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."'"

Comments

nail -- meet hammer!

[mikesimaska]

from the original article... " the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored. "

Science Should Always Be Up For Debate

[MarkPNeyer]

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.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[ajs]

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.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[stratjakt]

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?

Re:I Don't Buy It

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Which is why "global warming" is on it's way out and "global climate change" is on it's way in. But the inability to predict the changes has nothing to do with changes currently observed OR whether or not it was caused by mankind.

My thought is that we're facing backlash based on 30 years of bad predictions- with nobody noticing the logic of "hey, maybe we SHOULD reduce pollution for other reasons", or "maybe we should capitalize on all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere and provide us with some nice large lumber-grade bamboo forests for building materials in the mean time".

Problem is not the dissent...

[AtlanticCarbon]

... 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.

Re:Flat Earth Society

[UbuntuDupe]

At what point do you stop funding the scientists investigating that the Earth is flat?

When they stop making testable, correct, non-trivial predictions?

Re:I Don't Buy It

[sumdumass]

What if what "was done about it" was the wrong thing? And what iof nothing needs to be done about it?

Do Not Forget the REAL Debate Among the Scientists

[moore.dustin]

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.

Like many others areas of the world/media, /. 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.

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 :) )

Educate us

[benhocking]

Find one by an actual climatologist and not by an author who has also warned us about the "summer of the shark". The truth is that during this global cooling scare manufactured by Time and Newsweek, real scientists were already doing research on global warming.

It is the height of meglomania to suggest that human beings have a greater impact on the planet than that big-ass hot thing that comes over the horizon every morning.

Humans tend to think that the span of our lifetimes are significant, when in the scope of Universe, our lifespans, and indeed human life on this planet are nothing but a blip, a footnote, a grain of sand on the beach.

It's the height of ignorance to believe otherwise. If you don't trust environmentalists, perhaps you'll believe what Lindzen himself has said:

At some level, [that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system] has never been widely contested.

Responses are criticizing the wrong thing

[ElScorcho]

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.

Re:They do agree its anthropogenic

[Nutria]

Really? You really believe that? On what basis do you make such a radical claim?

Grant money.

runaway global warming: debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am concerned about the future of our planet and our species' place upon it, I am growing increasingly sceptical of the wild claims surrounding a looming global warming catastrophe.

My main area of surprise and shock was learning that past concentrations of carbon dioxide were much higher than they are today, as revealed in the interview below:

RES: Professor Robert E. Sloan, Department of Geology, University of Minnesota
JC: Dr Joe Cain, interviewer

We are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. When you have high amounts of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere up to a certain limit, which is considerably higher than it is now, the result is green plants grow very much better... And it is precisely at this time that the recovery from the first dinosaur extinction takes place. When the super plumes come and carbon dioxide increases, and the oxygen correspondingly increases as a result of photosynthesis... And yet the super plumes did not last forever and they started to die at the end of Cretaceous.... In any event, large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28. And so this suggested to me that this was perhaps a significant reason for the first dinosaur extinction, and probably one of the major factors in the second, the terminal dinosaur extinction, other than the birds. It also neatly tied together all of the really bizarre features about the Cretaceous... The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to the present ice house that we have... Well, the rich carbon dioxide of course provides for a much greater biogenic diversity.

I have come to learn that these past carbon dioxide concentrations have been documented in peer-reviewed research journals:

We find that CO2 emissions resulting from super-plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric CO2 levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm.

My interest in past CO2 concentrations began by reading a (somewhat) more partisan summary of this information:

When dinosaurs walked the earth (about 70 to 130 million years ago), there was from five to ten times more CO2 in the atmosphere than today. The resulting abundant plant life allowed the huge creatures to thrive. . . . Based on nearly 800 scientific observations around the world, a doubling of CO2 from present levels would improve plant productivity on average by 32 percent across species.

I have also seen a great rejection of the global warming panic in the scientific community (it is unlikely that "big oil" funds have "bribed" so many faculty members of such prestigous universities):

Sixty scientists call on Harper to revisit the science of global warming... If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

And I have also seen a growing political backlash against scientifically-unfounded runaway global warming panic:

Politicians who build campaigns around "alarmist" global warming claims are themselves becoming quite alarmed because of growing skepticism, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said.

When I see interviews such as

Re:I Don't Buy It

[SirTalon42]

Your article was from 2005, through 2006 there was far more evidence showing Mars was warming (including reports from NASA and other groups saying exactly that).

Re:I Don't Buy It

[JonBuck]

Actually, it has become an emotional issue. We have people like James Lovelock and James Hansen saying we're doomed, Doomed, DOOMED! at the top of their lungs. When you drive people into a panic, they do not behave rationally. I've made some bad financial errors because I made an emotional purchase.

Read this piece by Dr. Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research:

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science. It will not be visible in next year's global assessment from the world authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To state that climate change will be "catastrophic" hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.

Is any amount of climate change catastrophic? Catastrophic for whom, for where, and by when? What index is being used to measure the catastrophe?

The language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change.

The language of politicians can be as strong as that of campaigners
This has been seen in other areas of public health risk. Empirical work in relation to climate change communication and public perception shows that it operates here too.

Framing climate change as an issue which evokes fear and personal stress becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. By "sexing it up" we exacerbate, through psychological amplifiers, the very risks we are trying to ward off.

The careless (or conspiratorial?) translation of concern about Saddam Hussein's putative military threat into the case for WMD has had major geopolitical repercussions.

We need to make sure the agents and agencies in our society which would seek to amplify climate change risks do not lead us down a similar counter-productive pathway.

Don't panic.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[misleb]

What if what "was done about it" was the wrong thing? And what iof nothing needs to be done about it?

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

Re:He's not alone

[LionMage]

Kind of interesting that "The Great Global Warming Swindle" gets mentioned a lot in the comments on this article. So I might as well mention the RealClimate debunking of this documentary (mentioned briefly in another comment thread).

Re:Oversensitive much?

[Chacham]

You know, things like claiming that the word "denier" is a holocaust reference.

He never said such a thing. The exact quote from the article is:

I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust.

All the connotations of. The word denier (when refering to those who deny) is uncommon, as is usually used as a strong term.

Anyway, the word itself, to many, does indeed carry sucha reference. Just now i googled denier, and the second line (first entry, first sub-entry) was a Holocaust reference in Wikipedia.

IMNSHO, a denier, when referring to one who denies, is nearly always predicated with what is being denied. On its own, however, it would refer to a famous topic that has famous incidents of deniers. One such case, and to many nearly the only case, would be the Holocaust.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[Lars T.]

PS: Balancing green house gasses would do little harm to the US economy. We might go from spending ~3% of are GDP on fossil fuel to ~6% on renewable energy but over the long term it's a minor change

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.

How many of those are climatologists?

[benhocking]

I'm not being sanctimonious, but I'm not going to waste my time watching some infomercial. Have you watched "An Inconvenient Truth" yet or are you too sanctimonious?

I already know that Steve McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick are not climatologists. Are any of them?

Prof. Tim Patterson: Geologist
Prof. Edward J Wegman: Statistician
Prof. Bob Carter: Marine Geophysicist
Dr. Willie Soon: Astrophysicist
Dr. Madhya Khandekar: ???
Prof. Wibjorn Karlen: Paleoclimatologist
Dr. Henrik Svensmark: Physicist
Dr. Dick Morgan: Law Professor?
Dr. Fred Goldberg: Physicist
Hans H.J. Labohm: Economist
Steve McIntyre: Mineralogist
Dr. Ross McKitrick: Economist
Dr. Chris Landsea: Meteorologist

OK. So I've had to do a lot of work to get one name. Prof. Karlen is a climatologist. So, what was his contribution? If I do a Scirus search, I don't find much, but perhaps I'm not searching on the right terms. He wrote a paper in 1973 on Holocene climatic variations and another in 2000 on high-altitude fresh waters.

Ahah. I did another Scirus search and found this article. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be anything there. I really wish I knew what he had written as every other article I can find only deals with the holocene. Although the title is suggestive, it wouldn't be the first time that what one would infer from a title did not agree with the conclusions.

I really don't buy it

[mrcparker]

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.

Every reason TO change, no reason not to.

[cephal0p0d]

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.