Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

[JohnRich 4]

News:

How can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis...

Full Story: Wall Street Journal

[kelpdiver 2]

John, why does a hot link titled "Wall Street Journal" actually refer to a url at opinionjournal.com?

[billvon 2,434]

>How can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded
>global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain
>public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes?

Try storing a big glass jug of water at 32.5F. Now try storing it at 31.5F. Get back to me on whether it's a barely discernible difference or not.

>And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

Warmer oceans = stronger storms.

> Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds
> disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry
>stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change
>gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that
>supposedly is their basis...

If only the world were like a Michael Crichton novel, and the evil environmentalists were plotting to discredit the hardworking conservative scientists out to better humanity!

Problem is that people in Alaska SEE the climate change. People in Moscow see the tundra disappear. They are seeing the coral die and the glaciers disappear. Even the most ardent professional victims are not going to be able to make people believe they are just poor victims of the evil environmentalists.

By the way, most deniers have switched to "OK, so the climate's changing - but we have nothing to do with it." Best switch to that soon and stick with it. If you flip-flop between "the climate's not changing much" and "the climate's changing but we have nothing to do with it" it makes it appear that you see it as a political issue, and are just saying whatever it takes for your side to win. It really is science and not politics, despite what many conservative activists believe.

[rushmc 18]

I , and others, say Alaskans see the effects of the climate cycle. There is no proof that "Global Warming" as defined by you is causing those current changes.

Theory? yes. Proof, you know better than that....

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[cam 0]

how come scientists who dispute a link between smoking and lung cancer are not getting grant money and professional respect (now that the tobacco companies have given up on funding them)?

the idea that there is major scientific dissent about the basic phenomenon of global warming is a gross misperception. many things about precise impacts remain uncertain, but there IS overwhelming scientific consensus that the climate has changed and that 'natural' causes for this (climate internal variability, solar oscillations etc) are not consistent with the evidence. a couple of publicity-seeking 'climate skeptic' scientists do not change the mass of peer-reviewed studies that have convincingly refuted their claims.

Here are the major reports of the international panel on climate change - the most encompassing assessment of the research:
http://www.ipcc.ch/

and a summary of recent findings:
http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/29
you'll probably not consider the WRI an impartial source, but note this is not their research - it is research carried out by unrelated scientists and published in peer-reviewed journals.

and if you should actually want to read a book on why the policy debate does not accurately reflect the science, this is a good recent one:
The science and politics of global climate change : a guide to the debate / Andrew E. Dessler, Edward A. Parson.
Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

[storm1977 0]

Bill an arguement could be made that
warmer H20 does NOT equal stronger storms.

Strong storms are the result of the polar equitorial
temperature gradient.... The earth as you know is
system always trying to balance itself... The Equator is warm and the poles are cold. Storms/hurricanes are a means of energy transport from the equator toward the poles....
As the differece in temperature becomes smaller, there will likely be weaker and less storms.

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[GTAVercetti 0]

Because opinion journal is part of the WSJ.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[rushmc 18]

>the idea that there is major scientific dissent about the basic phenomenon of global warming is a gross misperception.<

The statement above is misleading at best. There is less dissent about whether or not change is happening but, the question of man caused or natural has not been agreed to by a long shot in the scientific community.

I believe that this debate is not as loud is because not agreeing with the GW crowd is not polically correct.

I also believe that polictical correctness is the greatest danger to free speach in this country. IMO

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 2,434]

>Strong storms are the result of the polar equitorial
>temperature gradient....

Their more immediate cause is the difference in temperature between the surface of the water and the upper atmosphere - and as long as the planet keeps (on average) getting warmer, that difference will persist. If we stop the increases in temperature, I agree that a warmer _stable_ climate will tend to not generate stronger storms.

>The earth as you know is system always trying to balance itself...
>The Equator is warm and the poles are cold. Storms/hurricanes are a
>means of energy transport from the equator toward the poles....

That is exactly right! As you know, CO2 forcing is resulting in warmer overall temperatures. That will be 'balanced' if you will by stronger storms, which will help transport heat from the equator to colder areas. As long as the forcing continues, this activity will tend to be more intense.

[mnealtx 0]

If the storms are a balancing system between the warmer temps at the equator and colder temps at the poles, and the temp at the poles increases more than temps at the equator, how do you figure the storms will be stronger, since there is less of a differential to balance?

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[billvon 2,434]

>If the storms are a balancing system between the warmer temps at
> the equator and colder temps at the poles, and the temp at the
> poles increases more than temps at the equator, how do you figure
> the storms will be stronger, since there is less of a differential to
>balance?

Like I said, if the temperature of the planet stabilizes at a new, higher temperature, then the storms will not be stronger. But for as long as the temperature rise continues, the poles will tend to lag the equator a bit, which makes sense (thermal inertia, less energy input overall.) Storms are one of the mechanism that balances that back out.

[lawrocket 3]

There is further evidence of warming. A lot of people tend to forget about the fact that there are no longer any Frost Fairs on the Thames River, an ancient tradition, which used to freeze solid occasionally, but no more. Global warming has been largely to blame for this.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Zipp0 1]

Despite any evidence one way or the other on global warming, can anyone argue that pollution of the environment with toxic chemicals is a good thing? Who cares if it is causing global warming or not - it is not a good thing either way.

What this really comes down to is a desire to put corporate profits ahead of all else. Could there be any other logical explanation for relaxing laws to make it easier for corporations to pollute the water and air? No.

As a former hardline conservative, and a fisherman and sometimes hunter (not as often as I once was) I can't understand why more conservatives are not conservationists, if not outright environmentalists. If you want to be able to hunt and fish in the future, you better get on the right side of this issue.

Zipp0

--------------------------
Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the Earth down.

[Amazon 7]

Actually John it seem that far more of the OPPOSITE is happening.. since the Administration is MUZZLING anyone who dissents with its view of the world.. yet again...

http://www.theocracywatch.org/bush_climate_silence_post_apr6_06.htm


Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House


By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006; A27


Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.

Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.

These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.

"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He added that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."

Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.

Once in 2002, Milly said, Interior officials declined to issue a news release on grounds that it would cause "great problems with the department." In November 2005, they agreed to issue a release on a different climate-related paper, Milly said, but "purged key words from the releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate' and 'climate change.' "

Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.

"We've always had the policy, it just hasn't been enforced," Laborde said. "It's important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast."

Several times, however, agency officials have tried to alter what these scientists tell the media. When Tans was helping to organize the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference near Boulder last fall, his lab director told him participants could not use the term "climate change" in conference paper's titles and abstracts. Tans and others disregarded that advice.

None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Indeed, several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.

The assertion that climate scientists are being censored first surfaced in January when James Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times and The Washington Post that the administration sought to muzzle him after he gave a lecture in December calling for cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. (NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin issued new rules recently that make clear that its scientists are free to talk to members of the media about their scientific findings and to express personal interpretations of those findings.

Two weeks later, Hansen suggested to an audience at the New School University in New York that his counterparts at NOAA were experiencing even more severe censorship. "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," he told the crowd.

NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. responded by sending an agency-wide e-mail that said he is "a strong believer in open, peer-reviewed science as well as the right and duty of scientists to seek the truth and to provide the best scientific advice possible."

"I encourage our scientists to speak freely and openly," he added. "We ask only that you specify when you are communicating personal views and when you are characterizing your work as part of your specific contribution to NOAA's mission."

NOAA scientists, however, cite repeated instances in which the administration played down the threat of climate change in their documents and news releases. Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation's economy.

In 2002, NOAA agreed to draft a report with Australian researchers aimed at helping reef managers deal with widespread coral bleaching that stems from higher sea temperatures. A March 2004 draft report had several references to global warming, including "Mass bleaching . . . affects reefs at regional to global scales, and has incontrovertibly linked to increases in sea temperature associated with global change."

A later version, dated July 2005, drops those references and several others mentioning climate change.

NOAA has yet to release the report on coral bleaching. James R. Mahoney, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, said he decided in late 2004 to delay the report because "its scientific basis was so inadequate." Now that it is revised, he said, he is waiting for the Australian Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to approve it. "I just did not think it was ready for prime time," Mahoney said. "It was not just about climate change -- there were a lot of things."

On other occasions, Mahoney and other NOAA officials have told researchers not to give their opinions on policy matters. Konrad Steffen directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a joint NOAA-university institute with a $40 million annual budget. Steffen studies the Greenland ice sheet, and when his work was cited last spring in a major international report on climate change in the Arctic, he and another NOAA lab director from Alaska received a call from Mahoney in which he told them not to give reporters their opinions on global warming.

Steffen said that he told him that although Mahoney has considerable leverage as "the person in command for all research money in NOAA . . . I was not backing down."

Mahoney said he had "no recollection" of the conversation, which took place in a conference call. "It's virtually inconceivable that I would have called him about this," Mahoney said, though he added: "For those who are government employees, our position is they should not typically render a policy view."

Tans, whose interviews with the BBC crew were monitored by Laborde, said Laborde has not tried to interfere with the interviews. But Tans said he did not understand why he now needs an official "minder" from Washington to observe his discussions with the media. "It used to be we could say, 'Okay, you're welcome to come in, let's talk,' " he said. "There was never anything of having to ask permission of anybody."

The need for clearance from Washington, several NOAA scientists said, amounts to a "pocket veto" allowing administration officials to block interviews by not giving permission in time for journalists' deadlines.

Ronald Stouffer, a climate research scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, estimated his media requests have dropped in half because it took so long to get clearance to talk from NOAA headquarters. Thomas Delworth, one of Stouffer's colleagues, said the policy means Americans have only "a partial sense" of what government scientists have learned about climate change.

"American taxpayers are paying the bill, and they have a right to know what we're doing," he said.

Researcher Eddy Palanzo contributed to this report.


© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[SpeedRacer 1]

Any Alaskan will tell you that the glaciers are definitely retreating rapidly & have been over the last century, especially the last 30 years

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[rushmc 18]

Oooook

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[Amazon 7]

Hell anyone from Washington that frequents the back country of the North Cascades can tell you that the glaciers are dissappearing or GONE. I remember where there used to be hundreds of small Glaciers back in the early 1970's that no longer exist here.. ONly the really high Strato volcanoes( 10,000ft plus) of the Cascades seem to have any glaciers left now with VERY few exceptions. Even the existing glaciers on Mt Rainier are melting rapidly and it has moe ICE than any other peak in the lower 48 states.

[billvon 2,434]

>Any Alaskan will tell you that the glaciers are definitely retreating
>rapidly & have been over the last century, especially the last 30 years . . .

Oh, give me a break. Rushmc saw something on the internet! What do those whiny Alaskans know? They probably all voted for Kerry anyway.