[Vision2020] 79 Skeptic Arguments at Skepticalscience.com Re: FBI Investigates Death Threats Against Climate Scientists

[Ted Moffett]

Who said/wrote that "skeptics" regarding anthropogenic climate warming are
"one homogeneous bunch?"  I don't know why you write you have failed to make
a point that any thinking person knows is true anyway, after you have made
this point clearly repeatedly.  There is no need to make this point, unless
you are approaching those with a penchant for oversimplified stereotypes,
which are, however, apparently in abundance. There are a wide variety of
mindsets involved in a spectrum of viewpoints on human contributions to
climate.  There is no doubt, however, that the issue has become "binary" to
many, to quote NASA's climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, from the quote
offered below, no doubt due to the very emotional responses climate change
inspires.

The scientific topics you mention are discussed in great scientific detail
on Realclimate.org to address skeptical arguments... But then I seem to
recall you stating you don't read the content offered on this website?
Though the scientists who contribute "officially" to this website all appear
to believe that there is compelling scientific evidence and theory that
human contributions to climate change are profound, Realclimate is an
excellent resource to study the more skeptical science regarding the extent
of human impacts.  In the Realclimate.org post below, by NASA's climate
scientist Gavin Schmidt, you can read his thoughts on the often heard phrase
"settled science" when applied to climate science:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
 Unsettled Science
— gavin @ 3 December 2009

Unusually, I’m in complete agreement with a recent headline on the Wall
Street Journal op-ed page:

“The Climate Science Isn’t Settled”

The phrase “the science is settled” is associated almost 100% with
contrarian comments on climate and is usually a paraphrase of what ’some
scientists’ are supposed to have said. The reality is that it depends very
much on what you are talking about and I have never heard any scientist say
this in any general context – at a recent meeting I was at, someone claimed
that this had been said by the participants and he was roundly shouted down
by the assembled experts.

The reason why no scientist has said this is because they know full well
that knowledge about science is not binary – science isn’t either settled or
not settled. This is a false and misleading dichotomy. Instead, we know
things with varying degrees of confidence...
------------------------------

Another website that offers a bonanza of arguments or points against
anthropogenic warming, is Skepticalscience.com.  They currently list 79
skeptical arguments or points arguing against the reliability of the science
showing anthropogenic warming:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
 Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says

Here is a summary of what the science says on each skeptic argument. You can
also view arguments sorted by
popularity<http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=percentage>or
taxonomy <http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy>.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

------------------------------------------

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:

> I must hang out with a higher class of skeptic than you do.
>
> I read posts about sea ice extent, CO2 partial pressures and solubility
> curves, solar magnetism, surface temperature adjustment anomalies,
>  statistical techniques, historical agrarian sites in Greenland, and other
> technical topics.
>
> I don't doubt that there are gleeful idiots out there spouting the most
> insane rubbish.  The point that I've failed completely to make is that
> skeptics are not one homogeneous bunch and should not be treated that way.
>
> Paul
>
> Ted Moffett wrote:
>
>> Paul Rumelhart wrote:
>>  "Simply making up motives for climate skeptics out of whole cloth does
>> not make them true."
>>  You might be suppressing, hiding or manipulating data.  The evidence that
>> Anthropogenic climate change "skeptics" (a description that is misleading,
>> given all good scientists are skeptics who question their theories and will
>> alter them if new data reveals this is necessary) are intent to "find dirt,
>> " "skew meaning" "destroy reputations" and so forth is more than ample.  The
>> manner and extent to which the hacked private alleged e-mails from the UK
>> East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit are being taken out of
>> context and presented in a scientifically distorted fashion intent on
>> creating doubt about anthropogenic warming on many blogs and websites and
>> other media, is extreme.  Read the article from the Union of Concerned
>> Scientists on this subject posted to Vision2020:
>>
>> http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
>> ------------------
>>  Of course there are "skeptics" who are not unethical, but only attempt
>> reasoned factual scientific disagreement with anthropogenic global warming.
>>  Did Santer make the broad claim that all "skeptics" are unethical?  If so,
>> I must have misread his letter, which I just read again, because I cannot
>> find such a broad claim.
>>  I previously posted to Vision2020 threatening e-mails that NASA climate
>> scientist James Hansen, who is arguably the most publicly well known and
>> most frequently attacked climate scientist, has received(
>> http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080804_TripReport.pdf <
>> http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2008/20080804_TripReport.pdf<http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080804_TripReport.pdf>>
>>   page 18).  How would you describe the following statements? "...I will
>> destroy you, Jimmy,,, no doubt about it..." and "...I will do all within my
>> power to destroy you professionally and personally..."
>>
>>  Whoever is engaging in the alleged conduct described in the Guardian
>> article below, is evidence of "skeptics" who are using death threats etc. to
>> disrupt the work of climate scientists.  A short excerpt from the Guardian
>> article below:
>>  Tom Wigley, previous Director of CRU and now at the National Center for
>> Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, US, has been horrified by the e-mails
>> he and other colleagues have received. "They are truly stomach-turning and
>> show what sort of venomous monsters we are up against,"...
>>
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/hacked-climate-emails-death-threats
>>  Hacked email climate scientists receive death threats
>>  CRU scientists receive torrents of abusive and threatening e-mails since
>> leaks that began in mid-November 2009.
>>
>>    * Kate Ravilious for *environmentalresearchweb*
>>      <http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/home>, part of the
>>      *Guardian Environment Network*
>>      <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/network>
>>    * guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Tuesday 8 December
>>
>>      2009 09.28 GMT
>>    * Article history
>>      <
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/hacked-climate-emails-death-threats#history-byline
>> >
>>
>> Two of the scientists involved in "Climategate" – the e-mail hacking
>> incident at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East
>> Anglia, UK <
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/hacked-climate-science-emails> –
>> have been emailed death threats since the contents of their private e-mails
>> were leaked to the world. No further information can be revealed about these
>> particular threats at present because they are currently under investigation
>> with the FBI in the United States.
>>
>>
>> Many other CRU scientists and their colleagues have received torrents of
>> abusive and threatening e-mails since the leaks first began in mid-November
>> 2009. Tom Wigley, previous Director of CRU and now at the National Center
>> for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, US, has been horrified by the
>> e-mails he and other colleagues have received. "They are truly
>> stomach-turning and show what sort of venomous monsters we are up against,"
>> he told environmentalresearchweb.
>>
>> The scandal, dubbed "Climategate", broke on 19 November this year when
>> hundreds of messages between scientists from CRU and their colleagues around
>> the world were posted onto websites. Since then, segments of the messages
>> have been used by climate-change sceptics to undermine the scientific case
>> for climate change <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change>
>> being caused by humanity's greenhouse-gas emissions.
>>
>>
>> In the UK a police investigation is underway to uncover how the material
>> was hacked or leaked. Meanwhile, the University of East Anglia has ordered
>> an independent review into the allegations against CRU and Phil Jones has
>> temporarily stepped down as director of CRU, until the investigations are
>> completed.
>>
>> Many of the accusations being made by climate-change sceptics are based on
>> fragments and selected phrases from e-mails sent by eminent climate
>> scientists, dating back to 1996. The scientists involved are confident that
>> they can counter all of the claims against them. "None of it affects the
>> science one iota," said Wigley. "Accusations of data distortion or faking
>> are baseless. I can rebut and explain all of the apparently incriminating
>> e-mails that I have looked at, but it is going to be very time consuming to
>> do so."
>>
>> In particular Wigley vigorously denies that any data was ever destroyed.
>> "We did not destroy any primary records," he said. "All these data came from
>> National Meteorological Services, and the originals are still there for
>> anyone to access. Indeed other groups such as GISS and NOAA have
>> independently accessed these data and independently reproduced our results."
>>
>> Climate scientists not caught up in the scandal agree that the independent
>> investigation is necessary, but don't believe that the CRU science will be
>> discredited or any misdoings uncovered. "CRU is just one of many
>> climate-research institutes that provide the underlying scientific basis for
>> climate policy at national and international levels," said Dave Reay, a
>> climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. "The conspiracy
>> theorists may be having a field day, but if they really knew academia they
>> would also know that every published paper and data set is continually put
>> through the wringer by other independent research groups. The information
>> that makes it into the IPCC reports is some of the most rigorously tested
>> and debated in any area of science."
>>
>> And some scientists express little surprise at the tactics being used to
>> try and undermine the science. "We have always had a very vocal minority of
>> people who have long since decided to ignore the science and the data and
>> take a deliberately and completely contrarian view, and who have always and
>> constantly accused (all) climate scientists of falsehood and being in it for
>> the money," said Andy Ridgwell, a climate scientist at the University of
>> Bristol. "They have been playing Chicken Little and claiming the sky is
>> falling in on climate science for a decade. There is nothing left that is
>> new or different that they can (falsely) claim or accuse us of."
>>
>> Nonetheless there are now concerns that the e-mail leaks could derail some
>> of the objectives due to be set at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen,
>> Denmark, next week. On Friday 4 December Saudi Arabia's lead climate
>> negotiator, Mohammad Al-Sabban, told BBC news that the hacked e-mails
>> suggest climate change does not have a human cause, and that he thought it
>> could have a huge impact on agreeing limitations of greenhouse gases at the
>> summit. Meanwhile, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on
>> Climate Change (IPCC), was reported by the BBC as saying that the claims
>> were serious and needed to be investigated.
>>
>> For now the scientists involved in the scandal are anxious to get back to
>> doing their research. "We must continue to do the science," said Wigley. "As
>> time goes by the evidence mounts – it is already overwhelming – and we must
>> continue to report this through normal channels in peer-reviewed scientific
>> journals. We must continue to strive to understand the complexities of the
>> climate system better and to improve climate models so that we better know
>> how to respond to future climate changes."
>>
>> But Wigley fears that time may be running out. "As time goes by, however,
>> we are approaching the point where any actions we might take will be
>> inadequate to protect humanity and the planet from dangerous climate
>> change," he said. "Those people – the hackers, the sceptics, the luddite
>> bloggers – who are hindering and slowing down the process of response will,
>> I hope, eventually be held accountable. They already have much to answer
>> for."
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>>  On 12/18/09, *Paul Rumelhart* <godshatter at yahoo.com <mailto:
>> godshatter at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>>
>>    Simply making up motives for climate skeptics out of whole cloth
>>    does not make them true.  Among other things, he has claimed that
>>    skeptics are trying to "find dirt", "skew meaning", "distort",
>>    "misrepresent", "take out of context", "destroy reputations", and
>>    "destroy scientific careers".  This indicates a failure of
>>    understanding that I've seen in many places on the web - skeptics
>>    are not attacking climate scientists just because they've run out
>>    of puppies to torture.  They simply question what is almost always
>>    stated as an undeniable truth.  These scientists need to work
>>    towards understanding the motives of the skeptics.  They might
>>    find that they have more in common than they realize.
>>
>>    Ted Moffett wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/ben_santer_open_letter/
>>
>>
>>           Ben Santer: Open letter to the climate science community
>>
>>        /Posted on Tuesday, December 01, 2009 /
>>
>>        Climate scientists are being subjected to slanderous attacks
>>        by demagogues in high office and the global warming
>>        disinformation campaign.  Climate Science Watch is posting
>>        here an “Open letter to the climate science community” by Ben
>>        Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Santer
>>        says: “We are now faced with powerful ‘forces of
>>        unreason’—forces that (at least to date) have been
>>        unsuccessful in challenging scientific findings of a warming
>>        Earth, and a ‘discernible human influence’ on global climate.
>>         These forces of unreason are now shifting the focus of their
>>        attention to the scientists themselves.  They seek to
>>        discredit, to skew the truth, to misrepresent.  They seek to
>>        destroy scientific careers rather than to improve our
>>        understanding of the nature and causes of climate change.”
>>        *Open letter to the climate science community*
>>
>>        Dear colleagues and friends,
>>
>>        I am sure that by now, all of you are aware of the hacking
>>        incident which recently took place at the University of East
>>        Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). This was a criminal
>>        act. Over 3,000 emails and documents were stolen. The identity
>>        of the hacker or hackers is still unknown.
>>
>>        The emails represented private correspondence between CRU
>>        scientists and scientists at climate research centers around
>>        the world. Dozens of the stolen emails are from over a decade
>>        of my own personal correspondence with Professor Phil Jones,
>>        the Director of CRU.
>>
>>        I obtained my Ph.D. at the Climatic Research Unit. I went to
>>        CRU in 1983 because it was - and remains - one of the world’s
>>        premier institutions for studying the nature and causes of
>>        climate change. During the course of my Ph.D., I was
>>        privileged to work together with exceptional scientists - with
>>        people like Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, and Sarah Raper.
>>
>>        After completing my Ph.D. at CRU in 1987, I devoted much of my
>>        scientific career to what is now called “climate
>>        fingerprinting”, which seeks to understand the causes of
>>        recent climate change. At its core, fingerprinting is a form
>>        of what people now call “data mining” - an attempt to extract
>>        information and meaning from very large, complex climate
>>        datasets. The emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit
>>        are now being subjected to a very different form of “data
>>        mining”. This mining is taking place in the blogosphere, in
>>        the editorial pages of various newspapers, and in radio and
>>        television programs. This form of mining has little to do with
>>        extracting meaning from personal email correspondence on
>>        complex scientific issues. This form of mining seeks to find
>>        dirt - to skew true meaning, to distort, to misrepresent, to
>>        take out of context. It seeks to destroy the reputations of
>>        exceptional scientists - scientists like Professor Phil Jones.
>>
>>        I have known Phil for over 25 years. He is the antithesis of
>>        the secretive, “data destroying” character being portrayed to
>>        the outside world by the miners of dirt and disinformation.
>>        Phil Jones and Tom Wigley (the second Director of the Climatic
>>        Research Unit) devoted significant portions of their
>>        scientific careers to the construction of the land component
>>        of the so-called “HadCRUT” dataset of land and ocean surface
>>        temperatures. The U.K. Meteorological Office Hadley Centre
>>        (MOHC) took the lead in developing the ocean surface
>>        temperature component of HadCRUT.
>>
>>        The CRU and Hadley Centre efforts to construct the HadCRUT
>>        dataset have been open and transparent, and are documented in
>>        dozens of peer-reviewed scientific papers. This work has been
>>        tremendously influential. In my personal opinion, it is some
>>        of the most important scientific research ever published. It
>>        has provided hard scientific evidence for the warming of our
>>        planet over the past 150 years.
>>
>>        Phil, Tom, and their CRU and MOHC colleagues conducted this
>>        research in a very open and transparent manner. Like good
>>        scientists, they examined the sensitivity of their results to
>>        many different subjective choices made during the construction
>>        of the HadCRUT dataset. These choices relate to such issues as
>>        how to account for changes over time in the type of
>>        thermometer used to make temperature measurements, the
>>        thermometer location, and the immediate physical surroundings
>>        of the thermometer. They found that, no matter what choices
>>        they made in dataset construction, their bottom-line finding -
>>        that the surface of our planet is warming - was rock solid.
>>        This finding was supported by many other independent lines of
>>        evidence, such as the retreat of snow and sea-ice cover, the
>>        widespread melting and retreat of glaciers, the rise in
>>        sea-level, and the increase in the amount of water vapor in
>>        the atmosphere. All of these independent observations are
>>        physically consistent with a warming planet.
>>
>>        Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. The claim
>>        that our Earth had warmed markedly during the 20th century was
>>        extraordinary, and was subjected to extraordinary scrutiny.
>>        Groups at the National Climatic Data Center in North Carolina
>>        (NCDC) and at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New
>>        York (GISS) independently attempted to reproduce the results
>>        of the Climatic Research Unit and the U.K. Meteorological
>>        Office Hadley Centre. While the NCDC and GISS groups largely
>>        relied on the same primary temperature measurements that had
>>        been used in the development of the HadCRUT dataset, they made
>>        very different choices in the treatment of the raw
>>        measurements. Although there were differences in the details
>>        of the three groups’ results, the NCDC and GISS analyses
>>        broadly confirmed the “warming Earth” findings of the CRU and
>>        MOHC scientists.
>>
>>        Other extraordinary claims - such as a claim by scientists at
>>        the University of Alabama that Earth’s lower atmosphere cooled
>>        since 1979, and that such cooling contradicts “warming Earth”
>>        findings - have not withstood rigorous scientific examination.
>>
>>        In summary, Phil Jones and his colleagues have done a
>>        tremendous service to the scientific community - and to the
>>        planet - by making surface temperature datasets publicly
>>        available for scientific research. These datasets have
>>        facilitated climate research around the world, and have led to
>>        the publication of literally hundreds of important scientific
>>        papers.
>>
>>        Phil Jones is one of the gentlemen of our field. He has given
>>        decades of his life not only to cutting-edge scientific
>>        research on the nature and causes of climate change, but also
>>        to a variety of difficult and time-consuming community service
>>        activities - such as his dedicated (and repeated) service as a
>>        Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
>>        (IPCC).
>>
>>        Since the theft of the CRU emails and their public
>>        dissemination, Phil has been subjected to the vilest personal
>>        attacks. These attacks are without justification. They are
>>        deeply disturbing. They should be of concern to all of you. We
>>        are now faced with powerful “forces of unreason” - forces that
>>        (at least to date) have been unsuccessful in challenging
>>        scientific findings of a warming Earth, and a “discernible
>>        human influence” on global climate. These forces of unreason
>>        are now shifting the focus of their attention to the
>>        scientists themselves. They seek to discredit, to skew the
>>        truth, to misrepresent. They seek to destroy scientific
>>        careers rather than to improve our understanding of the nature
>>        and causes of climate change.
>>
>>        Yesterday, Phil temporarily stepped down as Director of the
>>        Climatic Research Unit. Yesterday was a very sad day for
>>        climate science. When the forces of unreason win, and force
>>        exceptional scientists like Professor Phil Jones to leave
>>        their positions, we all lose. Climate science loses. Our
>>        community loses. The world loses.
>>
>>        Now, more than at any other time in human history, we need
>>        sound scientific information on the nature and causes of
>>        climate change. Phil Jones and his colleagues at CRU have
>>        helped to provide such information. I hope that all of you
>>        will join me in thanking Phil for everything he has done - and
>>        will do in the future - for our scientific community. He and
>>        his CRU colleagues deserve great credit.
>>
>>        With best regards,
>>
>>        Ben Santer
>>        ——————————————————————————————————————
>>        Benjamin D. Santer
>>        Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
>>        Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
>>        Livermore, CA U.S.A.
>>        ------------------------------------------
>>        Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>>
>
>
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