Professor Stephen Schneider, leader of the Stanford delegation to COP 15 and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with the IPCC, was yesterday verbally assaulted by an Irish documentary filmmaker at the UN event in Copenhagen. During a 30-minute press conference meant to roll out Schneider’s new book, “Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth’s Climate,” the first questioner, who was clearly being filmed by a cameraman next to him, proceeded to berate Schneider regarding the recent Climategate scandal. Various news sources covered the incident, including the Huffington Post, yet all have failed to accurately describe what occurred and who the assailant was.
The culprit is one Phelim McAleer, a little-known Irish filmmaker who recently completed “Not Evil, Just Wrong” a feature-length documentary attacking the environmental movement. Judging from the man’s tremendously disrespectful behavior, one could easily distinguish that he views environmentalists with disdain, contrary to what his restrained film title might suggest. Refusing to let any other attendants ask questions, he proceeded to yell at Schneider and accuse him of being a fraud, repeatedly interrupting him even though the climatologist was making an effort to answer his queries. Though it was reported elsewhere that Schneider “repeatedly answered that he did not agree with the deletion of data,” he in fact emphasized that he regularly deletes data if it proves to be incorrect, and did not feel he could make a judgment on the Phil Jones issue without knowing more about exactly what was deleted. With McAleer apparently intent on pursuing his harassment of Schneider, a security guard escorted the irate Irishman away from the professor upon completion of the Q&A.
Schneider is not just one of the world’s most renowned climatologists, a MacArthur genius, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a truly dedicated educator. (It is largely thanks to him that Stanford was able to send over 50 representatives to the COP.) As he often says, “all good scientists are skeptics”, and he genuinely subscribes to this aphorism: once a proponent of “global cooling” in the 1980′s, he only advocated global warming when he came across evidence that suggested he was previously wrong. The intellectual honesty required to change one’s beliefs if they are proven incorrect is very rare, and, while one may disagree with the policy conclusions Schneider has come to, he is deserving of far more respect than he was given here in Copenhagen.
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Jesus Christ, this is a truly disgusting propaganda, starting from the way how it treats McAleer and Schneider.
Schneider’s value would be generally known to be zero if there were no global cooling and global warming scares. He promoted the first one thirty years ago and switched to the latter one recently. Just because many people got brainwashed by these moralistic and hormonal threats, low quality science of Schneider’s type became visible.
One surely doesn’t have to worship average, politicized scientists of Schneider’s type in the U.S. yet.
On the other hand, Phelim McAleer was very cool and respectful. And his and his wife’s movie is pretty good and successful. I don’t claim he is a god of the film industry but treating him in this way – as a “little-known” “disrespectful” “culprit” – is just terrible.
This particular blog claims to represent conservatives in the U.S. – is that meant seriously? It’s the same kind of uncritical far-left fanaticism that one can read on DailyKos or HuffingtonPost – and in the second case, it may be even worse. Environmentalism represents the same kind of threat to democracy and freedom and Nazism did 75 years ago.
They can stop the scare tactics. There is no known “perfect” temperature for the Earth. Cycles are normal. CO2 is plant food. Past CO2 levels were 20 times higher than now. There is no tipping point.
The NY Times has change from global warming to global cooling four times in their history. Here is their timeline; they have changed their position four times so when are the going to go back to cooling?.
“MacMillian Reports Signs of New Ice Age” Sept. 18, 1924
“Americas in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” March 27, 1933
“Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing; A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable” May 21, 1975
“Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons to Relax About New Warming” December 27, 2005
Seriously? A reporter asking questions at a press conference is harassment?
In the real world, harassment is when minions followed by armed UN goons stop a reporter from filming or asking questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtzMBfDrpI
Let me guess, Philippe de Koning is the pseudonym of the thug professor’s assistant who called the security guards in the first place. News flash, at press conferences hard questions get asked. It isn’t harassment – it is responsible journalism. Einstein (and most scientists of his time) used to engage in bets with their critics – today the global warming theorists try to silence critics. It can almost be said that people like Schneider are post-scientists, not real scientists.
Looks to me like the journalist was the one who was harassed here. Schneider (the genius) was merely asked a legitimate question or two. As he says, “all good scientists are skeptics” – that sentiment certainly does not come through in the article above.
I don’t know if Schneider is to blame, but I find the behaviour of the COP/UN handlers/security guards towards McAleer very disturbing.
What a load of bollocks. Hitler would have been proud of a) the way the reporter was intimidated by an ARMED guard and b) the way the truth was distorted. And we are supposed to trust these clowns?
Since when is asking an inconvenient question a “verbal assault”? The only “assault” that occurred was when Schneider’s assistant called in an armed UN thug to shut down McAleer and his cameraman. They had press credentials, so can I take this article to mean that Stanford University endorses the forcible removal of journalists from press gatherings, just for asking uncomfortable questions?
Wow, I always thought Stanford was an institution of higher learning. Looks like I was wrong.
This is interesting reporting by Philippe and fascinating, heated (pun intended) comments by responders.
It underlines the cynicism on all sides, and that no one can be assured that any “science” is objective and real, or that any country’s politics and politicians are pure.
The ramification of this lack of trust deservedly taints absolutely every endeavor.
Still, I hesitate when I read that climategate is analogous to Nazism. It seems to me that this emotional extremism lacks credibility and undermines the intellectual path of this particular debate.
This further affair after the ClimateGate clearly calls for Open Climate Scinece + Open Climate legislation – no exclusive license only for UN PCC – because this closed-shop status will cause further significant damages in missleading our civilization.
For example today the main mistake is already clear:
that CO2 is not causing the warming, but the warming (due to increased Sun spots) are causing the warning, which then causing higher overall CO2 production (approx. nature 95%, human 5%).
Other main factor is lack of water vapor in the atmosphere – due to deficit of the rainwater catchment on the landscape (this is a Human-made factor – bad water managemt rushing rainwater immediately to the rivers, increase of urban concrete surfaces, etc.)
And in what way was the precious professor Schnieder harassed? (Poor baby.) I appears to me that he was saved, through the brutish practices of his UN protectors, from having to answer a simple question pertaining to the fraudulent activities of his “peers” at the CRU.
Through his reticence it is logical to conclude that he is in fact complicit in that fraud. His defense of the CRU conspirators can only taint him with the stench of their scandal.
Anyone who considers himself to be a scientist needs to re-evaluate their relationship with these people. If your results are founded on lies why the hell should YOU be granted any credibility?
How much real science could have been accomplished with the billions of dollars that have been poured down the AGW rat hole? Has shame been totally bred out of the scientific class?
If professor Schneider is the man and scientist he claims to be he should call a press conference and truthfully answer the questions he was asked in the video and defend his answers. If he can’t do that then maybe it’s time for him to deploy his golden parachute.
One pissed off taxpayer
Harrassment? Calling a reporter, politely asking a question regarding a major newsworthy story is harassment?
Seems i should put Stanford on the list of schools to avoid due to a lack of critical thinking being taught there.
Temperature leads CO2; there is no problem to solve. Except for the fact that some want the GOVERNMENT to rule every aspect of our lives.
Read the Constitution or leave the country.
Red
This propaganda piece by Philippe de Koning would normally go unquestioned if not for the viral videos that have already circulated around the world showing a calm reporter asking an indignant and nasty Professor Stephen Schneider a valid question about Global Warming.
Phillippe, luckily we have seen the videos already which confirm you are unethical and a LIAR.
Maybe someone should find and post an unadulterated link of the video before making the judgment call. There doesn’t seem to be one that hasn’t been edited to make a point. Philippe de Koning was there and we weren’t – since nobody seems to know in full what transpired, I don’t think any of the above comments hold much water.
Schneider “in fact emphasized that he regularly deletes data if it proves to be incorrect.”
Let’s think about that for a moment. What might Schneider offer as proof that the data are incorrect? Would he, for instance, discover an error in the equipment used to generate the data?
No. He’s talking about determining that the data are incorrect by looking at the data — clearly an ad hoc determination. The climate scientists at Hadley did the same thing. If the data didn’t show warming, they were incorrect, and therefore had to be adjusted upwards. Trenberth says that’s precisely the approach they took.
Since you’re at Stanford, the home of at least one decent scholar, you might familiarize yourself with Rene Girard’s anthropology of scapegoating and its hyperbolic variants under the rule of a “secularized” Christianity (with its divinization of the victim) gone mad. Don’t pretend you’re in a scientific fight when it’s clearly rather more, at this point, a religious one.
I would like to personally thank all journalists with the courage to ask questions and continue to expose the illegitimate climate change industry. It is shameful how the scientific community has failed…. due to greed, ego, and political gain.
Unfortunately for Stanford and the Cultists, the press conference question was caught on video:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/5851-video-un-security-stops-questioning-of-scientist-about-climategate
The momentum is with us now. We must organize and press the issue.
Schneider and his “handlers” were not having any of that much praised “free and honest, open scientific debate.” Much easier to simply have armed goons detain a journalist who actually asked a question.
Schneider, Al Gore, and their minions, with their “let them eat cake” attitudes are eerily similar to previous elites. The communist elites enjoyed the same privileges and mouthed the same type of platitudes. Where are they now?
No Consensus–No Warming (NOC-NOW)–Stop the Scam–Halt the IPCC
We have a quickly growing Yahoo Group (CO2 is Plant Food), and a petition (NOC-NOW) that simply spells out a Declaration of Climate Independence.
We also have a Facebook Group: No Consensus–No Warming (NOC-NOW)–Stop the AGW Scam.
The petition will be provided to the US Congress, the White House, the UN, the IPCC, the EU Commission, and other representative bodies involved in “Climate Change” policy deliberations.
We will be heard.
Please join the group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/co2isplantfood
And sign the petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/NOC_NOW/
Join Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=191580771509
We can stop this scam, together.
Kent Clizbe
NOC-NOW
Stop the Scam—Halt the IPCC
No Consensus—No Warming
“Schneider is not just one of the world’s most renowned climatologists, a MacArthur genius, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a truly dedicated educator.”
The Professor is NOT a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize … no matter what he claims on his book jacket. The award was made to the IPCC as an institution, not to each of it panel members as individuals. Another instance of shading the truth for personal and commercial advantage? Check the announcement: 1/2 to Al Gore and 1/2 to the IPCC as an institution — no individuals mentioned: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/index.html
Is this the same far left crowd that lionizes Michael Moore while openly condemning Phelim McAleer for the very same activities? Hypocrisy seems to be the next world class attitude.
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