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Climate Careerist Privately Voiced Worries about Media Hype and Scientific Honesty

A thoughtful email from University of East Anglia’s Douglas Maraun in which he shares serious misgivings about the politically correct atmosphere prevalent within the establishment in 2007.

From the Climategate 2.0 collection:

date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:05:20 +0100
from: “Douglas Maraun”
subject: Informal Seminar TODAY
to: cru.internal@uea.ac.uk

Dear colleagues,

I’d like to invite all of you to todays discussion seminar, 4pm in the
coffee room:

“Climate science and the media”

After the publication of the latest IPCC, the media wrote a vast
number of articles about possible and likely impacts, many of them
greatly exaggerated. The issue seemed to dominate news for a long time
and every company had to consider global warming in its advertisement.
However, much of this sympathy turned out to be either white washing
or political correctness. Furthermore, recently and maybe especially
after the “inconvenient truth” case and the Nobel peace prize going to
Al Gore, many irritated and sceptical comments about so-called
“climatism” appeared also in respectable newspapers.

Against the background of these recent developments, we could discuss
the relation of climate science to the media, the way it is, and the
way it should be.

In my opinion, the question is not so much whether we should at all
deal with the media. Our research is of potential relevance to the
public, so we have to deal with the public. The question is rather how
this should be done. Points I would like to discuss are:

-Is it true that only climate sceptics have political interests and
are potentially biased? If not, how can we deal with this?
-How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think,
that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not
especially honest.

-How should we deal with popular science like the Al Gore movie?
-What is the difference between a “climate sceptic” and a “climate denier”?
-What should we do with/against exaggerations of the media?
-How do we avoid sounding religious or arrogant?
-Should we comment on the work/ideas of climate scepitics?

If you have got any further suggestions or do think, my points are not
interesting, please let me know in advance.

See you later,
Douglas

November 25, 2011 - Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular

2 Comments »

  1. Sadly, not even the alternative press has commented upon the fact that these emails were stolen and published–it is no wonder that the scientists don’t always seem coherent under such conditions (but this email is OK). Also, before the 2008 theft of emails, I’d never heard of East Anglia University, and even if it is a gang of corrupt criminals (sort of like banksters), it will not change the science one iota.

    If stealing and publishing private emails is OK these days, can I see some from the Koch heads? Or how about the ‘Heartland Institute?’ I’d settle for BP’s private emails, especially after their little Gulf of Mexico escapade.

    A retired hurricane hunter has written an excellent article about the ‘manufactured doubt’ industry and its tobacco-stained origins.
    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1389

    “With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world’s five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton, to help out.” Yes, Hill and Knowlton are still around, working for the highest bidder. In 2009, these were the highest sums spent on lobbying Congress:
    Chevron $6,485,000
    Exxon Mobil $4,657,000
    BP America $4,270,000
    ConocoPhillips $3,300,000
    The Sierra Club can not put up that kind of money!

    Like

    no6ody's avatar Comment by no6ody | November 25, 2011 | Reply

    • In fact, Nobody, introductions to the climategate emails do disclose their provenance, as did the one at this site. This is now considered something that readers should be aware of.

      Also, the emails do uundermine the very central claims made by the AGW alarmist movement in that they reveal that tree ring historic temperature proxies are totally unreliable and that the notion that the medieval period was not warmer than today is unfounded.

      Your smearing the issue by attempting to connect it with tobacco reveals that you have no argument to make.

      One wonders if you have any idea how much money has been spent promoting the fraudulent climate alarmism relative to that spent opposing it. The comparison makes your lobbying tally appear negligible.

      It really is pathetic to see commentary like yours the only thing that the AGW people can muster.

      Like

      aletho's avatar Comment by aletho | November 25, 2011 | Reply


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