MIT Climate Scientist Questions Global Warming Alarmists

[From article]
his opponents characterize him—variously, a liar, a lunatic, a charlatan, a denier, a shyster, a crazy person, corrupt
[. . .]
A pioneering climate scientist with decades at Harvard and MIT, Lindzen sees his discipline as being deeply compromised by political pressure, data fudging, out-and-out guesswork, and wholly unwarranted alarmism.
[. . .]
In the 1970s, while a professor at Harvard, Lindzen disproved the then-accepted theory of how heat moves around the Earth’s atmosphere,
[. . .]
Over the decades, he’s authored or coauthored some 200 peer-reviewed papers on climate.
[. . .]
an issue of Newsweek declaring all scientists agreed. And that was the beginning of a ‘consensus’ argument.
[. . .]
he is voluminously on record disputing the predictions of catastrophe.
[. . .]
The question at issue is how sensitive the planet is to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (this is called climate sensitivity), and how much the planet will heat up as a result of our pumping into the sky ever more CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for upwards of 1,000 years.
[. . .]
he contends that the “alarmists” vastly overstate the Earth’s climate sensitivity. Judging by where we are now, he appears to have a point; so far, 150 years of burning fossil fuels in large quantities has had a relatively minimal effect on the climate. By some measurements, there is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been at any time in the past 15 million years.
[. . .]
over the past 15 years, as man has emitted record levels of carbon dioxide year after year, the warming trend of previous decades has stopped. Lindzen says this is all consistent with what he holds responsible for climate change: a small bit of man-made impact and a whole lot of natural variability.
[. . .]
The IPCC report itself, weighing in at thousands of pages, is “not terrible. It’s not unbiased, but the bias [is] more or less to limit your criticism of models,” he says. The Summary for Policymakers, on the other hand—the only part of the report that the media and the politicians pay any attention to—“rips out doubts to a large extent. .  .  . [Furthermore], government representatives have the final say on the summary.” Thus, while the full IPPC report demonstrates a significant amount of doubt among scientists, the essentially political Summary for Policymakers filters it out.
[. . .]
the most glaring failure of the models: their inability to predict the 15-year-long (and counting) pause in warming
[. . .]
Almost all funding for climate research comes from the government, which, he says, makes scientists essentially vassals of the state. And generating fear, Lindzen contends, is now the best way to ensure that policymakers keep the spigot open.
[. . .]
“But the environmental movement is highly organized. There are hundreds of NGOs. To coordinate these hundreds, they quickly organized the Climate Action Network, the central body on climate. There would be, I think, actual meetings to tell them what the party line is for the year, and so on.” Skeptics, on the other hand, are more scattered across disciplines and continents. As such, they have a much harder time getting their message across.
[. . .]
Because climate change is invisible, only the experts can tell us whether the planet is sick or not. And because of the way funds are granted, they have an incentive to say that the Earth belongs in intensive care.
[. . .]
One frustrating feature of the climate debate is that people’s outlook on global warming usually correlates with their political views. So if a person wants low taxes and restrictions on abortion, he probably isn’t worried about climate change. And if a person supports gay marriage and raising the minimum wage, he most likely thinks the threat from global warming warrants costly public-policy remedies.
[. . .]
it is well known that the vast majority of “alarmist” climate scientists, dependent as they are on federal largesse, are liberal Democrats.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/what-catastrophe_773268.html

What Catastrophe?
MIT’s Richard Lindzen, the unalarmed climate scientist
JAN 13, 2014

VOL. 19, NO. 17

BY ETHAN EPSTEIN

Columnist Objects to Skepticism

Standardized tests, i.e., Common Core, are not "settled established norms." Testing teachers is also relatively new. If Goodwin's thesis was true, Noam Chomsky would be on network news every day. He is still marginalized, while Kennedy family celebrities get national recognition for misguided policies. Does Goodwin mistake opposition for radicalism? Has conformity become the default position on all matters?

[From article]
Ideas that only recently were relegated to the fringes are now going mainstream. And policies that were settled, established norms are under vicious assault. Here’s the real shocker: The radicals are not limited to Occupy Wall Street and other anarchists demonstrating against cops, capitalism and all authority. Instead, respected public figures and government officials who would normally defend the establishment are leading the charge against it. [. . .] The San Jose Mercury News found that 87 percent of kindergartners at the wealthy Berkeley Rose School had vaccine exemptions because the parents believed in “more alternative health care,” according to a school spokesman. The school, where half-day kindergarten costs nearly $12,000 a year, says it offers “judgment-free” education. Children handwrite their own textbooks, learn to knit in first grade and, despite its proximity to Silicon Valley, the school features an anti-tech culture that emphasizes experience over facts. No kidding.

http://nypost.com/2015/04/18/radicalism-is-going-mainstream/

Radicalism is going mainstream
By Michael Goodwin
New York Post
April 18, 2015 | 11:04pm

NY Attorney General Scrutinizes Herbal Supplements

[From article]
An ongoing investigation of popular herbal supplements subjected to DNA testing has found numerous store brand supplements aren't what their labels claim to be, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday.
Schneiderman's office has sent letters to GNC, Target, Wal-Mart and Walgreen Co. concerning supplements that either couldn't be verified to contain the labeled substance or that contained ingredients not listed on the label. The products include Echinacea, ginseng, St. John's wort, garlic, ginkgo biloba and saw palmetto.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Eric-Schneiderman-Herbal-Supplements-New-York-Walmart-GNC-Walgreens-290640551.html

NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Targets Popular Herbal Supplements
Updated at 10:20 AM EST on Tuesday, Feb 3, 2015

NBC News New York, NY

By Mary Esch
Updated at 5:51 PM EST on Tuesday, Feb 3, 2015

Propaganda Rules Over Reason, Skepticism

[From article]
At our school we teach how to lie, bully and master the art of self-aggrandizing arrogance while cleaning up on outside consultancies, made possible by our minimal teaching requirements.
This week we are featuring demonstrations by Jonathan Gruber of MIT and Ben Edelman of the Harvard Business School.
[. . .]
Gruber’s taped speeches at conferences of other heath care “experts” bragging about his key role in writing the Act, smarmily suggesting he pulled this one off because the people are “stupid”, and then when called to account by Congressman Darrell Issa, responded: "In excerpts of these videos I am shown making a series of glib, thoughtless, and sometimes downright insulting comments. I behaved badly, and I will have to live with that…"
Still, he refused to say how much his work enriched him. (Credible accounts say about $6 million from the federal and various state governments.)
[. . .]
Either Gruber spent two years lying about his role in writing the law, or he was lying this week in his sworn congressional testimony.
[. . .]
There’s lots of irrationality on campuses and you should learn how to quickly bow down to it. The trustees don’t like to see strong administrators -- they just want their names on buildings and avenues for getting their friends’ dumb kids into your school so genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
[. . .]
“We are united in our insistence that all lives matter,” read the e-mail, in which she made clear she was strongly behind the protests, writing that the grand jury decisions had “led to a shared fury… We gather in vigil, we raise our voices in protest.”
So, at Smith, black lives matter -- even if the slogan is in support of two thugs whose deaths were connected to their illegal activities (and in Garner’s case ill health). Nor is it significant to these students that black-on-black crimes far exceed deaths by blacks at the hands of police or of white people for that matter. White lives, Asian lives, presumably do not matter.
[. . .]
In a Dec. 5 op-ed, the president of California State University (CSU) claimed if you are “light skinned” you have “significant unearned privilege” and routinely think less of those who are different than yourself.
In her piece, “Privilege at The Beach,” -- referencing the Long Beach area where the school resides -- Jane Close Conoley, a white woman herself, asserts that “light skin color and high income levels may attract significant unearned privilege.” Those who qualify for such privilege, often unknowingly exert distrust and “lower expectations of behavior” on those of another skin color.
[. . .]
We thought that we could skip this course for now after the Duke Lacrosse debacle, but no, we have to keep reminding you guys that when it comes to white male students, it’s the narrative that counts.
Teaching this course this week, we have the president of the University of Virginia who based her actions on a now thoroughly debunked Rolling Stone article.
[. . .]
Remember, above all “responsibility to this community” in college administrator talk does not include responsibility to white men, fair play, or respect for the truth.
[. . .]
One of the demands was to delay exams, like happened at Columbia University Law School.
HLS did not relent, although it did issue some statements of concern and sympathy.
I have it from reliable sources that law students at Harvard are, as we write, being subjected to the oppression of having to take final exams as scheduled.
[. . .]
Few if any of the students complaining talk about the evidence, the forensics, the law that might have justified the grand jury rulings. Instead, it’s all about them and their emotions. Are we training students to think and act as lawyers, or emotional activists?
[. . .]
Michael Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, shouted, “Burn this bitch down!” after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown.
The question then asked students to imagine that they are lawyers in the St. Louis County Attorney’s office and had been asked to advise the prosecutor “whether to seek an indictment against Head” for inciting violence. The exam reads:
“[As] a recent hire in the office, you are asked to write a memo discussing the relevant First Amendment issues in such a prosecution. Write the memo.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/clarices_college_guide.html

December 14, 2014
Clarice's College Guide
By Clarice Feldman

State Rep. Skeptical About Olympic Bid For Boston

MA State Rep. Tim Toomey

[From article]
So far, anyone who has dared to question the bid organizers has been met with answers that are the equivalent of “trust us.”

[. . .]
In Boston 2024, we see a small group of people promising us that we will all benefit from their success, and that once they have finished throwing a party for the world’s elite, the rest of us will get a crack at the leftovers the next morning. Those of us who have lived through the era of “trickle-down” economics — and who are still waiting, 30 years later, to see any benefit at all from tax cuts for top earners and deregulation of the financial industry — should be wary of this thinking.
[. . .]

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20141219/NEWS/141216316

Guest Column: Process for Boston Olympic bid is ‘deeply troublesome'
By Rep. Tim Toomey
Posted Dec. 19, 2014 @ 8:16 am
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle

Skepticism Becoming Distrust, and Brain Dead Senator

U.S. Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) admits he's brain dead.

[From article]

With the Senate now less open and more partisan, unanimous Democrat votes set an all-time high for either chamber, according to a recent study by Congressional Quarterly, with the average Senate Democrat voting the party line 94 percent of the time in 2013.

To maintain this governing conformity, Reid has denied votes on more than 350 House-passed measures, many with large bipartisan majorities, and used parliamentary trickeries to pass controversial measures on narrow party-line votes. In December, he activated the “nuclear option,” eliminating the Senate’s two-century-old filibuster tradition (the 60-vote threshold requiring consultation with the minority) on most presidential nominees.

Smash-mouth politics has served the governing elites — many of whom, like Reid, have parlayed influence into family fortunes — but not Americans who feel ill-served by the institutions they oversee. 

[. . .]

More worrisome than the cavernous competence gap is the politicization of every bureaucracy, even institutions charged with equal enforcement of laws, such as the Justice Department and IRS.

Aided and abetted by elected officials who defend the indefensible, the administration diverts our attention with false assurances: You can keep your health insurance and your doctors, there’s not a smidgeon of corruption at the IRS, al-Qaida is on the run, the border is secure, and a U.S. Ebola outbreak is extremely unlikely.

[. . .]

In a television interview this week, Udall admitted to being “brain dead,” which isn’t surprising given how dumbed-down and non-deliberative the Senate has become. Had Udall and Reid succeeded last month in passing their constitutional amendment to refashion the First Amendment (under the guise of campaign finance reform), there’d be even less need for politicians to defend themselves in the marketplace of ideas. 

http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/13490814-113/udall-ebola-post-senate

Sturm: “What’s Scarier Than Ebola? A Brain-Dead Polity.”
Melanie Sturm
Think Again
October 23, 2014

MIT Climate Scientist Is Not Alarmed

[From article]
his opponents characterize him—variously, a liar, a lunatic, a charlatan, a denier, a shyster, a crazy person, corrupt
[. . .]
A pioneering climate scientist with decades at Harvard and MIT, Lindzen sees his discipline as being deeply compromised by political pressure, data fudging, out-and-out guesswork, and wholly unwarranted alarmism.
[. . .]
In the 1970s, while a professor at Harvard, Lindzen disproved the then-accepted theory of how heat moves around the Earth’s atmosphere,
[. . .]
Over the decades, he’s authored or coauthored some 200 peer-reviewed papers on climate.
[. . .]
an issue of Newsweek declaring all scientists agreed. And that was the beginning of a ‘consensus’ argument.
[. . .]
he is voluminously on record disputing the predictions of catastrophe.
[. . .]
The question at issue is how sensitive the planet is to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (this is called climate sensitivity), and how much the planet will heat up as a result of our pumping into the sky ever more CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for upwards of 1,000 years.
[. . .]
he contends that the “alarmists” vastly overstate the Earth’s climate sensitivity. Judging by where we are now, he appears to have a point; so far, 150 years of burning fossil fuels in large quantities has had a relatively minimal effect on the climate. By some measurements, there is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been at any time in the past 15 million years.
[. . .]
over the past 15 years, as man has emitted record levels of carbon dioxide year after year, the warming trend of previous decades has stopped. Lindzen says this is all consistent with what he holds responsible for climate change: a small bit of man-made impact and a whole lot of natural variability.
[. . .]
The IPCC report itself, weighing in at thousands of pages, is “not terrible. It’s not unbiased, but the bias [is] more or less to limit your criticism of models,” he says. The Summary for Policymakers, on the other hand—the only part of the report that the media and the politicians pay any attention to—“rips out doubts to a large extent. .  .  . [Furthermore], government representatives have the final say on the summary.” Thus, while the full IPPC report demonstrates a significant amount of doubt among scientists, the essentially political Summary for Policymakers filters it out.
[. . .]
the most glaring failure of the models: their inability to predict the 15-year-long (and counting) pause in warming
[. . .]
Almost all funding for climate research comes from the government, which, he says, makes scientists essentially vassals of the state. And generating fear, Lindzen contends, is now the best way to ensure that policymakers keep the spigot open.
[. . .]
“But the environmental movement is highly organized. There are hundreds of NGOs. To coordinate these hundreds, they quickly organized the Climate Action Network, the central body on climate. There would be, I think, actual meetings to tell them what the party line is for the year, and so on.” Skeptics, on the other hand, are more scattered across disciplines and continents. As such, they have a much harder time getting their message across.
[. . .]
Because climate change is invisible, only the experts can tell us whether the planet is sick or not. And because of the way funds are granted, they have an incentive to say that the Earth belongs in intensive care.
[. . .]
One frustrating feature of the climate debate is that people’s outlook on global warming usually correlates with their political views. So if a person wants low taxes and restrictions on abortion, he probably isn’t worried about climate change. And if a person supports gay marriage and raising the minimum wage, he most likely thinks the threat from global warming warrants costly public-policy remedies.
[. . .]
it is well known that the vast majority of “alarmist” climate scientists, dependent as they are on federal largesse, are liberal Democrats.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/what-catastrophe_773268.html

What Catastrophe?
MIT’s Richard Lindzen, the unalarmed climate scientist
JAN 13, 2014, VOL. 19, NO. 17

BY ETHAN EPSTEIN

Give me Your Guns So I Can Put You In A Mental Hospital

Coulter's argument conflicts with the Fourth Amendment. What part of taking liberty without due process does she support? Why is the criminal law standard of mens rea and actus reus not applicable to persons accused of mental illness? Coulter wants to imprison persons for status crimes, and for offensive protected speech. Torrey promotes forced drugging for all persons accused of mental illness. He is spokesman for the psychiatric industry. Blaming liberals for mass murders is as irrational as blaming guns. Like Torrey and many liberals too, Coulter cannot separate crime from psychiatry. She ridicules conduct and speech which she does not like. Is she unaware of what liberals think of her speech? Speech and behavior that psychiatrists do not like or do not understand is declared mental illness. Having a human emotion is mental illness. For Michael Savage liberalism is a mental disorder. For Harvard University's neurologist Allan Counter, being called a racist is a mental illness. Psychiatry is arbitrary personal opinion masquerading as science. What is it about psychiatry that makes ordinarily rational skeptics blind believers? Coulter questions everything to find the kernel of truth. Why is she so accepting of the mumbo jumbo that is psychiatry? It is like law, a system of social control, but lacking due process protections. Hitler and Stalin put undesirable people in jail or mental hospitals after taking their guns. Coulter and Torrey want to do the same but let some people keep their guns. The issue is due process and liberty. Something that Coulter supports on occasion. 

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/09/18/crazier-than-liberals/

Crazier than liberals
By: Ann Coulter
9/18/2013 06:01 PM

 

UK Journalists More Tuned To Interviews

[From article]
It’s a very British way of thinking. The one question all young reporters on Fleet Street are taught to keep foremost in their mind when interviewing public figures can be best paraphrased as, “Why is this jerk lying to me?”
The news that flows from that mind-set is often far more interesting than American media, which frequently bow to power even as they seek to hold it accountable. (Mr. Stewart, so rapacious when annotating video clips, often goes soft when confronted by an actual interview.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/business/media/britain-as-a-breeding-ground-for-media-leaders.html?ref=business

British Invasion Reshuffles U.S. Media
By DAVID CARR
New York Times
Published: June 23, 2013

Scientific Method OK, But Scientists Maybe Not

[from article]
"Regardless, while one should trust science as a method — honestly done, science remains the best way at getting to the truth on a wide range of factual matters — there’s no particular reason why one should trust scientists and especially no particular reason why one should trust the people running scientific institutions, who often aren’t scientists themselves.
In fact, the very core of the scientific method is supposed to be skepticism. We accept arguments not because they come from people in authority but because they can be proven correct — in independent experiments by independent experimenters. If you make a claim that can’t be proven false in an independent experiment, you’re not really making a scientific claim at all."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/faith_in_science_ElyzoJm9wNW7Vl7m8ESXYP

Faith in science?
Why skepticism is rising
By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
New York Post
Last Updated: 7:17 AM, April 2, 2012
Posted: 10:11 PM, April 1, 2012

ABC News Report Clueless and Biased

ABC's Nightline report on Wednesday September 7, 2011 was given by David Wright.
[Requires Latest Flash Player]
http://abcnews.go.com/watch/nightline/SH5584743/VD55142018/nightline-97-ihop-massacre-chilling-911-tapes

He said the man accused of the shootings has a history of mental illness and asked, "How did he get access to weapons." Journalists show no skepticism regarding allegations of mental illness. They never question the accuracy of a diagnosis. In courts one psychiatrist says a person is mentally ill, then another says he is not. How can that be if psychiatry is scientific? Psychiatry is no more than personal opinion masquerading as science. Yet journalists do not question these charlatans. Are his family members psychiatrists too? Why did the sheriff accept their diagnosis? Why did journalists repeat it?

Two aspects of this ABC news report indicate the extreme bias of network journalists. One is they are clueless about the causal connection between psychiatric drugs and violence. If he had a history of mental illness did he take any, or stop taking, psychiatric drugs? The drug-company-controlled FDA requires a warning label that they cause violence and suicidal thoughts. This crime fits the pattern. But no mention from network journalists. The second aspect is that there is no causal connection between an accusation of mental illness and violence. Most people accused of mental illness are harmless. The effort by drug companies to criminalize mental illness is assisted by the useful idiots in the mainstream media.

[From article]
Carson City Sheriff Kenny Furlong said "There has been some suggestion by his family members that there is some mental health issues that we are going to have to look into."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/ihop-shooting-nevada-leaves-dead/story?id=14457713

National Guard Members Among Four Dead in Carson City Nevada IHOP Shooting Rampage
By JESSICA HOPPER (@jesshop23) and DEAN SCHABNER
Sept. 6, 2011
ABC News

Misguided Journalists Lack Skepticism

Speaking about dehumanizing vulnerable people, the New York Post refers to a human being as a psychiatric disease. But there is no mention whether this troubled man was taking psychiatric drugs which are a proven cause of suicidal thoughts and violence. What genes are Post journalists missing that they are incapable of skeptical thought regarding psychiatry? What will it take to begin warning civilians about the dangers of psychiatric drugs? When will psychiatrists be indicted for the murders and suicides they cause?

[From article]
"The troubled man who threatened to jump from the Top of the Rock observation deck is a schizophrenic who had threatened to kill himself twice before -- once in an eerily similar attempt from atop Las Vegas' 1,149-foot Stratosphere Tower, sources said yesterday."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/rock_leap_bid_was_third_udPIUYr7MN0yYG2SPmnc8K

30 Rock leap bid was third
By DOUG AUER and BOB FREDERICKS
New York Post
Last Updated: 10:38 AM, August 12, 2011
Posted: 1:32 AM, August 12, 2011

Journalists Lack Skepticism

Boston Herald publishes a "reported diagnosis" for what reason? To discredit the suspect? Because a housing administrator made the diagnosis? Or did he reveal medical records contrary to state and US law? Congratulations for noting the dangers of psychiatric drugs. Are potential drug company advertisements the reason this is not an issue for journalists to warn the public? Choosing Howard Trachtman to comment on psychiatric abuses is like asking John Edwards to discuss marriage loyalty. NAMI is not a civil rights organization. Each year drug companies give NAMI about $3 million to promote drug treatment.

[From article]
"reportedly has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic,
[. . .]
Moore was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, said Boston Housing Authority administrator William McGonagle. Moore’s attorney yesterday requested a psychiatric evaluation. In court records, Moore said he was on the anti-anxiety drug Klonopin at the time of the shooting. Federal health authorities caution people taking the drug of potential suicidal or aggressive behavior.
[. . .]
Howard Trachtman, director of the Greater Boston affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said for those with mental illness,"
[See also this biased report on WFXT-TV FOX25 Boston at
http://enoughroomvideo.blogspot.com/2011/08/fox25-wfxt-tv-boston-ma-bias.html

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_0812headlinegoes/

Noise dispute eyed in Brighton murder
By Marie Szaniszlo and John Zaremba
Boston Herald
Friday, August 12, 2011

Journalists Don't Question Psychiatrists

Peyser quotes Brooklyn psychiatrist Hilfer referring to "This man's deepening and worsening mental illness," without offering any proof. Did this psychiatrist ever meet with the accused shooter? Did he get access to the defendant's medical records in violation of state and US laws? All too often psychiatrists are ignorant of laws. Some know the laws but ignore them due to disrespectful attitudes toward their patients. Journalists are all too eager to publish whatever psychiatrists say with no skepticism or criticism from others.

[From article]
"Dr. Alan Hilfer, chief psychiatrist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. "This man's deepening and worsening mental illness, combined with easy access to guns, combined with distorted thinking" did the trick."


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/left_takes_wild_shot_at_palin_co_7Q6hIEeqI3ufpAmQO1OjqN

Left takes a wild shot at Palin & Co.
Andrea Peyser
Last Updated: 7:31 AM, January 14, 2011
Posted: 1:24 AM, January 13, 2011

Psychiatric Film Propaganda

Angelina Jolie's film The Changling (2008) is based on real events in Los Angeles in 1928. The film shows how police use psychiatry to silence unpopular people. The film focuses on women but the principle applies to all. 80 years later, not much has changed with police and psychiatric abuses.

Another recent film, Shutter Island (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio is based on a novel with fictitious events and persons. This film appears to be propaganda for the psychiatric industry. That government psychiatrists use vulnerable humans for experiments without consent and destroy rather than heal is fact. But this film makes it appear that these are fantasies of maniacs. It portrays psychiatrists as humane people doing good, the image promoted by high powered PR firms for many decades. Depraved psychiatrists get away with harm in the name of good due to blind beliefs of citizens which are reinforced by journalists who are incapable of skepticism regarding psychiatry.