How denialists misrepresented an IPCC scientist


by Newswire    
8:30 am - February 11th 2010

Tweet       Share on Tumblr

Sir John Houghton, who played a critical role in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), was roundly condemned after it emerged that he was an apparent advocate of scary propaganda to frighten the public into believing the dangers of global warming.

“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen,” Sir John was supposed to have said in 1994.

The quotation has since become the iconic smoking gun of the climate sceptic community. The words are the very first to appear in the “manual” of climate denialism written by the journalist and arch-sceptic Christopher Booker.

They get more than a million hits on Google, and are wheeled out almost every time a climate sceptic has a point to make, the last occasion being in a Sunday newspaper article last weekend written by the social anthropologist and climate sceptic Benny Peiser.

The trouble is, Sir John Houghton has never said what he is quoted as saying. The words do not appear in his own book on global warming, first published in 1994, despite statements to the contrary.

In fact, he denies emphatically that he ever said it at any time, either verbally or in writing.

…more at The Independent

  Tweet   Share on Tumblr   submit to reddit  


About the author

· Other posts by


Story Filed Under: News


Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Reader comments


First its global warming, now its climate change, what will we call it next, weather?

A genuine sceptic would check their sources before using a quote. Instead Peiser et al credulously recycle some guff they read on the Internet. These people don’t know the meaning of the term sceptic.

It would be good if you would do something about the off-topic denialist spam.

Sorry, I didnt realise the comments box was there to provide a summary of the article and nothing more, wont happen again.

Dont be scared. I’ll try not to think differently from you in future.

Houghton’s alleged remark never influenced me. But these did.

http://www.peopleforwesternheritage.com/PFWHRMAdditionalQuotes.htm

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
- Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
- UN Commission on Global Governance report

“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced – a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
- UN Agenda 21
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
- Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
- Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

5. So Much For Subtlety

There is no evidence anyone, much less every skeptic, has invented a thing.

On the other hand Rush Limbaugh was denied the right to buy a football team because a known and named liberal invented a series of quotes by him about race that he never made.

I am sure all the usual posters will be along to condemn the injustice to Limbaugh any second now.

Anthropological Global Warming is bollox (my considered scientific opinion) and the truth is coming out everywhere – with a groundswell that has become unstoppable.

So-called “green activists” are going to feel very foolish when the hoodwinking fraudulent Carbon hoax is fully exposed. Maybe they will then get back to real environmental concerns like pollution of rivers, land and, yes, the air.

@6

Your scientific opinion. What about your scientific qualification to call your opinion scientific? Grade 3 GCSE science doesn’t count, though it would make you more qualified than most climate sceptics.

8. Randy Bullock

1. Dave…you are right on the ball. The term changed at least in the US during a period of colder than usual winter temperatures in NYC at a time when Al Gore was having a “Global Warming” conference. The irony was not lost on even the most leftist of our news organizations.

Shouldn’t the subject matter be-jeez, let the IPCC actually write a truthful report and lets go from there? This report should be totally rewritten. Che Guevara wouldn’t trust this report.

9. Randy Bullock

6. Russell

Right on brother……We have REAL common sense concerns and we in the states have dealt with hoaxes from acid rain and GLOBAL COOLING where the solution offered was to drop coal ash on the poles to help melt them.

We have industrial plants that spew filth into the air and waterways, local utilities that are permitted to “direct discharge” raw sewage into rivers and lakes and we spend so much energy on what appears to be nonsense.

If we are so wrong and the alarmists are so right how come they can’t put out a report with truthful data? If they were so right there would not be a need for “fudge factors” and such nonsensical exaggerations.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Lawrence Mills

    How climate denialists made up a quote by scientist http://bit.ly/bBo9sv (via @libcon)

  2. Quietzapple

    RT @LawrenceMills: How climate denialists made up a quote by scientist http://bit.ly/bBo9sv (via @libcon)

  3. Ryan Bestford

    RT @libcon: How climate denialists made up a quote by scientist http://bit.ly/bBo9sv

  4. Liberal Conspiracy

    How climate denialists made up a quote by scientist http://bit.ly/bBo9sv

  5. Bella

    RT @LawrenceMills: How climate denialists made up a quote by scientist http://bit.ly/bBo9sv (via @libcon)





Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.