

Thu, 2009-11-26 13:15Richard Littlemore
Richard Littlemore's picture


There's nothing like a good "second-day" story to absolve the average journalist (very average in this case) from any responsibility to support his contentions with, say, a smattering of evidence.

Admittedly, second-day stories are tough in a paper like the Toronto Sun where space is at a premium. You want to update the reader with the news, but you still have to provide enough of the original story to provide context. Unless you're Lorrie Goldstein, in which case you can short-cut your way to today's opinion without making any effort to support it with actual factual references.

In his column today on the "Climategate" story of emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Goldstein offers this as a synopsis of what the purloined emails prove:


Did they just? Well, you'll have to take Goldstein's word for it because he didn't offer a single quote to back up his sweeping condemnation. He didn't even mention whether he had read any of the emails himself; he was too busy getting hysterical about the horrifying collaboration of Big Government, Big Business and Big Green. Truly scary.

For people who are interested in the detail of what appeared in those emails and for a second opinion about what the authors might have meant in the writing, read the next post. For a mindless recitation of ideological cant, based on a cursory reading of yesterday's news, you can always fall back on the Sun.



The game is over - make this very clear!

Wow Freiherr you sure are militant. It makes me laugh everytime I see one of you guys so indignant and full of himself, standing atop the pulpit try to call people out for being sinners or rather deniers. Like we haven't all seen this delusion of blind faith to ideology before. Don't you see whats going on here? Your guys fudged the numbers and bs'ed their way through the peer review process. Their is no firm science to hang your hat on. At the very least we need to re-examine the work done by these people to see if their is even a shred of validity to it.
I hope you didn't use your real name, but please tell me which paper you sent it to though we always need a laugh. Oh and please tell me how you cut skeptics off in a print newspaper? Did you use the force like darth vader as they we're writing their articles? This ought to be good!

uuhhh...uhhh...uunnnnn. You cut me off mid sentence. LMAO


I did not express myself properly when talking of cutting skeptics off. I was referring to emphasizing the point to the readership that the skeptics are running after the train - meaning they have been out of touch with reality for 10 years. I am not a climatologist so "you guys" does not apply to me. But when I did my PhD with one of the best scientists in our field, I learnt two words "rigour" and "reason". I was first confronted with the AGW discussion when a coworker pointed the T-t trend on the FoS website out, as well as the 800 year T-CO2 lag. Their interpretation of both is so obviously flawed (out of context; apple and oranges) for somebody who has looked at many many data sets. So, my intention is purely scientific and not political. Unfortunately, the "skeptics" side in only political, and in a way that would be considered extremist where I come from.


You find my letter in the Calgary Herald.

zero tolerance of fundamentalism of any kind.

I like that line. It's nutty, but I like it

Was the train the benighted deniers missed ten years ago a Dr. James Hansen 'deathtrain'? The ten years; another tipping point? And please copy here your brave, precient LTE as many would like to be set straight. Trouble getting it printed? Just re-define the editorial process.

Hansen issued a tipping point warning in 1988; the IPCC in 1989. Perhaps math isn't their strong-suit. Pity no one was able to 'trick' those figures. Would 'hiding' be an option?


Any link provided would be greatly appreciated.

A "decline" not "hidden" will be in AGW funding.






And the lying has not stopped.

Krugman writes:


And Pat Michaels has never owned up to his deception.


O.K. mention a few.







Greenmachine, you are a bad joke. All you get when you click on that is some denialist blog that refers to some Washington Post article and provides a link, not to that article as you would expect but to ... another denialist blog that claims that Hansen predicted cooling (by six degrees no less) around 1970. This fellow doesn't even mention that mythical newspaper article. And that passes for source material among you and your few friends - because that is the people you are referring to when you say that Hansen has 'zero credibility with anyone'.



Actually your bs doesn't deserve an answer like this.

This is what Hansen himself wrote about it:



Here is how this swift-boating works. First on 19 September 2007 a Washington Times article by John McCaslin reported that a 9 July 1971 article by Victor Cohn in the Washington Post had been discovered with the title "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming". The scientist, S.I. Rasool, is reported as saying that the world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age".

This is an old story: Rasool and (Steve) Schneider published a paper in Science on that day noting that if human-made aerosols (small particles in the air) increased by a factor of four, other things being equal, they could cause massive global cooling. At Steve's 60th birthday celebration I argued that the Rasool and Schneider paper was a useful scientific paper, an example of hypothesis testing, in the spirit of good science. But what is the news today? Mr. McCaslin reported that Rasool and Hansen were colleagues at NASA and "Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus."



Global Warming Scientist Once Warned of 'Ice Age'

By Doug Ware -- KUTV.com

[I won't reprint the whole piece of nonsense here]

It is little wonder that I have been getting nasty e-mails the past several days. The lesson is: don't believe everything you read in the press, especially the conservative press."


If I would have heard you saying this in a pub (where this type of 'argument' belongs) I would have asked you how many glasses you had had. No, more likely I wouldn't have bothered. Babble on brother.


Don't believe anything you read in the rightwing press.








Personally, I believe no-one should ever call a liar a "liar". That would be unfair, dirty pool, unsportmanlike, mean, ya da ya.....

For the most part, Monbiot is a Moonbat. Most people view him as out in left field, if not completely out of the ball park.



Oh really paul s., you make it sound like the money funding the research goes into Phil Jones pocket. Perhaps you can tell us all how much Phil Jones makes. I'm sure the CEO of Exxon would be jealous. Perhaps you can also tell us how much Singer, Michaels, etc. make from private sources. But that's okay isn't it. You can lie and cheat as much as you want as long as your money comes from industry sources.

(In the spirit of tabloid papers I've edited the heading above)

Well - It's The Sun. It's not the most serious newspaper in the world, so you have that going for you.

Laurie Goldstein is quite impressed with himself and his own little world. Unfortunately, a certain segment of the population laps up the rantings of people like him. He reassures their ignorance. They just need a couple of talking points and they're good to go and bully people in their crap.

I don't know how many times I've had discussions with these sheep, it's frustrating and useless. You get the feeling they have their fingers in their ears while they continue to sing "la, la, la, I can't hear you, la, la la".


The CBC has a story running on this that is actually quite well balanced. Be great to see this level of attention on the "National".




... and one on our Environment minister saying "we" need 40 more years before we can do something.......... ???

Is this man FROM this planet??


The last link was dead.

The second link outlines a serious problem with the global warming issue. Why do we really care what 3000 people think? We live in a country of 33 million. Just tell them to vote next election. From the people I run into it's pretty clear no action on global warming. We've been had and many people that we're sitting in the middle are now not convinced and are becoming climate skeptics. My take is that after kyoto dies we will be free and clear to examine climategate and ditch the issue. Even grandia must be having his doubts, fabricated data? Perr review fixing, thats not much of a theory to start government action towards.

now just think richard. this is how we feel about your guys. two differences tho..you say they didn't have any evidence but i say that is better than making the evidence up. secondly, this guy is a "average journalist (very average in this case)" writing a "second-day" story. your guys were the (let's see how many superlatives i can remember you using to describe the A team...)preeminent scientists helping to shape policy for the world. hmmmmmm

How the email can be stolen, did the owner have any secure for his email? And did the provider kept the secure for their customer?
Tahitian Noni Juice




As a former VP, you might think he would remember the place that the tar sands have in American energy security. You can't just take that source out of the mix.



1. That global warming is real and manmade
2. We should do somethin about it and soon
3. Why overlook the fraud?


2 that's a political response. people want to have a cause and save the day.



Coincidence does not prove cause.


It is obvious.




I've heard worse about Europe




And then we will see the extent of the fraud!


that would be spew from the Washington Times you are pointing to, there, Cam...

None of it seriously undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change...

Many — including us — find global warming deniers' claims irresponsible and their heated criticism of climate scientists unconvincing….




2 climate letters in today's Herald:

First writer has looked at data:



And a columnist quotes Monbiot out of context:
Here one can leave a message below.




A very "sobering" video on the reality of "Denial Gate"....


The AGW Virus


Virus Signature:
The AGW virus can be recognized by the following signature


Patient Zero:

Preventing the spread if AGW:





While the global warming deniers continue blowing content-free smoke and making noise, here's a nice little fact on the time zones in the FOI2009.zip file that was, um, 'discovered':

Most of the archived files in the .zip gave a time zone of -0500 or -0400. I don't know about you, but I don't think that's in Britain.


-- bi