Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Roy Spencer

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World’s greatest scientist?

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s certainly head and shoulders above most of the climate crowd:

Texas A&M has a large atmospheric sciences department. On their website there are 22 tenured and tenure track faculty. What is really unusual about the department is that all the regular faculty are seemingly required to sign a global warming loyalty oath called the climate change statement. Every faculty member except one new arrival has signed. None of the lowly adjunct faculty’s names appear.

The Texas A&M atmospheric sciences department is part of the College of Geosciences. That college also houses the department of Geology and Geophysics that operates practically as a satellite of the Texas energy industry. Texas A&M has a large endowment, heavily invested in energy industries, and of course, the revenue of the state of Texas is heavily dependent on carbon burning energy industries. There are strange bedfellows in the Texas A&M College of Geosciences.

Andrew Dessler wrote his paper attacking Spencer’s paper. It zoomed through peer review in 19 days, a remarkable speed record. It was published in Geophysical Research Letters, a favored journal of the global warming establishment.

It probably didn’t matter what Dessler’s paper said or how objective it was. All that really mattered is that the climate establishment could say to the world of media and politics that Roy Spencer had been refuted. Spencer had a response on his website within 24 hours of receiving a preprint of the paper. One problem for the establishment is that Dessler is prone to go a bit wobbly and lose focus as to the main task. The main task is making skeptics like Roy Spencer look like incompetent idiots. Dessler entered into a dialog with Spencer and accepted suggestions from Spencer to correct errors and otherwise improve the paper attacking Spencer himself. Spencer felt this was a great step forward from establishment figures ignoring him or taking potshots from afar.

The global warming scientific establishment is starting to look like the final days of the Soviet Union. On the surface it appears impregnable and the dissidents are a minor problem. But the huge soviet edifice quickly collapsed when people lost their fear of the system and the functionaries stopped following orders. There came a point when everyone decided to stop living a lie. I can’t believe, for example, that every faculty member at Texas A&M is really happy about signing a climate loyalty oath.

I think the collapse may be nigh.

9 thoughts on “Roy Spencer”

  2. What is really unusual about the department is that all the regular faculty are seemingly required to sign a global warming loyalty oath called the climate change statement.

    (My bold)

    The Climate Change Statement looks to me like another one of those climate change statements faculty members of many institutions decide to issue, the “seemingly required” bit looks to me like a calculated lie.

  3. There is this scene in a movie about Midway as a sequel to the Pearl Harbor epic “Tora, Tora, Tora”, where the call goes out for volunteers for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. That raid perhaps had as much audacity as the Pearl Harbor raid, but given the small bomb loads and the large target, it was perhaps a morale booster rather than anything that was going to “win the war.” It was also a very high risk mission for the crews given the lack of good “recovery” options for the aircraft.

    The men are lined up standing at attention in their dress uniforms, and anyone who doesn’t want to go on this mission is asked to “take one step forward.” The late Roger Ebert commenting on this scene said, “Yeah, right. As if anyone is going to take that one step forward.”

    Peer pressure is a powerful thing.

    1. Paul,

      Actually the raid did have strategic value as it scared the Japanese into clustering more forces around the home islands, forces that were really needed elsewhere.

      1. Far more importantly, it convinced Yamamoto that it was vital to get rid of the remaining US carrier forces, which is what led to Midway. The poor disposition of Japanese naval forces had much more to do with the lack of merchant shipping (particularly tankers), and the growing sub threat.

    2. As if Roger Ebert would know a damned thing about what motivates military men to risk their lives in time of war. Men don’t fight for their flag, they fight for their friends. In the months following Pearl Harbor, huge numbers of men joined the military knowing they were putting their lives on the line (as have those who joined the military since 9/11). When that Japanese picket boat spotted the Hornet, Doolittle’s men launched 400 miles and many hours earlier than planned. They did this knowing they’d be at the very limits of their range and would be reaching China at night. And not one man backed down. The backup crews were disappointed that they weren’t going to go on the mission even knowing the odds.

  5. The lesson I take from the linked story is that AGW-skeptical scientists continue to get research grants, tenured faculty positions, and the opportunity to publish their arguments in peer-reviewed journals. But so far the overwhelming majority of their peers don’t find the arguments persuasive.

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