Fired for ‘Diverging’ on Climate: Progressive Professor’s fellowship ‘terminated’ after WSJ OpEd calling global warming ‘unproved science’
Climate Depot Exclusive
Dr. Caleb Rossiter was “terminated” via email as an “Associate Fellow” from the progressive group Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), following his May 4th, 2014 Wall Street Journal OpEd titled “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,” in which he called man-made global warming an “unproved science.” Rossiter also championed the expansion of carbon based energy in Africa. Dr. Rossiter is an adjunct professor at American University. Rossiter, who has taught courses in climate statistics, holds a PhD in policy analysis and a masters degree in mathematics.
In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot, Dr. Rossiter explained: “If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.’”
“I have tried to get [IPS] to discuss and explain their rejection of my analysis,’ Rossiter told Climate Depot. “When I countered a claim of ‘rapidly accelerating’ temperature change with the [UN] IPCC’s own data’, showing the nearly 20-year temperature pause — the best response I ever got was ‘Caleb, I don’t have time for this.’”
[Climate Depot Note: Intimidation of skeptical scientists has been well documented.Climate scientist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson — who converted from warmist to skeptic – resigns from skeptical group after ‘enormous group pressure’ from warmists – Now ‘worried about my health and safety’ – ‘Colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship’
Many politically left of center scientists are also converting to skeptics: Scientist Dr. Daniel Botkin Tells Congress why he reversed his belief in global warming to become a skeptic: ‘There are several lines of evidence suggesting that it (AGW) is a weaker case today, not a stronger case’
Caleb Rossiter
Climate Depot has obtained a copy of a May 7, 2014 email that John Cavanagh, the director of IPS since 1998, sent to Rossiter with the subject “Ending IPS Associate Fellowship.”
“Dear Caleb, We would like to inform you that we are terminating your position as an Associate Fellow of …
‘Climate change could flood your streets with doo-doo and toxic waste’: ‘Rising seas and ferocious storms linked to global warming won’t just bring water to our doorsteps…it will deliver a witches’ brew of sewage from low-lying drains and toxic waste from Superfund sites and industrial areas’
http://grist.org/news/climate-change-could-flood-your-streets-with-doo-doo-and-toxic-waste/…
Public Suffering ‘Apocalypse Fatigue’ From Climate ‘Cultists’ – EPA’s ‘symbolic’ regs: ‘There is no claim that the [EPA] regulations will affect climate change’
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/climate-cultists_794401.html?page=3
‘There is no claim that the regulations will affect climate change. If anyone bothers to run full compliance with the new regulations through one of the computer climate models, the temperature difference in the year 2100 would be perhaps .02 degrees Celsius. It would be novel if a reporter had the wit to ask the White House how much warming will be prevented in the year 2100 by the full implementation of the new EPA policy, and then sit back and enjoy the tap dancing.
Anyone who seriously thinks climate change is an imminent crisis threatening humanity will scoff at the EPA’s proposed policy, but there has been barely a peep from the climate establishment. Al Gore gave away the game when he used the term “symbolic” to describe the EPA proposal. But the environmental movement is nothing if not persistent and patient. Environmentalists surely hope that once the EPA’s authority is firmly established and the regulations are up and running, a 30 percent reduction can be ratcheted up to 50 percent, then 75 percent, and so forth, reaching 100 percent at some point—all on the authority of the EPA alone. Congress can be completely bypassed. (By the way, the natural gas sector shouldn’t celebrate that the EPA scheme will increase demand for gas-fired electricity because they will be next on the EPA chopping block.)
…The real “deniers” today are the climateers who refuse to consider that their case for catastrophe has weakened even as they promote unserious solutions that do little or nothing to stimulate the genuine energy transition they say they want. Their default position continues to be simpleminded exaggeration or distortion of every possible angle for political gain.
…The rank politicization of the issue and the relentless demonization of any critics within the scientific community are a catastrophe for science and debilitating for serious deliberation about policy. But the left is so far gone into climate madness, and the Democratic party so beholden to its green faction, that they are likely to persist in their inordinate fear of the Keystone pipeline, natural gas fracking, and the extraordinary revival of American oil production, all of which, in a relatively unmolested market, would tend to displace coal. Absent an unusual level of political resolve from Congress, the climate campaign may yet succeed in hobbling the electric power sector in America. That would be a high price …
Analysis of ‘tiny’ skeptic funding vs. warmists funding: ‘Total budgets for all of these [skeptical] efforts would probably not add up to a month’s spending by just the Sierra Club’
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/climate-cultists_794401.html?page=3…
Alleged 97% climate consensus dismantled: ‘When you explore the lineage of this cliché, it appears about as convincing as a North Korean election’ – ‘Among all the scientists who agree with the ‘consensus’ are all of the scientists who agree with the consensus’
Read http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/climate-cultists_794401.html?page=3…
Global temperature standstill ‘is the biggest embarrassment for a supposed scientific ‘consensus’ since Piltdown Man’
…Gore: ‘History will not be kind’ to climate ‘deniers’
If it’s wet, EPA wants to regulate it: ‘Obama’s War on Everybody Else’ – New law ‘would remove ‘navigable’ from American water law and redefine nearly everything wet as ‘waters of the U.S.’ or WOTUS — and potentially subject us all to permits and fines’
http://www.cfact.org/2014/06/12/if-its-wet-epa-wants-to-regulate-it/…
Polar bears numbers underestimated! ‘PBSG has been assigning a zero value to the unstudied areas, territory that encompasses as much as half of the bears’ geographic range’ – ‘The total count has been consistently under-estimated’
Polar bears and the media
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/6/11/polar-bears-and-the-media.html
At the Breakthrough Institute, Zac Unger looks at past misconceptions over what was known about polar bear numbers and seeks to lay the blame on the way these figures were reported:
What’s news isn’t the idea that polar bear totals are a best-guess estimate. Of course they are. What’s new is the emerging understanding by established polar bear scientists that they may have done themselves a disservice by tacitly allowing the public to treat their good-faith estimates as rigid facts. In proceedings, papers, and press availabilities, polar bear scientists have repeatedly referenced the 20,000+ number. But what was never made clear was that the PBSG has been assigning a zero value to the unstudied areas, territory that encompasses as much as half of the bears’ geographic range. A casual observer, even one who is fully invested in protecting polar bears, would be justifiably upset at discovering that the total count has been consistently under-estimated…
In fact, the standfirst to the article suggests that we don’t even know whether populations are going up or down:…
Giant Of Geology/Glaciology Christian Schlüchter Refutes CO2…Feature Interview Throws Climate Science Into Disarray
Giant Of Geology/Glaciology Christian Schlüchter Refutes CO2…Feature Interview Throws Climate Science Into Disarray
This post is about an interview by the online Swiss Der Bund here with Swiss geology giant Christian Schlüchter titled: “Our society is fundamentally dishonest“. In it he criticizes climate science for its extreme tunnel vision and political contamination.
Geologist Sebastain Lüning sent me an e-mail where he writes: “This is probably the best interview from a geologist on climate change that I have read for a long while. My highest respect for Prof. Schlüchter.” Fritz Vahrenholt calls it “impressive”.
Hat-tip: Bernd Felsche and Wolfgang Neumann at Facebook.
Photo credit (Christian Schlüchter): University of Bern
His discovery of 4000-year old chunks of wood at the edge of glaciers in Switzerland in the 1990s unintentionally thrust the distinguished geologist into the lion’s den of climate science. Today the retired professor and author of more than 250 papers speaks up in an interview.
Almost glacier-free Alps 2000 years ago
Early in the interview Schlüchter reminds us that during Roman times in the Alps “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.” He criticizes today’s climate scientists for focusing on a time period that is “indeed much too short“.
In the interview, Schlüchter recounts how he in the 1990s found a large chunk of wood near the leading edge of a glacier. The chunk of wood, he describes, looked as if it had been dragged across a cheese shredder. It was clear to Schlüchter that the specimen had to be very old. Indeed laboratory analysis revealed that it was 4000 years old. Next they found multiple wood fragments with the same age, all serving to fill in a major piece of the paleo-puzzle. His conclusion: Today where one finds the Lower Aare-Glacier in the Bernese Alps, it used to be “a wide landscape with a wildly flowing river“. It was warmer back then.
Until the 1990s, scientists thought that the Alps glaciers had been more or less consistently intact and only began retreating after the end of the Little Ice Age. Schlüchter’s findings showed that glacial retreats of the past also had been profound.
This threw climate science into chaos and it remains unreconciled today.
Ice-free 5800 of the last 10,000 years
But not all scientists were thrilled or fascinated …