Calling "Climategate" for what it really is - Kerry Emanuel

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“Climategate”: A Different Perspective - July 19, 2010 By Kerry Emanuel

ClimateProgress: Kerry Emanuel calls Climategate “the latest in a series of coordinated, politically motivated attacks that represent an aggravated assault on scholarship” - July 20, 2010

Slams Lindzen, Singer and Happer as liars

ClimateProgress:

MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel has been at the forefront of trying to explain many aspects of climate science to the public, especially in his field of expertise — hurricanes.  He has written a good essay on the hacked emails, ” ‘Climategate’: A Different Perspective [ http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1444 ],” originally published at the National Association of Scholars [NAS] website.  Near the end, he notes:

While the climategate email authors are castigated for not being paragons of virtue, the sins of others go unremarked. In the summer of 2009, a one-page letter was sent to Congress, signed by one actual climate scientist and six physicists with little or no background in climate science, three of whom were retired.

Among other untruths, it contained the sentence, referring to evidence of anthropogenic global warming, “There is no such evidence; it doesn’t exist.” I confronted the sole climate scientist among the authors with this statement, and he confessed that he did not hold that to be the case. Last I checked, lying to Congress was a federal crime.

Emanuel doesn’t mention Richard Lindzen by name, but that is who he means (as is made clear here [ http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/05/16/global_warming_debate_makes_climate_tough_on_friends/ ]).  The laughable letter itself is here [ http://www.examiner.com/x-11224-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m7d1-Read-scientists-open-letter-to-congress-You-are-being-decieved-about-global-warming ].  Emanuel is thus calling out his old friend Lindzen, plus William Happer and S. Fred Singer, as liars on climate science.  No argument here.

Kerry Emanuel:

"those interested in treating the issue as an objective problem in risk assessment and management are labeled “alarmists”, a particularly infantile smear considering what is at stake. This deployment of inflammatory terminology has a distinctly Orwellian flavor. It originates not in laboratories and classrooms, where ideas are the central focus and one hardly ever hears labels applied to researchers, but in the media, the blogosphere, and political think tanks, where polarization attracts attention and/or turns a profit.

But it turns out that there are not enough mavericks in climate science to meet the media’s and blogosphere’s insatiable appetite for conflict. Thus into the arena steps a whole host of charlatans posing as climate scientists. These are a toxic brew of retired physicists, TV weather forecasters, political junkies, media hacks, and anyone else willing to tell an interviewer that he/she is a climate scientist."

The whole Climate Inactivist circle-jerk:

"But, but, but... we must not hamper "spirited debate"... um uh... guilty of "stealth advocacy"... hurr durr...  let's be "Serious" and "Reasonable"... herp derp... over-zealous scientists are most responsible for a warming earth..."

Kerry Emanuel is a welcome remedy to prattle.