“Are humans like frogs in a simmering pot, unaware that temperatures have reached the boiling point? Or has global warming been spun into an ‘alarmist gale,’ as Richard S. Lindzen, a climatologist at M.I.T. wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed article?” (Revkin 2006, below)

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Seventeen years ago, and eighteen years after James Hansen yelled Fire in his testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee (tomorrow’s post), New York Times climate columnist Andrew C. Revkin published “Yelling ‘Fire’ on a Hot Planet.” The media propaganda machine was out in force, and the alarmist side was debating what to do to ‘wake up’ the public. One idea was to emphasize adaptation instead of mitigation, a controversial strategy as Revkin reports below.

The article questions whether polar bear drownings were due to climate change.…

Ed Note: This week is the 35th anniversary of the exaggerated climate alarm, which began with James Hansen’s June 1988 testimony before the Senate. Meanwhile, far-too-many scientists remain quiet about the climate model problem and psuedo-scientific attribution studies, while the campaigners link all extreme weather events to mankind’s consumption and energy habits.

“In a paper being published in the March-April [2009] edition of the journal Environment, Matthew C. Nisbet … said Mr. Gore’s approach, focusing on language of crisis and catastrophe, could actually be serving the other side in the fight … ‘as global-warming alarmism….’” – Andrew Revkin, NYT (2009).

“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language. In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.”

“DeSmog’s methodology of listing the ‘denier’ qualifications, quotations, and activities–as if the debate was settled toward climate alarmism and forced energy transformation–is utterly unconvincing. Their growing list is impressive and a badge of honor, so let their project continue.”

Stephen Koonin has done much to help “mainstream” the problems with alarmism based on climate modelling–at least for the open-minded and curious. Humility must rule in the face of radical complexity. After all, what can be known in the absence of causal physical equations that are sub-grid scale anyway?

Climate models cannot be expected to “get it right,” if earth modeling is even possible. This is why data-data-data can and should drive the climate sensitivity debate.

Professor Koonin has been profiled relative to Andrew Dessler at MasterResource (here and here).…

“There is no doubt that these emails are embarrassing and a public-relations disaster for science.” – Andrew Dessler, “Climate E-Mails Cloud the Debate,” December 10, 2009.

It has been 13 years since the intellectual scandal erupted called Climategate. Each anniversary inspires recollections and regurgitation of salient quotations. These quotations speak for themselves; attempts of climate alarmists to parse the words and meaning distracts from what was said in real-time private conversations.

And the scandal got worse after the fact when, according to Paul Stephens, “virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong.” Whitewash exonerations by the educational institutions involved and scientific organizations– was a blow to scholarship and standards as well. The standard of fair, objective, transparent research was sacrificed to a politically correct narrative about the qualitative connection between CO2 forcing and temperature (see Wiki).…