The thing about both the Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler’s Germany was that the enemy was plain in view. We knew these guys were bad, they had black uniforms, they had swastikas, they had tanks – they were obviously the bad guys, they wanted to destroy us. What makes the modern environmental movement so dangerous is that it masks its intentions behind this cloak of cuddly, touchy feely, polar bear-hugging, Nobel Prize-winning righteousness. …
What could be nicer than trying to save those cuddly little polar bears from melting due to our wanton greed and selfishness? It gels with a sense that I think grew in the affluent ’90s, when people began asking themselves questions like, Shouldn’t there be limits to growth? You know, isn’t there more to life than consumption?
So, you have this alliance of ordinary people, of kids who’ve been brainwashed at school, of the big corporations which wanted to get in on the act by greenwashing their image, of powerful NGOs like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, of politicians wanting to be seen to take action in matters of public concerned. So what you have is this unstoppable bandwagon, all pushing this agenda based on the flimsiest of junk science.
Warmist whackjob Byron Kennard has a modest proposal for reducing entitlement spending on nursing home care for decrepit baby boomers.
I call on boomers to imitate the example of the Inuit, a tribe who occupy Greenland and Northern Alaska. In olden days, when food ran short, elderly Inuits who felt they were a burden on their community would wander off by themselves into the wilderness where they would perish of their own accord. …
• A hero’s journey, in the mythical sense, is the highest goal to which humans aspire.
• There’s something about being alone in the wilderness that evokes humanity’s most intense, sublime experiences.
• Preservation of wilderness is of paramount importance to the future well-being of the planet.
My proposal builds on all this. It provides a strong new rationale for preservation of wilderness areas. After all, if aging boomers are to wander into the wilderness to die, there must be wilderness to wander into. But, of course, nobody wants suicidal seniors flooding into existing parks such as Yellowstone or Yosemite that are already crowded with vacationers looking for a good time. So my proposal calls for expanded wilderness protection in order to accommodate large numbers of nearly-dearly departed boomers. Think of this as the ecological dividend of your sacrifice.
Now, despite my emphasis on volunteerism, I’m realistic enough to know that economic incentives are what really count. Accordingly, my proposal includes a prod to encourage any boomers who are reluctant to “step up to the plate.” Cutting off their income ought to do the trick.
Under my proposal, Social Security payments would end automatically when beneficiaries turn 90. This sounds harsh, I know, but frankly, isn’t it reasonable to assume that by age 90 your overriding concern will be death with dignity? Well, anyway, that’s what it ought to be if you guys have any taste or gumption or healthy sense of self.
At present, most really old people lie terminally bored in rest homes watching Law and Order re-runs for the hundredth time — a fate worse than death. Most actually expire hooked up to expensive machines in overcrowded, unsanitary hospitals.
Hey, boomers, wouldn’t you rather bid life farewell on your own terms, in the great American outdoors, surrounded by scenic wonders, communing with nature? Sure you would!
Here’s the icing on the cake. As things stand now, you guys are going to exit life’s stage amid catcalls of derision from the younger generations you’ve screwed. But as followers of the Inuit’s honorable tradition, you’ll stride offstage to thunderous applause from a grateful posterity. And think how proud Mom and Dad would be.
It’s kind of hard to tell how much, if any, of this is tongue in cheek when it comes from someone with Kennard’s political views. His lot has a record of really implementing these kinds of ideas.
Princeton Professor Russell H. Nieli offers a serious critique of the establishment of AGW as orthodoxy on American university campuses and in the MSM. His list of issues is quite good, and so is his conclusion.
MIT’s Richard Lindzen, a long-time skeptic of the Gore-Hansen Model of global warming, has explained how the serious challenge to American scientific and military dominance posed by the Soviet launching of the Sputnik satellite in the 1950s sent a clear message to the American scientific community that has stuck with it ever since. After Sputnik, says Lindzen, it became clear that the way to gain status, prestige, and, above all, government funding for one’s scientific research, was through the medium of public fear and crisis creation. A similar dynamic was at work earlier, he says, in the creation of the Manhattan Project, which was originally established as a counterweight to what was believed to be an advanced Nazi atom bomb project. The threats and crises for which the government will shell out big money may be entirely real, of course, and not in need of any exaggeration or hype. But they may also be bogus or grossly inflated, a condition that Lindzen thinks accurately describes current global-warming concerns of the Gore-Hansen variety.
The New York Times science editor John Tierney offers a similar take on the global warming issue, stressing both the self-interest of scientists involved in crisis mongering and the more general, herd-like conformism that afflicts scientists along with everyone else. “I’ve long thought that the biggest danger in climate research,” Tierney writes, “is the temptation for scientists to lose their skepticism and go along with the ‘consensus’ about global warming. That’s partly because it’s easy for everyone to get caught up in ‘informational cascades,’ and partly because there are so many psychic and financial rewards for working on a problem that seems to be a crisis. We all like to think that our work is vitally useful in solving a major social problem — and the more major the problem seems, the more money society is liable to spend on it. … Given the huge stakes in this debate — the trillions of dollars that might be spent to reduce greenhouse emissions — it’s important to keep taking skeptical looks at the data. How open do you think climate scientists are to skeptical views, and to letting outsiders double-check their data and calculations?” (John Tierney).
The last sentence was an oblique reference to attempts by many climate scientists to suppress skeptical voices, which was so clearly in evidence in the scandalous Climategate emails. A commentator on Tierney’s blog adds the following valuable insight: “To survive, most workers in scientific fields must follow the grant money. If all the grants this year are for work on the crisis du jour, then that’s the work which gets done. The annoying fact is that somebody pays for science. The ‘somebody’ may be an Evil Oil Company, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, or anyone else with bags of money. We shouldn’t be too amazed when we find that the ‘somebody’ tends to get the science he or it wants to see.”
That money, power, vanity, and prestige may influence a scientific debate — or non-debate in the case of global warming — should not be very surprising. As I have said, scientists and scholars are human beings and prone to all the foibles and distortions of the human condition. This was the great insight of the mid-20th century “sociologists of knowledge,” and before them of most Calvinists and other discerning Christians (including most notably James Madison in Federalist No. 10).
But I think there is an additional element here that is less talked about but probably as important as the kinds of issues Lindzen and Tierney bring up. This is the attraction of global-warming orthodoxy not as a falsifiable scientific theory or source of research funding but as a substitute religion that engages all the energies and capacities to enhance meaning in life that an earlier generation of secular scholars and scientists often found in various brands of socialism or psychoanalysis. With the general decline and discrediting of both Marxism and Freudianism over the past thirty years radical environmentalism in various forms has taken their place in the lives of many secular intellectuals as a source of existential meaning and purpose. The insular, defensive, cult-like behavior displayed by so many global warming advocates when they are confronted with the concerns of informed skeptics reinforces such an interpretation and explains their refusal to debate dissenters. True believers have no converse with heretics. And such cult-like behavior reinforces one final suspicion: like socialism and Freudianism, global-warming alarmism may prove in time to be a God that failed.
Domenico Fetti, Flight to Egypt, circa 1621-1623, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna During the flight to Egypt, the Holy Family passes the bodies of two of the innocents massacred by Herod
Those of us who remember the Climategate scandal of 2009, when Russian Intelligence released damaging emails exchanged between Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Center and other principal figures like Penn State’s Michael Mann, will recall Jones promising Mann on July 8, 2004, that he and Kevin Trenberth (of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research) would keep dissenting papers out of the next IPCC report by hook or by crook:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
A year earlier one of Phil Jones’ emails addressed to a wider group of colleagues promised a boycott of the Journal Climate Research, guilty of publishing an important paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics injurious to the cause of Warmism, if the editor responsible was not replaced.
March 11, 2003 — “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.â€
The Soon-Baliunas paper is described by Wikipedia as having “reviewed 240 previously published papers and tried to find evidence for temperature anomalies in the last thousand years such as the Medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age. It concluded that ‘Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest or a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.’ ”
The upshot of the 2003 Climate Research publication of a paper challenging the Warmist Industry consensus was a successful crackdown by Phil Jones and his allies.
Climate Research’s chief editor, Hans von Storch, was persuaded to torpedo the offending paper in the same journal which had published it: The review process had failed. An unworthy paper had been published which did not adequately taken into account opposing arguments. The editorial policy of board editor Chris de Frietas responsible for its publication was insufficiently rigorous.
Storch then announced in the same editorial that he intended to impose a new regime giving himself final say on any paper’s publication. The publisher refused to accept the proposed dictatorship, and Storch and four other editors subsequently resigned in a thorough bloodbath.
Universal denials were issued concerning reports that Messrs. Jones, Mann, and Trenberth had been responsible for all this. Storch publicly denied that the fix had been put in. It was just a case of “a bad paper.”
Fox News identified the new paper’s significance in the world of climate science:
Has a central tenant of global warming just collapsed?
Climate change forecasts have for years predicted that carbon dioxide would trap heat on Earth, and increases in the gas would lead to a planet-wide rise in temperatures, with devastating consequences for the environment.
But long-term data from NASA satellites seems to contradict the predictions dramatically, according to a new study.
“There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans,†said Dr. Roy Spencer, a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. science team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer — basically a big thermometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,†he said. The planet isn’t heating up, in other words.
But, what do you know? Instead of another important paper challenging one Anthropogenic Global Warming’s central tenets, we have another case of the editor of the same journal in which the dissenting paper appeared, reversing course, denouncing the recently published paper, and resigning!
Warmist Peter Gleick reports triumphantly in Forbes:
The staggering news today is that the editor of the journal that published the paper has just resigned, with a blistering editorial calling the Spencer and Braswell paper “fundamentally flawed,†with both “fundamental methodological errors†and “false claims.†That editor, Professor Wolfgang Wagner of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, is a leading international expert in the field of remote sensing. In announcing his resignation, Professor Wagner says “With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements.â€
In his editorial resignation, Professor Wagner says the paper was reviewed by scientific experts that in hindsight had a predetermined bias in their views on climate that led them to miss the serious scientific flaws in the paper, including “ignoring all other observational data sets,†inappropriate influence from the “political views of the authors,†and the fact that comparable studies had already been refuted by the scientific community but were ignored by the authors. He summarizes:
In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief―to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.
Isn’t it amazing? For the second time in under a decade, some feckless scientific journal has published a paper offering conclusions deeply injurious to AGW, and again, in otherwise unprecedented reversals, the journal’s editor has attacked his own journal’s paper ex post facto for alleged lack of rigor and for purportedly failing to do justice to its opponent’s arguments, and resigned.
Presumably, we can look forward momentarily to the next development: the denials by Wolfgang Wagner that Messrs. Jones, Mann, and Trenberth, and the other principals of the Catastrophist Industry had anything to do with any of this.
I would say it is remarkable that, even after their exposure in 2009, the Global Warming gangsters still have the chutzpah, along with the remaining prestige and power, to successfully arrange the strangling in the cradle of significant dissenting publications, smearing their adversaries with accusations of bad science and lack of rigor.
Yesterday, one of my liberal Yale classmates responded to my anti-Warmism posting by complaining that I was guilty of believing in a conspiracy of climate scientists.
I responded:
If there is no imminent catastrophe, “climate science” is a very minor and insignificant branch of geology populated by ill-paid, failed chemists and people unable to do physics. If the very existence of life on this planet as we know it is at stake, and vast new accretions of governmental power and revenue are required, climate scientists are cooler than ****, and you can just back up the truck full of money to
the loading dock at the climate science research center. Gosh, I wonder what position most climate scientists are likely to prefer?
Jonathan Adler got himself quoted approvingly by Megan McArdle, in her Atlantic blog, for identifying conservatives outraged by NJ Governor Chris Christie’s recent public testimony to his belief in Warmism as being guilty of “anti-scientific know-nothingism.”
Last week, Christie vetoed legislation that would have required New Jersey to remain in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions through a regional cap-and-trade program. The bill was an effort to overturn Christie’s decision earlier this year to withdraw from the program. Given conservative opposition to greenhouse gas emission controls, the veto should have been something to cheer, right? Nope.
The problem, according to some conservatives, is that Christie accompanied his veto with a statement acknowledging that human activity is contributing to global climate change. Specifically, Christie explained that his original decision to withdraw from RGGI was not based upon any “quarrel†with the science.
While I acknowledge that the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are increasing, that climate change is real, that human activity plays a role in these changes and that these changes are impacting our state, I simply disagree that RGGI is an effective mechanism for addressing global warming.
As Christie explained, RGGI is based upon faulty economic assumptions and “does nothing more than impose a tax on electricity†for no real environmental benefit. As he noted, “To be effective, greenhouse gas emissions must be addressed on a national and international scale.â€
Although Christie adopted the desired policy — withdrawing from RGGI — some conservatives are aghast that he would acknowledge a human contribution to global warming. According to one, this makes Christie “Part RINO. Part man. Only more RINO than man.†[“RINO†as in “Republican in Name Only.â€]
Those attacking Christie are suggesting there is only one politically acceptable position on climate science — that one’s ideological bona fides are to be determined by one’s scientific beliefs, and not simply one’s policy preferences. This is a problem on multiple levels. Among other things, it leads conservatives to embrace an anti-scientific know-nothingism whereby scientific claims are to be evaluated not by scientific evidence but their political implications. Thus climate science must be attacked because it provides a too ready justification for government regulation. This is the same reason some conservatives attack evolution — they fear it undermines religious belief — and it is just as wrong. …
[E]ven the vast majority of warming “skeptics†within the scientific community would agree with Governor Christie’s statement that “human activity plays a role†in rising greenhouse gas levels and resulting changes in the climate.
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McArdle refers to scientific “denialism,” then establishes a new confirmatory experimental principle: if three libertarians accept it, then it must be true.
I am quite convinced that the planet is warming, and fairly convinced that human beings play a role in this. (When you’ve got Reason’s Ron Bailey, Cato’s Patrick Michaels, and Jonathan Adler, you’ve convinced me). I reserve the right to be skeptical about particular claims about effects (particularly when those claims come via people who implausibly insist that every major effect will be negative) . . . and, of course, of ludicrous worries that global warming will cause aliens to destroy us. But generally, I think global warming is happening, and even that we should probably do something about that, though I’m flexible on “something.”
However. Even if you disagree, it is reprehensible to have a litmus test around empirical matters of fact.
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It is always difficult in addressing the enormous pile of rubbish and intellctual confusion that constitutes Warmism to decide exactly where to begin.
Megan McArdle tells us that she is “quite convinced that the planet is warming.” What does she mean exactly? If McArdle means that the climate is generally warmer today than in the 17th century when the Thames froze regularly in the winter, she is obviously correct. If she, on the other hand, thinks that the widely noticed warming trend that began around 1980 has continued uninterrupted to the present day and constitutes a meaningful pattern, she is obviously wrong.
It is generally accepted by everyone that mankind has been living for the last eleven thousand years in a period of Interglacial Warming. So, yes, Megan, the planet is warming. That’s is what happens during periods between glaciations.
The catastrophist statists allege that there is a grave danger of “climate change.” Climate change is a heads I win, tails you lose kind of proposition, as the climate is always changing. There is a major warming (or cooling) trend direction of the earth’s climate, and there are constant short-term variations of irregular interval.
Geologic evidence indicates that periods of glaciation have lasted as long as nearly two hundred million years. Climate change is an enormously long-term phenomenon and the earth’s climate has moved from extremes far beyond anything known in human history during times in which there was no possibility of human agency playing any role.
Human observational capabilities with respect to phenomena occurring over geologic periods of time is limited by the brevity of our life spans and also by the brevity of the existence of our species and our civilization. Anyone attempting to draw some kind of conclusions on the basis of temperature patterns going back three decades is an idiot.
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Warmism rests on unverifiable models and on one grand scientific metaphor, the notion that the earth’s atmosphere is like a greenhouse. But the greenhouse reference is only a metaphor.
A 2007 paper by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner argues, I think quite successfully, that the greenhouse model is incompatible with Physics.
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation.
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Mr. Adler’s accusation that aversion to Warmism amounts to “know-nothingism” is based on uncritical acceptance of the greenhouse metaphor and acceptance of the proposition that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide causes warming. Only superstitious savages would deny that carbon dioxide must be decreased.
Well, the role of CO2 in warming and the timing of increased CO2 is a seriously controversial issue.
There is excellent data also showing that historically increases in CO2 occurred after planetary warming, not before.
Patrick J. Michaels may accept the Greenhouse model and claims of increasing CO2, but Mr. Adler and Ms. McArdle ought to delve a little deeper into these issues before climbing on board.
I will only mention in passing that it is possible, further, to dissent from Warmist Catastrophism by taking the view that a slightly warmer climate would not be an entirely bad thing, particularly if you happen to live in Canada, Scandinavia, or Russia.
And, even if one were to surrender completely and abandon critical science and skepticism, even if one were to simply accept that everything Al Gore says is true, human reproduction and increased energy use and industrial development will inevitably continue. The undeveloped world will not relinquish material progress and efforts to close the gap with the developed world, and no collection of treaties and international conferences will prevent everyone in India and China from wanting an automobile and a full assortment of electrical appliances. If human population growth and economic activity really dooms the planet, the planet is well and truly doomed, because government efforts will not succeed in preventing growth and progress.
The real Know-Nothings, the real parties guilty of a lack of seriousness and respect for science, are the people who accept the herd consensus of interested parties and the community of fashion as probative, and who are willing to accept on its say-so unverifiable models as established science.
Adler and McArdle are totally wrong. It would take a very thick book to discuss all the ways that Warmism fails to represent legitimate science, worthy of acceptance and suitable as a basis for public policy. Some of the issues are technical, but a lot of all this is basically pretty obvious.
To believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, you have be an urban narcissist whose perspective on reality resembles Saul Steinberg’s 1976 “View of the World From 9th Avenue” cover. You have to be the sort of person who believes that human actions, the human world, biomass, and mental life absolutely dominate the natural world, that mankind could “destroy the planet” through nuclear war, or by further indulgence in materialistic consumption. You have to be a dualist and a fool, who believes that there is an essential disjunction between humanity and the natural world and that the key ingredient of the fundamental basis of life on this planet (photosynthesis) is a dangerous pollutant, and you have to be stupid enough to fail to notice that we are dealing with a popular theory based, at root, on a few years of warmer weather beginning in 1980 promulgated by the same people who were previously warning us about a New Ice Age.
Stupidity on this scale is incompatible with a role in the Conservative Movement. Sorry about that! That’s not religion. That’s just having intellectual standards.
The Guardian (with only mild jocundity) reports the latest warning of untoward consequences associated with Anthropogenic Global Warming from NASA scientists. Warmlist is going to love this one.
[R]educing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.
ETI [Extraterrestrial Intelligence] could seek our harm if they believe that we are a threat to other civilizations.
The thought of humanity being a threat to other civilizations may seem implausible given the likelihood of our technological inferiority relative to other civilizations. However, this inferiority may be a temporary phenomenon. Perhaps ETI observe our rapid and destructive
expansion on Earth and become concerned of our civilizational trajectory. … [P]erhaps ETI believe that rapid expansion is threatening on a galactic scale. Rapidly (maximally) expansive civilizations may have a tendency to destroy other civilizations in the process, just as humanity has already destroyed many species on Earth. ETI that place intrinsic value on civilizations may ideally wish that our civilization changes its ways, so we can survive along with all the other civilizations. But if ETI doubt that our course can be changed, then they may seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us. A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere (e.g. via greenhouse gas emissions), which therefore changes the spectral signature of Earth. While it is difficult to estimate the likelihood of this scenario, it should at a minimum give us pause as we evaluate our expansive tendencies.
It is worth noting that there is some precedent for harmful universalism within humanity. This precedent is most apparent within universalist ethics that place intrinsic value on ecosystems. Human civilization affects ecosystems so strongly that some ecologists now often refer to this epoch of Earth’s history as the anthropocene. If one’s goal is to maximize ecosystem flourishing, then perhaps it would be better if humanity did not exist, or at least if it existed in significantly reduced form. Indeed, there are some humans who have advanced precisely this argument. If it is possible for at least some humans to advocate harm to their owncivilization by drawing upon universalist ethical principles, then it is at a minimum plausible that ETI could advocate harm to humanity following similar principles.
We might never have heard of any of this, but Monnett is being passionately defended by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and the staff of that organization is so thoroughly infatuated with its own assumptions and perspective that it cannot even imagine what the material it is disseminating enthusiastically in Monnett’s defense would look like to parties less ideologically committed than themselves.
The Inspector General interview transcript (excerpts) had me, for instance, in stitches.
Disclosing as it does the level of rigor of methodology being employed:
ERIC MAY: Well, actually, since you‟re bringing that up, 18 and, and I‟m a little confused of how many dead or drowned polar bears you did observe, because in the manuscript, you indicate three, and in the poster presentation –
CHARLES MONNETT: No.
ERIC MAY: – you mentioned four.
CHARLES MONNETT: No, now you‟re confusing the, um, the estimator with the, uh, the sightings. There were four drowned bears seen.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: Three of which were on transects.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: And so for the purpose of that little ratio estimator, we only looked at what we were seeing on transects, because that‟s a – you know, we couldn‟t be very rigorous, but the least we could do is look at the random transects. And so we based, uh, our extrapolation to only bears on transects, because we‟re saying that the transects, the, the swaths we flew, represented I think it was 11 percent of the entire habitat that, you know, that could have had dead polar bears in it.
ERIC MAY: Um-hm [yes].
CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, so by limiting it to the transect bears, then, you know, we could do that ratio estimator and say three is to, um, uh, “x†as, uh, 11 is to 100. I mean, it‟s that kind of thing. You, you‟ve, you‟re nodding like you understand.
LYNN GIBSON: Yeah.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, that‟s pretty simple, isn‟t confusing. I mean, it‟s –
ERIC MAY: So, so, so you observed four dead polar bears during MMS –
CHARLES MONNETT: One of which was not on transect.
ERIC MAY: Okay, so that‟s what –
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. …
ERIC MAY: So I highlighted under here, and we‟ve got the four, and that‟s what –
CHARLES MONNETT: Oh, here you go. Yeah. Well, I‟m pretty confident that it was four. I mean, that‟s, um – uh, look, look what is in the paper. I mean, it should have the – probably the same information that, you know –
ERIC MAY: Well, it –
CHARLES MONNETT: There‟s a table in there, but does it – it has the dead ones in it, doesn‟t it?
ERIC MAY: Well, and I think you, you explain, so this is the portion where you‟re talking about the 25 percent survival rate.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: And you‟re talking about four swimming bears and three drowned or dead polar bears.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. Yeah, but that‟s because those are on transects.
ERIC MAY: On part of this 11 percent?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, it says that right in here and, 11 and –
ERIC MAY: Right, right, but that‟s what you‟re talking about. …
How to do things with statistics.
3 CHARLES MONNETT: The paragraph in the left-hand column. Um, God, I‟ve got people here who are second-guessing my calculations. Um, well, um, we flew transects. That was our basic methodology. They were partially randomized. And we, uh, we looked at a, a map. I think we probably used GIS to do it, and we said that our survey area, if you bound it, is so big.
ERIC MAY: Um-hm [yes].
CHARLES MONNETT: And then we made some assumptions about our swath width, and I think we assumed we could see a, a bear out to a kilometer with any reliability, which mean you‟re looking down like that. And, uh, sometimes you might see more; sometimes you wouldn‟t. Sometimes you can‟t see a whale out that far, so it depends on the water conditions. And so we just said that, um, if you add up, we had 34 north/south transects provide 11 percent coverage of the 630 kilometer-wide study area, and that was just to get our ratio of coverage. And then the area we really were concerned about was just the area where the bears were, so we could ignore the area at that point and just go with a ratio, because we assume that‟s the same, because these things are pretty, uh, they‟re pretty standardized. They were designed to be standardized, so in each bloc – have you seen the blocs? Have you seen our design? It‟s in here.
ERIC MAY: I took – yeah, in, in your study.
CHARLES MONNETT: It‟s right at the beginning here. Um, every map in here has got it on it. Um, there, those are our blocs. And so, uh, this one would have four pairs. This one would have probably three pairs. I don‟t know, there will be later maps. Um, and there, you can see the flights. Uh, well, yeah, they‟re in here. Um, so we‟re flying these transects, and we‟re assuming we can see a certain percentage or a certain, certain distance. Therefore, we can total up the length and the width and come up with an area. And so we calculated that
our coverage was 11 percent, plus or minus a little bit.
ERIC MAY: Okay. And I believe you rounded up, too. It was 10.8 and you rounded up to 11?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. Well, that‟s a nothing. Um, yeah, 10.8. And then we said, um, four dead – four swimming polar bears were encountered on these transects, in addition to three.
ERIC MAY: Three dead polar bears?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, three dead.
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: But the four swimming were a week earlier.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, then we said if they accurately reflect 11 percent of the bears present so, in other words, they‟re just distributed randomly, so we looked at 11 percent of the area.
ERIC MAY: In that transect?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: In, in our, in our area there, um –
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: – and, therefore, we should have seen 11 percent of the bears. Then you just invert that, and you come up with, um, nine times as many. So that‟s where you get the 27, nine times three.
ERIC MAY: Where does the nine come from?
CHARLES MONNETT: Uh, well 11 percent is one-ninth of 100 percent. Nine times 11 is 99 percent. Is that, is that clear? …
LYNN GIBSON: I think what he‟s saying is since there‟s four swimming and three dead, that makes –
ERIC MAY: And three dead.
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, you don‟t count them all together. That doesn‟t have anything to do. You can‟t – that doesn‟t even –
LYNN GIBSON: So you‟re not saying that the seven represent 16 11 percent of the population.
CHARLES MONNETT: They‟re different events.
ERIC MAY: Well, that‟s what you try – we‟re trying to –
LYNN GIBSON: You‟re talking about they‟re separate?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, they‟re different events.
ERIC MAY: Right, so explain to us how –
CHARLES MONNETT: On one day – well, let me draw. I, I, I don‟t have confidence that you‟re understanding me here, so let me (inaudible/mixed voices). …
CHARLES MONNETT: It makes me feel more professorial if I write it on the blackboard.
LYNN GIBSON: Okay, go ahead.
CHARLES MONNETT: No, that‟s okay.
ERIC MAY: (Inaudible/mixed voices)
CHARLES MONNETT: If you could see it, I wanted you to see it was why I was going to do it there.
ERIC MAY: (Inaudible/mixed voices)
LYNN GIBSON: We‟re your students today.
CHARLES MONNETT: Uh, well, this has transects on it, doesn‟t it, guys?
LYNN GIBSON: Yes, it does.
CHARLES MONNETT: I mean, look right here. So here‟s our coastline right here, this red thing.
ERIC MAY: Okay, yep.
CHARLES MONNETT: And here‟s our, um, our study area. We go out to whatever it was. I don‟t remember, 70, 71 degrees or something like that. And, um, around each of these things, we survey a tenth of the distance between, basically.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: And so if you draw these lines here, and this is – you‟re just going to have to pretend like I did this for all of them. And you calculate the area in here.
LYNN GIBSON: Um-hm [yes].
CHARLES MONNETT: And you total them all, and then you calculate the whole area. This – the area inside here was 11 percent.
LYNN GIBSON: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: Okay? Now what we said is that we saw three, three bears in 11 percent.
ERIC MAY: Three dead bears?
CHARLES MONNETT: Three dead, yeah, dead –
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: – in the 11 percent of the habitat. And so you could set up a, um, a ratio here, three is to “x†25 equals 11 over 100, right? And so you end up with – you can cross-multiply. You know algebra?
ERIC MAY: Um-hm [yes], yeah.
CHARLES MONNETT: You can cross-multiply. Okay, so you end up with 300 equals 11x, and I am sure that that‟s – equals 27, okay?
ERIC MAY: Right, right, got that.
CHARLES MONNETT: And if you stick four in here instead, you end up with –
ERIC MAY: Thirty-six.
CHARLES MONNETT: – whatever that number was, yeah, 36. Now, um, those numbers aren‟t related, except we made the further
assumption, which is implicit to the analysis. Seems obvious to me. We went out there one week, and we saw four swimming on the transect, which we estimated could have been as many as 36.
LYNN GIBSON: Correct.
CHARLES MONNETT: If we correct for the area. And we went out there later, a week to two weeks later, and then we saw the dead ones, the three dead ones in the same area, which could have been 27. And then we said let‟s make the further assumption that – and this, this isn‟t in the paper, but it‟s implicit to this aument –
ERIC MAY: Um-hm [yes].
CHARLES MONNETT: – that right after we saw these bears swimming, this storm came in and caught them offshore, all right? And so if, um, if you assume that the, the, the 36 all were exposed to the storm, and then we went back and we saw tentially 27 of them, that gives you your 25 percent survival rate. Now that‟s, um, statistically, um, irrelevant. I mean, it, it‟s not statistical. It‟s just an argument. It‟s for, it‟s for the sake of discussion. See, right here, “Discussion.â€
ERIC MAY: Um-hm [yes].
CHARLES MONNETT: That‟s what you do in discussions is you throw things out, um, for people to think about. And so what we said is, look, uh, we saw four. We saw a whole bunch swimming, but if you want to compare them, then let‟s do this little ratio estimator and correct for the percentage of the area surveyed. And just doing that, then there might have been as many as 27 bears out there that were dead. There might have been as many as 36, plus or minus. There could have been 50. I don‟t know. But the way we were posing it was that it‟s serious, because it‟s not just four. It‟s probably a lot more. And then we said that with the further assumption, you know, that the bears were exposed or, you know, the ones we‟re measuring later that are carcasses out there, it looks like a lot of them, you know, didn‟t survive, so – but it‟s, it‟s discussion, guys. I mean, it‟s not in the results. …
The reliability of the calculations used and the scrupulous oversight of the peer-review process.
ERIC MAY: So combining the three dead polar bears and the four alive bears is a mistake?
CHARLES MONNETT: No, it‟s not a mistake. It‟s just not a, a, a real, uh, rigorous analysis. And a whole bunch of peer reviewers and a journal, you know –
ERIC MAY: Did they go through – I mean, did they do the calculations as you just did with us?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, I assume they did. That‟s their purpose.
ERIC MAY: Okay. Right, and that‟s – again, that‟s why I was asking peer review.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: Did they do that with that particular section of your manuscript?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, I don‟t, I don‟t remember anybody doing the calculations but, um, uh, there weren‟t any huge objections. There weren‟t a – let‟s put it this way, there weren‟t sufficient objections for the journal editor to ask us to take it out.
ERIC MAY: Right. Well, let me, let me read you what – the four bears – and representing what we were just talking about, this section.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: So just let me, let me read what I have here, okay?
CHARLES MONNETT: Okay.
ERIC MAY: “If four swimming bears, if four bears represent 11 percent of the population of bears swimming before the storm,†–
CHARLES MONNETT: Um-hm [yes].
ERIC MAY: – okay? “Then 36 bears were likely swimming.â€
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, maybe, I mean –
ERIC MAY: Okay, but I mean –
CHARLES MONNETT: No, we didn‟t say “likely.†I think we said “possibly,†or did you say “likely†or –?
ERIC MAY: Well, or this – again, as you just stated earlier, this is Discussion, so –
CHARLES MONNETT: I‟d be surprised if we said “likely,†but mostly we were saying “possibly.â€
ERIC MAY: Okay, so let me – let, let me continue, so –
CHARLES MONNETT: Okay.
ERIC MAY: – so you have that. “If three bears represent 11 percent of the population of bears that may have died†–
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: – right?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: I think those are your words in your manu- – “may have died.â€
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: “ – as a result of this storm, then 27 bears were likely drowned.†Okay, so far, so good?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, if I used “likely.†I don‟t know if I did. …
And, then, the interview really gets humorous. “I mean, the storm had nothing to do with it!”
ERIC MAY: Isn‟t that stretching it a bit, though, saying – making that conclusion that no dead polar bears were observed during these years, and then, all of a sudden, 2003, you guys are – you observe dead polar bears?
CHARLES MONNETT: I don‟t think so.
ERIC MAY: Why?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, if you ask me, I would know, I mean, what I saw, I mean, if I saw something weird like that.
ERIC MAY: So as a scientist, if another scientist made these conclusions based on the information, you would be okay with that as a peer reviewer?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, yeah, I would, I mean, if, you know, if they told me that. They keep notes. I mean, they did this – every, everything like we do, so –.
ERIC MAY: And that‟s a, that‟s a – and it‟s a stretch, isn‟t it, though, to make that statement?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, no, I didn‟t think so. I thought that was perfectly reasonable to ask them, since it isn‟t something – remember, the reason it‟s not in the database is because it, it doesn‟t happen. You know, you don‟t see it, so – and there‟s a reason, uh, why it‟s changed, which is in, in, in a lot of the early years, there was a lot of ice out there, and there just weren‟t opportunities for there to be dead bears. You know, bears don‟t drown when there‟s ice all over the place.
ERIC MAY: Well, so let me elaborate what I just asked you. Wouldn‟t you, wouldn‟t you notate that as a – like maybe a – you know, your statement kind of is stretching it, and you would say, “Well, based on my conversations with individuals during these surveys, although they weren‟t supposed to look for dead polar bears, they did not†– I mean, because you‟re making a very broad statement by, by that, saying that no dead polar bears were observed during those years. …
ERIC MAY: Well, and based on, based on what I just said, in terms of the, you know, your statement, would it not make more sense, too, because there was a major windstorm during this period of time, which you do mention, but you didn‟t talk too much about that as in 2004 regarding these dead polar bears.
CHARLES MONNETT: What do you mean (inaudible/mixed voices)?
ERIC MAY: Well, you‟re saying that from 1987 to 2003, there was no dead polar bears.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: Did you discuss the storm conditions during those period, period of years as well? I mean, you‟re extrapolating a lot to make such, you know, scientific findings.\
CHARLES MONNETT: You mean, the storms are increasing up there?
ERIC MAY: No, you‟re saying that there was no dead polar bears during those years.
CHARLES MONNETT: Certainly.
ERIC MAY: Yet in 2004, you, you observed four dead polar bears.
CHARLES MONNETT: Right.
ERIC MAY: Yet you didn‟t really elaborate on why you believe those dead polar bears died or drowned.
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, yeah, we did actually. I don‟t know why you‟re saying that. We‟ve got an extensive section in the paper talking about the, uh, you know, the wind speeds and out there, and we looked into that very hard. And, and we, um, we‟re very, very careful in this manuscript to, um, write it so that it, uh, reflects uncertainty, uncertainty about the extent of what happened, the uncertainty of why it happened, the uncertainty of what it meant in a, in a broader context.
We knew three things: That we had seen a bunch of swimming bears and that that was unusual in the context of the whole data stream. We knew we saw some dead bears, which had not been reported before and that we had been assured, you know, was new to the study. And we saw, uh – we experienced, we were there, a, a, uh, high wind event, which was actually not a, a very severe high – and it wasn‟t, you know, one of the really severe high wind events, but it was enough to shut us down, which meant that there were some pretty good waves breaking, you know, out at sea, which, um, is pretty easy to imagine would be, uh, challenging, you know, for a bear swimming. And a good bit of that, there‟s a whole section in the paper that talks about the windstorm.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: Um, right here, there‟s a map, you know, of the wind speeds and all that and, uh, you know, it shows that it just fits right in there. Um –
ERIC MAY: When I was relating to th
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, I don‟t know, we, we had complete confidence in it. Um, people worked extensively with, with the database and, and, uh, so we were totally comfortable with the swimming ones, um, which, you know, were rarely seen. And it‟s a small thing I think to assume that a, um – you know, the person managing the survey would know and – ….
And here comes Jeff Ruch of PEER to the rescue.
1 JEFF RUCH: This is Jeff Ruch. We‟ve been at this for an hour and 45 minutes, and I‟m curious, are we going to get to the allegations of scientific misconduct or, uh, have – is that what we‟ve been doing?
LYNN GIBSON: Actually, a lot of the questions that we‟ve been discussing relate to the allegations.
ERIC MAY: Right.
JEFF RUCH: Um, but, uh, Agent May indicated to, um, Paul that he was going to lay out what the allegations are, and we haven‟t heard them yet, or perhaps we don‟t understand them from this line of questioning.
ERIC MAY: Well, the scientif- – well, scientific misconduct, basically, uh, wrong numbers, uh, miscalculations, uh –
JEFF RUCH: Wrong numbers and calculations?
ERIC MAY: Well, what we‟ve been discussing for the last hour.
JEFF RUCH: So this is it?
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, that‟s not scientific misconduct anyway. If anything, it‟s sloppy. I mean, that‟s not – I mean, I mean, the level of criticism that they seem to have leveled here, scientific misconduct, uh, suggests that we did something deliberately to deceive or to, to change it. Um, I sure don‟t see any indication of that in what you‟re asking me about.
What is downright scary is the way these bozos think that dressing up wildly extravagant theories resting on baseless extrapolations of insignificant anecdotal-level observations with jargon and a few formulae in order to reach preconceived and intensely desired conclusions is perfectly legitimate scientific activity.
If anybody wonders how junk science can become established science and the accepted basis for fabulously costly governmental programs and polices, just look at the work of Dr. Charles Monnett and at PEER.
Steven Hayward (the new contributor at PowerLine) is doing an excellent job.
Yesterday, he linked a new paper from the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, whose conclusions will not make liberals happy.
The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.
Hayward rubbed salt in liberal wounds by quoting himself in an earlier posting, in which he compared climate change allegations to a poem by T.S. Eliot:
“What might have been and has been / Point to one end, which is always present,†Eliot continues in Burnt Norton. Which reminds me of the climate record (“time future contained in time pastâ€). We don’t understand the climate past with reasonable precision, as the intense debate about the “hockey stick†graph showed, and the computer models predicting a 2 to 5 degree rise in the future are clearly riddled with large uncertainties, given the range of prospective temperatures they spit out. No matter. “What is always present†today is the cocksure certainty that catastrophic global warming is occurring, and damn the weatherman. Think of it as the ultimate modernist free-verse, only without literary allusions “an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation.â€
Hayward capped it all off by remarking “now the whole farce is starting to remind me of Monty Python’s “dead parrot†sketch—the climate crisis isn’t dead, it’s just restin’.”
A superbly apt comparison to the position of advocates of Warmism in the aftermath of the Climategate Scandal, two old-fashioned winters, and the re-emergence of speculation about diminished solar activity and impending severe cooling.
Walter Russell Mead takes the occasion of Albert Gore’s latest climate jeremiad (in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, quoth Gore: In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.) to discuss why somebody who lives like Albert Gore cannot function satisfactorily in the role of prophet of Ecological Self-Denial.
[S]ome forms of inconsistency or even hypocrisy can be combined with public leadership, others cannot be. A television preacher can eat too many french fries, watch too much cheesy TV and neglect his kids in the quest for global fame. But he cannot indulge in drug fueled trysts with male prostitutes while preaching conservative Christian doctrine. The head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving cannot be convicted of driving while under the influence. The head of the IRS cannot be a tax cheat. The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig.
You can be a leading environmentalist and fail to pay all of your taxes. You can be a leading environmentalist and be unkind to your aged mother. You can be a leading environmentalist and squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle, park in the handicapped spots at the mall or scribble angry marginal notes in library books.
But you cannot be a leading environmentalist who hopes to lead the general public into a long and difficult struggle for sacrifice and fundamental change if your own conduct is so flagrantly inconsistent with the green gospel you profess. If the heart of your message is that the peril of climate change is so imminent and so overwhelming that the entire political and social system of the world must change, now, you cannot fly on private jets. You cannot own multiple mansions. You cannot even become enormously rich investing in companies that will profit if the policies you advocate are put into place.
It is not enough to buy carbon offsets (aka “indulgencesâ€) with your vast wealth, not enough to power your luxurious mansions with exotic low impact energy sources the average person could not afford, not enough to argue that you only needed the jet so that you could promote your earth-saving film.
You are asking billions of people, the overwhelming majority of whom lack many of the basic life amenities you take for granted, people who can’t afford Whole Foods environmentalism, to slash their meager living standards. You may well be right, and those changes may be necessary — the more shame on you that with your superior insight and knowledge you refuse to live a modest life. There’s a gospel hymn some people in Tennessee still sing that makes the point: “You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.â€
St. Francis of Assisi understood the point well. Taken by the Pope on a tour to see the treasures of the Vatican, St. Francis was notably unimpressed. “Peter can no longer say, ‘silver and gold have I none,’†smiled the Pontiff, referring to the story in the Book of Acts that recounts what St. Peter said to a crippled beggar asking him for alms.
“Neither can he say, ‘rise up and walk.’†replied St. Francis — quoting what St. Peter said as he miraculously cured the beggar of his affliction.
You can sit on ivory chairs with kings in their halls of gold, participating in the world of politics as usual, or you can live with the prophets and visionaries in the wilderness, voices of a greater truth and higher meaning that challenge the smug certainties and false assumptions of the comfortable, business as usual elites. You cannot do both.
Al Gore cannot say “silver and gold have I none and no excess carbon do I spew,†and neither can he say to the paralyzed global green movement “rise up and walk.†He speaks, he writes, he speaks again, and the movement lies on the ground, crippled and inert.
A fawning establishment press spares the former vice president the vitriol and schadenfreude it pours over the preachers and priests whose personal conduct compromised the core tenets of their mission; Gore is not mocked as others have been. This gentle treatment hurts both Gore and the greens; he does not know just how disabling, how crippling the gap between conduct and message truly is. The greens do not know that his presence as the visible head of the movement helps ensure its political failure.
Consider how Gore looks to the skeptics. The peril is imminent, he says. It is desperate. The hands of the clock point to twelve. The seas rise, the coral dies, the fires burn and the great droughts have already begun. The hounds of Hell have slipped the huntsman’s leash and even now they rush upon us, mouths agape and fangs afoam.
But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world. He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry. A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation. Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents.
What this tells the skeptics is that Vice President Gore doesn’t really believe the gospel he proclaims. That profits from his environmental advocacy enable his affluent lifestyle only deepens their skepticism of the messenger and therefore of the message. And when they see that the rest of the environmental movement accepts this flagrant contradiction, they conclude, naturally enough, that the other green leaders aren’t as worried as they claim to be. Al Gore’s lifestyle is a test case for the credibility of his gospel — and it fails. The tolerance of Al Gore’s lifestyle by the environmental leadership is a further test — and that test, too, the greens fail.
The average citizen is all too likely to conclude that if Mr. Gore can keep his lifestyle, the average American family can keep its SUV and incandescent bulbs. If Gore can take a charter flight, I don’t have to take the bus. If Gore can have many mansions, I can use the old fashioned kind of shower heads that actually clean and toilets that actually flush. Al Gore looks to the average American the way American greens look to poor people in the third world: hypocritically demanding that others accept permanently lower standards of living than those the activists propose for themselves.
There are gospels that can be preached by the comfortable and the well fed. But radical environmentalism is not one of them. If you want to be Savonarola, you must don the hair shirt. If you want a public bonfire of the vanities, you must sleep on an iron cot and throw your own cherished treasures into the flame. …
I am not one of those who thinks him a hypocrite; I think rather that he shares an illusion common amongst the narcissistic glitterati of our time: that politically fashionable virtue cancels private vice. The drug addled Hollywood celeb whose personal life is a long record of broken promises and failed relationships and whose serial bouts with drug and alcohol abuse and revolving door rehab adventures are notorious can redeem all by “standing up†for some exotic, stylish cause. These moral poseurs and dilettantes of virtue are modern versions of those guilt-plagued medieval nobles who built churches and monasteries to ‘atone’ for their careers of bloodshed, oppression and scandal.
Mr. Gore is sincere, as the fur-fighting actresses are sincere, as so many ’causey’ plutocrats and moguls are sincere. It is perhaps also true that the fundraisers who absolve them of their guilt in exchange for the donations and the publicity are at least as sincere as the indulgence sellers in Martin Luther’s Germany.
Mead does not stop, unfortunately, to observe that the perils of alleged Climate Change are just as far removed from diurnal reality as the theological perils of Christian hellfire.
