Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Threatened For "Climate Denial"
Forrest Kyle writes "A former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg has received multiple death threats for questioning the extent to which human activities are driving global warming. '"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor. "I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal." Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [...] recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."'"
This really begs the question: are the climate scientists who dissent really tools for corporations or are the climate scientists who advocate (consent to global warming caused by man) really tools for government/special interest groups?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
from the original article... " the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored. "
---- mike simaska
Saying "we will not debate this" accomplishes nothing. All science is up for debate. If the science is solid, it will withstand all criticisms, no matter how ludicrous.
My blog
You don't have to buy anything, just walk up to a representative sample of people who think that global warming is anthropogenic and say, "actually I think it's probably just a natural cycle."
The shock, hostility and downright hatred you will come across will very quickly render claims of death threats highly believable. Is this guy a jerk? Maybe. Is his science on-par? I have no clue. But, there is no denying the fact that this has become such an emotionally charged issue that climatology is probably the hardest field to do real science in today. I really wish we could de-politicize the whole process, but I fear that we would have had to start slowing this train about a decade ago in order to accomplish that feat.
This raises the larger question...At what point do you stop funding the scientists investigating that the Earth is flat? At some point, the evidence becomes overwhelming and those who ignore it really are 'deniers'. I'm not sure about this particular scientist, but a lot of those skeptics are funded by the very corporations who have a vested interest in doing nothing. For how long was there a group of scientist who claimed that cigarette smoking could not be linked to any negative health effect data?
I'm afraid you're talking nonsense, people may be forced to migrate because of the effects of a global climate change but not because of scientists disagreeing with the popular scientific consenus.
Scientists like this guy aren't denying that we are undergoing a climate change but they do disagree about the underlying cause of the change which is something they are perfectly entitled to do.
Having watched the documentary mentioned in the article I have some sympathy with the viewpoint that this whole issue has been hijacked by a number of pressure groups and political associations which is leading to an overly emotional and hysterical treatment of the entire issue.
Personally I am in two minds on the subject, I see a lot of people saying the case is comprehensively proven who want to decide what action we should now take and also a lot of people saying that the case isn't yet proven and there are a number of scientific arguments which still need to be overcome.
What I would like is for the hysteria and the political posturing to stop and instead promote a more balanced approach to considering the scientific arguments.
Even if global warming is largely due to human activities I don't believe and I have not seen any evidence to support the view that the effects are going to be anywhere near as catastrophic as is made out in various news reports and in the media, e.g. huge tidal waves towering over the Thames Barrier and destroying the City of London seem to me to be based more on a need for sensastional television than anything else.
Ignore the hurricanes, tsunamis flooding Bangladesh, and the loss of island nations worldwide, if you must. But don't call your "belief" science.
You just shot down your own argument.
Hurricanes: Wasn't this last hurricane season supposed to be the worst in history due to global warming. How did that work out?
Tsunamis: Are you saying that earthquakes are caused by global warming? Please! Stop blaming everything on GW. It just makes you look (more) stupid.
Loss of nation states: Name one nation that is now underwater.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
TFA is more about the death threats he's recieved, and the general unwillingness to believe anything other than worst-case "day after tomorrow" type scenarios.
I don't think any true climatologists have such a dim view - but the media does, and Al Gore does, and a large community of activists do. And those activists have the same mindset of those who murder doctors at abortion clinics, or assault people wearing fur coats.
How are you going to have any sort of open discourse or intelligent discussion, or any sort of pursuit of the "truth" with such people involved?
Believing something other than "mainstream science" these days has some nasty consequences. Science has sort of replaced religion to a lot of people, and people vehemently defend Darwin like a religious fundy would defend the Bible.
I wonder if there are any true-life Galilleo's out there, muzzled and silent, who's name won't be known for centuries, when they're proven right?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... it's that the dissent is being irresponsibly over-exaggerated and manipulated by certain parties (namely the Bush administration). It's somewhat similar to holocaust or evolution denials. It's not a problem, perhaps even healthy, that there is dissent. However, if decision-makers start cherry-picking oddball positions to further their policy (like the Bush administration on the environment or evolution and Iran on the holocaust) then you have a problem. The problem is with the decision-makers, not the various individuals expressing their thoughts.
What if what "was done about it" was the wrong thing? And what iof nothing needs to be done about it?
Almost all of the skeptics or deniers only deny or are skeptical about the _cause_ of global warming, not the fact that the planet is indeed warming.
/. likes to attack these same people for not seeing things their way. It is commonplace here to attack and mod down people who present other or counter evidence, no matter how valid it may be. The media has successfully nullified the scientific process when it comes to global warming. The media and political interests are causing global warming to be such a polarizing issue that any one person, or entity looking to present evidence counter to the what the media/politicians feed us, is going to think twice. The implications of publishing an article/paper counter to what many believe to be true are far reaching and could end your career.
:) )
Like many others areas of the world/media,
All I hope for is that the scientific process can be saved from the media in the future when issues like this come up. By that I mean issues that demand action based on conclusive scientific evidence of a problem. We could all certainly be wrong about global warming and if you do not at least concede that, then you too, are contributing to the fall of one of, if not the most important advancement of our modern society, the scientific process. (Sanitation puts up a good fight for #1
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
What money is there to be made on the green side? Where does the majority of research money in the world actually come from, people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, or those who have a vested interest in changing it?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not a climatologist, but I am a scientist, and some of these responses (and indeed, responses all over the place) are scaring me. Global warming is not the issue. There's a very clear trend of increasing global temperatures, you can check meteorological websites and see it. There's also a very clear trend of an increase in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, even just since they started recording it, to say nothing of what it might have been 100 or 200 years ago.
The argument is whether the global warming that we see in hard data is caused by humans. There's a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperature, but as any Pastafarian can tell you, correlation does not equal causation. That's what people should be arguing about. We KNOW temperatures are increasing, what we don't know (and it's one of those things that might be impossible to prove, as so many things are in science) is whether these increases are caused by us. If they are, then we might possiblly be able to reverse them given reductions in CO2 output and carbon sequestering. If they aren't, then rising CO2 probably isn't helping and should still be reversed, and we might also look into other solutions for it.
The Earth has cycled between hot and cold for its entire existence, and we don't know why. It might be life, it might be the planet's internal processes, it might be the Maunder Minimum.
Anyone denying that the planet is heating is living with their head up their butt. Anyone denying that the heating is caused by humans is simply skeptical, and has good reason to be. Anyone convinced that the warming of the planet is caused by humans is too credulous and should always remember that science is falsifiable and therefore can never be certain.
Evil will always win, because Good is DUMB
Actually, we've not "ruined Eden".
What most people fundamentally miss, is concern at the current _extremely rapid_ climate change (it's not questioned that the climate is always changing for various reasons) is not concern about "saving the planet" by saving ourselves. Concern about whether humans are causing rapid climate change (which there are now mountains of evidence in favour of) is _self interest_. The Sun has another five or six billion years of main sequence, and if we act like bacteria in a petri dish - living in an unsustainable manner until either the environment no longer favours our species, or that the resources are used up - in that period of time, the Earth will shrug it off. 100 million years is nothing to the Earth.
We are the first species who can actually predict the course of our actions, and actually stop the disaster from happening in the first place. Concern about this very rapid climate change is all about preserving our technological society. We only have one shot at at - the easy to get at resources are all now gone, so if this society collapses, there cannot be another industrial revolution (at least, not for 100 million years or so).
So the choice is: live sustainably and save ourselves, or don't live sustainably, and doom civilization. The Earth doesn't care either way, the Earth will just shrug us off in what is the short term for the planet - if we doom ourselves, in a couple of hundred million years you'll have to dig for fossils to even tell that humans even existed.
It's clear that we both need to adapt _AND_ we need to find a way to live sustainably. Even if it turns out to be entirely false that human emissions are the main factor in the rapidly changing climate (which is unlikely), resource exhaustion is still a future problem that must be tackled. Living sustainably will solve both problems, and it doesn't mean we all go back to an Edwardian lifestyle either if we engage our brains (and sadly, as a species, we act no more intelligently than bacteria on a petri dish). I think ultimately, if our society survives it'll be luck rather than good planning (luck - as in resources become increasingly scarce at a slow enough rate that the market can force the move to alternatives, at a speed which won't cause economic collapse).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Scientists should be skeptical. It is only under much scrutiny and skepticism that the truth can be truly known. Petty tactics against skeptics only serve to make the more popular global warming theories appear as dogma rather than real science.
Grant money.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
More to the point, the scientific community was not claiming that harsh winters of 1976-1977 were evidence of global cooling.
And it's the height of willful ignorance to not understand that the human impact on climate is caused by solar radiation -- it's the human effect on the impact of that solar radiation that leads to anthropogenic climate change.
Are people still comparing pop sci global cooling with real sci global warming?
Immaterial. The impact of global warming is still significant to mankind, in the midst of that 'blip'. The point you make is equivalent to saying that I shouldn't be concerned if my home is burning to the ground because I'm only one of several billion humans -- hogwash. To me, that home is important, just as to mankind, global warming is important, despite our insignificance in the big picture of the universe.
Get your head out of the sand, please. The Earth is not a sentient being, it is not some mystical entity that 'does what it wants' -- it is a collection of all the things on and in it, including us. And to think that we are not part of the Earth system, to think that we have no influence on global phenomena, is to deny human existence.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Read this piece by Dr. Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research:
Don't panic.
The shock, hostility and downright hatred you will come across will very quickly render claims of death threats highly believable. I don't think it's a "representative sample" you have in mind.
There are extremists on both sides, who, unsurprisingly, are among the most vocal. Just look at the anti-AGW types who start screaming about dirty hippie globaloney-worshipping libtard Gorebots the instant the word "warming" leaves one's mouth. But, there is no denying the fact that this has become such an emotionally charged issue that climatology is probably the hardest field to do real science in today. Eh, the majority of the climatology community is probably fairly insulated from the political debate as far as their actual practice of science is concerned. It probably even remains true in general, with the exception of a relative handful of high profile scientists (e.g., the ones who end up testifying to Congress) and those who intentionally insert themselves into the political scene.
It is, however, way over-politicized to the extent that none of the real scientific debates accurately trickle down to the public.
Get a grip. Your first sentence makes my point for me. You try to insult me and belittle my position. Then you take a quote from me out of context and try to invoke Godwin. I said deniers as compared to skeptics. I have no problem with people who say, "We don't know." or "I'm not sure." I have a problem with people who actively deny the possibility and then toss around insults because they have no actual logical argument.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Depends on what was done about it, but I can't help thinking "better safe than sorry." When our greatgrandchildren look back on this time 100 years from now, I'd rather them laugh at our paranoia (or whatever you might call incorrect and alarmist views on climate change) than lament our complacency.
That said, I don't think it is worth any kind of violent revolution or some such. That woudl certainly be something to lament.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Global warming worries is so 1990's.
We won't have get to the point where it will really matter, Peak Oil will come and we won't HAVE anything to burn to create greenhouse gases.
Not that it would matter, when billions starve and get shot, bombed and nuked in the energy wars.
(perhaps I'm just kidding, perhaps not).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Except the CO2 could be keeping us from an ice age and our paranoia could plunge us into one. Try feeding 6 billion people with large amounts of farm land covered in ice. The climate is really complex and needs to be fully understood before we try to start changing things.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=900556679
The movie was produced by the BBC4 and is titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It shows an honest, reasoned response to the Global Warming Scare on a point-by-point basis from scientists and at least one journalist. The scientists all have credentials out the whazoo and are recognized leaders and contributors in their respective fields. A few of them have their names on the IPCC report (the report the Warmingistas always cite) and one has even sued to have his name taken off the document.
Particularly chilling (no pun intended) is the part that shows how the IPCC policy-wonks have redacted the IPCC report to remove comments from the scientists that explicitly state there is no proveable link between man-made CO2 and global warming.
As a technical person, I have always suspected the "consensus" results "proving" man-made Global Warming have been primarily a political scam. For one thing, science rarely (if ever) deals in absolutes, and complex models always deal in probabilities rather than yes/no answers. Further, as an undergraduate engineer, I spent plenty of time in college science labs doing experiments to acquaint myself with the scientific method. Working in simple straight-forward conditions:
- Indoor lab,
- Properly calibrated equipment,
- One simple, universally-accepted equation,
- One single variable,
we (me and all the other undergraduates) never got an exact match between the equations and the real world. There was always a fudge-factor. This experience has taught me that anyone who thinks scientists can model the entire world and get every equation and every theoretical assumption correct (down to a degree Celcius with no fudge-factor) is either ignorant or just a shill. They have the kind of faith that would put any religious bigot to shame.What about the massive amounts of money we're spending to protect our interests in our current energy sources? I.e. Money spent lobbying (for/against), by/for politicians re: fossil fuels? Or money spent to maintain military presence near/at the source of oil? No one ever seems to count that as money we're spending for fossil fuels.
Don't put your faith in Peak Oil solving our CO2 problem. The US is the MidEast of the world's Coal reserves, with about 1/4 of the entire reserves in our country. Also, before we resort to burning coal for fuel, we have natural gas to run through. It won't reach Peak Gas (sounds ominous :-) ) until after Peak Oil. There's lots of carbon to throw into the atmosphere. We have to find a way to sequester this CO2.
I know you pulled those figures out of your hat, but let's consider. If the cost of energy increases by 25%, that means the cost of everything increases by 10-25% (depending on what fraction of a widget is labor versus what fraction is materials). Everything.
Yeah, if the price of energy rose by 25%, absolutely nobody would start thinking about using less energy for a change.Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Depends on what was done about it, but I can't help thinking "better safe than sorry." When our greatgrandchildren look back on this time 100 years from now, I'd rather them laugh at our paranoia (or whatever you might call incorrect and alarmist views on climate change) than lament our complacency.
How about them cursing you for having trashed the economy so their standard of living is far below that of your time - and no resources are available for solving whatever the REAL problems of their day are - while instituting a global totalitarian repression to accomplish the "better safe" goals?
Kyoto alone talks about cutting the global economy by about a third for an "improvement" predicted (even by its advocates) to be too small to measure.
What good is insurance if you spend so much on it that you have nothing left to live on? Don't you think you need to actually do enough research to have some confidence in the results before instituting such costly measures?
Don't you think you should at LEAST get the models working to the point that they actually track the historic record of global temperature before taking draconian measures based on their predictions of the future?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> Notice anything familiar?
Nope. You're describing an issue of individual freedom. The global warming debate is about how to regulate the commons, not imposing on an individual's freedom.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I'll name one: Lindzen, your own cite. This is one of the things that bugs me about these arguments: "it is primarily anthropogenic in nature" and "there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system" are simply not the same. That humans are having some influence on the warming trend that is going on should be news enough. It's this apparent need to "alarmize" it beyond the science that's got so many of us annoyed.
You can not reverse a non-linear chaotic system. Whenever you hear someone say otherwise you can not win the argument because you are arguing with emotion.
You have to admire some of the handwaves that the RealClimate article resorts to in order to preserve the global-warming doctrine. "Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct; however they misinterpret it. The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can't even see the lag because its so small." It's either true or it's not. The RealClimate site admits that the "Great Global Warming Swindle" statement is correct, but that when you look at the 800,000 year range of the ice cores, this lag is insignificant. Excuse me, but if you make the claim "X causes Y; just look at these graphs, where you see X and Y moving in similar patterns", then ignoring the fact that X happens after Y makes your entire claim invalid.
If increasing CO2 levels cause increased global temperatures, then the historical record would show that the CO2 levels increased before the temperature rise. But the temperature rises actually occurred prior to the CO2 rise; making the claim that an effect is due to a cause that happened after the effect makes you look like an idiot. If the CO2 level changes mimic the temperature changes from 800 years earlier -- but not the current temperature changes -- over the measurement period, then it doesn't matter that the lag is 0.1% of the measurement range, then the CO2 level changes are not a cause of the temperature changes.
Yep, there is where most people live. That means, it's where most people have everything they own. They may be able to escape, our economy, not.
This is exactly what I fear in this sort of discussion... Do yourself a favor, go get a topographical map, and measure on it, from both the high and low tide marks, which are usually on the order of a METER apart, a "few centimeters" (that is, a small number, more than 3... say 10). Now, how much land on that topographical map is within your measurement.... go. Try it out. Oh, you'll find that most such maps are measured off in >1 meter increments....Yes, that's right. A rise in sea levels of 10cm would be very close to noise in the tidal fluctuation. It does mean that storm surges that didn't used to affect your beachfront-house might. It does mean that storm drains in some cities might be in trouble during storms. That's the extent of the concern. But just watch the news and they'll sing you any sort of dire prediction you like!
Places like New Orleans and Amsterdam are in more trouble, though. Such places actually exist BELOW the water line, and constantly run the risk of flooding. They WILL be flooded someday, and a 10cm rise in oceans certainly puts them in greater immediate risk, so there's your imminent danger model. Just be clear that you're talking about specific problems, not "most people."
Give me a single piece of evidence that says that increasing the temperature (but not solar power) increases the fertility of land (I can give you several examples of the contrary). Permanently frozen lands excluded.
,There are plenty of areas in the northern parts of North America, Asia and parts of Europe that aren't suitable for growing most crops because of the mean temperature, not the fertility of the land. When the temperatures go up, those areas WILL be suitable for growing (are now for heartier crops).
I'm horribly ignorant of the fertility of the colder regions of South America, so I can't tell you anything about that.
There is also the huge climate change, that will probably obsolet a lot of our housing investiment and take a lot of people lifes, the increase on wet of places that already have problems with it (that will probably be the most affected), and possible problems with the atmosphere (more tornadoes) and sea currents. Not to talk about the disruption that is already happenning at sea life.
I don't think it is a good idea to gamble on that.
Let's be specific. What lives will be taken, and how. Exactly. Cite examples. I'm not buying it.i find this notion fascinating -- I can't think of any other situation in which funneling research and development into more efficient and automated technology has resulted in anything other than economic progress. The entire western world is built on replacing the cheap, easy and obvious method of doing things with expensive but vastly more scalable and efficient technology.
Outlawing child labor didn't result in an energy or manufacturing crisis, it resulted in a more educated society while causing all the industries that relied on child labor to invest in better tools that wound up being MORE effective and profitable.
All that environmental concerns accomplish is to change the economic incentives so that the market has the motivation to cover the startup costs of technologies we know will be more productive in the long run anyways. Building more efficient and cleaner power plants and vehicles is a great idea that we know will benefit all aspects of the economy and society. So why not make it profitable for the market to move to that stage sooner rather than later?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Yeah. Because everyone has that option. My fossil fuel consumption is a direct function of my commute. Mass transit is not an option, because I'd also need a bike, and it'd be stolen almost immediately near the mass transit station. My energy consumption is relatively fixed. I have enough to run a laptop most of the time, and a bit extra for basic cooling and heating.
Are you going to tell everyone with outdate consumer utilities (radio, television, refrigerator, etc.) to fuck off and buy newer, more efficient models? Even if they cannot afford them? Will you volunteer to sacrifice from your lifestyle to bring everyone else up to par? So much for universal health care and cheaper higher-level education, eh?
You act like people are wantonly wasting energy left and right, with careless abandon. The real story is far grimmer. But when your only agenda is political tongue-lashing and grabs for yet more governmental power, I guess you can afford to discard reality. Americans are all so wasteful! Nevermind our industrialization is decreasing, and nevermind that global measures like Kyoto conveniently ignore countries like China that are rapidly becoming major impacts on the global ecological stage.
Help us, Lars T. You're our only hope.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
We need to shift off of fossil fuels anyway for strategic, economic, environmental, and geopolitical reasons: - De-funding terrorist petrostates - Neutering the Big Oil lobby - Removing the possibility of OPEC style embargo politics - Creation of a native energy industry increases GDP and keeps the money in-country - Expanding biofuel use eliminates the need to subsidize farms and farmers - Co2 from biofuel was in the air months prior, so no net CO2 gain. - Clean Coal tech such as emissions scrubbing and carbon sequestering has gotten to the point where it is viable as a greenish energy source, and the US has coal coming out its.. seams. - Nuclear has gotten a lot safer. Slowing/eliminating human inputs to climate change is just the cherry on the un-fossil sundae.
~!J!
Caveat - I've never been a denier and I appreciate not using more resources than we have to. Hell I don't own a car. Now that it's more accepted fact that the recent warming is caused by us, the next question on my mind is - is it *really* a bad thing?
Seriously!
Have they *really* done a proper study comparing how much land will be rendered inarable as compared to how much more land will become arable? Have they factored in how easy it is for entire human populations to shift if there's an economic reason to move?
Or have they just figured out what might happen to certain parts of land we currently use, and then scream the sky will fall?
Have you ever looked at the 100 kiloyear cycle, where 10,000 years ago all of Canada was under a kilometer of ice? Ever heard of the Canadian Breadbasket? The massive wheat fields of western Canada? To be honest if human activity PREVENTS and BREAKS the 100 kiloyear cycle, I"M ALL FOR IT. I don't want to see all of Canada and all of Northern Europe and Russia covered with a 1km thick ice shield in 50,000 years. Do you?
You know damn well everyone is merely afraid of "change". OOooooh evil evil change. God forbid the millions of people who live in Bangladesh should have to move. Oh wait, really we should already be moving them, considering how many die EVERY SINGLE FUCKING YEAR from flooding. So why haven't they been moved yet? OH WAIT - it's because there are political borders and the people in Western Canada and the Central USA would never ever ever let them in (repeat with every single other country in the entire fucking world.
Maybe the first thing we should do is figure out how to get rid of:
a) economic and social inequity
b) removing political borders that prevent people from moving to nicer places where the weather is perfect for all of us all year round - as opposed to having to live in Bangladesh or Canada -- Yes fucking Canada! It's fucking cold here 75% of the time! Who the hell in their right mind would settle here unless they were being persecuted or fleeing poverty or searching for riches or cheap land in an agrarian world of the late 1800's?
We're all modern now - there's no reason we can't all move down to and settle the northern fringes of South America where it's 15 deg C or more above all fricking year. Maybe we'll come up and vacation in Canada in July and August when it's 25/30/35 deg C here.