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...

[Seoulstriker (748895)]

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?

Well they can always get funding

[AlanS2002 (580378)]

from oil companies to speak at conferences full of other climate change deniers.

nail -- meet hammer!

[mikesimaska (660104)]

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

Problem is not the dissent...

[AtlanticCarbon (760109)]

... 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.

Do Not Forget the REAL Debate Among the Scientists

[moore.dustin (942289)]

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 [slashdot.org].

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 :) )

Responses are criticizing the wrong thing

[ElScorcho (115780)]

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.

His sources of funding...

[Serveert (102805)]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Bal l [sourcewatch.org]

Dr. Timothy Ball is Chairman and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). [1] Two of the three directors of the NRSP - Timothy Egan and Julio Lagos - are executives with the PR and lobbying company, the High Park Group (HPG). [2] Both HPG and Egan and Lagos work for energy industry clients and companies on energy policy. [3]

Ball is a Canadian climate change skeptic and was previously a "scientific advisor" to the oil industry-backed organization, Friends of Science. [4] Ball is a member of the Board of Research Advisors of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian free-market think tank which is predominantly funded by foundations and corporations. [5]


The links to PR companies is what bothers me. PR companies have studied and refined group psychology for decades, centuries even if you look at how it evolved from greek study of rhetoric, and it has even gotten us into wars like the 1st gulf war ( http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html [prwatch.org] ). They make Hitler's propaganda team look ineffecient in comparison. Stalin would be envious of them. Having observed PR campaigns for decades, this is a very high level and well funded campaign. I see their tactic - attacking global warming advocates as emotional and vindictive. Basically taking the science out of global warming and turning themselves into victims, because everyone likes a victim. I wish I wasn't so skeptical and negative but having seen PR companies in action, this has all the hallmarks of a PR campaign. The best PR goes unnoticed, it's not obvious to those uniniatied in PR tactics, but it is most definitely happening.

I personally only want to see peer reviewed data, nothing else matters. The PR companies want to take this to the people rather than to the journals.

Science Should Always Be Up For Debate

[MarkPNeyer (729607)]

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:More denial crapola on slashdot

[HappySqurriel (1010623)]

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/0 8/30/mits_inconvenient_scientist/ [boston.com]

Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.

I ask you: Are these convincing arguments? And directed at journalists, who are natural questioners and skeptics, of all people? What happens when you are told not to eat the apple, not to read that book, not to date that girl? Your interest is piqued, of course. What am I not supposed to know?

Here's the kind of information the "scientific consensus" types don't want you to read. MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen recently complained about the "shrill alarmism" of Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.

"We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as "the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," "the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and `"Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global- warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto- emissions standards. California et al . have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.

"We know that General Motors has been paying for this fake science exactly as the tobacco companies did," says ED attorney Jim Marston. If Marston has a scintilla of evidence that Lindzen has been trafficking in fake science, he should present it to the MIT provost's office. Otherwise, he should shut up.

"This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.

Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard ...

How about you ask some of these people about whether there is not political agenda:

Dr. Christopher Landsea:
Leading expert in the field of hurricanes and tropical storms.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
- resigned as an author of the IPCC 2007 report, released earlier this month stating the IPCC was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound."
- wrote a lengthy and detailed open letter to his scientific colleagues explaining why he was withdrawing from helping to author the report.
- "I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized." - "In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concer

Re:I Don't Buy It

[ajs (35943)]

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.

runaway global warming: debunked?

[by 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 [ucl.ac.uk]
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 [harvard.edu]:

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 [americanthinker.com] 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 [canada.com] 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 [cnsnews.com] 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

[sumdumass (711423)]

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

Re:I Don't Buy It

[SirTalon42 (751509)]

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 (112195)]

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 [bbc.co.uk], 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.

He's not alone

[slashkitty (21637)]

The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792 811497638&hl=en [google.com]

It covers both the politicization of the issue, and many scientific facts ignored by global warming films.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[stratjakt (596332)]

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 (638312)]

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".

Educate us

[benhocking (724439)]

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 [opinionjournal.com] himself has said:

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

Re:They do agree its anthropogenic

[Nutria (679911)]

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

Grant money.

Re:They do agree its anthropogenic

[benhocking (724439)]

Not true. They are in almost complete agreement that it is primarily anthropogenic in nature

No, they're not.

Can you name one climatologist who disagrees with that statement? If they're not in almost complete agreement, that should be an easy request. Just name one, and provide an article they've written which backs up your assertion.

No, it's not, in fact most of it is correlative which is why you get terminology like relying on global "fingerprints," as in it's just an assumption based two things that look like they could be affecting each other but haven't been proven to with any direct evidence.

Back in the 60's - when the correlational evidence was being masked by particulates - the evidence was already mounting. The underlying science is really quite simple. Because of the sheer number of feedback (positive and negative) systems it is really hard to determine the magnitude of the effect, but the existence is not in doubt, and nor is the fact that it is the dominant factor in our current climate change.

Re:Meanwhile in the real world

[CmdrGravy (645153)]

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.

Re:Meanwhile in the real world

[ArcherB (796902)]

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.

Re:Flat Earth Society

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

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:Earth IS warming, the WHY is almost unimportant

[Alioth (221270)]

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).

Re:Believe it.

[geekoid (135745)]

Yes, and if if people on slashdot starting saying the earth was actually a giant cube, they owuld have the same results.

Before throwing your hat in with this guy, you might want to research his motivations.
Also, he is a geographer, not a climatologist. Has written zero papers on climatology, has no experience in climatology.

SUpposing he actually got death threats, it isn't suprising, because tere are stupid people in every 'group' an dit is a shame. it is wrong, and I hope they get the person who wrote them. That in know way is an arguement against or for global warming.

"Their science is sound, and after doing my due-diligence I agree with them. I will not be shouted down by eco-religious fanatics or ideological thugs, and neither will these scientists."
actually it is not, and also MOST scientists agree that humans have impacted the enviroment and are a major contributer to global climate change.

However, I offer some proof.
China does not want there to be global warming, they want to have the same things the Western worlds has. With all ther political might, the best influance they had on the paper was some minor down grade in the language. This speaks volumes. If there was any strong scientific support against global warming China would have brought it up.

You go ahead and bury your head in the sand; where you can make yourself believe the humans haven't impact their enviroment at all.