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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."'"
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.
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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.
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.
At what point do you stop funding the scientists investigating that the Earth is flat?
When they stop making testable, correct, non-trivial predictions?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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.
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
Grant money.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Read this piece by Dr. Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research:
Don't panic.
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
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
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.
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!