Seriously, can not one climate scientest say the following: “we really don’t know for sure what is happening to the climate. It’s a very tough problem, and frankly, it’s going to take a while to sort out”?

We never saw the party in power so shrill and extreme as when they got power. And now we see the extremification of climate science, too.

But the other thing that I think I can prove with North in other emails he has written both back at Enron and more recently is what I call the Malthusian virus–the default, knee-jerk concern over the human influence on climate per se. Or maybe it is a form of ‘deep ecology’–where nature is considered optimal and sacrosanct.

Twice North has sent me very alarmist emails. Then I challenge him–once by relying totally on the IPCC conclusions (3rd assessment). He then backs off and sort of apologizes.

This is all a sad situation. Wish I didn’t have to expose it, but Climategate has given some of us the urgency and courage to do so…. This is a just another cost of politicized science.

Andrew Dessler
1595 24 Nov 2007 3:13am 1195902812 1195931612
‘Jerry North Eli-
For the record, Jerry North is not a skeptic in the least. I can assure you that he and I agree on just about everything when it comes to climate. He is, perhaps, less outspoken than I, but he is no less supportive of the conclusions of the IPCC WG I report.
Thanks!’

Andy was never fooled. North was always an alarmist according to him, and he should know.

I offered to argue with Dr Dessler on AIT, when he was searching for a debate.
He listed some few things he thought AGore phrased poorly.

“As far as Gore’s movie goes, three things I would have changed spring to mind: 1) his discussion of Katrina and the connection between hurricanes and AGW, 2) his discussion of the correlation between CO2 and the temperature record over the last 650 kyrs, and 3) his discussion of sea level rise. The last two I don’t think were necessarily wrong, but I think they could have been phrased in a better way. There may have been more, but I haven’t seen the movie in such a long time …”

After Andy posted that he must have had another look at Gore’s movie, because he sent me an email begging off debating AIT.
Which is kind of strange because just a month before he blogged on it saying, ” I think the movie is overall quite good and I give it high marks for accuracy.”

An Inconvenient Truth didn’t age well apparently.

>[ED: This is a valuable addition--others with first hand knowledge are invited to add to the historical record]

I know it sounds like carping, but public science across the board in most fields is essentially captive to a small number of players who have a serious vested interest in certain outcomes, and until we can change that relationship we will continue down this pathway of endless apocalyptic scenarios being deployed to engender funding for themselves or their institutions.

So while those such as Rob Bradley will probably be derided for harping on about relatively unimportant facts, in the end it is the only way back to integrity for those who are currently working in public science, and as such are informing the public deabte about various issues.

Consequently, I wasn’t at all surprised by the so-called climate science group going back to business as usual, though I am surprised you thought otherwise. Until we get political and economic leadership (I mean, look at the vapid position of the US Chamber of Commerce) that understands scientific methodology–how science really works–the country, indeed, much of the world, will get policy based on spin, and scientists will go where they can get grant dollars, which of course flow from the spinned policy.

My frustration is that Climategate should have led to a new impetus to find the middle in a very contentious debate. Instead, it seems that outside of a few courageous scientists, there has been circling the wagons.

There is a happy physical-science middle between ultra-skepticism (which I am not a fan of) and alarmism. We have got to push to get more and more scientists to want to find it–and in some cases (as the above) admit to it!

The real issue, for me, is the quality and sufficiency of the evidence, not whether a particular inquiry is pitched along a particular trajectory of the road. As you must know, Rob, being in the middle of the road is no indicator of how close one is to truth.

None of the priests of climate change have been able to decipher long range climate patterns in ways that seem predictable, let alone accountable. Consequently, why hitch incredibly costly, quality-of-life -reducing policies, particularly those encouraging “renewable” technologies, to our socio-economic engine–based upon highly provisional information?

I’d rather see North and Dessler provide a meaningful response to Bjorn Lomborg.