The guest poster is Willis Eschenbach. His argument? Well, rivers don’t run straight to the sea; they meander. Ergo, water doesn’t run downhill in a complex system. Consequently, no global warming. In another place he argues that humans are not metal, therefore, no global warming.
I mean — sweet Mother of Pearl! — this guy even denies the existence of the Army Corps of Engineers, and river straightening:
The results of changes in such a flow system are often counterintuitive. For example, suppose we want to shorten the river. Simple physics says it should be easy. So we cut through an oxbow bend, and it makes the river shorter … but only for a little while. Soon the river readjusts, and some other part of the river becomes longer. The length of the river is actively maintained by the system. Contrary to our simplistic assumptions, the length of the river is not changed by our actions.
No wonder they place all their bets on stealing e-mails from scientists. Somebody show that man the South Platte River through Denver, Colorado, or the Los Angeles River through Los Angeles, or the Mississippi from Arkansas to the Gulf. Somebody give that man a paddle!
Here are a couple of clues: First, water always runs downhill — capillary action being the exception. Eschenbach doesn’t propose capillary action as a driver of river meandering. Any hydrologist will tell you, however, that even a meandering river runs downhill. Second, human beings don’t conduct heat like metal blocks. Even a dead human won’t conduct heat like a copper block, but especially a living human will radiate heat away through several different paths, so that heating the feet of a human will not cause a concomitant rise in temperature of the head. But, heck, if you soak the human’s head in hot water, it won’t warm like a block of steel, either. The examples offered in this piece get pushed past the brink of absurdity. It’s impossible for me to believe that Eschenbach — or Watts — fails to understand the physics so greatly. I can only imagine that they are driven by a fanatic devotion to an idea of the result they hope to see, and that blinds them to the errors they make.
Finally, water’s flow, downhill or up with capillary action, doesn’t negate global warming. Human conductivity affects warming not at all, also.
(No, “constructal theory” doesn’t have much to do with it. Constructal theory generally doesn’t apply to atmospheric conditions, since the air is, technically, not alive, but a dynamic fluid system already highly evolved for these purposes. Even for those cases in which contructal ideas apply to non-living systems, constructal theory does not claim that laws of physics are suspended or held in abeyance, as Eschenbach claims at Watts’s blog. The idea of constructal theory is that systems not in equilibrium, will, over time, figure out (evolve) more efficient means to get into equilibrium. This has nothing to do with the fact of CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas. Constructal theory would only suggest that, over time, the atmosphere would develop systems to get heat distributed better despite CO2, which means that warming would not be held in abeyance at all, but spread out further and farther.)
Watts is already hot that I posted science links at his place on another post. Go see what other commenters can get away with. Can the camel’s nose of real science push into the WUWT tent?
Share the lightness:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
The PBSG renewed the conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest challenge to conservation of polar bears is ecological change in the Arctic resulting from climatic warming. Declines in the extent of the sea ice have accelerated since the last meeting of the group in 2005, with unprecedented sea ice retreats in 2007 and 2008. The PBSG confirmed its earlier conclusion that unabated global warming will ultimately threaten polar bears everywhere.
The PBSG also recognized that threats to polar bears will occur at different rates and times across their range although warming induced habitat degradation and loss are already negatively affecting polar bears in some parts of their range. Subpopulations of polar bears face different combinations of human threats. The PBSG recommends that jurisdictions take into account the variation in threats facing polar bears.
The PBSG noted polar bears suffer health effects from persistent pollutants. At the same time, climate change appears to be altering the pathways by which such pollutants enter ecosystems. The PBSG encourages international efforts to evaluate interactions between climate change and pollutants.
The PBSG endorses efforts to develop non-invasive means of population assessment, and continues to encourage jurisdictions to incorporate capture and radio tracking programs into their national monitoring efforts. The members also recognized that aboriginal people are both uniquely positioned to observe wildlife and changes in the environment, and their knowledge is essential for effective management.
Is that emblematic of the state climate “skeptics” are in these days, that a dull recitation of the facts is “sarcasm?” “Don’t confuse us with the facts,” they seem to be saying. And, if they really think they’re making headway with stolen e-mails, why are they so crabby?
More politics than science, more bluster than discussion.
This cartoon scares them, too. Maybe they know something’s up:
Chris Riddell cartoon, December 20, 2009, The Observer
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only group that has gone through the entire mass to see what is really shown — more than a million words, the AP story estimated.
Veteran climate issue reporter Seth Borenstein wrote up the story: Scientists in the heat of research and interpretation, on deadline with government policy makers, often attacked unfairly — one received death threats for his work on climate change. Under those conditions, one might understand that the scientists were defensive and rude, in private, about their critics. One of the critics harassed scientists with repeated FOI requests, then didn’t use the data. In one case, a critic published a paper based on bad data — what the critics accused the scientists of doing.
But in the end, there was no pattern of data fixing. Independent reviews today confirm that independently-generated studies confirm the warming the scientists wrote about.
Of course, that doesn’t stop the hecklers of the scientists from complaining, either about the science or the way it’s reported. Rather than deal with the material AP reported, for example, warming blogger Anthony Watts attacked the reporter who wrote the story, complaining that he is “too close” to the story, since he seems to have been covering the story long enough that his e-mail appears in the purloined e-mails.
‘You can’t report the news because you know too much,’ is Watts’s complaint.
In the e-mail cited, Seth Borenstein wrote to some of the world’s best scientists in the field and asked their opinions about a paper making some contrary claims.
To Watts, seeking information from the experts is beyond the pale. He calls it an ethical infraction.
That’s right, AP — it’s time Borenstein got a promotion for doing the legwork, honestly, that critics of the science have refused to do. Borenstein’s reporting is important. The story goes beyond mere repeating of press releases, beyond the mere “he-said/he-said” norm. Borenstein, in unemotional, clear and cool terms, indicted the critics of warming, by factually reporting the events. Give that man and his team a Pulitzer Prize.
Why shouldn’t reporters go to the experts? Why shouldn’t they ask the opinions of all sides in a science debate?
Think about it for a moment: Watts’s complaint is that Borenstein sought fairness in reporting on Watts’s side’s claim. Because Borenstein refused to show the bias Watts wants, Watts went after Borenstein.
Could there be a more clear and dramatic illustration of why the scientists’ ire is raised by such silly criticism?
Watts quotes at length from the Associated Press Statement of News Values and Principles, slyly implying by doing so that Borenstein violated the rules somewhere. Not so.
Watts worries about “getting too cozy with sources.” Read his blog. Watts prefers to be the source — but he also reports on the debate.
Watts would do well to read that AP ethical statement again, and take it to heart.
His charges are groundless, scurrilous in the light of the AP team’s going to great lengths to be fair to all sides. Watts and other critics bank on people being shocked that scientists get angry. Watts and his colleagues have campaigned across the web, on television and in print, to have these scientists tarred and feathered, and their science dismissed — though there is not handful of feathers to weigh against the mountains of evidence the scientists accumulated and published over the past 50 years.
I won a couple of minor investigative journalism awards in college. I have been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists off and on since 1974 (not much since I quit doing that stuff full time). I have worked with some of the best investigative journalists and Congressional investigators in my duties with the Senate. I’ve been a member of the FOIA committees in Utah and Maryland. I’ve lobbied in three states for freedom of information. I know a little bit about investigative reporting and fairness. And yes, IAAL.
Borenstein’s piece is solid and good. In light of the firestorm Watts hopes to bring down on it, Borenstein’s article is a shining example of high ethics in journalism. It deserves your reading.
If the critics had data denying warming, or denying human causation of warming, why are they hiding it so well? If they have the data to prove the scientists are in error, why not publish it, instead of sniping at a wire service reporter who merely tells the story?
Critics don’t have the data to contest the hard work of the scientists. They don’t have the data to make a case against either warming or human causation. And now we all know.
Post Script: Um, and , you know, it’s not like Borenstein hasn’t done some stuff over the years to make it look like he’s been on Watts’s side: Stoat, Mooney’s Intersection, Island of Doubt. Watts’ fit may put a gloss on Borenstein’s work that wasn’t there to begin with.
Drop in world temperatures fuels global warming debate
By Robert S. Boyd | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Has Earth’s fever broken?
Official government measurements show that the world’s temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.
That’s given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.
Proposals to combat global warming are “crazy” and will “destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family’s annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year,” the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. “High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health,” the ads asserted.
Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.
Geneva, 8 December 2009 (WMO) – The year 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for 2009 (January–October) is currently estimated at 0.44°C ± 0.11°C (0.79°F ± 0.20°F) above the 1961–1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.2°F. The current nominal ranking of 2009, which does not account for uncertainties in the annual averages, places it as the fifth-warmest year. The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989). More complete data for the remainder of the year 2009 will be analysed at the beginning of 2010 to update the current assessment.
This year above-normal temperatures were recorded in most parts of the continents. Only North America (United States and Canada) experienced conditions that were cooler than average. Given the current figures, large parts of southern Asia and central Africa are likely to have the warmest year on record.
In fashion we wish were different but seems all too typical, so-called skeptics of global warming defend their position with invective and insult. But they are vigorous about it. What do you think? What information can you contribute?
Here’s the post that set off the denialists, anti-science types and DDT sniffers, and a tiny few genuinely concerned but under-informed citizens:
AP caption: Former Vice President Al Gore, left, listens to speakers during a meeting at the Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Buckingham, Va., Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Gore visited the area that is the proposed site for a compressor station for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) Should be obviously silly for anyone to argue former divinity student Al Gore is evil, as this film implies despite the demurrer. It should also be obviously that it’s evil to call Gore wrong on these issues; but that doesn’t stop brown Earther critics of scientists and Al Gore.
“Not Evil, Just Wrong” is slated for release on October 18. This is the film that tried to intrude on the Rachel Carson film earlier this year, but managed to to get booked only at an elementary school in Seattle, Washington — Rachel Carson Elementary, a green school where the kids showed more sense than the film makers by voting to name the school after the famous scientist-author.
The film is both evil and wrong.
Errors just in the trailer:
Claims that Al Gore said sea levels will rise catastrophically, “in the very near future.” Not in his movie, not in his writings or speeches. Not true. That’s a simple misstatement of what Gore said, and Gore had the science right.
” . . . [I]t wouldn’t be a bad thing for this Earth to warm up. In fact, ice is the enemy of life.” “Bad” in this case is a value judgment — global warming isn’t bad if you’re a weed, a zebra mussel, one of the malaria parasites, a pine bark beetle, any other tropical disease, or a sadist. But significant warming as climatologists, physicists and others project, would be disastrous to agriculture, major cities in many parts of the world, sea coasts, and most people who don’t live in the Taklamakan or Sahara, and much of the life in the ocean. Annual weather cycles within long-established ranges, is required for life much as we know it. “No ice” is also an enemy of life.
“They want to raise our taxes.” No, that’s pure, uncomposted bovine excrement.
“They want to close our factories.” That’s more effluent from the anus of male bovines.
The trailer notes the usual claim made by Gore opponents that industry cannot exist if it is clean, that industry requires that we poison the planet. Were that true, we’d have a need to halt industry now, lest we become like the yeast in the beer vat, or the champagne bottle, manufacturing alcohol until the alcohol kills the yeast. Our experience with Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, the CleanAirActs and the Clean Water Act is that cleaning the environment produces economic growth, not the other way around. A city choked in pollution dies. Los Angeles didn’t suffer when the air got cleaner. Pittsburgh’s clean air became a way to attract new industries to the city, before the steel industry there collapsed. Cleaning Lake Erie didn’t hurt industry. The claim made by the film is fatuous, alarmist, and morally corrupt.
When the human health, human welfare, and environmental effects which could be expressed in dollar terms were added up for the entire 20-year period, the total benefits of Clean Air Act programs were estimated to range from about $6 trillion to about $50 trillion, with a mean estimate of about $22 trillion. These estimated benefits represent the estimated value Americans place on avoiding the dire air quality conditions and dramatic increases in illness and premature death which would have prevailed without the 1970 and 1977 Clean Air Act and its associated state and local programs. By comparison, the actual costs of achieving the pollution reductions observed over the 20 year period were $523 billion, a small fraction of the estimated monetary benefits.
“Some of the environmental activists have not come to accept that the human is also part of the environment.” Fatuous claim. Environmentalists note that humans uniquely possess the ability to change climate on a global scale, intentionally, for the good or bad; environmentalists choose to advocate for actions that reduce diseases like malaria, cholera and asthma. We don’t have to sacrifice a million people a year to malaria, in order to be industrial and productive. We don’t have to kill 700,000 kids with malaria every year just to keep cars.
“They want to go back to the Dark Ages and the Black Plague.” No, that would be the film makers. Environmentalists advocate reducing filth and ignorance both. Ignorance and lack of ability to read, coupled with religious fanaticism, caused the strife known as “the Dark Ages.” It’s not environmentalists who advocate an end to cheap public schools.
The trailer shows a kid playing in the surf on a beach. Of course, without the Clean Water Act and other attempts to keep the oceans clean, such play would be impossible. That we can play again on American beaches is a tribute to the environmental movement, and reason enough to grant credence to claims of smart people like Al Gore and the scientists whose work he promotes.
“I cannot believe that Al Gore has great regard for people, real people.” So, this is a film promoting the views of crabby, misanthropic anal orifices who don’t know Al Gore at all? Shame on them. And, why should anyone want to see such a film? If I want to see senseless acts of stupidity, I can rent a film by Quentin Tarantino and get some art with the stupidity. [Update, November 23, 2009: This may be one of the most egregiously false charges of the film. Gore, you recall, is the guy who put his political career and presidential ambitions on hold indefinitely when his son was seriously injured in an auto-pedestrian accident; Gore was willing to sacrifice all his political capital in order to get his son healed. My first dealings directly with Gore came on the Organ Transplant bill. Gore didn’t need a transplant, didn’t have need for one in his family, and had absolutely nothing to gain from advocacy for the life-saving procedure. It was opposed by the chairman of his committee, by a majority of members of his own party in both Houses of Congress, by many in the medical establishment, by many in the pharmaceutical industry, and by President Reagan, who didn’t drop his threat to veto the bill until he signed it, as I recall. Gore is a man of deep, human-centered principles. Saying “I can’t believe Al Gore has great regard for real people” only demonstrates the vast ignorance and perhaps crippling animus of the speaker.]
That’s a whopper about every 15 seconds in the trailer — the film itself may make heads spin if it comes close to that pace of error.
Where have we seen this before? Producers of the film claim as “contributors” some of the people they try to lampoon — people like Ed Begley, Jr., and NASA’s James E. Hansen, people who don’t agree in any way with the hysterical claims of the film, and people who, I wager, would be surprised to be listed as “contributors.”
Here, see the hysteria, error and alarmism for yourself:
Ann McElhinney is one of the film’s producers. Her past work includes other films against protecting environment and films for mining companies. She appears to be affiliated with junk science purveyors at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an astro-turf organization in Washington, D.C., for whom she flacked earlier this year (video from Desmogblog):
In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?
Among the most riveting mysteries of human history are those posed by vanished civilizations. Everyone who has seen the abandoned buildings of the Khmer, the Maya, or the Anasazi is immediately moved to ask the same question: Why did the societies that erected those structures disappear?
Diamond’s essay appears in different, and longer form (as I recall) as a chapter in his book Collapse. That book is all about why civilizations collapse.
A lot of it boils down to wasting of resources. Easter Island had not always been the grass-only rock with just a couple of thousand people clinging to a desperate existence, as Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen found it on Easter Sunday, 1722 (April 5). When the ancestors of the tiny population found the island, it had forests, and probably animals, and rich enough resources to support a larger population.
Until they deforested it, hunted to near extinction every animal that couldn’t escape, and caused the collapse of their own civilization.
Is this an analogy for what humans are doing to the planet now with pollution, especially atmospheric-warming air pollution?
Diamond concluded his essay:
I suspect, though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. After all, there are those hundreds of abandoned statues to consider. The forest the islanders depended on for rollers and rope didn’t simply disappear one day-it vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation. Our Pacific Northwest loggers are only the latest in a long line of loggers to cry, “Jobs over trees!” The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect: yes, this year we cleared those woods over there, but trees are starting to grow back again on this abandoned garden site here. Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Their children could no more have comprehended their parents’ tales than my eight-year-old sons today can comprehend my wife’s and my tales of what Los Angeles was like 30 years ago.
Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.
By now the meaning of Easter Island for us should be chillingly obvious. Easter Island is Earth writ small. Today, again, a rising population confronts shrinking resources. We too have no emigration valve, because all human societies are linked by international transport, and we can no more escape into space than the Easter Islanders could flee into the ocean. If we continue to follow our present course, we shall have exhausted the world’s major fisheries, tropical rain forests, fossil fuels, and much of our soil by the time my sons reach my current age.
It is hard to miss the irony in people eagerly poring through illegally-obtained private email, looking for ethical breaches by the writers! I’m sure we can all imagine the outrage if one of the emails revealed that a scientist had hacked into one of the sceptics’ computers and was reading all their correspondence. So a bit of perspective is called for here.
James Is A Scientist (IANAS), and he has much good stuff to say (read some of the other posts about the hacked e-mails while you’re there) — but you gotta wonder about a blog that follows such a post with this:
Prawns not in their native habitat. Probably Tastimus deliciousus
Sure enough, with just a few minutes of searching the e-mails, I found references to ethical breaches in cooking of data, and a discussion about how to talk about the data and the issue in public.
David H. Douglass, John R. Christy, Benjamin D. Pearsona and S. Fred Singer, “A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Int. J. Climatol. (2007). Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651
Unless you follow this issue closely, you probably don’t see the problem with publicizing the ethical breaches scientists thought they saw in this paper and its publication. Also, if you are a “skeptic” who is chronically apoplectic over Al Gore’s success in informing people about climate change and winning prizes and making money, you may be thrilled that there is a scientist anywhere worried about ethical lapses by scientists involved in this controversy, and you can’t wait to see them brought to justice (cooking data is a federal crime in the U.S., if done with federal research money).
[Yes, I think there are ethical questions about publishing anything from these e-mails, let alone links so the viewing public can read them completely. However, since much of this material has already been cherry picked and quote mined by political activists who hope to stop action to mediate and stop global warming, I think a good case can be made that, to be fair, we should look at the entire collection to see what they really reveal. There may be criminal liability for some of the disclosures I’m discussing here — but that liability does not fall on the scientists who have been unfairly impugned in the last few days. The liability falls instead on the critics of warming. Let’s be fair. In a fair fight, truth wins.]
So, hold your high-fives and “I-told-you-sos” until you look at the data, at the information found.
I think the scientific fraud committed by Douglass needs to be exposed. His co-authors may be innocent bystanders, but I doubt it.
Fraud? Right there in front of everyone? In the climate debate?
In the end, the scientists in the discussion determined not to hold a press conference to announce a finding of fraud, but instead to hunker down and work on publishing datasets that would contradict the alleged fraudulent paper, and establish their case with data instead of invective and press conferences.
Bottom line: Douglass et al. claim that “In all cases UAH and RSS satellite trends are inconsistent with model trends.” (page 6, lines 61-62). This claim is categorically wrong. In fact, based on our results, one could justifiably claim that THERE IS ONLY ONE CASE in which model T2LT and T2 trends are inconsistent with UAH and RSS results! These guys screwed up big time. [emphasis added by MFB]
Anthony Watts and others may be justified in asking that the scientists who wrote this fraudulent paper should be summarily dismissed, and in questioning why other scientists dallied in exposing the fraud.
But there is this to consider: The paper in question is a paper critical of warming hypotheses, and it was co-authored by at least a couple of the most strident critics of Al Gore, James Hansen, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The smoking gun was used to shoot down a hasty effort to brand climate-change critics as unprofessional and wrong. The smoking gun was used to enforce the hard ethical rules of science: Don’t speak until your data allow a fair conclusion.
The smoking gun e-mails show correct and careful behavior by the scientists who contributed to the IPCC report, but unethical behavior by the critics whose backers, we might assume, stole the e-mails in the first place, and published them without understanding the depth of moral character demonstrated by most scientists in the conduct of their professions.
Now, I have not analyzed every possible permutation of this thread, only those with the title shown. I used the “Alleged CRU e-mails — searchable” cited by Anthony Watts and others. I stumbled into the thread discussing the paper by “Douglass, et al.” I then did a search for e-mails discussing “Douglass,” and limited it to the thread on this point. I suspect there are other e-mails in that thread in which Douglass’s name is wholly missing, and which did not turn up in the search.
Now you know the rest of the story. Fred Singer is a leading denialist, one of the organizers of the political campaign to blunt the publication and discussion of evidence of global warming and what to do about it. The Douglass, et al. paper under discussion was a key component of the denialists’ campaign in 2007. The purloined e-mails point to unethical behaviors by the scientists on the anti-warming side, the so-called “skeptics.”
So, from a quick dive into the data we learn:
Climate scientists talk like Boy Scouts trying to impress a Board of Review.
Climate scientists are extremely careful with data.
When they think no one is looking, climate scientists behave ethically.
When they think have found a piece of fraud, climate scientists are careful to recheck their numbers several times and in several ways before saying anything.
Instead of holding a press conference, climate scientists like to keep the fisticuffs in the confines of juried journals.
Climate “skeptics” are full of themselves, and probably wrongly accuse climate scientists of fixing data.
Fraud in climate science may occur, but generally on the side of those who argue against warming or who advocate inaction as a response.
The claims of smoking guns that negate the case for doing something about global warming are most likely hoaxes.
Update, November 25, 2009: Be sure to check out these posts, at George Monbiot’s blog in the comments, at Stoat, and here at the Bathtub. This is the best judgment on the affair, I think, from Our Kingdom at Open Democracy: “Respectto any climate-deniers who invest all their pension funds in seashore hotels in the Maldives… otherwise, they should step aside, and let the work of saving the future begin.”
Smoke this:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Satire, hoax, fact — how can we tell the difference?
Maybe more importantly, how can we tell early on that the “Climategate” kerfuffle, involving purloined, but otherwise dull e-mails from climate scientists, is nothing to worry about?
If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published.
When you read some of these letters, you realise just why Newton and his collaborators might have preferred to keep them confidential. This scandal could well be the biggest in Renaissance science. These alleged letters – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists behind really hard math lessons – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in covering up the truth, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.
But perhaps the most damaging revelations are those concerning the way these math nerd scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence to support their cause.
What kind of conspiracy keeps calculus being taught to innocent children today? Exactly the same conspiracy that causes scientists to sound the alarms about climate change.
Then Vice President Al Gore campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, November 25, 1999.
Among the more amusing about-faces in conservative knee-jerk politics is conservative criticism of Al Gore for being a successful investor.
No, I’m not kidding.
Back in April, Gore testified to a House Energy and Commerce Committee in April — one of the committees where Gore was a shining star when he was a Member — and he ran into a challenge from Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blakburn who tried to play bad cop in grilling Gore about his investment work. Since leaving politics Gore has worked to put his money where his advocacy is, backing green industries and energy efficiency projects. Blackburn is a Republican representing Tennessee’s 7th District. Blackburn appears not to understand how cross-examination works.
In most discussions I’ve had on warming issues over the past two months, advocates for doing nothing almost always bring up Gore as as “profiteer” for investing in green businesses.
It’s as if conservatives and Republicans have forgotten how business works in a free-enterprise system, and they think that free enterprise is tantamount to communism.
T. Boone Pickens used to be a favorite witness for Republicans to call at Congressional hearings. Pickens was, and still is, a staunch advocate of free enterprise, and he advocates a lot less regulation than most Democrats want. Then Pickens’s investments, especially his vulture investments in dying companies where he’d sell off the assets and put the company out of existence, were touted by Republicans as indication that Pickens is a genius.
A hard look at Gore’s investments shows him to be nothing more than a free-enterprise advocate who leads the way in green investments. He has made huge gambles in businesses that warming skeptics claim won’t work — and his investments have tended to pay off, to the great consternation of warming do-nothings who understand markets.
This story in the New York Times suggests just how well Gore has done, and how much his leadership in investing might benefit us. It’s worth bookmarking for your next discussion on what we should do about global warming — because you know somebody will try to make it about Al Gore. It just galls the heck out of conservatives and anti-science folks that Gore is right so often, and that he is such a practitioner of the Scout Law.
Anti-pollution is good business. Reducing the dumping of poisons into the air and water makes sense, and it makes a better economy in the long run. Sometimes it makes a better economy in the short run, too. Gore stepped into the marketplace, a very capitalist act. His investments paid off, demonstrating that markets do work, and demonstrating that green business is smart business. What are Republicans and conservatives thinking in taking after Gore’s business success?
Oh — Boone Pickens? He used to have an office in Trammell Crow Tower when our offices at Ernst & Young LLP were a floor or so away. We shared elevator rides many times, and he is in person as gracious and smart as he appeared in those Congressional hearings years ago.
Here’s another example of where historians show their value in science debates.
Naomi Oreskes delivered this lecture a few years ago on denialism in climate science. Among other targets of her criticism-by-history is my old friend Robert Jastrow. I think her history is correct, and her views on the Marshall Institute and denial of climate change informative in the minimum, and correct on the judgment of the facts.
You’ll recognize some of the names: Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer, and William Nierenberg.
Oreskes details the intentional political skewing of science by critics of the serious study of climate warming. It’s just under an hour long, but well worth watching. Dr. Oreskes is Professor of History in the Science Studies Program at the University of California at San Diego. The speech is titled “The American Denial of Global Warming.”
If Oreskes is right — and I invite you to check her references thoroughly, to discover for yourself that her history and science are both solid — Lord Monckton is a hoaxster. Notice especially the references after the 54 minute mark to the tactic of claiming that scientists are trying to get Americans to give up our sovereignty.
Nothing new under the sun.
“Global warming is here, and there are almost no communists left,” Oreskes said.
Nudge your neighbor:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Why is this relevant? Oh, the tantrum was rude, but if you’re a hack film producer with a political screed whose film looks like a flop, you’ll do anything to get publicity for the film. Perhaps we should not be too critical of publicity whores.
It’s not relevant because of that.
It’s relevant because one of the charges against Gore by the fruit-and-nut brigade is that Gore refuses to talk to the press. How can they complain about Gore’s treatment of them when any mention of this event makes the Gore critics appear untruthful?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Cleverly avoiding real discussion of greenhouse gases and their effects on Venus, climate change denialists often claim warming to be a solar system-wide event, caused by the Sun — evidenced, they say, by warming on all the other planets in the solar system.
Is there any way to interpret away his conclusions that the war against green jobs is killing American industry?
Is there any way he could be wrong? Read it; doesn’t it make you want to fix things?
O.K., so you don’t believe global warming is real. I do, but let’s assume it’s not. Here is what is indisputable: The world is on track to add another 2.5 billion people by 2050, and many will be aspiring to live American-like, high-energy lifestyles. In such a world, renewable energy — where the variable cost of your fuel, sun or wind, is zero — will be in huge demand.
China now understands that. It no longer believes it can pollute its way to prosperity because it would choke to death. That is the most important shift in the world in the last 18 months. China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.
In October, Applied will be opening the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
