Just joking. That’s not shocking at all.

Spotted by Trevor (link is to the WSJ’s notoriously propagandistic FAIR editorial page):

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.

Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

The “large and growing” claim is conveniently left unsubstantiated. Instead we get a series of anecdotes, long-since-refuted claims, and faux paranoia. Read it for yourself, if you must, but what’s interesting to me is the list of 16 “Scientists” allowing their names to be used to legitimate this propaganda:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

I’m at work right now, and don’t have time to go through all of them (hence the “pt. 1″ above), but I got a start:

Claude Allegre (former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris) has been caught both misrepresenting and making up data and has, from what I can tell, lost all credibility as a scientist within the scientific community. He’s also a very old white man.

J. Scott Armstrong (cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting) is a Wharton School marketing prof with no apparent credentials in climate science whatsoever. His beef with climate science seems to be that it doesn’t rely on the particular body of marketing forecasting research literature that his been where he’s made his biggest contributions as an academic. He published an attack on the scientific-ness of climate-change-related forecasting methods used by climate science in something called “Marketing Papers (2008),” which I can’t seem to track down, and was shot down, claim by claim, by actual climate scientists in a paper published by Interfaces (“a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal about operations research that was established by The Institute of Management Sciences, now part of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences“). The paper concludes:

Creating doubt about well-supported scientific results to influence policy actions is a well-documented phenomenon in health-related research (Michaels 2008). Whatever the goals of AGS [the paper's shortform for Armstrong and his two non-climate-scientist co-authors], their audit of the USGS reports similarly serves to create doubt—in this case, about global warming and its effects on polar bears. AGS continue previous efforts to create doubt about global warming and its probable consequences (Lee 2003). The two USGS reports that AGS audited clearly defined the scientific approaches, the threats, and the scientific uncertainties regarding the likely future status of polar bears. In this rejoinder, we have shown AGS to be scientifically wrong or misleading on every major point in their attempt to establish doubt about those reports.

Scientific discussion is necessary to advance knowledge and inform public-policy decisions. Expressions of ideology masked as scientific discussion, however, do neither.

Jan Breslow (head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University) is a medical doctor who’s done genetics research, but has no apparent expertise or training in climate science. Count one more really old white man (that’s three now).

Roger Cohen (fellow, American Physical Society) is a recent retiree of the ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, which clearly suggests impartiality on this issue. (He’s also old, male, and white.)

Edward David (member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences) is even fucking older (can’t say whether or not he’s particularly whiter or more manly). “In 1977, he became President of Research and Engineering for Exxon Corporation, serving until 1985.”

The author of the article is one William Happer who appears to be the “Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.” Specifically (from wiki), “William Happer is a physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy.” RELEVANT. The Princeton part is impressive.

I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. Think that’s impressive? It’s nothing. Between oil money and every credentialed climate “skeptic” on this planet, there’s only one. Let’s find Happer’s! *double-yoo double-yoo double-yoo dot gee oh oh…* you know the rest….

Link:

Happer has been on the board of the George C. Marshall Institute since at least 2002, and is currently its director.  The institute receives a sizable portion of its funding from ExxonMobil.  Out of an operating budget of about $800,000, an average of $91,428 per year from 2001-07 comes directly from ExxonMobil.  They also receive $250,000 per year from the Scaife oil fortune, and we see almost half of the Institute is funded by oil money.

DING DING DONG.

I’d rather go play basketball than spend the next half-hour pointing out the holes in his seeping shit bag of an article. (If you really want me to, I’ll do it, but please don’t ask me to unless you really really want me to.)

Before signing off though, Happer made his biggest splash as a anthropogenic climate change “skeptic” (not that it really matters whether or not we’re causing it if it’s happening,which it fucking is) pushing a petition that the American Physical Society (APS) soften its stated affirmative position on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Here’s how that worked out:

Despite seven months of intense effort to recruit physicists to sign a politically motivated petition disputing anthropogenic climate change, a mere, 0.45% of theAmerican Physical Society‘s 47,000 members signed on.

It’s a humiliating defeat for the climate change Deniers who make such false claims as ”many scientists dispute’ and ‘there is no consensus. The Petition drive was announced in the prestigous journal Nature, APS publications, numerous popularand electronic media, as well as heavily promoted by the petition organizers. Despite all of that effort and publicity, a mere 0.45% was all that they could manage.

Consider that the success rate for Nigerian email scams is estimated to be0.1% to 0.2%, ie roughly speaking about the same.

It’s a good post. With charts!

You should read it.

Five down, eleven to go. I need to get back to work, but I will get back to this.

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UPDATE BY TREVOR: Here’s Part 2.