Seriously! In a post ironically titled "You can't make this stuff up" (actually, you can -- that's what most deniers do), Roger Pielke, Jr. responds to my last post (which challenged his absurd defense of the "Earth is cooling" nonsense) as follows:
And people wonder why some people see the more enthusiastic climate advocates akin to religious zealots.
Who are these "some people" Pielke cites? Go to his link -- it's none other than NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who became famous in the climate arena for saying:
To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.
That would seem to be "making it up" for the head of NASA, and it puts Griffin squarely in the middle of the denier camp and makes him a major delayer. As I blogged at the time:
So it is arrogant to want to preserve the climate that gave us human civilization, to avoid 80 feet of sea level rise, mass desertification, and the like. He really needs to talk to one of his employees about just what dangerous climate change means for this planet.
So, Pielke cites denier/delayer Griffin in his defense, and yet Pielke's upset that I called him a delayer. Rereading it, I realize that one could perhaps read my post to say I called him a denier, but I merely meant to call him a delayer. Note to Pielke -- if you aren't a delayer, I'd love to hear your answer to the key question:
If you were running national and global climate policy, what level of global CO2 concentrations would be your goal, and how would you achieve it?
But it is absurd for Pielke to naïvely write on his blog:
Now according to Grist Magazine's Joe Romm I am a "delayer/denier" because I've asked what data would be inconsistent with IPCC predictions. Revealed truths are not to be questioned lest we take you to the gallows.
No, you aren't a delayer because you've "asked what data would be inconsistent with IPCC predictions." You are because you wrote a long post giving credence to the notion -- which is clearly at odds with the data -- that the climate is in a cooling trend. In fact, you begin with a graph that implies we've been in a major cooling trend since 2001 and you yourself write of "the recent cooling in the primary datasets of global temperature."
Roger, do you think the data show it has been cooling since 2001? If so, I don't know what to call you, but "delayer" is the mildest thing that comes to mind. Denier of science would be fair, I think -- since that isn't what the data show, as the Hadley Center (and NASA) folks I cite explain.
If you don't think that the data show that it has been cooling since 2001, then why not say so in your post, rather than titling it "Update on falsification of climate predictions"? Given the graph and your comments, that sounds like you are saying that recent data has falsified climate predictions, which they have not.
So I stand by my comments -- shame on you!
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
View as Flat
jcwinnie Posted 11:53 pm
19 Mar 2008
The error, of course, is assuming that denial need to make sense, whereas it is a univesal defense mechanism that appears earlier in development than sense making.
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:07 am
20 Mar 2008
This Galileo quote was used in the recent film, King of California, with Michael Douglas:
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Galileo.html
The Manhattan Declaration
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frankbi Posted 5:10 am
20 Mar 2008
So why did James Inhofe need to gather 400 "climate scientists" to dispute global warming?
As Einstein might have said, if the IPCC were wrong, then one scientist would be enough.
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tico89 Posted 7:29 am
20 Mar 2008
He didn't invent the telescope, or throw anything off the Torre Pendente in Pisa; and the fact that he worked with the 'Copernican' model is a pretty big giveaway that he didn't come up with it himself.
I'm not trying to lessen his accomplishments, just point out that it wasn't all himself. Theories do not become accepted merely through the "humble reasoning of a single individual"--while a single individual may come up with the theory, using the work of others as well as his own, they become scientifically accepted after many others have found them to work.
I rather think that's where 'consensus', the #1 word seemingly most hated by deniers, comes into the pictures.
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:21 am
20 Mar 2008
As Einstein might have said, if the IPCC were wrong, then one scientist would be enough.
Well, according to Grist, there was only about 1 scientist on the Inhofe list, so that is enought.
Contrast that with Al Gore and James Hansen (and Grist) who do science by majority vote.
Something Galileo (and Einstein) would have abhorred...
The Manhattan Declaration
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Alex Lockwood Posted 8:51 pm
21 Apr 2008
I've written about it here:
http://www.alexlockwood.net/2008/04/21/climate-science-re ...
I wrote about this because the Pielke Research Group claimed that the decision not to publish an article based on the research, a decision taken by EOS and Nature Precedings, was an example of bias in climate change reporting.
I disagreed, and so investigated. My view is that the Pielke Group is using rhetoric and taking positions that is not backed up by their own data. I probably don't know enough science, but I do know enough about the uses of language for this rhetoric to ring some bells of alarm about research emanating from this research group.
Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Sunderland, UK.
http://www.alexlockwood.net
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