Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Recently, the Wall Street Journal refused to publish a letter on the subject of climate change that was signed by 255 scientists—all of whom are members of the United States National Academy of Sciences. The WSJ chose instead to publish an opinion piece titled No Need to Panic about Global Warming that was written by 16 “other scientists.” It has been reported that the 16 “other scientists” include engineers, a physician, a retired airplane designer, a retired electrical engineer, and astrophysicists. Also included among the “No Need to Panic” authors are two men—one who questions whether smoking causes cancer (Richard Lindzen) and another who does not believe that asbestos is a health hazard (Claude Allegre).
According to Media Matters, most of the scientists who signed the WSJ op-ed do not publish peer-reviewed papers on climate research. In addition, more than a third of them have links to fossil fuel interests.
Peter Gleick, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur Fellow, wrote an article for Forbes descrying the WSJ’s actions.
Gleick wrote:
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.”
Serious doubt has been cast on the actual expertise on climate science of the signers and on the accuracy of the content, here and elsewhere, and the strawman arguments and technical flaws of their opinion piece are evident to anyone actually versed in the scientific debate. For example, their op-ed has fundamental errors about recent actual temperatures, they use false/strawman arguments that climate scientists are saying climate change “will destroy civilization,” they launch ad hominem attack on particular climate scientists using out-of-context quotes, and so on. Formal responses are in the works, and will be available from a variety of groups in the next day or so. [Just as an example, as pointed out here previously, and at the Union of Concerned Scientists: the authors claim there has been a “lack of warming” for 10 years. The reality? 2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.]
But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.
Climate Change and the Integrity of Science, the letter that was signed by the 255 scientists, spoke of their concern about the recent escalation in assaults on scientists—especially climate scientists. They said that the assaults on both climate science and scientists came from climate change deniers who “are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.” The scientists called “for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”
Not long ago, I was disheartened to learn that climate scientists in the United States and in other countries have become victims of cyber-bullying. In 2010, Douglas Fisher wrote an article for Scientific American titled Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned. Fisher spoke of how climate researchers have to purge crude and crass emails that they find in their inboxes every day. Some consider purging such correspondence as a task they must deal with as part of the job of being a climate scientist. Others, however, “see the messages as threats and intimidation—cyber-bullying meant to shut down debate and cow scientists into limiting their participation in the public discourse.”
Clive Hamilton, an Australian author and academic said, “The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate.” Gavin Schmidt, a scientist who works for NASA, said that “organized, ‘McCarthyite’ tactics aimed at specific scientists by various groups can be stressful.” He added “‘Frivolous’ Freedom of Information Act requests can tie up considerable quantities of researchers’ time.” Schmidt claims that the worst things of all are the “‘intimidating letters’ from congressional members threatening dire consequences to scientists working on climate change.”
Last month, MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel, a Republican and the director of MIT’s Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, received a “frenzy of hate male” after a video that featured an interview with him was published by Climate Desk.
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VIDEO LINK: Not all Republicans are climate deniers (In the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, former Rep. Bob Inglis, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel, and other Republicans talk about why climate action is a conservative value)
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Mother Jones reported that the emails contained “veiled threats’ against Emanuel’s wife—as well as other “tangible threats.” Emanuel said, “They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive.” He added, “What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn’t feel very good about that at all. I thought it was low to drag somebody’s spouse into arguments like this.”
The Guardian reported last June that Australian climate scientists had been receiving death threats. As a response to the large number of threatening emails and telephone calls, the Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra moved some of its “leading climate scientists to a secure facility…”
Ian Young, ANU’s vice-chancellor, said, “Obviously climate research is an emotive issue at the present time. These are issues where we should have a logical public debate and it’s completely intolerable that people be subjected to this sort of abuse and to threats like this.” Young added that “scientists had been threatened with assault if they were identified in the street.”
Canberra Times reported last year that more than 30 researchers in Australia—including ecologists, environmental policy experts, meteorologists, and atmospheric physicists—told the paper that they had been receiving a “stream of abusive emails threatening violence, sexual assault, public smear campaigns and attacks on family members.” Some of the scientists installed upgraded home security systems and switched to unlisted phone numbers because they were fearful that their homes and cars might be damaged.
One researcher even spoke of “receiving threats of sexual assault and violence against her children after her photograph appeared in a newspaper article promoting a community tree-planting day as a local action to mitigate climate change.”
One climate scientist, who did not want to be identified, told ABC News that a dead animal was once left on his doorstep. He said he now travels with bodyguards at times. David Koroly, a professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Science, told ABC that he receives threats whenever he is interviewed by the media. He said, “It is clear that there is a campaign in terms of either organised or disorganised threats to discourage scientists from presenting the best available climate science on television or radio.”
Addendum: An Excerpt from Cowards in Our Democracy: Part 1, Written by James Hansen, Climatologist and Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual. Fossil fuel profiteers can readily find a few percent of the scientific community to serve as mouthpieces — all scientists practice skepticism, and it is not hard to find some who are out of their area of expertise, who may enjoy being in the public eye, and who are limited in scientific insight and analytic ability.
Distinguished scientific bodies such as national science academies, using the scientific method, can readily separate charlatans and false interpretations from well-reasoned science. Yet it seems that our governments and the public are not making much use of their authoritative scientific bodies. Why is that?
I believe that the answer, and the difficulty in communicating science to the public, is related to the corrosive influence of money in politics and to increased corporate influence on the media.
SOURCES
Climate Change and the Integrity of Science (Science Magazine)
WSJ Publishes Op-Ed From 16 Climate Deniers, Refused Letter From 255 Top Scientists (ThinkProgress)
Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like ‘Dentists Practicing Cardiology’ (ThinkProgress)
The rise of anti-science cyber bullying (ThinkProgress)
MIT Climate Scientist’s Wife Threatened in a “Frenzy of Hate” and Cyberbullying Fomented by Deniers (ThinkProgress)
Price Of Truth: Limbaugh Operatives Encourage Abusive Hate Mail At Female, Evangelical Climate Scientist (ThinkProgress)
Climatologist James Hansen on “Cowards in Our Democracies” (ThinkProgress)
Cowards in Our Democracies: Part 1 (Columbia)
The Journal Hires Dentists To Do Heart Surgery (Media Matters)
Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal (Forbes)
Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned: Researchers must purge e-mail in-boxes daily of threatening correspondence, simply part of the job of being a climate scientist (Scientific American)
While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower (Discover Magazine)
WSJ War on Climate Science continues with 16 prominent (but not in climate science) Scientists (Firedoglake)
Australian climate scientists targeted by death threats (Climate Science Watch)
ABC World News: Climate Scientists Claim ‘McCarthy-Like Threats’ (Climate Science Watch)
Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers: ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming (The Independent)
And as I stated to O.S. in re to scientist turning skeptics. Martin Hovland and others are distancing themselves from the AGU as well.
Martin Hovland writes in with this statement. It seems that AGU Position Statement keeps costing them members.
He writes:
Although I have been a long-time member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), I hereby refuse to pay my membership fees. The main problem is the organization’s Position Statement on the purported “Human impacts on Climate” This statement includes the following statements: “During recent millennia of relatively stable climate, civilization became established and populations have grown rapidly. In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change—an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade—is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it.
Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and—if sustained over centuries—melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2°C warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of CO2 must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century. With such projections, there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.”
As an active communicator in geophysics, spanning subjects ranging from marine geology to climate science, and an expert reviewer for the IPCC Working Group 1 on the up-coming Assessment Report 5 (my comments have just been submitted to the organization), I can no longer bear to support the AGU.
Martin Hovland
And speaking of the AGU
February 21, 2012
AGU Release No. 12-11
For Immediate Release
In response to a blog post late yesterday, 20 February 2012, by Dr. Peter Gleick regarding documents purportedly from the Heartland Institute which he disseminated, AGU President Michael McPhaden issued the following statement:
“AGU is disappointed that Dr. Gleick acted in a way that is inconsistent with our organization’s values. AGU expects its members to adhere to the highest standards of scientific integrity in their research and in their interactions with colleagues and the public. Among the core values articulated in AGU’s Strategic Plan are ‘excellence and integrity in everything we do.’ The vast majority of scientists share and live by these values.
“AGU will continue to uphold these values and encourage scientists to embrace them in order to remain deserving of the public trust. While this incident is regrettable, it should not obscure the fact that climate change is occurring or interfere with substantive scientific discourse regarding climate change.”
On Thursday, 16 February, prior to his blog post, Dr. Gleick resigned as chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics, which first convened in November 2011. In his resignation, he cited “personal, private reasons” and expressed concern that he would not be able to fulfill his responsibilities as chair. His resignation was accepted.
Following Dr. Gleick’s resignation, a search began immediately for a replacement. Effective today, 21 February, the new chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Integrity is Linda Gundersen, Director, Office of Science Quality and Integrity, USGS (U.S. Geological Survey).
The American Geophysical Union is a not-for-profit society of Earth and space scientists with more than 61,000 members in 146 countries. Established in 1919 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., AGU advances the Earth and space sciences through its scholarly publications, meetings, and outreach programs. For more information, visit http://www.agu.org.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
The funny thing is, is the guy who committed the crime is the same person Ms. Elaine chose to highlight in her post.
Peter Gleick, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur Fellow, Except it should be corrected to say EX-MEMBER National Academy of Sciences along with EX-MEMBER of the AGU and a number of other organizations who have de-listed him.
In other words they can’t argue the facts so the must discredit the witness because the facts just don’t add up in their favor anymore.
Thanks for the link Anon Nurse but if you havent been following along those leaked papers expose how someone committed a criminal act and either the same person or someone else forged documents to make Heartland look like the bad guy.
Heartland Institute leak exposes strategies of climate attack machine
“The documents show how groups play up controversy to undermine confidence in well-established scientific findings”
by Bob Ward
21 February 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/heartland-institute-leak-climate-attack
“The Heartland Institute documents demonstrate once again how those driven by ideological dogma or vested commercial interests attempt to hide their true motives behind a facade of false controversy and uncertainty in science.”
The law of unintended consequences
Time Magazine Money Quote
Worst of all — at least for those who care about global warming — Gleick’s act will almost certainly produce a backlash against climate advocates at a politically sensitive moment. And if the money isn’t already rolling into the Heartland Institute, it will soon.
Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/02/20/climate-expert-peter-gleick-admits-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-institute-papers/#ixzz1n2TL0yG3
One way or the other, Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others. (Some of the released documents contain information about Heartland employees that has no bearing on the climate fight.) That is his personal tragedy and shame (and I’m sure devastating for his colleagues, friends and family).
The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the “rational public debate” that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
Ms. Elaine in response to Scientists Denounce Climate Change Denial, Censorship
Climate Gate 2.0 e-mail number 1656
Dr. Douglas Maraun
Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Dear colleagues,
I’d like to invite all of you to todays discussion seminar, 4pm in the
coffee room:
“Climate science and the media”
After the publication of the latest IPCC, the media wrote a vast
number of articles about possible and likely impacts, many of them
greatly exaggerated. The issue seemed to dominate news for a long time
and every company had to consider global warming in its advertisement.
However, much of this sympathy turned out to be either white washing
or political correctness. Furthermore, recently and maybe especially
after the “inconvenient truth” case and the Nobel peace prize going to
Al Gore, many irritated and sceptical comments about so-called
“climatism” appeared also in respectable newspapers.
Against the background of these recent developments, we could discuss
the relation of climate science to the media, the way it is, and the
way it should be.
In my opinion, the question is not so much whether we should at all
deal with the media. Our research is of potential relevance to the
public, so we have to deal with the public. The question is rather how
this should be done. Points I would like to discuss are:
-Is it true that only climate sceptics have political interests and
are potentially biased? If not, how can we deal with this?
-How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think,
that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not
especially honest.
-How should we deal with popular science like the Al Gore movie?
-What is the difference between a “climate sceptic” and a “climate denier”?
-What should we do with/against exaggerations of the media?
-How do we avoid sounding religious or arrogant?
-Should we comment on the work/ideas of climate scepitics?
If you have got any further suggestions or do think, my points are not
interesting, please let me know in advance.
See you later,
Douglas
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=1606
Climate researcher admits leaking Heartland Institute documents
From Politico
Heartland Institute spokesman Jim Lakely said late Monday that he’s aware of Gleick’s blog post but did not have an immediate comment. The group sent letters over the weekend to several blogs and news outlets — including POLITICO — demanding that they delete all references to the documents.
Heartland says one of the documents is a fake and that it’s investigating the others, and it’s alleging that the documents were stolen or otherwise taken from the group improperly. It also said it’s contacted the FBI and police and is considering pursuing civil and criminal charges against the person who originally obtained the materials.
longtime Democratic operative Chris Lehane and Corey Goodman, a member of the Pacific Institute board of directors — confirmed to POLITICO that Gleick authored the Huffington Post blog confessing to be the source of the leak.
Lehane, Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign press secretary, is helping Gleick pro bono with communications issues. Gleick is represented by John Keker, a prominent San Francisco-based white colar criminal defense attorney.
“This is very Peter-esque if he discovers he did something wrong to get right out there,” said Goodman, the managing director and co-founder of venBio, a health care investment firm. “There’s a lot of people in these issues who don’t do things like that.
“If he discovers he made a mistake, he’d want to be the first one to say so. Give him some credit for that,” Goodman added.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73099_Page2.html#ixzz1n2GsHKEB
It has begun, Peter Gleicks name removed from AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics page.
http://www.agu.org/about/governance/committees_boards/scientific_ethics.shtml
OS just like the Peter Glieck story that is now unfolding. When the data doesn’t fit your meme fake it, forge it, message it. You know “Hide the decline”, pretend the medieval warming period never existed.
We are at 400ppm of atmospheric CO2. Which way is the trend heading.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
Wasn’t it Phil Jones who was quoted back in 2010 as saying for the past 15 years there has been no statistically significant warming. Wasn’t it Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US government’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the IPCC’s lead author on climate change science the one who wrote in an e-mail that stated.
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
Didn’t the CRU just release new data confirming the above?
The whole scam is coming crashing down and it is those who have perpetrated the fraud who have the most to loose. This is why you are seeing many scientist who believed in the theory now becoming skeptics. It’s a scam of major proportions.
Scientists Denounce Climate Change Denial, Censorship
By Stephen Leahy
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106834
Excerpt:
VANCOUVER, Canada, Feb 21, 2012 (IPS) – Amid revelations of a well-funded U.S. organisation’s plans to deliberately distort climate science, scientists and journalists at a major scientific conference called on the Canadian government to stop its muzzling of scientists.
For the past four years, the Canadian government has been denying timely access to government scientists even when their findings are published in leading scientific journals, said scientists and journalists in a special session of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting here in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“The Canadian public doesn’t know as much as they could about science and climate change,” said Margaret Munro, who is a science writer for Postmedia News, based in Vancouver.
“The more controversial the story, the less likely you are to talk to the scientists,” Munro told IPS.
Last year, journalists from around the world were denied access to Canadian government scientist Kristi Miller, who had published a groundbreaking paper on the decline of salmon populations in western Canada in the journal Science.
However, lobbyists for the oil and gas industry appear to have direct access to scientists, according to emails obtained under access to information legislation. Internal government documents reported an 80-percent decline in Canadian media coverage of climate change since 2007 when the new Stephen Harper Conservative government put restrictive policies into place.
“It is unacceptable that the Canadian public sits back and allows access to the science they’re funding to be denied them,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria.
When the science community starts having “panels about the muzzling of scientists, you know the situation is pretty desperate,” Weaver said.
Media provides the public with information so they can make informed decisions. But without timely access, the media cannot perform its role, he said.
“When government muzzles scientists for political reasons, it cuts at the fundamental principals of good science,” said Stephen Hwang, professor of general internal medicine at the University of Toronto.
“The open discussion of ideas is essential to science, just as a free press is essential to democracy,” Hwang said in a statement.
Elaine et al,
Just woke up from a nap, so late getting in here.
Hilarious. I thought BDM was exercising the only muscle he has, between the ears. He must be on speed. Or did somebody install a new battery.
OS, That one will be much used in debates, LOL.
So Gleick (?) confesses, gets endless headlines (as long as MSM is following the Republican script), and raises awareness about CW for the already aware. The others will only hear “scientists are crooks, and they admit it too!”.
Does the Pope own the world? I’m wondering if he’s not thinking of a revivalist movement. Motto: “Burn Gallileo, burn”
Again the anti-Catharist instructions: “Kill them all, let God decide.”
Bdaman,
“Ms. Elaine I was being facetious when I said that. We could go on and on about the fluff.”
Are you now saying that you were being facetious when you said that you thought is was okay to bully and threaten scientists?
What is the “fluff” that you are talking about?
Sierra Club took $26M from natural gas
This is more than 1000 times what Koch gave to Heartland
Former Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope often spoke warmly about gas as an alternative to coal in power plants. But now, the group is considering calling for natural gas to be phased out by 2050 — about 20 years after it wants coal eliminated.
Now, Brune says the group definitely isn’t a fan of natural gas, due to concerns over hydraulic fracturing.
http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/02/07/sierra-club-took-26m-from-natural-gas/
They may not be a fan of natural gas but they sure a big ol fan of dem greenbacks.
Bdaman, more red herrings.
How about let’s see the full reports from the eight thousand scientists from fifty countries. You know full well the next comprehensive meteorological reports are due out later this year. You seem to have some difficulty grasping the difference between reporters and their sources.
We now are awaiting the full report from Al Gore, Richard Branson and James Hansen on just how bad Antartica is.
Fact: Artic sea ice extent is worse than we thought
From the Greenland Climate Research Center plotting the last 7 years. It’s getting much worse.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Total sea ice extent on the northern hemisphere since 2005. The ice extent values are calculated from the ice type data from the Ocean and Sea Ice, Satellite Application Facility (OSISAF), where areas with ice concentration higher than 30% are classified as ice.