Bishop Hill The community strikes back
May 14, 2014 Climate: Sceptics GWPF This has just been posted at Klimazwiebel:
In an e-mail to GWPF, Lennart Bengtsson has declared his resignation of the advisory hoard of GWPF. His letter reads :
"I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time."
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
GWPF has published the response of Professor David Henderson, the chairman of its Academic Advisory Council, to Bengtsson.
Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation: it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.
David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council
Reader Comments (164)
Thanks TinyCO2 (May 15, 2014 at 12:08 PM) for an excellent summary of the “rationally optimistic” view on this event.
On your point about bullying, the problem with this argument is that the warmists got it in first over the retraction of Lewandowsky's “Recursive Fury” paper. I've had a long correspondence with the Guardian Readers' Editor, who defends Nuccitelli's accusation of bullying (and implicitly, Nuccitelli's accusation of lying against the editors of the journal when they said that they hadn't been bullied).
The Guardian Ombudsman's position seems to be that, even if there's no evidence of bullying, we sceptics seem to be the kind of people who would bully. Case proved.
The climate change industry, like the pharmaceutical industry isn't about science , it's about money.
Some pretty heavy bullying.
The authors of two papers published by the British Medical Journal have publicly retracted statements they made about the frequency of side effects experienced by people taking statins, following a charge by an Oxford professor that the information was wrong and could endanger lives.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/15/statins-bmj-statement-professor-collins-side-effects
I turned down a job teaching nurses at the local 'university' because it seems to me that the British education industry is as corrupt as the climate change industry.Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at the behaviour of academics.
esmiff
Marginally off topic but the decision to make nursing a graduate profession was another example of academia "hoovering up" anything it could (semi-)legitimately lay its hands on.
My aunt was a matron for 20 years and found the concept laughable. She said it would deprive nursing of the best nurses (in the true sense of the word 'to nurse') and 30 years on she has been proved right. Nursing per se is now beneath them and the ones who genuinely care for people can no longer qualify.
There are exceptions of course, before too many people jump down my throat!
Nick Stokes (11:12 AM): the messages to Phil Jones are not much worse than responses I have received on alarmists sites when I acknowledged my ignorance, and raised such questions as: “How does CO2 act as a greenhouse gas?” with the supplementary: “How can it be such an effective greenhouse gas, considering how little of it there is in the atmosphere?” If any of the other warmists found them reprehensible, they managed to keep remarkably quiet about it. The responses on sceptical sites were considerably more pleasant, if no more informative; they are both questions that no-one has yet managed to answer satisfactorily.
Mike Jackson. Totally agree. Yes, it is laughable until you realise that the head of intensive care and the head of mental health in this area are both nurses who may have no substantial educational qualifications. I knew the intensive care guy. Low / middling quality human being.
See Mid Staffordshire for details.
So, who have been the main sponsors of the Guardian's massive climate propaganda effort. Shell and money laundering giant, HSBC.
Climategate: George Monbiot, the Guardian and Big Oil
But who is it that sponsors the Guardian?s Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell. (Though I notice their logo no longer appears on top of the Guardian?s eco pages: has the Guardian decided the relationship was just too embarrassing to be, er, sustainable?)
And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion ? an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP (which stands for British Petroleum)
And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe?s Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.
And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There?s a clue in this line here: ?Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.?
And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)
And why does this Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild?s bank sound so enthusiastic in this (frankly terrifying) letter about the prospects of the ?new world order? (his phrase not mine) which result from globally regulated carbon trading?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019523/climategate-george-monbiot-is-in-the-pay-of-big-oil/
New young tail wagging, little, Guardian socialist Owen Jones, sponsored by HSBC.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bnria83CcAEkpeY.jpg:large
For the record I do comment in a "warmist" blog, where I have obvious and profound differences with the host both in world view and in the interpretation of climate science. However I do not go around there eg disparaging the host's associations, or being casually offensive.
I think it should be just obvious that visiting and commenting to a blog is like being invited for a discussion in somebody else's home, and a modicum of appropriate behaviour is strictly in order. Everything else is an attempt at stirring up the worst in all of us, aka "trolling".
I have asked Gavin on Twitter for examples of "bad faith" by the GWPF. I am sure he will not answer my request. Is anybody aware of any example having been pushed forward yet?
>[UEA] Response: "There are none on record".
Universities, eh? 'None' is singular - is that what they mean by creative writing?
Mike Jackson
Agree entirely. It's what used to be called a vocation, but now excludes most of those who would regard it as such.
James P Usage (and the C.O.D) says that "none" can equally well be plural.
"none of them have found it"
"none but fools have ever believed it"
(examples from C.O.D.)
Splitpin: James P is correct – the “none” in the university answer should be singular; the C.O.D. examples given referred directly to plurals (“them” and “fools”), so would be correct with the use of a plural reference for “none”.
Pedantic Rodent (a sibling of Radical’s).
Radical - My understanding is that the university was asked "for copies of the threats". So plural sounds correct to me.
But why am I sticking up for the UEA?.