8 February 2012, 10:16 am
One may argue over what all the Climategate emails show but it's pretty hard to disagree that the mainstream climate scientists have a mean streak of arrogance. One might also say it's deserved because of the skeptic fleas buzzing around bothering them and their important work. Either way, how do you think such an attitude developed. I propose that climate science is a young science and doesn't have the elders of Nobel Laureate status to corral the delinquent children. However, there were a few climate scientists who could be seen as father figures to young climate scientists. One of the most prominent was the late Stephen Schneider. But lets look at one of his emails from Climategate: *************************************** "Hello all. Ah ha–the latest idiot–McKitrick–reenters the scene. He and another incompetent had a book signing party at the US Capitol–Mike MacCracken went and he can tell you about it–last summer. McKitrick also had an article–oped, highly refereed of course–in the Canadian National Post on June 4 this year. Here is the URL that worked back then: It was a scream. He argued there is no such thing as global temperature change, just local–all natural variablity mostly. To prove this he had a graph of temperature trends in Erie Pennsylvania for the past 50 years (this is from memory) which showed a cooling. THat alone proves nothing, but when reading the caption I noticed the trend was for temperature in October and November!! So one station for two months consitituted his ”refutation” of global warming–another even dumber than Lomborg economist way out of depth and polemicizing. I showed it to a class of Stanford freshman, and one of them said: “I wonder how many records for various combinations of months they had to run through to find one with a cooling trend?” THe freshman was smarter than this bozo. It is improtant to get that op-ed to simply tell all reporters how unbelievably incompetent he is, and should not even be given the time of day over climate issues, for which his one “contribution” is laughably incompetent. By the way, the Henderson/Castles stuff he mentions is also mostly absurd, but that is a longer discussion you all don’t need to get into–check it out in the UCS response to earlier Inhofe polemics with answers I gave them on Henderson/Castles if you want to know more about their bad economics on top of their bad climate science" ******************************************* This was addressed to Annie Petsonk of the Environmental Defense Fund (!) as well as most of the Hockey Team like Michael E. Mann, Gabi Hegerl, Jonathan Overpeck, Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes, Mike MacCracken, Phil Jones, Ray Bradley, Ben Santer, etc. So Schneider's "leadership" didn't include a tone of treating dissent with patience, tolerance, and humility or that science is a cooperative exercise, that knowledge evolves via skepticism, re-examination, and questioning. No, instead he responded to challenges of his clique by hurling insults. Idiots. Incompetents. Bozos. And on top of that, as explained last year by Ross McKitrick (presumably when he first read this email), Schneider didn't even get his facts correct about that opinion piece he was trashing. So I ask again, why are mainstream climate scientists so arrogant? By the way, this is from Climategate email 0020. And if you want to look up McKitrick's response, Google "A Somewhat Late Response to Schneider" @pegminer: "Why do you hate climate scientists so much?" Well, I'm almost halfway to equating "mainstream" climate scientists like the ones in this email to astrologists. And the reason I don't knock astrologists every day is because I can step on a crack if I want to or not. Climate scientists are trying to force me step around it because of their authority on "cracks". As for my veiled or thinly veiled assault on climate scientists' character, I do plan on another question in this regard with no veiling whatsover. I'm really looking forward to your response on that one so please stay tuned. @Gringo: '...when they believe that their private emails are not going to be read by complete strangers?" My private email is: xxx@yahoo.ca. I work for the Government of Canada and my public email, which is subject to FOI under Canadian law, is xxx@xxx.gc.ca. I was made to understand that what I say under my public email address reflects upon the department I work for and can certainly become public knowledge Now it may be that Stephen Schneider wasn't given this information when Stanford gave him an email account. Regardless, how can you argue that this isn't arrogant and unprofessional behavior? Hey, how come none of the alarmists have complained at my choice of Schneider who is a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics? Isn't this the point where you say it doesn't matter because he's not a climate scientist? After all, he was the founder and editor of the journal Climatic Change. Isn't that a climate science journal? Or does that journal not matter because it was founded by a "climate scientist"? How come nobody cares that this email was addressed to the Environmental Defense Fund? Doesn't matter?... Read More »
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