Questionable list?
“It’s Getting Hot in Here” is an activist blog about AGW. In its latest entry, Phil Aroneanu writes:
Remember that number global warming deniers throw around — those 500 scientists that have supposedly signed onto a letter denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change? 500. It’s a number you hear on the nightly news near the end of many stories on climate change, and it’s also a number invented by the Heartland Institute, one of Washington’s most conservative thinktanks.
As it turns out, that the number is a fabrication. Our friends over at DeSmogBlog sent questionnaires to each signer, and received back some interesting quotes.
According to It’s Getting Hot in Here, a large number of the signers were shocked when told that their names were on the “deniers” list. A few scientists are quoted: Dr Ming Cai, Dr. Paul F. Schuster, Dr. David Sugden, Dr. Gregory Cutter.
Now I am sorry to say, but NONE of these names are on the list of those who signed the Manhattan Declaration. You can check for yourselves at the ICSC site.
New addition:
As stated in the 1st comment, the 500 are to be found on a list by Dennis T. Avery from September 2007. Not in the Manhattan Declaration, as I first thought. But since the latter also comprises of 500 + names and is related to Heartland Institute, I drew the wrong conclusion. I am sorry for that.
I will ask Dennis Avery about the document. Meanwhile, may I would only like to bring to your attention that there are more than 500 scientists who doubt in AGW. The Manhattan Declaration endorsers are to be found here. There is also a list by the US Senate, naming more than 400 scientists who do not agree with the AGW-hypothesis.
22 comments
You obviously don’t pay attention to detail, I wonder why we should trust you on Global Warming. The 500 scientists are on this document:
500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares: Alphabetical List
http://www.desmogblog.com/500-scientists-with-documented-doubts-about-the-heartland-institute
Not the Manhattan Declaration!
Thank you for the correction.
The 400 “skeptical” scientists on the list from the US Senate are in many cases either not scientists or not skeptical to the agw hypothesis.
See for instance: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/26/1971/6517
But as we’ve seen in a previous discussion on this blog, real scientific credentials are of no value …
Anders: I think you’ll find non-scientist-scientists on both sides. That is probably because the whole debate has become so politicized. If scientific credentials were necessary, Al Gore wouldn’t be touring the Earth trying to convert people to deliver his truth (that’s actually how he states it
).
The difference is that Al Gore is not pretending to be a climate scientist.
But he is spreading falsehoods by making predictions based on the worst case scenario that some misguided climate scientists have offered as “proof” of AGW, using computer predictions that are a million light years away from reality. And it enables him to rip off the gullible by inferring he can “save” the planet with his frankly illegal Carbon Offset Trading. What a blatant scam!
Brian J: No, he’s not. He’s more optimistic than many of the (real) climate scientists analyzing the data.
Anders: So Al Gore’s optimistic prognostication of a 20 foot sea level rise within a few years is less than some (real) climate scientists? Where is this presumably peer reviewed data? How will the current views of no warming for at least ten years affect Al Gore’s scam about Carbon Offset Trading?
Brian J: He has never said anything about a 20 foot sea level rise within a few years.
“Ice-sheet driven sea level rise Gore correctly asserted that melting of Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels 20ft (6 meters). In the movie, no timescale for that was specified, but lest you think that the 20 ft number is simply plucked out of thin air, you should note that this is about how much higher sea level was around 125,000 years ago during the last inter-glacial period. Then, global temperatures were only a degree or two warmer than today - and given that this is close to the minimum temperature rise we can expect in the future, that 20 ft is particularly relevant.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/convenient-untruths/
Anders: It isn’t what Gore says, it’s what he implies to further his Messiah like pose of “Saving the Planet”. He has an agenda and he will try and make as much money as he can [like his documentary "A convenient lie" or whatever it was called] by provocative speeches. He was a lousy Vice President and he will never be a credible politician but he is a credible ‘adjuster’ of the truth.
Well he may not have said 20 feet in a few years but most people will have formed that impression. His Nobel Peace Prize should be returned but I guess he is in good company because Adolph Hitler got one and so did Joseph Stalin!
Anders: Here is part of an Al Gore speech entitled
“Global Warming is an Immediate Crisis”
New York University School of Law
Monday 18 September 2006
“Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several “tipping points” that could - within as little as 10 years - make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization. In this regard, just a few weeks ago, another group of scientists reported on the unexpectedly rapid increases in the release of carbon and methane emissions from frozen tundra in Siberia, now beginning to thaw because of human caused increases in global temperature. The scientists tell us that the tundra in danger of thawing contains an amount of additional global warming pollution that is equal to the total amount that is already in the earth’s atmosphere. Similarly, earlier this year, yet another team of scientists reported that the previous twelve months saw 32 glacial earthquakes on Greenland between 4.6 and 5.1 on the Richter scale - a disturbing sign that a massive destabilization may now be underway deep within the second largest accumulation of ice on the planet, enough ice to raise sea level 20 feet worldwide if it broke up and slipped into the sea. Each passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a planetary emergency - a climate crisis that demands immediate action to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to turn down the earth’s thermostat and avert catastrophe.”
To those lawyers listening the implication was that a catastrophe was going to happen very soon.
Brian J: Nice quote.
Brian J: In the scientific community it is not in any way controversial that we are close to - or perhaps beyond - the tipping points Gore talks about. See for instance the Hansen paper (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080331.pdf).
Passing those tipping points may result in the warming becoming unstoppable. That doesn’t mean that all the consequenses are going to happen immediately, it may still take centuries, but that they become unavoidable. And that is a catastrophe.
PS: About the Heartland list: http://www.desmogblog.com/outrage-in-the-climate-science-community-continues-over-the-500-scientist-list
Brian J: In the scientific community it is not in any way controversial that we are close to - or perhaps beyond - the tipping points Gore talks about. See for instance the Hansen paper (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080331.pdf).
Passing those tipping points may result in the warming becoming unstoppable. That doesn’t mean that all the consequenses are going to happen immediately, it may still take centuries, but that they become unavoidable. And that is a catastrophe.
About the Heartland list: http://www.desmogblog.com/outrage-in-the-climate-science-community-continues-over-the-500-scientist-list
As Grist’s David Roberts puts it: “If Heartland really believes what it claims, why does it have to lie and slander scientists to make the point?”
Anders: You mentioned Hansen! If you can get him to release his data and algorithms so that others can check his accuracy [or rather how he 'massaged' data to prove his point!]
NASA would do best to get rid of this modifier of the truth.
Here’s a comment from Dan Miller at the Heartland Institute that appeared on DeSmogBlog.
As usual in its jihad against Heartland, SmogBlog gets its facts utterly wrong.
1. Heartland isn’t the source or the author of the purported list. It came from the Hudson Institute.
2. There is no list of 500 scientists signing a statement denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change. SmogBlog invented that “list” and ascribed it to Heartland as a straw man to continue its attack on Heartland. The 500 scientists SmogBlog refers to are those whose work in various aspects of climate change was cited in “Unstoppable Global Warming” by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery. Singer and Avery never asserted those scientists agreed on anything. Singer and Avery cited the scientists’ work in a bibliography to buttress their argument that natural cycles of climate change exist.
3. Academics cited in the Singer/Avery study have no right to demand that their work not appear in bibliographies such as in “Unstoppable Global Warming.” In fact, Singer and Avery do the authors a favor by stating clearly that not all of the authors cited question the theory of AGW.
4. Heartland offers more than 25,000 articles on its Website, including an abstract of “Unstoppable Global Warming.” That abstract appears on many other Web sites. Surely SmogBlog is able to access more than one site. Why focus on Heartland?
5. Heartland isn’t “one of Washington’s most conservative think tanks.” We’re based in Chicago.
6. If anyone has a gripe about the list of scientists cited in the bibliography, they should contact the Hudson Institute, which issued the press release that is on Heartland’s site.
Dan Miller
Publisher
Heartland Institute
Chicago.
Brian J: Thank you for the information that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin received the Nobel Peace Prize. If it wasn’t for blogs like these that information would never reach the public, so thanks Maggie too. Good luck in spreading the truth!
I withdraw the statement that Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin received the Nobel Peace Prize, my error, they were only nominated. However now that Al Gore’s blatant lies and image manipulation in “An Inconvenient Truth” have been proven to be so, 35+ ‘naughties’ I think, shouldn’t Al Gore now hand back his prize as it was gained by proven false pretenses, wasn’t it?
Anders: Well, I am glad we can entertain you.
Update: May 8: Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, defends naming scientists as climate change skeptics. Read the article here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10508859
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