THE DAILY BLADE: Scientists Who Refuse To Toe The Line On Global Warming
The National Post of Canada is running a superb series on "scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science." Here are brief summaries of each segment of "The Deniers" series thus far:
† Edward Wegman believes that peer-reviewed climate science should be taken with a grain of salt, because the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. He says that competent statisticians should reassess past studies and in the future, the climate science world should better incorporate statistical know-how.
† Richard S.J. Tol doesn't think the evidence is in on global warming and its effects, that there's reason to rush to action, and that crash programs to curb global warming are necessary.
† Christopher Landsea insists that research on hurricane variability shows no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin – or in any other basin.
† Duncan Wingham published research based on satellite data that suggests the spectacular collapse of the ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula was much more likely to have followed natural current fluctuations than global warming.
† Richard Lindzen was among the first to criticize claims about global warming that he considers unfounded and alarmist. Earlier this year he wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."
† Henrik Svensmark has research showing that changes in the sun's magnetic field could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures.
† Nigel Weiss believes that sunspot activity has been abnormally high in the last 50 years, and that we’re due for a crash in solar activity that may cool the Earth dramatically - a phenomenon, known as "Grand minima," that has recurred over the past 10,000 years, if not longer.
† Henk Tennekes challenged climate models on the grounds that they could never replicate the complexity of the real world, and was forced to leave his position at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. Other scientists learned their lesson … most who harbor doubts about climate science bite their tongues and keep their heads down.
† Habibullo Abdussamatov believes that Earth has hit its temperature ceiling. Solar irradiance has begun to fall, ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015 that "will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60" lasting some 50 years, after which temperatures will go up again.
† Nir Shariv says that there is only "circumstantial evidence" linking CO2 and other greenhouse gasses to global warming. The more likely culprit: "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" because of evidence of the strong relationship cosmic-ray flux has on our atmosphere.
† Jasper Kirkby was about to lead a trail-blazing experiment into the sun's role in global warming when he made the mistake of stating that cosmic rays "will probably … account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth's temperature that we have seen in the last century." Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming - and the funding for his experiment was put on ice.
† Claude Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great." Western governments and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change commissioned billions of dollars of research by thousands of scientists. … To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed to establish a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.
Lawrence Solomon undertook this groundbreaking series to determine whether scientists who are "at odds with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change" are "crackpots from the fringes of academia, as their detractors so often claim." He found that they "are not just credible; they have reached the pinnacle of the scientific establishment, with credentials to rival those of any of scientists representing the IPCC position."
Solomon regrets that in focusing on these scientists, he "inadvertently added to their anguish," since most of them "have suffered for their scientific findings - some have been forced from their positions, others lost funding grants or been publicly criticized."
So much for academic freedom, intellectual honesty and scientific rigor.
Libby’s Lawyers To Move For New Trial Or Appeal Conviction
After seven weeks of conflicting, confusing testimony about when various people remembered saying, hearing or knowing that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee, a federal jury of seven women and four men needed 10 days to convict I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.
Libby is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on June 5; he will likely be given a prison term of 1 1/2 to three years. One of his lawyers, Theodore V. Wells Jr,. told the press that, "We intend to file a motion for a new trial. If that is denied, we will file an appeal. We believe Mr. Libby eventually will be vindicated."
Libby wasn’t even the original target of this politically motivated investigation. He was Plan B. Plan A was to go after Karl Rove (see "Disclosure and scandal" sections September 2003, October 2003 and July 2004) and force him to resign as President’s Bush’s campaign manager. But Rove eluded Fitzgerald’s clutches. So Plan B was to get Cheney, using Libby as a proxy defendant.
The Wall Street Journal speculates influential Libby supporters, who see him as a victim of prosecutorial overkill, may lobby President Bush to pardon him. The Stiletto hopes Libby is exonerated on appeal well before the pardon card would need to be played at the end of the president’s term.
Editorial Note: The Washington Post’s lede states that Libby was convicted of "lying about his role in the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity" (emphasis, The Stiletto’s). This is factually incorrect. Neither the defense nor the prosecution introduced evidence that Plame was an undercover agent. In response to a question by the jury on this point, the judge stated that her status was irrelevant to the specific charges against Libby. Further, at the outset of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s investigation it became apparent that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage originally leaked Plame’s identity, and that she had not been a covert operative for years.
Turkish Expert On Armenian Genocide Harassed With False Accusations Of Terrorism
Turkish historian Taner Akçam, an expert on the Armenian Genocide, was detained for more than four hours in Montreal last week as Canadian customs officials investigated anonymous charges of terrorism made against him in a Wikipedia article (the page is currently blank) and in a review of his 2004 book, "From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide," on Amazon.com.
One customer reviewer, H. Aydin, lifted this material from an unidentified Web site:
Taner Akcam became involved in radical leftist activities while he was still a lycee student. His radicalism intensified while he was a university student in the early 1970s. Akcam moved from student activism into political terrorism by joining the THKP-C (Turkiye Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi-Turkish People's Liberation Party-Front) in 1972 -- a terrorist organization that was implicated in the assassinations and killings of numerous far-right militants, Turkish security officials, and American and NATO military personnel. In the mid-1970s, Akcam became a leading member of DEV-YOL (Devrimci Yol-Revolutionary Path) and the editor of its periodical Devrimci Genclik Dergisi (Revolutionary Youth Magazine).
None of the other reviewers made or cited similar charges, and several of them questioned the motives of anyone who did.
Akçam, a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, had been invited to speak at a human-rights symposium at McGill University Law School.
McGill professor Payam Akhavan happened to call Akçam on his cell phone while he was being questioned. Akhavan’s next calls were to Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism, and Stockwell Day, the minister of public safety. Akçam was allowed to enter the country without further incident.
Akçam tells the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune that he is the victim of an ongoing intimidation campaign "by the Turkish authorities":
"When I was at New York University recently as part of my book tour, the autograph session was broken up by Turkish nationalists. They distributed a flier labeling me a terrorist and claiming that I was responsible for the deaths of Americans in Turkey."
The same thing happened in December at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School in New York, but with a twist. When e-mails suggested the same group was going to break up a conference on genocide and law, the sponsors called the Turkish Consulate in Manhattan to complain. The next day, Akçam said, a consular official called Cardozo to say there would be no demonstration. There wasn't.
Akçam says he fears for his life when he travels outside the U.S. and has canceled several presentations at academic conferences around the world. "Under the guise of freedom of speech, certain groups are causing me great physical and material harm. It is very difficult to do my work."
Akçam has good reason to be afraid, since the crime of "denigrating Turkishness" by discussing the Armenian Genocide is punishable by death.
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April 18, 2007
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According to a new computer model, if all vehicles in the U.S. were to tank up on a mostly ethanol fuel blend by 2020 levels of smog, ozone and particulates in the air would increase, especially in the Northeast and Los Angeles, causing 200 more deaths per year from respiratory problems. Stanford University atmospheric chemist Mark Jacobson, who authored the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, tells The Associated Press, "If you want to use ethanol, fine, but … [i]t's no better than gasoline, apparently slightly worse." According to his estimates, roughly 4,700 people die each ...
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