If there was any question as to how little science is involved in the global warming debate, check this out:
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he will investigate a threatening letter sent by the leader of an EPA-member group, vowing to “destroy” the career of a climate skeptic.
During a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday, Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, confronted EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson about the strongly-worded letter written July 13 by Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) that was sent to Marlo Lewis, senior fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).
“It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar,” Mr. Eckhart wrote. “If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.”
Folks, this is scary! These are the people our politicians are depending on to provide sound scientific information on which to base decisions that will affect the well-being of our country. Mr. Eckhart doesn’t deny he wrote the email but says its not a big deal:
In a written response sent to Inside the Beltway last week, Mr. Eckhart apologized to “all the public who were offended” by his choice of words. He said he intended his letter to be a “private communication” in the context of “personal combat and jousting.”
Oh, well that’s very different! We didn’t know it was a private communication. Stifling a scientific debate by threatening your opponent’s career is a very, very dangerous road to travel. It also demonstrates that you most likely have a weak argument to begin with if you have to resort to such tactics.
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Gee, what a gentle, fair-minded bunch those Global Warmers are. I really think some of them are mentally unbalanced.
RickG: It’s the heat!
“I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America.”
Funny, but these guys are the ones bought off by milking the public out of grant money to do their bogus “research”. And doesn’t Gore make $$$ off of selling carbon credits? Who’s bought off?
I’m not against global climate change — I’m for it. I think it’s exciting, far more exciting than I ever expected weather to be.
Meanwhile, Houston is having the mildest (and wettest) summer since I move here in 1981. Time to go for a walk!
Man-made global warming is a total and complete lie! It has no basis in fact whatsoever.
Liberalism is a mental disease!
Fight leftist tyranny!
If this was supposed to be in the spirit of “personal combat and jousting” does this mean there will be pistols at dawn on the Field of Honor?
So much for the august dignity of the Haavaad blueblood aristocrats who know so much more than all the peasants in the rest of the nation. Hope the attacked party sues the pants off him for defamation, threat to his career, and anything else his attorney can think of.
And ye olde EPA administration should censure the creep and drop its membership in ACORE in protest unless it ousts him. Unlikely they will find the spine to do so, but Sen Inhofe will not let this one go.
#6, Regrettably, dueling is illegal these days. It has served a purpose historically though….
6 mattexian
The Code Duello.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/sfeature/rulesofdueling.html
I think people like that are too cowardly and more adept at knifing one in the back.
When you leared history and science in grade school and were taught about brilliant astronomers, etc., who were persecuted for saying the sun didn’t revolve around the earth or that the world wasn’t flat, did you think to yourself, “how could people have been so deliberately ignorant of clear scientific and mathmatical facts”? How much harder to believe this can be happening on such a widespread basis in the year 2007? If you simply state facts, you’re impuned as being a “denier”. When it comes to global warming, the tin foil hat fringe lunatics like Gore are put on a pedestal. It’s medieval times all over again!
And if one is so biased as to threaten someone else’s career, how is the party of the first part supposed to provide scientific, unbiased research? By threatening someone else’s career, the first has just trashed his own reputation.
And usually, people get this bothered over only a few things: politics, religion, protecting family, sexual reputations (e.g.,”small ‘ears’”). Guess how many sound like they are involved here?
/waiting to see how many minds are in the gutter
#9 You have just as much of a political agenda as the Gorites, it’s just not the same one. Calling them names makes you just as small as they are.
Weather patterns may be changing, but we are still a long way from successfully modeling the earth’s climates and drawing firm conclusions. That does not mean it is not man-made — only that we cannot know, at least not yet. Someday, when our knowledge of climate is more advanced and our computing resources more vast, we may know. Until then we should all keep our minds open to all the possibilities. For my own part, I intend to enjoy whatever comes my way. In Texas, the Galveston and Padre sand bars will be our open laboratories.
Ghost - Gore and his follwers are fringe lunatics, whether you like that term or not. They are deliberately twisting, destorting, and outright making up “facts” in a very deliberate effort to shackle free market capitalism and to advance world socialism. If you think they don’t have a political agenda and it’s just about “keeping our minds open” and waiting for more “advanced knowledge” of the climate, then realize that you’ve already decided to sit out the fight. When your grandkids ask where you were when freedom was being stamped out in the home of the brave, be sure to tell them you just sat in a bar and accepted “whatever came your way”.
Actually, Dennis’ comparison of the flat-earthers and the man-made global warming crowd is dead on. Goremaniacs are convinced they are right and refuse to accept any scientific evidence to the contrary, even going so far as to attempt to destroy their critics careers. Ekhart has proven that with his “jousting”. There is nothing scientific about this debate.
gore IS a lunatic. It is not a political agenda of mine to deny man-made global warming. It just simply isn’t true.
When NASA JSC Director Mike Coats recently made a statement that he wasn’t convinved we need to be worrying about global warming, there was a firestorm of critisism from all directions. He got so much heat, that he “clarified” his comment a day or two later to mean exactly the opposite.
I find it rather disturbing that we find ourselves in an environment where standing up for simple facts (like the data does NOT support the man-made global warming theory) is met with such widespread outrage that many people simply won’t dare do it.
Thanks for the support, Hamous and T-Hawkk.
It IS disturbing. Threatening a man’s career and reputation in this manner is like the Church excommunicating Galileo for stating that the earth isn’t the center of the universe. But outrageous behavior like this may actually end up hurting the Chicken Littlers by showing the world how little they know.
The folks who suggest that environmentalism serves as a religion for agnostics, atheists, and do-gooder libs would seem to be pretty close to the mark. And global warming embraces their sacrament as well as their penance (expiation of sins against Gaia). Seems like there’s entirely too much religious-type fervor associated with its promotion to dismiss the description. For some adherents it’s almost jihad. That is scary.
If she weighed the same as a duck… she’s made of wood.
And therefore…
…A witch!
Wake Up !!
This behaivor is nothing new in the Scientific Community. Newton suffered similar treatment by the scientific community in his early days and later he dished plenty of it out to his peers. The rivalry and feud between Newton and Leibnetz was legendary.
The Scientific Community is not populated by a bunch of white smock coated idealistic individuals. It is comprised of the same egotistic, petty, and flawed individuals that one might find in the say…Religous Community.
Egos abound and the threat of being exposed to one’s peers is hardly a new event. Indeed, the last ten years has seen a feud in the physics community over String Theory and the Unification of the Forces that has been less than gentlemanly.
I would point out to some of you that the threat of having one’s ideas being “exposed” does not rise to the level of having one’s home torched in the dead of night.
Good Science will eventually prevail, but sometimes we will go down blind alleys because Scientists can be just as pig-headed as lay people.
Simple
Uh…I think that’s kinda what I’ve been saying, Simple. It was wrong then and its wrong now. But we need to expose the charlatans.
Not sure what you’re getting at with the “home torched” analogy. Perhaps you could explain.
Not only does Gore have a company whose business is trading carbon credits, but he also is a paid agent of Europe for the purpose of promoting the global warming agenda as a means of hampering the US competitive advantage over Europe. Let’s not forget that Albert Gore, Sr. and his family were “taken care of” for years by that Soviet-lover, Armand Hammer.
Hamous,
My point is simple. Peer Review is not as genteel as the term implies. The give and take in the Scientific Community is pretty rough and tumble.
The supply of charlatans in the Scientific Communtity is in no danger of running out anytime soon. This applies to the plagerists, intellectual property thiefs, and whores who sell themselves and their stature to the highest bidder.
It is possible to hire a “Scientific Expert” to back just about any position one chooses. I am sickened by this fact, but accept it as human nature.
If I would back a Scientific theory or position (there is a difference), then I would be mature enough to believe I will have to defend it with facts and data. In reality, I would welcome a public airing of the facts. This gentleman’s threat is an example of boorish and less than professional behaivor, but he is simply stating what could be a likely outcome.
Do you really think the folks at the CEI will stop Mr Lewis’s paycheck. He is doing what his masters have paid him to do and that is represent their position. I suspect his paycheck will continue no matter what would happen at Harvard.
Simple
#9 DennisOnTheRight, #16 Hamous & #19 Simple Simon:
As a matter of fact, the only thing Galileo’s telescope demonstrated is that the moons of Jupiter revolve around Jupiter. There has never been any scientific proof that the earth revolves around the sun. Actually, the Ptolmaic system, regardless what you have been taught, is simpler than the Copernican system. Nevertheless, one is the geometrical reciprocal of the other.
A recent, excellent book on this very subject, as well as the ideological corruption of science over the past few centuries, is, “Galileo Was Wrong…and So Was Einstein,” by Robert Sungenis, Ph.D. and Robert Bennett, Ph.D. The two authors expose many of the “scientific” myths we were taught in school and demonstrate the lack of objectivity of many in the scientific establishment. In addition, an appendix in the book gives an account of the personal lives of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Einstein that is a real eye-opener. For example, how many of us are aware of Einstein’s flagrant womanizing, questions of his plagiarism and his outrageous treatment of Lieserl, his daughter born out of wedlock, the forsaking of his son Eduard and the physical violence toward his first wife, Mileva. Indeed, Einstein’s biography is one of the most lurid in the annals of science. After reading this account, Albert seems very unworthy of being named by Time magazine as “Person of the Century,” unless, of course, the distinction has an ignoble meaning.
I use belief in man-made global warming as a litmus test of sorts (for politicians). Just as less than genteel behavior of scientists during peer review is nothing new, political use of questionable science to drive economic “deals” is nothing new. The thing is, there are some voters who see that for what it is and refuse to participate. I think most of us are those kinds of voters.
The reason why I use belief in man-made global warming as a litmus test is that I believe such uninformed belief yields some very poor economic decisions that have huge implications. Consider the use of ethanol as fuel as an example of that. For many reasons, ethanol is not a good fuel. Yet it benefits some farmers, so its use as fuel undoubtedly will get some lobbyists’ votes behind those politicians who advocate using it as fuel. It may be right for that subset of our economy, but the larger economic picture shows it to be more harmful than good.
Feel good policies that lack a sound scientific and/or economic basis should never be allowed to come to fruition. Unfortunately they do sometimes. For me the man-made global warming debacle is one that will cost enough that it should be fought tooth and nail. That’s why I - as a voter - don’t hesitate to use it as a litmus test.
I completely agree about Gore’s political agenda, I just take exception with calling him a lunatic, just as I take exception with the close-minded attitudes of him and his ilk. He’s scheming and self-righteous, that’s all. As a recovering Democrat I am probably more aware than any of you as to how bad they are. I see the same problem in the Republican party, but in respect to different issues.
Someone said I have decided to sit this one out, whatever that means. Given that I have strong doubts that the climate change is man-made, and that man’s attempts to change it are futile, I do not see what any of us can do, other than argue about it. I see little value in that. When I want scientific information, I go to scientists. Gore clearly does not know the difference between himself and a scientist, nor does his cult following. I do know the difference.
Will my feelings about this issue affect my vote? Perhaps, but I do not give it primacy. My #1 issue is the Mexican invasion. That is immediate, provable, and remediable.
#23 Your arguments help give credence to the Democrats who call us flat earthers. Your reasoning is no better than theirs, and possibly even worse. And really, the personal lives of those people has nothing to do with the soundness of their science.
Tx Patriot,
I would be very interested in seeing your mathematical “proofs” for your statements and I am using that term loosely. Feel free to start with the sum of all forces = 0 and F=MA; you can start from there.
Most of the greats in Science were far less than perfect in their persona lives. Are you?
Having a less than perfect pesonal life does not change the data. A good scientist (and anyone else with a lick of sense) will let the data speak for itself.
Simple
Tx Patriot,
It would seem that Robert Sungenis did not exactly get his training in Physics, but rather theology.
“Sungenis was raised in a Catholic family, but became a Protestant in 1974, aged nineteen[1]. He held various posts in several Reformed churches, including a stint with radio preacher Harold Camping of Family Radio[2] He also gained an M.A. in theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1982. He has an unaccredited PhD from Calamus International University[1].”
Just the kind of guy qualified to comment on Newtonian Physics, Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics.
Simple
Tx Patriot,
It would also seem that Mssrs Sungenis and Bennett are alums of Calumus International University, which would appear to be a “Learning by Distance” diploma mill, where one can purchase creditials with a VISA or MasterCard.
I used the term Mssrs, since neither would seem to deserve the title of Doctor.
Simple
#26 Ghost Rider & #27 Simple Simon:
You are wrong on all counts. People, including scientists, act a certain way because of the view of the world they hold, but they also hold a particular view of the world because of the way they act. The personal lives of the listed scientists, as well as many others, has very much to do with their “science” - it’s inescapable.
There is no mathematical proof of the correctness of either the Ptolemaic or Copernican system. One does not have to be perfect to do good science, but a priori commitment to certain philosophical beliefs, such as materialism and a rejection of any spiritual dimension, mostly precludes much authentic science. It is this type of scientist who refuses to let the observational data speak for itself, rather they color it with their unprovable philosophical beliefs.
That Sungenis does not have a background in cosmology is exactly why he enlisted Robert Bennett, who has a doctorate in General Relativity, as his consultant and coauthor.
Your last comment, Simple, is one you aren’t qualified to make.
Tx Patriot,
And to think I wasted all those hours in Physics and Calculus classes while getting my Engineering Degree.
I don’t suppose you have any articles from Science, Scientific American, Nature, or Popular Mechanics that would back up these two guys (or yours for that matter) blathering.
Have they submitted and gotten acceptance by way of peer review from any of the following: National Academy of Science, NASA, Royal Society of Astronomy, or the Mickey Mouse Club.
Simple
p.s.
I am still waiting for your proofs. I do have some experience in Math and Physics and suspect that I will not be overwhelmed.
Wow. This conversation sure has taken a very strange twist. As a degreed chemist, I also have some physics and calculus classes under my belt, not to mention physical chemistry. I think its pretty sound science that the geocentric model has been thoroughly debunked.
As for trying to criticize Einstein’s scientific theories based on rumors of his personal life, true or not, well based on your previous posts I think I can safely assume your motives there. I’ll kindly leave it at that.
I suppose the earth really is flat too.
Galileo was wrong. Einstein was wrong. Yesterday the founding fathers were deemed wrong for creating the Constitution.
Ron Paul really is affecting
societythe blogsphere.Now that we got that out of the way, can we discuss the revolutionary theories of Immanuel Velikovsky? A Freudian psychotherapist who re-wrote Egyptian history and astronomy … perhaps Sungenis’ model, almost certainly his hero. Or perhaps you never heard of the times that Venus and Mars almost collided with Earth?
#32, Hamous. Quite so. Seems like somebody might be double parked in the Twight Zone.
Let’s just do the Mentos/Diet Coke experiment and laugh a lot.