Last week I had the pleasure of dining with my two favorite Fort Collins octogenarians – Dr. Bill Gray and Sue Brackenbury. Their mothers were best friends, but Bill and Sue hadn’t seen each other for decades. Both have been icons of the community in Fort Collins for many years, where Bill’s late wife was mayor in the 1980s. Today is Sue’s 86th birthday, and Bill has a special gift for us.
The Practice of Personal Attacking Global Warming Skeptics – Rather than Responding to Their Scientific Criticisms
By Bill Gray
While visiting the Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Poona, India in August 1966 I met and interacted with a young (~21) and promising Indian meteorologist named Jagdish Shukla. I have not been surprised to see his later scientific rise and very successful meteorological career in the US.
At an evening social event in Poona (August 1966) a number of us (including Shukla) were discussing the then recent China-India War (1962) over China’s infringement on India’s northern border and the political tensions which had continued up to that time. China was then in its isolated cultural–revolution period and was belligerent to most outside nations. China’s strong intervention in Korea (1950-53) was still relatively fresh in people’s minds. The US was in the early stages of the Vietnam War and there was worry about China’s possible intervention on the side of the North Vietnamese as they had done in Korea. China was also rapidly advancing in its effort to develop a nuclear bomb. Some people (at the time) were advocating the bombing of China’s nuclear facility before it had developed the bomb (as Israelis did to the Iraq nuclear development facility a number of years later). We discussed the desirability of the US and its allies taking such action. As best I can remember, I did not advocate taking such action and I’m glad that no such action was ever taken.
Fast forward 35 years later to a NOAA Climate meeting Shukla and I attended in Washington around 2001. I was trying to obtain NOAA funding for my CSU project hurricane research which was partly involved with seasonal prediction. My talk at this meeting was directed to the complicate nature of the earth’s climate system and the lack of confidence we should have in the then current numerical climate prediction models of rising CO2 amounts causing large global warming. I specifically criticized the unrealistic positive water-vapor feedback in the climate models, the inability of the models to resolve individual convective units, the lack of proper inclusion of deep ocean circulation processes in the models, and other factors. This was not what the government officials and most of the meeting attendees wanted to hear (and I didn’t get the funding I was seeking). I now see that I was naïve in thinking that the global warming question was not totally dominated by governmental and environmental politics unrelated to the science behind the warming issue.
I expected and was prepared for negative comments about the meteorological problems I had pointed out in my talk. The first response came from Shukla. But he didn’t question anything I had just presented. He went directly after me personally – by announcing I was the type of fellow who had earlier advised the bombing of China’s nuclear development facility. He implied by this that I was the type of person too far out of the mainstream to be trusted on any of the serious questions concerning the AGW topic. Shukla was not at all hesitant about bringing up and twisting what he thought I had said 35 years earlier. I was 36 at the time I was then in Poona and about 70 when I gave my later NOAA talk.
These types of personal attacks on us AGW skeptics (unrelated to the physics or science of the topic) are not so unusual. I have heard a number of similar stories about the aggressive isolation and criticisms of skeptics who do not follow the global warming party-line. Most skeptics, as a result, are not able to obtain federal grant support. They pay a high price for trying to tell the truth.
The attempt of the warming crowd to discredit us skeptics can take many forms other than the merits or demerits of the scientific questions we ask. Warming proponents will typically not discuss or defend the physics behind the AGW hypothesis or how their climate models produce the large global warming results they do. They tend to have a ‘take-it’ or ‘leave-it’ mentality or they typically refuse to discuss the warming mechanisms within their models on the grounds that the scientific questions have already been settled.
The warmers usual response to criticism seems to be to try to dig up whatever negative personal information they can uncover about the skeptic and then from this manufactured degraded outlook to imply that the science behind the skeptics criticisms must be similarly flawed.
Why are the warmers so afraid to have open and honest discussion about the basic nitty-gritty assumptions of their AGW hypothesis? I think it is because they well know (but will not admit) that the science behind the AGW hypothesis is ripe with conceptual errors and, in the long run, be proven to be wrong.
I am but one of many AGW skeptics who have been subjected to the warmer’s attempts to isolate, ignore, and personally marginalize us, in order to deflect attention away from the basic scientific problems confronting the AGW hypothesis and its model output representations. I doubt that the global warming crowd would so act if they were really confident of the reality of their science. The warmers are now on a downward slide (which I believe they know but won’t admit) and cannot or will not face-up to the fact that they have picked the wrong horse to bet their future scientific reputations upon. The older warmers are now too far down the AGW road to be able to gracefully extricate themselves. Other warmers may feel that their prestige-enhancements and the governmental funding rewards they have gotten have been worth it – even if their warming alarms are later proven wrong.
Well I guess we can now conclude that the Manhattan Project was a fraud and that nuclear bombs are fake, because Oppenheimer once discussed bombing somebody.
“The older warmers are now too far down the AGW road to be able to gracefully extricate themselves. Other warmers may feel that their prestige-enhancements and the governmental funding rewards they have gotten have been worth it – even if their warming alarms are later proven wrong.”
OUCH !!!!!!!!!
I hope this statement is broadcast far and wide, and eats at the guilty conscience of many a warmist trough dweller………………
……… If any of them have a conscience, that is.
PS.. Thank you, Bill , for remaining loyal to science, not money.
http://abovethelaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/thumbs-up-300×199.jpg
+ 10
+1 too!
There is no conflict between knowledge and money. Looting, however, presents a problem…
Andy, I am not sure they have a conscience. But one thing is for sure they absolutely HATE IT when you point out they have bloody hands from all the deaths in the UK from fuel poverty and all the children who have died from starvation thanks to biofuels.
HERE is Jan Pearlwitless exploding.
They certainly don’t like it when you yank that holier than thou pedestal out from under them and leave them flaying in the muck.
I figure given how they treat gentlemen like Dr Gray and Dr Happer, they deserve to have Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals used on them.
Mud slinging especially when it is a scientific question tells you the person slinging the mud can not defend his scientific position.
It does not matter if the guy tortures little animals and children and is a convicted axe murderer to boot, if his science is correct it is correct.
This is why part of science is access to ALL the data and validation and verification by other independent scientists.
The fact the ClimAstrologists refuse to
1. allow open access to publicly paid for information.
2. Publicly debate sceptics
3. and resort to mudslinging
Tells you all you need to know about CAGW. It AIN’T SCIENCE!
…………………..
This tells you it is all about politics of a particularly nasty stripe:
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals
We had the same witchhunts against nuclear power in the 1980s. To this day every alternative is more dangerous, including power outages. But the same ex-scientists who prostituted themselves to advance the agenda of political looters are to this day ex-scientists. Political looting is no less a religion than anything else, and every bit as blinding.
The warmers are now on a downward slide (which I believe they know but won’t admit) and cannot or will not face-up to the fact that they have picked the wrong horse to bet their future scientific reputations upon.
A year or two ago I would have agreed with that, but today, it looks like there has been word passed down from on high to get back on message and apply a scorched earth policy to those who disagree.
Silly as it sounds, it all depends on the weather.
The problem is the brain dead slaves do not even notice their slave chains.
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams
Unfortunately they now want to drag the entire world down into slavery with them.
A prison is a prison even if made of gold.
And we are in a prison made of laws, regulations, taxes and treaties that make it almost impossible for an honest man to earn a living.
Jeff ID has a good essay on the insanity of government — Inequality
Warmers don’t want to discuss the science behind global warming because they don’t understand it. The best they can do is say “Our anus figured it out 100 years ago” and that’s enough for them.
“Our anus figured it out 100 years ago”
Wow, I guess I’ve involved in this issue long enough to get this reference. Some Swedish guy right?
As in pulled out of ….
Svante Arrhenius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
The polar vortex attacks in the eastern USA.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z10_nh_f00.png
Sounds like a 50’s B movie. Attack of the polar vortex.
http://oi68.tinypic.com/30ttpqe.jpg
Ren (Ireneusz) does not speak English but he is good about posting interesting stuff.
It sounds like a Vodka shot
Ireneusz,
Weso?ych ?wi?t i bardzo szcz??liwego nowego roku
Thank you very much and each other best wishes in the New Year.
Look at the jet stream in the lower stratosphere over the Atlantic.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f00.png
http://api.sat24.com/animated/EU/infraPolair/3/Central%20European%20Standard%20Time
N hemisphere cold – interactive map
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-0.61,91.96,256/loc=96.325,89.549
Our greatest asset of knowledge is not the internet – but in the wisdom of those who have seem more than most of us ever will. The problem is most learn that truth late in life, when seeking out those with wisdom only to realize we are now the aged and must provide it to the youth – who will more than likely ignore it.
Youth is wasted on the young.
The older I get, the more true that is.
Yea, that is my favorite line from that movie as well. 😉
Nice post about Arctic sea ice on NoTricksZone
http://notrickszone.com/2016/01/05/large-number-of-climate-scientists-officials-baffled-arctic-sea-ice-still-hasnt-disappeared-and-has-grown-instead/#sthash.CLYAChvM.dpbs
Seems that most of the idiot AGW climate non-scientists don’t know anything about CYCLES,
and the Russians have some longer term temperature data which CLEARLY indicates the AMO as one the main drivers..
Wow.. Who Knew !! 😉
No Tricks Zone—-Great site Thank You A-55
Shukla is another one of those fake Nobel Prize Winners… Who is in on the RICO investigation.
Works at George Mason University to their discredit….
http://junkscience.com/2015/10/fake-nobel-prize-taken-away-from-george-mason-prof-who-asked-for-rico-investigation-of-climate-skeptics/
The comments are priceless.
Shukla is another one of those fake Nobel Prize Winners… Who is in on the RICO investigation.
Works at George Mason University to their discredit….
http://junkscience.com/2015/10/fake-nobel-prize-taken-away-from-george-mason-prof-who-asked-for-rico-investigation-of-climate-skeptics/
Thank you, Bill Gray, for excellent comments. Whether or not we like it, planet Earth and its inhabitants are strongly influenced by the fountain of energy Copernicus discovered at the gravitational center of the solar system in 1543. Willingness to accept reality appears to be inversely correlated with arrogance and false pride.
Very strong galactic radiation.
http://oi66.tinypic.com/2s97vqf.jpg
https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
Thank you for everything you do Professor Gray.
I have been in touch with Will Happer and he has agreed to speak at Mankato State University here in Southern Minnesota. I am very excited and honored that he would be willing to do that.
He sent me a paper regarding the edges (wings) of the CO2 absorption spectra, the shorter version, that he and Freeman Dyson are working on.
I am a retired high school teaching advanced placement chemistry, physics and sometimes math.
After studying the climate change material for over six years, I feel I have advanced from the infant to the toddler stage. But most scientists I have talked to who are in some ancillary subfield do not have a clue of even the language, let alone the science, and therein lies the problem.
Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars have been spent on people who have made a career out of AGW, Ike warned about all of this in his farewell speech. However for younger scientists(think Michael Mann) money, their ego and the constructs of human nature cause them to circle their wagons and even if they listen, they do not “hear”
As I told Will Happer, eventually your name will be honored and highly respected, but that which too often has been the case of human nature, it will probably be far, too far, in the future and probably posthumously.
I am writing a book, currently titled “climate Change, Witchcraft, Eugenics and More: and your name will be honored in it.
Most unmentioned are population growth (anathema to religious birth-forcers) and quantification of hypothetical “excess” wattage (anathema to econazis). Then again, economic models are what “proved” that prohibitionist asset-forfeiture would not cripple the economy in 2007–at least not ruin it as badly as it had in 1929-33 and 1987-1992.
darrylb,
I am glad to hear you are writing a book on the subject. Don’t forget Giordano Bruno, an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer. He is a much better example than Galileo.
Dr Gray and Dr Happer are in very good company.
Gail, thank you for the info and as to Dr’s Gray and Happer
Absolutely!!!
Interestingly enough, I was trying to find a site where the 496 on the black list
Anderleg et al, and Dr. Happer had not heard of it.; the paper published on line by
the National Academy of Sciences.
Does anyone know of a site where it has not been removed?
This list?
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/skeptic_authors_table.html
The Paper: Expert Credibility in Climate Change in PNAS (Anderegg, Prall, Harold & Schneider, DOI 10.1073/pnas.1003187107)
WUWT wrote this about that list says:
Now I have to go wash … YUCK!
Holy Stromboli….
Gail, thanks for posting that. I didn’t know I was on the list.
What a thrill!
The list does credit me with some papers I did not work on, but does include some that I did write. They misstate my job title, and know not when I earned my PhD. It also misspells some names of others. The list, and the paper about it, appear to be pretty sloppily done.
But it is an honor to be on any list with Dr. Gray.
Unfortunately ” sloppily done” is a good description of a lot of research papers done these days thanks to the push to publish so you can advance. We know the ClimAstrologists were colluding thanks to the Climategate e-mails. Unfortunately the problem is throughout science.
(08 July 2014 SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted
4 October 2013 “Peer review is sick and collapsing under its own weight,” says science publisher Vitek Tracz, who has made a fortune from journals.
Looks like Tracz is going to be changing the face of scientific publishing thank goodness. It is about time!
Gail,
Peer review has become a board of censors, aka gatekeepers to the “truth”. At least, that’s how Phil Jones et al. have re-defined it.
https://publicintelligence.net/climatic-research-unit-emails-even-if-we-have-to-redefine-what-the-peer-review-literature-is/
BTW, while looking for a link to Jones’ comment, I found this article that reinforces what you said about open journals
http://eloquentscience.com/2009/12/redefining-the-peer-review-literature/
Agreed Richard,
I do not have the link (Scott Armstrong maybe?) but peer-reviewed journals are only interested in publishing mainstream thought. Anything new and innovated, no matter how well documented is barred. The length of time it took to get the idea that ulcers are caused by bacteria accepted is a classic example.
With luck on-line publication without gatekeepers will really speed up innovation. I sure hope so.
(Thanks for the link for my collection.)
The Injun’s rejoinder was a classic example of the Argument from Intimidation. It is listed in the “Ayn Rand Lexicon” online. Back then it attacked Goldwater, nowadays it is used against anyone who defends science against the ravages of superstition and looter sophistry.
Dr Gray,
Thanks for all you do and have done. Those attacking you are reprehensible, and present no challenge to your scientific integrity.
Well said, gregole
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