put under the microscope; they will react viscerely to the revelation. If they suspect the miscoscope will reveal too much, they will be scurrying around looking for some needed funding – that is why they will react harshly, it is always about the money!
What folks should also see is that this episode demonstrates that the consensus is not about science. Yes there is a science component. That wasnt violated here. What was violated was the political component of the consensus. He lent comfort to the enemy. Pretty simple.
The Funny thing is what will the guy who threatened to remove his co authorship do now?
“What was violated was the political component of the consensus.”
You call it the political component, but it is really that the so called consensus wants actions taken that are economically unwise. It seems wrong to describe an entire political party as wanting to take economiclly stupid positions.
Politics is the ONLY component of the consensus. Science is not consensus.
What Mosher said. Also, this level of petty coercion is an indicator that the consensus is losing the political battles. The weeping and rending of garments displayed by the septics plays right into the hands of the bullies. Time for big boy pants.
Clark Kent hides in the phone booth to rip off his garments.
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“he weeping and rending of garments displayed by the septics plays right into the hands of the bullies. Time for big boy pants.”
Yes.
time to turn unleash Appell, agent provocateur extrodinaire,
Laff a minute, moshe. I know, you’re just reporting the facts. That’s what’s so hilarious about it all.
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If the old dude had joined Hezbollah, they would not have batted an eyelash. Probably would have given him an award for wallowing in multiculturalism.
What I’ve been calling trademark warmist nastiness for the last couple of years, is ultimately all about defensiveness and anger, which in turn is all about fear. And it ain’t fear of “global warming.” (how quaint that sounds in the age of “climate change” and “dirty weather” and “something’s just not right about those clouds over there”). In fact, it’s the very thing yearn for most in this world.
Far better we all burn alive than they get exposed for the frauds many of them really are.
Not just political, Mosh. Very personal as well. Two different kinds of pressures. Bengtsson got both. Political is about your reputation. Personal is about losing your social circle, about your wife understanding and loving you, but not being able to see friends she used to enjoy any more. Her loss is your loss. Every one is different, but many people really don’t want to lose contact with people they’ve gone to dinner with, raised kids with, over decades. It hurts, especially later in life.
Most readers of this blog, to judge by their comments, may be pretty thick skinned. But not everyone is.
And certainly, it is testimony to Judith that she can deal with the attacks on her, personally, than Bengtsson could not deal with. It really does take a lot of personal courage to go against this crowd publicly.
Good question. If he maintains his stand, there is nothing to prevent Bengtsson from revealing who he is. Yet if he reverses his stand, then his name will be revealed with the published paper by Bengtsson.
The problem with threats is the collateral damage. he was very childish to make the threat, and now he will understand why. He ceded the power to Bengtsson.
“The Funny thing is what will the guy who threatened to remove his co authorship do now?”
http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=oW9xy-VaVO1gEM&tbnid=X5AtJCwXkT3OnM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.todaytranslations.com%2Fnews%2Fsimpsons-greatest-language-contribution%2F&ei=bd90U6rvIc-tyATH_YDoBg&bvm=bv.66699033,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNHGaOoC0P4lCHjT-lhwvelFSUidVA&ust=1400254686355128
do’h!!! missed slightly on link. :OP
BREAKING NEWS
Denialists play dodge-ball
For more than three hundred consecutive posts, Climate Etc’s “usual suspects” have played childish dodge-ball with respect to the main common-sense question:
Why do denialists dodge common-sense questions?
The world wonders!
Wow.
Fascism by John Sidles. Shock by David Springer.
Those aren’t the fascists you are looking for.
Can’t help it. From Bengtsson’s ‘peaceful meteorological community’, they have become ‘rouge scientists’. Please, Gaiazilla, hear our pleas in this plague.
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If Dr. Bengtsson wanted to be on the right side of history he wouldn’t have resigned from the GWPF at all. He would have condemned political green consensus and apologize for past conformity and line “towing” for what…..the past 50 years?
Maybe he should have resigned from a professional association holding up the greenshirt party line instead?
We’re asked by Dr. Curry, again, to conduct the discussion of current events with an outlook and naivete from 30+ years ago. There is nothing surprising about this reporting and imagined “victims” here surprised by events reflect their own clueless bubble culture they belong to (at best). He never noticed Dr. Lindzen being burned in effigy by a mob wearing “Che” tee-shirts before? This culture is all a revelation?
Has he been living on an ice-sheet somewhere?
No, it’s just more game playing and marginalized dissent inside the orthodox without actually revealing or discussing the orthodox directly. That would be going TOO FAR in their mindset. The old chess adage applies;
“The threat of a threat is greater than the threat itself.”
He resigned which is success to the greenshirts and he warned them to stay out of his yard or else. This is hardly a skeptical success story in the current form. Looks like the bullies got the lunch money from the kid to me. Face saving conformity none-the-less.
The real target here is, of course, not Bengtsson, but GWPF.
A respected member of the lukewarmer wing of the consensus party joining GWPF made it marginally more difficult to demonize them as all radical right wing science deniers. The consensus wasn’t out raged at what Bengtsson said or might say. He has been saying it since 1990. They got their panties in a bunch because he may have gotten in the way of their Alinskyite tactic of isolating and caricaturing their political opponents.
We have a saying in Chicago, politics ain’t bean bag. Frankly it’s a shame Bengtsson didn’t just publish the emails he received and stand his ground.
He stood it til the waves unhorsed him, the tide is going out.
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Gary M,
Have to agree with you that the e-mails should be published and GWPF should pursue the issue. FOIA, freedom of information re government and academic scientists would be pursueable if some were identified.
Scott
There is truth to that GaryM, also what we’re seeing is cause fatigue. I don’t doubt that many AGW conformers and formers like Dr. Curry and Bengtsson thought the keys to the city were suppose to be delivered decades ago. Some like Mann and Trenberth are willing to live in the jungle another 20 years or more, dreaming of installing reeducation camps and a NWO when the final victory is achieved in their imaginations.
Others might be more correctly wondering how climate change advocacy crimes against humanity charges might actually come down in the future and how they and the greenshirt movement is going to be treated in history books. Wimpy as it is some are catching on.
More minimally when the big fire-up-the-greenshirt-troops fails in November and the Senate is lost we’ll see what use the tactics of EPA authority abuse will look like then. I see weeping in “Che” shirts as the XL gets approved and President Klaatu in the WH talks about leading the North American carbon boom as part of his legacy.
cwon14,
Don’t expect any serious change in US government policy even if the Republicans take the Senate in the midterms this year. They will not have a veto proof majority, so they will not be able to overturn the Obama imperial climate regulations, or force completion of the XL pipeline legislatively.
The only way they could force a change would be to refuse to fund that part of the government. But even if they win the Senate, there are too many progressive Republicans in congress for them to actually stand their ground against Obama.
The only way to role back the regulations and get the XL pipeline built is to elect a conservative president, and a majority of conservatives in both houses of congress. 2016 at the earliest, and maybe not then.
CO2 is a trace gas. You can double or triple it and it is still a trace. You can go back in history, when it was ten times what is is now, to when it was 15 times what it is now, and then, it appeared to make no difference.
It takes care of a small fraction of the Greenhouse effect. Water Vapor takes care of most of the Greenhouse effect.
Water, in all of its states, is abundant. Water, in how it changes state, in the range that makes life on earth even possible, does regulate the Temperature of Earth.
CO2 is here to make the green things grow better. Since CO2 increased, very likely because of us, the green things are growing better. That makes life on earth better.
Reduce CO2 and you would reduce life on earth as we know it.
It is lucky for us that China and India, know this and they will keep pumping out the CO2 and watching their not as wise competitors fall by the wayside.
A precious conceit of a Western elite.
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Michael Mann, Aug. 29, 2007
“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an
investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his
thusfar unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests.Perhaps the
same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.
I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and
discrediting them….”
What likely happened to Bengtsson is not a one-off bug, it’s a standard feature of the consensus team’s approach to heretics.
Indeed,
This event is “consistent with” Climate Science Community behavior.
No reason to doubt. I believe we’re above 97% certainty.
Andrew
I look forward to the dawn of human conscioussness. 97% of people on the planet have been brainwashed to believe they need to go back to burning dung to power their laptop so that we can slow down the growth rate of plants and speed up the transition to a normal period of climate described as an ice age. It will solve the illegal immigration problem for the US. A lot of Northern homes will be covered with a few miles of ice and the warmth of Mexico will beckon. I’m sure they will welcome all of us with open arms and be happy to give us free education, health care and retirement benefits!
Because I love my beloved “skeptics” as much as I do, I’d like to pass on a few more analogies that have been suggested to me.
Calligula, Gengis Khan, and Attila the Hun.
I hope those prove useful. I’ll post more suggestions if I come across any others. Don’t say I never did anything for y’all.
“Because I love my beloved “skeptics” as much as I do”
Joshua,
Admit it. You love conversation with skeptics (probably mostly because you don’t get as much intelligence and critical thinking in your tribal circles).
Andrew
Judith Curry writes:
Judith Curry seems to be confused about free speech and what constitutes “McCarthyism”. She seems to think that free speech and becoming a political activist are something that she or Lennart Bengtsson are not just entitled to, which they are of course, but that this also includes the right to not be critisized and counteracted by the political decisions by other then in response. And when Lennart Bengtsson decides to join a right wing group of political and ideological hacks whose purpose is to spread disinformation and lies about climate science, something that directly affects climate scientists and their research, and when the response to this public political decision and statement is massive criticisms and political decisions by other climate scientists, Judith Curry is complaining about these “attacks” and labels this “Climate McCarthyism”.
Has Lennart Bengtsson be objected to a government orchestrated witch hunt and prosecution campaign, which aimed to “cleanse” institutions from subservises and political dissidents? No. Has there been any campaign that such a witch hunt and prosecution be installed against Lennart Bengtsson? That he should be removed from his academic positions for his political views? Not to my knowledge. All what apparently has happened is that many people told him their opinions about what they think about his decision to join the GWPF. And some didn’t want to be affiliated with him in this case anymore. Those have the same right to free speech and to make their political decisions as Lennart Bengtsson does. The rest appears to be simply the classical heat and kitchen problem, with which he was confronted. Only, he is not admitting it and tries to spin it differently.
Nothing of this will diminish Lennart Bengtsson’s scientific contributions to atmospheric physics and climate science.
The right to free speech and to political activism is not a one-way street, going in the direction of convenience for Judith Curry and others. Surely, the world would be as much nicer from her point of view if it was.
Prediction Supposing that Jan P Perlwitz’s assertions are factually accurate — a postulate for which there is ample evidence — then we can reasonably predict that denialists will respond by personalizing the discourse
*THAT* prediction has been amply fulfilled, eh Climate Etc readers?
Jan says it’s OK. Such karma.
============
Fan has exposed himself and Jan for what the world recognizes they are, Left Wing Nuts who have been defending deplorable behavior of their ilk and would rather go down with the ship than admit they are losing the public support.
Thus, I take from this that “ceresco kid” is an enemy of free sprech and who thinks that defense of free speech makes one a “left wing nut”.
Jan P. Perlwitz: The rest appears to be simply the classical heat and kitchen problem, with which he was confronted.
I think you might be right. Unless we are informed of the exact wording of the emails and other “threats” we can’t tell. A government official who threatens to take his name off a paper is not McCarthyism; while on federal grants I have threatened to take my name off papers, and my co-authors did not suffer at all (granted, I am not in the least prominent.)
What is interesting is the degree to which Dr Bengtsson feels he has been onerously criticized for doing something that he thought was pro-social, namely engaging with people who disagreed with the majority opinion.
. And when Lennart Bengtsson decides to join a right wing group of political and ideological hacks whose purpose is to spread disinformation and lies about climate science, something that directly affects climate scientists and their research, and when the response to this public political decision and statement is massive criticisms and political decisions by other climate scientists, Judith Curry is complaining about these “attacks” and labels this “Climate McCarthyism”.
Your characterization of GWPF is fallacious. They are a self-selected group of people who, like the mostly self-selected writers for the IPCC reviews, write summaries of the science, and summaries of the limitations of the science, and proposals for public policy. They sometimes highlight the evidence that the IPCC writers choose to downweight or ignore entirely; and they are less enthusiastic about globally coordinated wealth distribution programs IPCC (and poor countries) seem to favor, and more respectful toward economic development and local solutions to pressing local problems (of the sort that socialistic governments like Cuba and Venezuela tend to disrespect.) They are not “right-wing”, “hacks”, whose “purpose” is to “spread disinformation.” That is the adolescent caricature that the critics of Bengtsson evidently subscribe to. They only look “right-wing” to people who are way left of center. To us centrists, they are somewhat “center-right.”
Matthew R Marler,
You may be right that my labeling of the GWPF as “right wing” has a strong subjective component from my side, and it may show my own political bias. However, the question whether they are spreading disinformation and lies about climate science is something that is verifiable or falsifiable. I do not see that truth with respect to the science was very much on top of their agenda.
Jan Perlwitz: However, the question whether they are spreading disinformation and lies about climate science is something that is verifiable or falsifiable. I do not see that truth with respect to the science was very much on top of their agenda.
I liked my characterization better: that they remind people of the facts that IPCC and AGW alarmists and moderate promoters downweight or ignore completely. Perhaps some day we can review their writings and find this “disinformation” of which you wrote. My writings about the liabilities in the evidence (the holes in the orthodoxy, so to speak) have also been called “disinformation”, even though everything I write has been in the peer-reviewed and textbook literature.
Matthew R. Marler writes:
I see here only two mere assertions without any evidence. One is that there were substantial facts, which were downweighted or completely ignored by the IPCC, “AGW arlamist”, or even “moderate promoters”. The second one that the GWPF would have presented these alleged facts.
Jan P Perlwitz “I see here only two mere assertions without any evidence. One is that there were substantial facts, which were downweighted or completely ignored by the IPCC, “AGW arlamist”, or even “moderate promoters”. The second one that the GWPF would have presented these alleged facts.”
What Matthew Marler has asserted is correct. Both of your statements tells me that you’ve made up your mind without even visiting thegwpf.org.
Either that or that you are so blindly enamored with your ‘side’ in the debate, that you won’t even grudgingly accept that much of what they write has at least some acceptance and has been published – regardless of whether you agree with it.
Scott Basinger wrote on May 15, 2014 at 4:48 pm:
What Matthew Marler has asserted is correct.
Well, I guess, if you insist that he is correct, then he must be correct. Not.
What about you give me one example related to the physics of global warming, of those facts that had been allegedly downplayed or ignored?
Why does my statements tell this to you? Because the GWPF tells you want you want to believe? So they must be right? And I must be wrong?
What do you mean with has “acceptance”? That there are people who believe in their drivels? What relevance does this have for the two assertions made by Matthew Marler? And what do you mean with “published”? On their own website? And reproduced on other non-scientific websites? Or in some newspapers?
Before I accept something as a fact regarding questions of science, it will have to be gone through the grinder of the scientific process and the evidence will have to be thoroughly evaluated in this process. The GWPF doesn’t do science.
Scott Basinger: Either that or that you are so blindly enamored with your ‘side’ in the debate, that you won’t even grudgingly accept that much of what they write has at least some acceptance and has been published – regardless of whether you agree with it.
fair points, at least the criticism of me. I wanted to postpone a point-by-point assessment of GWPF “disinformation” and “counter-points” to some other time. Particular statements have appeared here from time to time. The other day, for example, Nic Lewis at Climate Dialogue (linked and praised here) pointed out how some of the TCS estimates downweighted the empirical evidence by having priors with non-negligible probability at high values, with no evidentiary support other than expert opinion. Whether GWPF has addressed that issue exactly as he did I don’t know, but some of the listed writers have done so, iirc.
Matthew R Marler on May 15, 2014 at 6:07 pm
This is not an example for a fact “downplayed” or “ignored” by anyone, this is merely an example for someone having an opinion about something. Please don’t confuse opinion with facts.
Jan Perlwitz: The GWPF doesn’t do science.
The IPCC doesn’t “do” science either, fwiw. Like GWPF, IPCC reviews publications (some in the gray and green literature), and makes policy recommendations.
Jan P. Perlwitz: This is not an example for a fact “downplayed” or “ignored” by anyone, this is merely an example for someone having an opinion about something. Please don’t confuse opinion with facts.
Now you are asserting that “downweighting” is not “downplaying”?
Notice that what is “upweighted” in the Bayesian broad prior is in fact opinion not evidence. Some Bayesians do and some Bayesians don’t insist that the prior be justified with respect to shareable evidence. The broad priors discussed in Nic Lewis’ post and the others have at most weak justification. The posterior distribution is what combines opinion with evidence.
Matthew R Marler on May 15, 2014 at 7:03 pm:
I would assert that the two words do not have the exactly same meaning. But that is not the point. Neither is the point that Nic Lewis may have some criticism of some papers on climate sensitivity or of the IPCC report. Criticism also of scientific methodology applied in studies is a normal part of the scientific process. Science moves forward with such criticism. The point is that you make a claim about facts, and then you try to back up your claim by referring to someone else’s mere opinion. Has this criticism even been published in some scientific venue? From what you write here it looks like it was just some post somewhere by Nic Lewis. Since when is it sufficient in science that someone has an opinion about something to consider this something to be a fact?
Matthew R Marler wrote on May 15, 2014 at 6:52 pm:
Scientific journals publish review papers on a topic now and then. Even when those review papers do not present original research, they go through the same process of peer review as original research articles. They are also scientific publications.
The IPCC report is as high scientific quality as you can get it. The authors of the IPCC reports are leading researchers who work in the field, which is being reviewed. Go to the WG I report on the Physical Science Basis. Each chapter of the report is based on hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers relevant for the chapter. The whole report goes through a comprehensive peer review process. This doesn’t mean one has to agree with everything in the report. Like there are probably always scientists who don’t agree with everything that is said in a review paper in a journal.
Now show me anything comparable to the IPCC report, coming from the GWPF. Or from any other “skeptic” organisation for the matter of fact. And show me the peer review process for the “reports” by these organisations. It’s lightyears between the quality of the IPCC report and the quality of the publications by those organisations.
Jan P. Perlewitz: It’s lightyears between the quality of the IPCC report and the quality of the publications by those organisations.
“Light years”? Please. It’s longer, but it is full of holes.
The short report by Nic Lewis, referenced here and published originally at “Climate Dialogue”, showed how some of the IPCC ECS estimates downweight observations by using a Bayesian methodology that gave substantial prior probability to high values of ECS based on unsubstantiated expert “opinion”. It showed exactly what I said it showed, that the IPCC downweights information that GWPF weights more highly. Not one of these priors has been justified by an analysis of data published in peer-reviewed journals, yet the IPCC includes the opinions anyway because the scientists are experts.
Have you ever had a chat with James Annan, MattStat?
Here’s James TL;DR on Nic’s piece:
http://www.climatedialogue.org/climate-sensitivity-and-transient-climate-response/#comment-901
Willard (@nevaudit): Have you ever had a chat with James Annan, MattStat?
I did but our chat was short, about one of the unresolved issues, at one of the Joint Statistical Meetings.
Nic Lewis wrote a rather clear presentation illustrating that the higher estimates of sensitivity depend on Bayesian methods with priors that assign non-negligible probability to high sensitivity values. He presented the references. If any one has substantial evidence in support of the high priors, that should be presented in any attempt at a rebuttal of Nic Lewis, imo. If the only evidence in favor of a non-negligible probability for an ECS to a doubling of CO2 in the range 8C – 10C is “expert opinion”, then we’ll reply with the quote from Feynman about science v “experts.”
In “Principles of Planetary Climate” Raymond T. Pierrehumbert plumps for a value of 2C. With that as the median of a reasonable prior, the empirical evidence comes down on the side of a value less than 2; this is especially true if the prior includes negative values for ECS, which is possible on some of the much debated effects of clouds.
Bengtsson needs to name those who attacked him.
Or else let’s get all FOIA on this.
Release the clowns.
‘I received emails from colleagues all over the world telling me it was a “questionable” group.
‘But what made me the most upset was when a colleague from the US resigned as co-author of a paper, simply because I was involved. … – Lennart Bengtsson
willard (@nevaudit) | May 15, 2014 at 1:10 pm |
”
Or else let’s get all FOIA on this.
Release the clowns.
”
http://www.desmogblog.com/foia-facts-5-finds-friends-gwpf
Bruce Cockburn
— Planet Of The Clowns —
This bluegreen ball in black space
Filled with beauty even now
battered and abused and lovely
And the waves roar on the beach like a squadron of F16’s
Ebb and flow like the better days they say this world has seen
Each one in our own heart
Desperate to know where we stand
Planet of the clowns in wet shoes
I see the climate community is busy shooting itself in the foot yet again. They could have said great, let him convince the skeptics at the GWPF they are wrong and climate sensitivity is higher than they think. Everyone would be napping trying to read that story. Instead they create a huge story that they are intimidating and blacklisting a scientist. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a similar story about a scientist that has joined a too alarmist organization. Is any organization considered too alarmist?
Are there any “alarmist” organizations that have scientists as members?
Joseph, if you would be so kind as to detail which organizations you consider alarmist I’m sure we can find out. If you think none are I don’t see this conversation bearing any fruit.
You said: ” I can’t say I’ve ever seen a similar story about a scientist that has joined a too alarmist organization.”
I assumed you had examples of scientists joining an “alarmist” organization
Joseph, it would be easy for me to point out organizations I think are too alarmist. You can’t think of one we might agree on? If you can’t that just answers my question. According to you there are no organizations that are alarmist much less too alarmist.
The Union for Concerned Scientists.
In the leadership groups, I cannot find a scientist who works for the United States government. University scientists abound.
How many get grants from the government?
Follow the money.
The “McCarthyism” drum-beat is so cute.
It becomes deliciously ironic when one realizes that Bengtsson himself has been complaining about the evil socialists and communists for years, volunteering to help ship them off to North Korea.
”
Det är ju synd att DDR försvunnit annars skulle man ha kunnat erbjuda enkelbiljetter dit för dessa vurmande socialister. Nu finns det ju tyvärr inte många renläriga länder kvar snart och jag tror väl ändå inte våra romantiska grönkommunister vill ha en enkelbiljett till Nordkorea. Men om intresse föreligger bidrar jag gärna till resan så länge det rör sig om en utresebiljett. Kanske man kunde ordna med en gallupstudie då det inte kan uteslutas att jag underskattat utresebehovet.
LennartB
”
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/01/23/grona-moten/#comment-361068
All the expressions of moral outrage are sauce for the goose.
Let’s call it the karma of hypocrisy.
So I guess you’d probably agree, then, that the folks involved in Climategate deserved everything that they had coming to them too?
Et tu, hypocrite?
Oh yes – Those folks are still reeling from all the “skeptical” science that climate-science-invigilators flung at them.
Many of them have even realized the profound error of their ways and have joined the GWPF. LOL.
Here is a comment from Gavin Schmidt: “Groups perceived to be acting in bad faith should not be surprised that they are toxic within the science community,” Schmidt tweeted. “Changing that requires that they not act in bad faith and not be seen to be acting in bad faith.”
“Faith” is mentioned three times. The perception of “acting in bad faith” is mentioned twice.
I expect his view to be more warmly greeted among grant recipients than among taxpayers. Obviously I can’t tell for sure, but I think that the voting public in the US wants a much longer and more thorough public debate before the US devotes resources to the policies advocated by Gavin Schmidt, Alan Leshner, and James Hansen. I think the Schmidt quote will contribute to the “perception” that the “so-called scientific debate” is actually a debate about a religious dogma.
You can do more passively and aggressively than that, MattStat.
Matthew R Marler writes:
That apparently seems to be the spin you want to put on Gavin Schmidt’s statements.
However, the term “Bad Faith” comes from legal vocabulary and has a different meaning,
Bad Faith
The fraudulent deception of another person; the intentional or malicious refusal to perform some duty or contractual obligation.
Bad faith is not the same as prior judgment or Negligence. One can make an honest mistake about one’s own rights and duties, but when the rights of someone else are intentionally or maliciously infringed upon, such conduct demonstrates bad faith.
(Source: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/bad+faith)
The term “bad faith” has nothing to do with religious beliefs. The opposite of “bad faith” is not “good faith” or religiously believing in something. Instead the opposite is sticking to the truth and to the facts.
The same (deliberate?) misinterpretation of the term “bad faith” was done by the writer of an article in the National Review Online:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378011/science-mccarthyism-rupert-darwall
who claims, “Evidently the right to practice and discuss climate science should be subject to a faith test., was what Gavin demanded. This interpretation has been posted also at the GWPF:
http://www.thegwpf.org/rupert-darwall-science-as-mccarthyism/
And perhaps you took this yourself from one of the two sources.
Now, one could ask, is this twisting of Gavin’s words, that he was asking for blind faith into science, even though his use of the term “bad faith” implies the opposite, he asks for sticking to the truth and to facts, is based on a lack of knowledge about the English language or is this itself an example for how a statement made by a climate scientist is twisted in bad faith, for the purpose to deliberately deceive the public?
I am with janny p p on this one. Gavin is talking about adhering to the Truth, as it is defined by the Almighty Most Sacred 97% Climate Consensus Dogma. Can I get an Amen!
Jan P Perlwitz: Now, one could ask, is this twisting of Gavin’s words, that he was asking for blind faith into science, even though his use of the term “bad faith” implies the opposite, he asks for sticking to the truth and to facts, is based on a lack of knowledge about the English language or is this itself an example for how a statement made by a climate scientist is twisted in bad faith, for the purpose to deliberately deceive the public?
You certainly can ask what Gavin Schmidt really meant. For example, was he counseled by attorneys on the legal use of “bad faith”, and was that how he meant it?
I was more interested in the “perception” of bad faith, where “the perceiver” was not defined. I do not perceive “bad faith” in GWPF, I perceive “counter point”. Maybe some day we can elaborate on the “evidence” of bad faith in GWPF, along with the “disinformation” of which you wrote.
So using the word “bad faith” implies bigotry.
And now the problem is not exactly bad faith, but the perception of it.
Let’s go Berkeley all the way down.
“Groups perceived to be acting in bad faith should not be surprised that they are toxic within the science community,” Schmidt tweeted.
Jan’s explanation of “bad faith” is accurate and religion has nothing to do with what Gavin’s comment.
What is puzzelling is who he believes is acting in bad faith. Does he believe that scientists and engineers who disagree with his beliefs necessarily are acting in bad faith? What is the theortical motivation and benefit?
On the other hand, it would seem that the claim of bad faith could be made against someone who has benefitted and would continue to do so if the premise of greatly harmful AGW is maintained. To intentionally state that you are an expert in the field of climate science, and have very high confidence that additional CO2 will greatly harm people and must be stopped to prevent the harms would seem to be intentionally misleading.
Perhaps, but Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
Matthew R Marler wrote on May 15, 2014 at 6:18 pm:
I could but why should I? There isn’t any necessity for it. My default assumption is that he means what the words mean. I am not the one who is twisting his statement into something else.
If you want an example, here is one:
(Source: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/05/GWPF-Background-Paper.pdf)
The assertion is not supported by the data for the global surface or tropospheric temperature at all. For the surface data, the trend of 0.1 C/decade claimed by GWPF is even more than two standard deviations below the trend estimates calculated from the data. It’s an untruthful statement. Is this deliberately done, i.e., is this a statement done in bad faith? Well, one would have to believe that the folks of the GWPF don’t even know how to calculate a temperature trend, if one wants to believe they did it in good faith.
Jan P Perlwitz: I could but why should I? There isn’t any necessity for it.
You supplied the interpretation that Schmidt meant “bad faith” in the legal sense, not as common parlance borrowed from legalese. It was necessary that you do so because Dr Schmidt isn’t an attorney, and that wasn’t a legal document.
Jan, if you take the linear trend of UAH since 1980 you get about 0.1 C per decade. You can argue that is cherry picking the starting point but so what? Why is 1950 such a great starting date? Is it because it is cooler than 1940?
steven wrote on May 16, 2014 at 5:11 am:
The trend for the UAH data set is 0.141 +/- 0.073 K/decade since 1980, not “0.1”
(http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php)
Whether the year 1950 or the year 1940 doesn’t matter. The overall warming trend since then is statistically significant with more than nine standard deviations for both starting points.
Comparing climates at 99% confidence from interpolation of surface weather stations and from some wonky set of algorithms extracted from observations on a trio of satellites, one of which is thought to be leaking coolant:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:191/mean:194/plot/uah/mean:191/mean:194
UAH, so far as everything it might say about climate, backs (and strongly suggests underestimation of rise) the surmise from ground based stations.
Since UAH cover includes areas of the globe we expect are warming more dramatically than the areas covered by surface stations, we should not be surprised, as Cowtan & Way have demonstrated, to find UAH indicating faster warming.
Jan P Perlewitz: The trend for the UAH data set is 0.141 +/- 0.073 K/decade since 1980, not “0.1″
thank you for supplying the full confidence interval, which clearly includes 0.1. fwiw, 0.1 is the result of the standard rounding rule when rounding to the nearest tenths, which is about as accurate as you can be with a +/- 0.07 error estimate.
That figure comports well with the oft repeated appx 1C per century over the last century.
Matthew R Marler | May 16, 2014 at 2:03 pm |
Which would make it 2C per century currently, by the same reasoning.
So you can stop now.
Jan, where did the statistical significance argument come from? Did they make that argument about 1950 or 1940? What do you get when you take the linear trend from 1940? About 0.1 C/ decade?
steven | May 17, 2014 at 10:45 am |
People who read graphs for a living find arbitrary choice of starting and ending points to be generally fruitless.
The art of finding meaningful start and end points of periods for comparisons, independent of the subject matter of the graph, is well-studied.
And you’re doing it wrong, though not by much, by one of the commonplace rules. Choosing a section of a curve containing exactly three local extrema (in this case maximum-minimum-maximum) has been argued as a sound practice.
First we must persuade ourselves we’re looking at a simple curve uncomplicated by cyclic phenomena. Sadly, even with relatively prime filters we know that some of the components of global temperature are powerfully pseudoperiodic, so even though there are some fifty climate basins averaging out to a global mean we expect distortions in the curve even on spans beyond four decades. Happily, when we look at these plausible sources of distortion, we cannot confidently produce greater contribution than three percent, perhaps a fifth the strength of the influence we see from some specific types of volcanic eruptions.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:101/mean:103/from:1940/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:191/mean:193/from:1940/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:792/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:660/trend
If you’re appealing to the 99% confidence curve at 32-year smoothing, that would make the natural starting point 1948. To remove seasonal variability, choosing a multiple of 12 months back from present, one gets 792:
#Time series (hadcrut4) from 1850 to 2014.25
#Selected last 792 samples
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0103472 per year
1948.25 -0.2161
2014.25 0.466816
However, we note that there is an acceptable 95% CI for the 17-year filter with local extrema suggesting 1959 is a better starting year, or 660 months.
#Time series (hadcrut4) from 1850 to 2014.25
#Selected last 660 samples
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0129169 per year
1959.25 -0.191979
2014.25 0.518452
All of which is well and good, and from this framework we can’t suggest any value at one significant digit other than 1C/century.
However, we also can take the length of the filter itself as a valid span, and in the last 384 months, the trend is 99% likely to be ..
#Time series (hadcrut4) from 1850 to 2014.25
#Selected last 384 samples
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0160859 per year
1982.25 0.0570101
2014.25 0.571757
That’s right: 2C/century, at one significant digit.
We can do better if we account for the influence of volcano plumes in the stratosphere, too.
http://berkeleyearth.org/volcanoes
There have been some seventeen major volcanic eruptions in the past sixteen years, a remarkably high number for so brief a time. Ulawun, Chaitén and Merapi are plausibly likely to have suppressed temperature rise by about 0.3C in the past fourteen years.
But why quibble? Global mean temperature, whether interpolated from surface weather station readings or computed from satellite measurements, constitute only one fiftieth of the consilient essential climate variable evidence all pointing the same direction.
Bart, as far as I’m concerned one person’s cherry picking is no more evil than another’s. Now, did you ever come up with that reference that shows Christy was a liar? You having read every paper written on boundary layer dynamics since 1950 that should have been an easy task and yet how long ago was that? I know you can based upon how much lecturing you did about people calling scientists a liar shortly thereafter Lets finish that argument before we start a new one, shall we?
steven | May 18, 2014 at 6:57 am |
You’ll need to remind me; which particular lie of Christy’s are we talking about?
There are rather a lot of stevens in the world, many of whom are credulous, and I simply don’t remember that particular exchange.
and now, from the Penn State Eugenics Department . . .
One of the ugliest aspects of this is the thought of presumably young climatologists heaping abuse on a 79-year-old because he thinks differently than they do.
Just think of all that hate mail and death threats which climate skeptics have sent to climate scientists over the years. Maybe climate scientists have got meaner as a result.
Delivered by Unicorns no doubt
lolwot | May 15, 2014 at 4:21 pm |
I was involved in academia long before Earth Science even included the word ‘climate’ in the curriculum.
People were miserable back then, too. Heck, the older generations have forgotten more about being mean than the young one today could even imagine.
If what Dr. Bengtsson faced was as far in excess of what an experienced academic might expect to the point it is reasonable for him to claim fear for his own safety, then that is serious indeed and we all ought to know about it.
If not, then perhaps it might still be serious, and we ought judge it for ourselves in context of full disclosure to understand on balance the threat we all may face.
However, on its face, it sounds mostly like Dr. Bengtsson is making stuff up, but now that he has cried wolf in this way, we all deserve a chance to see for ourselves the substance of the matter, for our own peace of mind.
In case there’s a wolf.
Is there asymmetry between fringe nutcases nobody loves and fringe nutcases with the trappings of respectability and peer support?
Probably the first time that I’m in complete agreement with Bart R. Good post.
Me as well
What “stuff” do you think that Dr. B has made up, barty? Is it OK now to reveal private emails that could embarrass the climate alarmist cabal, as they were embarrassed by the Climategate emails? Be careful, lest you get what you axe for, bartski.
Don Monfort | May 15, 2014 at 4:45 pm |
So you say.
Overall, I doubt it.
Clearly, Dr. Bengtsson has rung a bell that cannot be unrung.
Knowing this, we have all been put in a state that concerns us all.
Putting the best face on it, Dr. Bengtsson’s been misquoted, or mistranslated, or his statements have been taken out of context.
Up to now, we don’t even know that much.
Plausibly, Dr. Bengtsson’s said exactly what he’s been reported as saying.
Probably, he didn’t realize the furor his words would cause.
Everyone now must wonder what exactly Dr. Bengtsson meant, in a scandal that now we all have a stake in.
To resolve this, we need to see Lennart Bengtsson’s full disclosure communications regarding his joining and leaving the GWPF, to judge for ourselves.
We can’t stop talking about this until the GWPF have wrung every drop of propaganda out of it.
Dr. B doesn’t have to show us anything, barty. You can take him at his word, or not. I am guessing that he is not too worried about what you think. This looks to me like an elderly scientist with a long and distinguished career mistakenly/naively thought that serving on a little Academic Advisory Council was no big deal. Suddenly he becomes like some freaking James Bond villain, out to destroy the world. Does anybody believe that he expected to get so pilloried by his little vicious colleagues? He is not accustomed to such rough treatment from allegedly professional scientists and it’s aggravation that an 80 year old dude doesn’t need. It would have been amusing to see him tell them all to F@#K off. On his behalf, that’s the message I will convey to you, bartski.
Don Monfort,
Extremely well said. I’m sure Dr. B is not used to being abused by a bunch of thug punk “scientists”. Kind of makes me ashamed as an American that most of them are from the USA.
Mark Silbert | May 15, 2014 at 6:40 pm |
So.. you have a list of them?
You know who they are?
What they said?
Then by all means, post it here.
I have the list, bartski. In fact I have the emails. I hacked D.r B’s computer and stole it all. However, I feel that is unethical to make public the stolen private emails of hardworking, ethical climate scientists. Don’t you agree, bartski?
Don Monfort | May 15, 2014 at 8:08 pm |
Funny for reasons you do not realize.
By all means, you should turn it over to the police or DA for investigation. I understand there’s this guy in Virginia who’d want to prosecute.
Alternatively, you could encrypt it, make that public, and send the key to a few dozen trusted experts with a proven track record of discretion, so they could vet any inappropriate information before releasing it.
You are blubbering, barty. Try another angle.
Bart R: If what Dr. Bengtsson faced was as far in excess of what an experienced academic might expect to the point it is reasonable for him to claim fear for his own safety, then that is serious indeed and we all ought to know about it.
If not, then perhaps it might still be serious, and we ought judge it for ourselves in context of full disclosure to understand on balance the threat we all may face.
Besides making stuff up, a part of your text that I did not quote here, is the possibility that Dr Bengtsson over-reacted because he received much more criticism, more sharply worded, than he expected. Say, for example, it is the first time he ever had co-authors express a desire not to be co-authors any more; or others implying he had “sold out”. Maybe it gave him headaches and other symptoms and otherwise felt just awful, like say your first bad grade in college, or first argument with a thesis advisor. People get really miserable on those occasions, and the worry over long-lasting illness isn’t unusual. Another example is the endless acrimony of a divorce, where all of a sudden the parties feel wounded.
Without knowing the exact wording of the communications, we can’t tell. I think your post should be taken seriously.
If you have taken anything in barty’s comments seriously, you have been manipulated.
Lets not forget that this 10% AGW/Skeptic group appears to be enourmous. The other 90% dont give a @@@@ about the subject, fortunately probbaly because they dont see/feel climate change, especially teenagers LOL
Oh dear looks like GWPF have tarnished another scientist’s reputation.
I note that the GWPF alone have acted to push both the propaganda story that lennart was joining them and that he was leaving. I wonder if the GWPF exists for any other reason than to create meme soundbites in a bid to worm them into the tabloid media.
+100
GWPF is a text-book case of propaganda.
You have to be quite naive, or a bit thick, not to get this.
So the GWPF seems to be effective.
Good point.
All experienced scientists encounter criticism that is ignorant, unjust, irrelevant. No experienced scientist is unduly bothered … unfair criticism comes with the job.
What *STINGS* is criticism that is *JUSTIFIED*.
Common-Sense Conclusion I Lennart Bengtsson is upset not because his scientific colleagues are wrong … but because they’re right.
That’s why the denialist blog-o-sphere is frothing too … because Bengtsson’s critics are right.
Common-Sense Conclusion II A young scientist can say “Oh well … at least I learned something.” But Lennart Bengtsson is too old (and too experienced) to be so comforted … that’s why (justified) criticism hurts doubly.
That’s obvious, eh Climate Etc readers?