Friday, December 4, 2009

it hurts: a response to Henninger of WSJ

From: Christopher Essex
To: henninger@wsj.com
Subject: it hurts.
Date: Dec 3, 2009 12:56 PM

Dear Daniel,

My friend Willie Soon passed on your article: Wonderland. It's very good. It is an angle that I have anticipated for a very long time.

Wonderland is certainly where I have been trapped for more than twenty years. But it is not nearly as nice as Alice's version. Thoughts of the inquisition come to mind instead.

Many of we scientists have been ringing the alarm bells from the beginning on this. We have been telling everyone who would listen about who we were dealing with. We have known all along. Climategate is no surprise at all to us. Evidence for this is in my book with Ross McKitrick from 2002, Taken by Storm. It won a $10,000 prize, and is now in a second edition. But few were listening. If my book had a title like "Oh, my God, we are all going to die," I am sure that it would have been on the NYT bestseller list at once.

Even though I understand where you are coming from, but I find it rings flat with me that so many many obstacles were put in our way to get a fair hearing and then now to have to face people asking where the scientists were. The scientists have been tied up and gagged in the back room. I hate that. We were there screaming our lungs out all along. Damn it all, my friends Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre had to have a hearing before US congress to get that ridiculous hockey stick broken! It should have been a simple matter. The thing could hardly hold together under its own weight. Ross and I had a whole chapter on the hockey stick in our book, long before the controversy came to light. We used similar techniques to compute the US GDP with
tree rings back to the year 1000, and we got a lovely hockey stick.

I did not want in on the original hockey stick paper, because of my objections to the merits of the underlying physics, but I did comment on the drafts. In the second edition, there is an account of how the thing got broken by Ross and Steve. That science needed to get settled in congress should have got people's attention right there that there was something seriously wrong.
Science is alive and well in the individual scientists who are not caught up in gaming the system for bigger grants. I call it small science. Many of them are doing very unfashionable things, and happy to get no recognition for it. That is where you can find the real scientists. And that is where the future will be.

A milestone in this mess can be said to be when John Houghton of the IPCC said it was the IPCC's job to "orchestrate" the views of science.

Everything that has happened flows as an inevitable consequence of that. Some important research fields have been "orchestrated" out of existence. Even before climategate, I have been saying that we have set ourselves back a generation by taking the money from governments
with so many strings attached. Governments leaders wanted something where they could absolve themselves of the responsibility for making informed decisions. They would have to read science stuff otherwise.

They ordered up a kind of unnatural scientist that would tell them precisely what they wanted to hear. But they gave the puppeteers clubs to deal with those of us who remained true. And the perps of climategate are what they got. All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.

You should understand that (real) scientists have had to pay the heaviest price for the creation of these monsters for decades. And they were not created by us.

Best wishes,

Chris Essex
____________________
Dr. Christopher Essex,
Professor,
and Associate Chair,
Department of Applied Mathematics
the University of Western Ontario
London, Canada N6A 5B7

Climategate: Science Is Dying


Finally! The whole world now knows what I've been saying for years: that global warming scaremongers are NOT scientists at all - they're nothing but money grabbing charlatans worthy of nothing more than our disdain. They should be rode off the planet on a rail. Or worse.

"Hello, we're from the UN - you must give us all your money - no really, all of the "scientists" said so. Trust us."

Yeh - I was born yesterday.


OPINION: WONDER LAND DECEMBER 3, 2009, 12:53 P.M. ET

Climategate: Science Is Dying
Science is on the credibility bubble.
By DANIEL HENNINGER

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).
 
Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.

What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences-physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering-came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences.
 
This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine.

The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims-plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish-evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.

Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence.

What would Galileo do?

The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant-with implications for a vast new regulatory regime-used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory.

The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

No Unanimous View

Recently there was a letter to the editor published in one of the local newspapers in which the writer took exception to an article published in that newspaper that didn't pay proper homage to the pop-culture acceptance of AlGore's theories on man-made global warming. In his letter he insulted anyone who insisted on applying actual scientific principles to the discussion (especially those of us who live in Utah) as moon-landing deniers. Anyway, I just loved the response he got from the international scientific community. Since I know that this newspaper's circulation is very limited, I've reprinted both letters below for your enjoyment and edification:

Original letter (see: http://universe.byu.edu/node/1042)
 
Global warming is one-sided
Mon, 07/20/2009 - 20:56

On the front page of The Daily Universe's July 20 issue was an article titled "Farmers reject global warming." I looked with futility for the article's counterpart, "Climatologists virtually unanimous in acceptance of global warming."

I have no problem with journalists informing the public that farmers (or anyone else for that matter) don't believe in global warming. What is frustrating is the article's implication that farmers' opinions somehow carry the same weight as the many scientific studies that have proven the planet is heating up. The denial of global warming seems to be epidemic in Utah. Even among students at BYU, the reality of global warming has been treated with skepticism and even animosity. I can't help but to ask, "Why?" I can only guess the consumers of the aforementioned article fall into the same category of those who maintain the lunar landing was a hoax.

Unfortunately, the issue of global warming has become a war on expertise in which the media still feels the need to tell both sides of the story - the facts according to experts and the facts according to everyone else.

Jeremy Kuhre
Southlake, Texas

And here's the solid gold response from the scientific community:

Jeremy Kuhre recently suggested that BYU students are unreasonably skeptical about global warming, in the face of "virtually unanimous" acceptance among climatologists of the belief that our planet is "heating up." He equates the students with people who maintain the lunar landing was a hoax.

We the undersigned have studied weather, climate and climate change for years -- and we can state with certainty that there is no "unanimous" view among scientists on the matter of manmade catastrophic global warming. By the way, one of the signers of this letter, Dr. Harrison Schmitt, actually stood on the moon, drilled holes, collected moon rocks and has since returned to Earth. He knows the landing was real.

Probably all climate and other scientists do agree that our Earth warmed slowly between 1850 and 1998 and has cooled slightly since. But that is not the issue. The question is whether humans' use of oil, coal, and natural gas can cause a future global warming disaster -- and on that there is tremendous disagreement, just as there is about the forces that are responsible for recent, current and past climate changes. This is the reason why over 31,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition at http://www.petitionproject.org/.

The opposition to the hypothesis of catastrophic climate change from rising atmospheric CO2 is legitimate, and it is the right and duty of all citizens, including American farmers, to ask questions and demand evidence and answers. The news media have contributed to the incorrect and biased view that recent warming was caused by human CO2 emissions, and that future warming will be disastrous for humans, wildlife and our planet. The media and political activists have also promoted policies that attack American liberties and that harm and kill people, by diverting money, attention and energy resources from far more urgent and worthy purposes, like reducing poverty, malaria and malnutrition and raising global as well as American living standards.

The issue of global warming is not a war of "expertise." It is, or should be, an objective study of scientific measurements and data -- which can now confirm that atmospheric CO2 plays at most a minor role in causing weather and climate change.

BYU is an institution of higher learning that should promote the seeking of truth. Similarly, science is an objective assessment of hypotheses, by testing concepts against actual data and observations; it is not a matter of votes, popularity or "virtual unanimity."
We are all harmed, if we allow our universities or our science to be politicized.

Signed

Harrison Schmitt, PhD, Geologist and Astronaut
Craig Idso, PhD, Geographer
David R. Legates, PhD, Climatologist
Art Robinson, PhD, Chemist
Noah Robinson, PhD, Chemist
Willie Soon, PhD, Astrophysicist

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

21st Century Snake Oil

A friend of mine asked me the following question. My response follows the question:

BTW what is all this stuff on TV about no such thing as "clean coal"???

Of course there is such a thing as clean coal; my power company happens to be 1/6th owner of the cleanest coal fired plant in the country. Clean coal happens when you filter the noxious gases, like SOx and NOx, which cause bad things like acid rain, out of the emissions.

The only people who argue that there's no such thing as clean coal are those who claim that CO2 is also a pollutant. But the only people who claim that CO2 is anything other than a harmless trace gas are those who are either too lazy to read any of the many scientific studies or they are deliberately trying to scam people out of their hard-earned money. "CO2 pollution" is the snake oil of the 21st Century and we'll all be laughing at those who were gullible enough to buy in to it before very many more years pass.

By the way, it's the fact that all of the scientific information is coming out about how CO2 is NOT causing "Global Warming" and that Al Gore is a great big scam artist that is causing a major panic among the Global Warming alarmists; they're in a huge rush to push through major funding for their projects, while suppressing scientific studies, before they get laughed out of Washington DC.

Sorry to run on so long on this subject, but as a professional power engineer I'm offended to see people have to pay more for their power bill than necessary, and these scam artists (including Obama's new Secretary of Energy) want to double or even quintuple your power bills.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Gore's Scientist Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’

Scientist Fired by Gore Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’

Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer, who says he was fired by Vice President Al Gore for failing to adhere to Gore’s views on global warming, has now declared that man-made warming fears are “mistaken.”

Happer, who served as the director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, said, “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly.”

He said in 1993, “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy."

Now Happer has asked to join the more than 650 international scientists who have spoken out against man-made global warming fears and are cited in the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environmental and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe, R-Okla.

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer told the committee on Dec. 22.

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as his top science adviser, Harvard University professor John Holdren, is a staunch believer in the dangers of man-made global warming and advised Gore on his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Dr. Happer has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Sen. Inhofe said that the statements of prominent scientists like Happer who are willing to publicly dissent from climate fears strike a blow to the United Nations, Gore, and the media’s claims about global warming.

“The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day," Inhofe said.

Happer declared, “I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect — for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow. Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past . . .

“Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility.”

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'

CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'
Network's second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute12/18/2008 11:02:44 PM http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081218205953.aspx

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather?

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.

Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Obama continues anti-American activities

In typical "newspeak" (ala 1984) the Global Warming alarmists claim that President Bush has suppressed science, when in fact they are the ones who totally ignore the science that contradicts their faith-based belief system.

Obama Announces Energy, Environmental Team.

The New York Times (12/16, A24, Broder, Revkin) reports, "The team President-elect Barack Obama introduced on Monday to carry out his energy and environmental policies faces a host of political, economic, diplomatic and scientific challenges that could impede his plans to address global warming and America's growing dependence on dirty and uncertain sources of energy." Obama "vowed to press ahead despite the faltering economy and suggested that he would invest his political capital in trying to break logjams."

The AP (12/16) adds, "Obama selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration." Obama also "announced his choice of Lisa Jackson, former head of New Jersey's environmental agency, as EPA administrator and Nancy Sutley, a deputy Los Angeles mayor, as chair of the White House Council on Environment Quality."


The Los Angeles Times (12/16, Tankersley, Hamburger) notes, "With this team, some environmentalists and former federal research scientists expect Obama's White House to break from what they view as the Bush administration's record of overlooking science in favor of politics. ... Critics -- including...former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- have complained about the influence of industry lobbyists and ideologues on Bush administration decision-making." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (CA) "is among the Democrats who repeatedly have accused top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and political advisor Karl Rove, with pressing federal agencies to take positions that put them at odds with their own scientists on energy, global warming and stem cell research." The Politico (12/16, Lee, Lovley), the Wall Street Journal (12/16, A5, Power), USA Today (12/16, Watson), The Hill (12/16, Youngman) and AFP (12/16), among other news outlets, also report on Obama's announcement.