Wednesday, January 03, 2007

"Why does a major news organization employ such a hack?"

I've done a certain, prominent, "terrorist expert" in the past, now in the light of this morning's climate change post, its time to consider an "expert" sceptic on climate change. Fellow Finnish-based blogger, KGS left a link in the comments suggesting that there is no consensus on climate change. This morning I wrote: "climate change scepticism is now pretty much a political position rather than a credible scientific one", and his link only supports this. The link is to an article on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) website and it is written by Steven Milloy. In terms of making the point that climate change denial is a political (and economic) position rather than a scientific one, it doesn't get much better than this.

Milloy writes for Foxnews.com and the quote referring to him serving above as a title to this post, comes from some minor and probably second-rate climate geek called James Hansen, who has some little job directing something unimportant called... ummm... NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies!!! Milloy who has a doctorate in law, (note: NOT climate science) has set himself up as an expert on second-hand smoke not being bad for you whilst taking money from Big Tobacco, and then also on climate change, whilst getting hand outs from oil companies. All-in-all Dr. Hansen is polite in calling him a hack.

The CEI is a think-tank that promotes liberal capitalism. Nothing wrong with that - it's a market place of ideas and they have every right to promote theirs, but they do themselves no favours by having Mr. Milloy on their team if they want to be seen as doing serious work rather than just paid cheerleading for various corporate interests (scroll down a wee bit to get to the part on CEI).

As a by-the-by, I was looking at Mr. Milloy's website Junkscience.com tonight and noticed this wonderful series of Google ads just below the header (click to enlarge).


So after you've finished your rigorous scientific reading on why climate change is all hoax, you can click straight on to Nostradamus to find out what will happen in the future! As ever Google knows so much... ;-)

7 comments:

KGS said...

Pretty winded view of CEI. The highlight of your post was the reference to the "GOOGLE SPONSORED ADD" in the website at Junk Science, which you know very well that they do not have any control of :-)

As for science, though from 2002, the mechanics/laws explained in the PDF report - http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/153_Regulation.pdf - do not change with time, and represents why the scientific debate between those who cling to computer models, and those that study actual data from the ground and air, are not any closer to a general consensus on GW.

This is the very same thinking of the sixty Canadian scientists who called for a revisiting of the Kyoto accords earlier last year. They are not totally convinced either.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

" "Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be irrational."

Now this does not refute the man made GW alarmist's claims, but neither are the alarmist's claims 100% validated. More earth and ground research is needed before "opinion" can become fact.

Toby - Northern Light Blog said...

Kenneth - you are really going to have to try better than that! :-) Your Lindzen report, leaving aside the fact that its in CATO's in-house journal is from 1992!!! That's 15 years out of date. When it was published I was wearing cut-off black combat trousers, plaid shirts, doc martins boots and had an urge to travel to Seattle to be "where it was all happening"! Did you actually read it? It keeps referring to "Senator Gore" not "former Vice President" or even just "Vice President Gore" - that should have been a clue. It has a date from when someone printed it out on it, not from it's publication, but it is still on CATO's homepage: http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html

Prof. Lindzen is still a prominent scientific sceptic on climate change, see: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 from last year. But he wouldn't take a bet on the earth's climate cooling rather than warming unless he was given 50:1 odds: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1552092,00.html For a critical look at Lindzen try: http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm or http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen

MIT seems to have lots of interesting professors; a certain world-leading linguist who has an odd thing or two to say on US and Middle Eastern politics is amongst them. ;-)

I'll have a look at the Canadians later as I should be writing something else! :-) But I have no problem accepting that Kyoto is full of problems - I don't think anyone disputes that in its present form it's not a lot of use, but as with so many international agreements you start from the lowest common denominator and hopefully build from there.

KGS said...

That report was in my files for some time now, having read it in full awhile back. I was too quick to give the older date that was all too noticeable in the right hand corner of the report. That said, the year of the report doesn't change the laws of nature nor the immense unpredictability of the earth's climate one iota.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6639

"But that's just another climate change hypothesis that time will test. Be forewarned, though. As we've learned from the completely unexpected cooling of the deep ocean that began in 2003, we know a lot less about climate change than we think."

As far as I can ascertain, Lindzen doesn't reject the notion that the earth is warming, but on the predominate causes. So it stands to reason why he wouldn't entertain a bet with lower odds. That scientists are looking at a more "heated sun" as a possible (but marginal) factor in the Earth's warming is also worth following closely:

1.) http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sunwarm.html

--Added note; the physicists do not claim to deny that man made green house gasses are not the guilty party.

2.) http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040718-115714-6334r.htm

3.) http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17977

The fact that the Antarctic is increasing is ice mass is another conundrum added to the list of many.

1.) http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/11/antarctic-ice-sheet-and-the-plot-thickens/

2.) http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820southseaice.html


All said, the issues behind GW is far from being understood or becoming a matter of stated fact, with the debate becoming more intense and livier.

KGS said...
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KGS said...
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Anonymous said...

Hi Tony,

You bloody right, there IS a concensus on climate change, it's just that politicians and economical people don't believe in it.

There's hard evidence for it too, see:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/306/5702/1686?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=climate+change+review&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=30&resourcetype=HWCIT

I quote:
"Thus, despite claims sometimes made by some groups that there is not good evidence that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities, the scientific community is in overwhelming agreement that such evidence is clear and persuasive."

If you follow the stories in Science and Nature, you can-not deny that climate change is going on.

Read and believe the peer-reviewed science, not some dodgy blogs/websites/politicians, they can state what they like...

(Do you have your winter back yet? Here's (former DDR) its still T-shirt weather, grrrrrrr.)

Anonymous said...

Boo, typo - must read Toby obviously...