Gordon Fulks, Harassing Yet Again

Also lying -- his response was moderated, not blocked, and appears here. (He does, after all, have a history of being "uncivil.") Seems he didn't like this. And this. Which I didn't at all mean to be sarcastic.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	RE: Appell
Date:	Thu, 7 Aug 2014 20:15:51 +0000
From:	Gordon Fulks <gordonfulks@hotmail.com>
To:	Cfwiese@cs.com <cfwiese@cs.com>, stevescare@aol.com <stevescare@aol.com>, Jim Karlock <jkarlock@gmail.com>
CC:	global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com <global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com>, Jim Diamond, Thomas Hellie

Hello Everyone,

David Appell replied with his characteristic sarcasm and then blocked this response from me on his blog:

http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-harassment-from-deniers-in-oregon.html

Hi David,

It is amazing to see all of the excuses you can dredge up for NOT discussing the science.  But the "you offended us" excuse is probably the most absurd.

Please tell us how the well-known professor of physics at Princeton University (Will Happer) offended you or Jim Diamond or Thomas Hellie?

He was NOT invited to speak as a counterpoint to Michael Mann, yet has far better academic qualifications.  Were these what caused offense?  Does it anger you and Linfield College that a member of the US National Academy of Sciences is willing to speak out against climate hysteria?  Or was it the fact that he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society?  Or was it the fact that he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science?

Skeptics are forever bombarded with sarcasm and personal attacks to try to get them to cower.  Yet we keep coming back pointing out that science is not conducted by character assassination and urging you to discuss the scientific issues, if you can.

Perhaps you should consider a constructive approach?


Gordon

---

From: gordonfulks@hotmail.com
To: cfwiese@cs.com; stevescare@aol.com; jkarlock@gmail.com
CC: global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com; Jim Diamond, Thomas Hellie
Subject: [GWR] RE: Appell
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 18:47:16 +0000

Dear Chuck,

We will have to admonish David Appell for forgetting to attack you too!  :-)

Better luck at getting his attention next time!  :-)

I left him this message:

Hi David,

Thanks for posting some of our emails that demonstrate our willingness to discuss climate issues from a scientific perspective, including the very basic issues of what constitutes science and what is merely storytelling.

As someone who long ago spent time in science, you know that real scientists love to discuss and argue the subjects where they are well-informed. Hence it should not seem strange to you that we try to engage Dr. Diamond and his college.

What is very strange is that they refuse all scientific dialogue. That certainly says that they feel unable to hold their own on this subject. Yet it is not a subject where one needs a PhD to realize that most of the lore is desperately wrong.

By the way, Roger Cohen (whose email you show above) is also a PhD physicist and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. That makes him one of the top physicists in the USA.


Gordon

---

To: stevescare@aol.com; gordonfulks@hotmail.com; jkarlock@gmail.com
Subject: Re: appell
From: cfwiese@cs.com
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 12:39:15 -0400

I am deeply hurt that I apparently didn't antagonize him enough to get some free press....:(

Chuck Wiese

PS; Congratulations, Gordon:D

Jim Diamond on "Carl in the Morning"

Jim Diamond, the professor of chemistry at Linfield College here in Oregon whose op-ed in the Oregonian got him harassed by some of the state's climate change deniers, was on yesterday's "Carl in the Morning" show, an online radio show here. He talked about what people can do individually to cut back on their carbon emissions, their impact on the environment in general, and what we need to do about climate change.

The 18-minute interview starts at about the 1:04:00 mark:

NOAA Still Predicting a Moderate El Niño

Even though much of the warm water that was in the equatorial Pacific has dissipated, NOAA still puts the chance of a moderate El Niño later this fall and early winter at 65%:

Over the last month, model forecasts have slightly delayed the El Niño onset, with most models now indicating the onset during July-September, with the event continuing into early 2015 (Fig. 6). A strong El Niño is not favored in any of the ensemble averages, and slightly more models call for a weak event rather than a moderate event. At this time, the consensus of forecasters expects El Niño to emerge during August-October and to peak at weak strength during the late fall and early winter (3-month values of the Niño-3.4 index between 0.5oC and 0.9oC). The chance of El Niño has decreased to about 65% during the Northern Hemisphere fall and early winter....

Their model projections for the Niño3.4 region are above. Except the latest Nino3.4 anomaly is already negative:

Why does it matter? Because an El Nino could bring lots of rain to California this winter, writes Paul Rogers in the San Jose Mercury News, who also quotes some pessimistic scientists, including this one:

"It takes big droughts to make big changes in water policy in California," Lund said. "It would cinch the deal if we have another dry year."

On Living in an Anti-Vax State

I sent Oregon's high vaccination exemption rate to my sister, and she sent me this:

Yes, I knew that about Oregon.  All these hippy, dippy organic, paranoid parents.  One time when [her son] was a wee infant, we were exposed to someone with whooping cough in our mom/baby yoga class and it was about a week before I was to fly to Albuquerque.  I rec'd a call from the health dept and it was a big deal.  He had been vaccinated, so he was OK, but I had to see the doctor since he had still only gotten one shot and it was a little frightening because he could have gotten really sick.  All due to a mother not vaccinating her child.  People see this as a personal decision but it's such a societal problem, particularly for infants and the elderly.  Measles rates are climbing at a rapid rate and these folks still believe that vaccinations are bad.  Makes me crazy.

Political Ideology & Who Vaccinates (and Who Doesn't)

Keith Kloor discusses this state-by-state data on nonmedical vaccine exemptions, in the context of a dumb message twittered by Mother Jones.

For me, it's more interesting that Oregon leads the nation in vaccine exemptions. Why would that be?

In the comments on Keith's blog, someone makes a good point:

Perhaps there are less "alternative" doctors in the bible belt. It may just be that bible belt doctors play it by the book. There would be nobody to give the parents bad advice even if they sought it out...

I think there might be something to that -- or that conservatives in conservative states play it by the book, and are less likely to fall for fashionable scientific ideas (anti-GMO comes to mind, and climate change, which, whatever the science, undoubtably has a 'fashionable' angle to it) than liberals. (Idaho and New Mexico would seem to be exceptions, though.)

Meanwhile, in the dark red states of Oregon and Vermont, you can't swing a stethoscope without hitting a naturopath, alternative healer, vegan therapist or specialist in Chinese medicine.

When and where I grew up -- when the US was more of a conservative, white bread, Chevy-driving, baseball and apple pie nation -- before the hippies and Richard Nixon ruined everything -- it would have been unthinkable to question your doctor on what vaccines your child would receive. (I still remember, as a 6 or 7 or 8-year old, going to the VFW one evening and waiting in a line to get a sugar cube in a small white paper cup, which I think contained the vaccine for polio). Other than that, we all got measles, German measles, chickenpox and the mumps when they came around. But I'm sure my mother and my aunts didn't question other vacccines when we went to Dr. Spino in Greensburg -- he was the doctor and he knew best and you did what he said.

Aside: Everyone went to Dr. Spino -- all my siblings and cousins -- and when he was done he let you pick a lollipop out of a jar. I just googled him and found (!) that in 2011 he won a Congressional Medal of Honor

"for a lifetime's commitment to treating children, often not charging those who cannot afford health care and saving tens of thousands of lives."

He certainly deserved it.... Anyway, to the extent that conservatism reigns in a region, I'm not really surprised it would have high vaccination rates, and that the crunchy free-thinking liberals (mostly) don't. There are enough anti-scientific sentiments out there to spread evenly over the political spectrum.

Added 8/7: Although The Economist now ranks Portland as only the 12th-most liberal city in the US:

1. San Francisco
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Seattle
4. Oakland, California
5. Boston
6. Minneapolis
7. Detroit
8. New York
9. Buffalo, New York
10. Baltimore
11. Chicago
12. Portland, OR

Oregon Harassers Compared to Animal Rights Activists

From a comment on reddit about the tactics of Gordon Fulks and his gang:

More Harassment from Deniers in Oregon

Writing an op-ed on how to lower your carbon footprint will now get you harassed in Oregon.

James Diamond, a chemistry professor at Linfield College (a great liberal arts college just south of Portland) had an op-ed in yesterday's Oregonian: "What you can do to cut your carbon footprint: Guest opinion," inspired by his recent trip to the American Chemical Society's national meeting.

Some people apparently think that such articles are not allowed. So they report you to to your boss and cc all their denier friends in their denier mailing group, who pile on and harass further with their personal emails (Those replies, there or here, are why comment sections exist).

Gordon Fulks is their ringleader, just as he was for the harassment I went through a week ago.

Fulks isn't content to merely comment on the article on the Oregonian's site (it's the second comment here) -- he sent it as an email to the president of Linfield College, as if he expected it would get Diamond reprimanded or fired.

From: Gordon Fulks <gordonfulks@hotmail.com>
Date: August 2, 2014 at 3:49:57 PM EDT
To: "global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com" <global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Jim Diamond, Thomas Hellie
Subject: Linfield College again displays ignorance

Hello everyone,

Linfield College Chemist Jim Diamond is promoting solutions to a 'problem' that he will not discuss and does not understand:

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/08/what_you_can_do_to_cut_your_ca.html

I wrote this response on Oregonlive:

Dear Dr. Diamond,

You and I have tried to discuss the science of climate on a number of occasions, but you refuse all substantive discussions.  I have challenged you to debate the issue in front of your students at Linfield College, but you refuse.

After Linfield College allowed the notorious meteorologist Dr. Michael Mann to speak, I asked Linfield President Thomas Hellie to allow someone to provide the skeptical perspective, but he would not even return my telephone calls.

I suggested to you that you invite Professor of Physics Will Happer from Princeton University.  Will is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.  When he gave a lecture to Nobel Laureates at UC Berkeley, they listened attentively and asked good questions.  When he gave the same lecture at a nearby junior college, the audience was disruptive.  Is the intellectual tradition at Linfield College still lower than a junior college?

Neither you nor apparently any of your faculty have ANY background in climate science, yet you profess complete devotion to "the cause."  Isn't that a bit outrageous for someone who considers himself a scientist?  You are supposed to be able to discuss the logic and evidence on whatever topic you profess competence.  Can you?

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA

cc: Dr. Thomas Hellie, President of Linfield College

By now Fulks schtick is clear: pretend he's sciencer-than-thou, accuse another scientist of "ignorance," and whine that no one pays him any attention -- as if a president of a college would give more than a nanopicosecond about his emails and phone calls.

Fulks always cc's his buddies -- global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com -- who in this case quickly piled on with their usual piffle:

From: Ken Schlichte <kensforsoil@comcast.net>
Date: August 1, 2014 at 8:03:17 PM EDT
To: 'global-warming-realists' <global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Jim Diamond
Subject: What You Can Do To Cut Your Carbon Footprint:  Guest Opinion    -    The Oregonian

What You Can Do To Cut Your Carbon Footprint:  Guest Opinion

What You Can Do To Cut Your Carbon Footprint:  Guest Opinion, by Dr. James J. Diamond, professor of chemistry at Linfield College, and in the August 1 The Oregonian link at http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/08/what_you_can_do_to_cut_your_ca.html, is copied at the bottom of the page and concludes with the following statements,

"Worldwide emissions now are 165 percent of those in 1988. If 1988 was the time to act to reduce CO2 emissions, what should we be doing now? It is up to us to act together to reduce our reliance on burning carbon."

Dr. Diamond states above that worldwide CO2 emissions are now 165 percent of those in 1988 and that it is up to us to act together to reduce our reliance on burning carbon, but he will be relieved to learn that the NOAA National Climatic Data Center Climate at a Glance site at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/ reports the official Oregon climate data indicating that:

·         Annual temperatures in Oregon's Climate Division 2 (The Willamette Valley) have trended downward at a rate of 0.3 degrees F per decade since 1988.

·         Annual temperatures in Oregon's Climate Division 2 (The Willamette Valley) have trended downward at a rate of 0.5 degrees F per decade over the last 20 years.

·         Annual temperatures in Oregon's Climate Division 2 (The Willamette Valley) have trended downward at a rate of 1.4 degrees F per decade over the last 10 years.

Annual temperatures in Oregon's Climate Division 2 (The Willamette Valley) have trended downward at increasing downward rates since 1988, as indicated by the official NCDC data above, even while our worldwide CO2 emissions have continued to increase to 165 percent of those in 1988.

and

From: jim karlock <jjkarlock@gmail.com>
Date: August 1, 2014 at 8:32:39 PM EDT
To: Jim Diamond
Cc: gwr <Global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com>
Subject: A question

Jim,
I saw you article in the Oregonian and have two questions:

1. Why do you believe that man?s CO2 is causing dangerous global warming?

2. What is the actual proof that man's CO2 is causing dangerous global warming?

Keep in mind that:

* Past warming periods such as the Minoen, Roman and Medieval were as warm or warmer than the present time.
* The ice core data used by Al Gore actually show CO2 following, not leading temperature.
* The historical temperature chart used by AL Gore showing a sudden recent increase in temperature is simply wrong and has been dropped from the latest IPCC report.
* Man emits around 5% of the annual CO2 emission, while natural sources emit about 95%.
* Water vapor causes more greenhouse effect than CO2.
* The rate of recent warming is within historical norms. (The late 1800s and early 1900s warming rates are statistically indistinguishable form the current according to CRU head Phil Jones in his BBC interview).
* Glaciers retreated faster in the 1930s (before most of man's CO2 emission) than recently.
* Climate warming slowed (or quit) 15 years ago (depending on data source and criteria) and the IPCC climate models did not predict this pause.
* Coincidence does not prove causation.
* Many, if not all, claimed extreme weather is actually not extreme when looking back a few hundred years, let alone compared to earlier times where no good records exist.

Thank You
Jim Karlock

Karlock -- who on the Oregonian's boards seems to go by both his real name and "Logical Thinker" -- has trailed me on comment boards for years, always asking if "man's CO2 is causing dangerous global warming." Of course, a thoughtful reply never works -- he just asks over and over, because apparently he thinks it's a killer question -- or, at least, the only trick he has. So anymore I ask him to please define the word "dangerous," because it's not a scientific term but one of human values, but never replies to that, not even once, I think.

So it seems now you can't even write a simple op-ed in the Oregonian about climate change without them coming after you. You can't suggest how to lower your carbon footprint. Apparently you can't even claim that climate change is anthropogenic. With the science getting ever stronger, the harassment gets ever nastier.

Added 4:43 pm PDT: And it continues:

> From: rogerwcohen@comcast.net
> Date: August 2, 2014 at 6:47:52 PM EDT
> To: Gordon Fulks <gordonfulks@hotmail.com>
> Cc: global-warming-realists@googlegroups.com, Jim Diamond, Thomas Hellie
> Subject: Re: [GWR] Linfield College again displays ignorance
>
>  Frankly most chemists know very little about the processes that lead to climate and climate change, and Diamond is a perfect example of one ignorant of the science.   Why chemists and the ACS should feel the need to chime in on something they know so little about might be considered a mystery, unless they merely seek to cash in on the torrent of funding supporting continued alarmism.   In any event this piece is simply a silly embarrassment to chemists, and to Linfield College, whatever that is.
>

Whitehouse's Pwn

This reply by Sheldon Whitehouse is delightfully accurate and directly to the point. It should be running on every airport television in America (if something has to; I'd prefer they tear them all down).

What Would You Have Predicted in 1970?

Suppose it is 1970.

You think the work of a few scientists that warns about manmade-CO2-induced warming is ridiculous.

What is your prediction  Earth's global average surface temperature in 2014, and why?

Gee Whiz, Cool and Far Out on Enceladus

Sometimes the "gee whiz" of science gets lost, especially in the debate over climate change. Which is a shame, because it's a big reason why people go into science.... But lots of things in science are just...cool... and ...far out.... Like this remarkable photograph - geysers of water vapor and ice particles on the Saturnian, icy ["cool"] moon Enceladus ["far out"]. Scientists now know of 101 of them.

I haven't been able to find their height, but from the curvature of the moon's horizon (it's radius is 252 km), I'd guess a couple of tens of kilometers, at least.

Here's a surface map of them, if you're planning on landing there anytime soon:

Joe D’Aleo's Two-faced Use of Data

Joseph D'Aleo is hereby cited for violating Rule #1: If you don't trust the temperature data, you can't use it to deduce something like a "pause."

On a post today on WUWT, titled "Should you trust NOAA claims about May and June records?" D'Aleo wrote:

NOAA and NASA (which uses data gathered by NOAA climate center in Asheville) has been commissioned to participate in special climate assessments to support the idealogical and political agenda of the government....

The National Climate Data Center and NASA climate group also control the data that is used to verify these models which is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. At the very least, their decisions and adjustments may be because they really believe in their models and work to find the warming they show – a form of confirmation bias.

Yet just a few weeks ago these data were good enough for D'Aleo to conclude:

Global warming has ceased for 12 to 20 years (depending on the data and region). As the Atlantic cools and all these three factors synchronize, look for temperatures to accelerate down.

That's a clear rule violation. So was this from February, where he used the USA48 data to write, "For 19 going on 20 years, global warming has stopped." So was this: "For example, global temperatures stopped warming close to 17 years ago and have cooled since 2002." Or this: "Models suggest atmosphere should warm 20% faster than surface but surface warming was 33% faster during the time satellites and surface observations used."

D'Aleo clearly accepts the data when (he thinks) it shows cooling, and rejects it when it shows warming.

D'Aleo's WUWT post also had a violation of another Rule, when he wrote:

The satellite data from RSS and UAH only available since 1979 also shows no warming for over a decade (two in the RSS data)

which is a clear violation of Rule #2: If you're going to cherry pick your data set (RSS), and your starting year, to show a "pause," you have to acknowledge the "anti-pause" that happened from 1998 to 2008, where the "18-year" trend was greater than the canonical 0.2 C/decade.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

And I'm adding a third Rule: Trends over a decade, or two, are conclusions about noise. But most of us are studying climate.

Joseph D'Aleo is guilty of violating all three rules. His penance? A week reading RealClimate from their earliest to latest post. No skipping any, either.

Niño Index Takes a Tumble

The chance of an El Niño look dead -- the Niño 3.4 Index is now actully negative. Last week I heard some scientists say each El Niño has its own characteristics and it's possible for one to still appear this year, though the cold phases of the PDO and IPO makes one less likely. But it's not looking good:

Obama Going to UN Climate Summit in September

President Obama says he's going to attend the UN climate summit in New York City this September 23rd. That's good in its own right

The Secretary-General has asked world leaders to come to the Summit to announce bold actions that they will be taking in their countries, especially in several high-impact areas, such as climate finance; energy efficiency; renewable energy; adaptation; disaster risk reduction and resilience; forests; agriculture; transportation; short-lived climate pollutants; and cities. There will also be announcements from a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives—initiatives that engage coalitions of governments, businesses and civil society organizations–that have high potential to catalyze ambitious action in these same areas.

and also because it might pressure other world leaders to attend and make announcements of mitigation strategies and projects, as Andrew Freedman writes at Mashable:

Obama's announcement may put pressure on other world leaders to participate, especially Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country is the top greenhouse gas emitter in the world, as well as the leaders of India and Brazil, two other key developing nations whose emissions are increasing.

It's kind of a shame that I feel surprised (and, not least, a bit proud) that the President of the United States finally takes the climate issue seriously enough to participate in a global meeting.