Is paranoia contagious? It seems so in certain circles. Like fear, it begins with one, and then spreads like wildfire.
Yesterday I wrote about Professor Stefan Rahmstorf’s hissing and fitting reaction to a piece written by EIKE, the humble sceptic organisation that had the audacity to bring up one of Rahmstorf’s old, yet embarrassing papers here, which I wrote about here.
Something is really getting to the poor fella. Science is supposed to be for the calm, and not the irrational. Rahmstorf has to learn to get a grip.
It seems whenever someone expresses dissent, which is normal in science, Rahmstorf flies off the handle and lashes out, almost irrationally.
Yesterday, for example, Roger Pielke Jr. wrote a piece here with details on an e-mail exchange between Rahmstorf’s sidekick Michael Mann and journalist Daniel Greenberg. These guys really seem to think the whole world is out to get them.
And recall the paranoia that pervaded throughout the Climategate e-mails involving Jones, Mann and the rest of the cast.
In this post I’m only going to focus primarily on Rahmstorf, as he is the issue here in Germany at the moment. But it fundamentally applies to the rest of his team as well.
Firstly, Rahmstorf is one of the very few “climate scientists” who truly believes that sea levels are about to rise at alarming rates over the next few decades, even refusing to accept the much more moderate projections of the IPCC, for which he is a lead author. Even though there is no data out there to support it, Rahmstorf is sure the atmosphere and seas are out to get us.
Calmer minds have attempted on numerous occasions to alleviate his anxiety by pointing out that scientific data do not support his horror visions, and that there is no need to go sleepless about it. For example sea levels over the last 100 years have risen at their normal rate of about 20 cm per century. Over the last years sea level rise has even slowed down, Read more here: Going Down.
Sea level rise is slowing. TOPEX U. of Colorado
And when someones tries to explain to him that the Greenland ice cores provide a reasonable temperature reconstruction of the past for the globe, he refuses to believe that too, insisting the fluctuations were local and not global. And if someone shows him that multiple proxies from all over the globe also show that temperatures fluctuated naturally, corresponding with the Greenland ice core, Rahmstorf still refuses to believe it and insists the climate is coming for us.
Proxies from all over the world confirm fluctuations on a global scale.
Whether it’s sea ice data, accumulated cyclone energy, the last two brutal German winters, ocean cycles, satellite data, etc., Rahmstorf refuses to believe the data no matter what. The climate’s after us.
So why does Rahmstorf refuse to believe data and the fellow scientists who deliver them? Here he also believes that these scientists are paid hacks of the big carbon industries, tobacco, and ultra right-wing think tanks.
The lefty Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, for example, even reminded Rahmstorf awhile back that EIKE is just small, mailbox sceptic organisation. Are corporations pouring millions and millions and only getting a mailbox operation for their big bucks?
Gravediggers of science
Rahmstorf is acting too paranoid, and this behaviour is now running rampant through much of the warmist side. He even thinks that European corporations are buying up US denier senators. He writes at his piece Headlines From Absurdistan, citing treehugger blog:
Also European companies don’t pinch their pennies when it comes to buying up candidates for the US Senate who deny anthropogenic climate change.
How are regular people reacting to this? Daniel Greenberg wrote to Pielke:
My sympathy to you and anyone else who has to deal with them. They’re gravediggers of science.
It’s called self-destruction.
Relax – the climate is not going to tip and destroy the planet. The data does not show this.
Love The Kinks.
Paranoia, BTW, is a known side effect of caffein. A few weeks ago a colleague groundlessly wondered whether the security in our office building would really prevent an intruder from breaking in, and i asked him “Did you pop caffeine pills?” and he answered “How did you know? I’ve brought a bag with me from California, they’re so cheap in the USA.”
Maybe they get’em for free at the IPCC.
Why am I not convinced it’s caffeine? It’s something else. By the way, EIKE has a response to Rahmstorf fit. I pinched the proxy chart from it.
His reaction shows insecurity. As a scientist, he should acknowledge his own doubts and reflect about them. He is under pressure to deliver certain predetermined results.
I’d say he’s way past the stages of insecurity. He’s entering paranoia territory.
The same names keep cropping up. How few climate scientists are there? Or is there just an extra loud bunch of nutters who drown the others out?
There are only a few who seek the cameras and radio interviews. In Germany, it’s mostly Rahmstorf and Mojib Latif.
I think he is that way because he knows he has run out of corners to sit in.The irrational content of his babbles,are indicative that he has lived a lie too long.
A real scientist would not behave the way he does at all.They would just publish credible papers and exchange views on them in seminars,phone calls,Letters and other BEHIND THE SCENES method of communication.
Let’s face it fellas.He is a crackpot scientist.
That’s a good point. Scientists normally conduct their debates through the tradional avenues you mention, and don’t use the public media to childishly discredit others.
It’s in the genes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8093089/Liberal-gene-discovered-by-scientists.html
Oh good – maybe a cure is in the cards. 😉
Detailed view of a brain affected by leftism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/8094719/Lifetime-cure-for-Lefties.html
Excellent article. I think the one good thing, a modest consolation, that could come out of this sorry saga of CO2-driven alarmism and associated factionalism, is increased insight into the psychology of the key players and promoters of it. Some have a clear material interest, such as the carbon traders and those benefiting from energy subsidies, but these are often, Gore & chums excepted, merely ‘innocent’ opportunists. Some have a clear political interest, such as leftwing groups intent on wrecking western civilisation, but this is a disorder that has been with us for some time. So, interest ought to focus on the scientists, geographers, computer programmers, and leaders of scientific societies who have played such a prominent part. There are not very many of them at the core of it, perhaps a few dozen – mainly in the USA and the UK, with a few in Germany and elsewhere in Europe such as Sweden and the Netherlands. They have neglected their duties as scientists to be open and to be sceptical, and indeed they have neglected their duties as adults to protect the young from ill-founded scares. It can’t all be explained, surely, by increased research grants. So what else is driving them?
Have ANY of the “skeptics” ever admitted/been proved to have taken money from “big oil/right-wing think tanks/etc.?? It is not happening!! But it is one of those assertions that cannot be disproven, so the warmists get away with it. It is just one more big lie. I feel another article coming on…
Hi Ed,
I’m ready to post! Just let me know when you’re finished.
“There are soo many proxies out there, but soo few good ones. It’s easier to find a needle in a haystack.
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Rahmstorf did it again
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/10/daniel-greenberg-meets-climate.html