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Gordon Fulks responds to Bozos Steve Milloy March 30, 2014 Gordon Fulks is one of my friends who is an astrophysicist. We aren’t like beer drinking friends, we are friends because we share an interest in promoting honest climate science. Bet you didn’t know I could spell astrophysicist, but I know a few. Keeps my humble since I can’t do higher math worth a hoot. So Gordon lives on the left coast and fights with the warming fanatics with elan and panache. Can I give you a taste of his brain output. Steve Milloy, a recognized leader in the fight against junk science with more than 20 years of experience. He is credited with popularizing the term “junk science.” He is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com, and an environmental and public health consultant. From the newspaper called the Oregonian
Gordon Fulks Hello Everyone, Nothing is more predictable than The Oregonian printing letters to the editor attacking me a few days after I write another Op-Ed. I must sell a lot of newspapers! http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/03/climate_trends_dont_back_u p_al.html
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This time a 64-year-old physician* attacks me for not being a climatologist, using a medical analogy, likening me to a podiatrist trying to do heart surgery. This is how I answered him: http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2014/03/letters_abortion_funding_clima.html Dear Dr. Bachhuber, Thanks for your political opinions. As a physician you should be able to understand the basic climate issues. A lot of physicians do. People with many different backgrounds work in this field, not just climatologists. The most prominent one is the Great Global Warming Guru Dr. James Hansen who recently retired from NASA/GISS. He is an astrophysicist like I am and comes from the astrophysics group at the University of Iowa. I’m from the competing group at the University of Chicago. The other prominent climate alarmist is Professor Michael Mann at Penn State. He has degrees in geology and physics, studies tree rings, and calls himself a professor of meteorology. None of this is particularly unusual in science, although I agree it would be in medicine. Where we do get into the inappropriate is when biologists, ecologists, and yes physicians claim expertise in physical processes in the atmosphere when they likely have none at all. Such is apparently the case with Warren Aney (above). He is prescribing treatments for planet earth without any apparent knowledge of their effectiveness or even if the planet is suffering from Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by man’s burning of fossil fuels. And he is not just prescribing low-cost sugar pills but vastly expensive treatments with no efficacy. Such is the difficulty with ignorance. In your field, the ignorant are prevented from practicing by licensing laws. The same holds true in many other professions from the law to engineering. Unfortunately in science too many like you claim enough expertise to advise the public when you should not be doing so. To be sure, some physicians long ago figured out the Global Warming nonsense. It does not take a PhD in Physics. Perhaps the most famous is Michael Crichton, MD. As a writer of science fiction, he specialized in stories that minimized the fiction and maximized the facts. You should read his famous lecture to students at CalTech, “Aliens Cause Global Warming:” Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture by Michael Crichton
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Crichton’s final sentence is especially poignant to me: “Personally, I don’t worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.” And this is the central problem for science. How do we keep the ignorant from practicing when their knowledge is purely political and their zeal is pseudo-religious. Science involves logic and evidence only. That is why I present such arguments. The facts that the earth has not warmed in 16 years and that Pacific Northwest temperatures have been trending downward is highly relevant. They show that our planetary physicians do not understand the disease they propose to treat. Isn’t it time to find planetary physicians who can get things right? As to salmon doing well because of restoration efforts, a scientist would point out that would not be effective if the Columbia River water temperature had risen enough to cook the fish! As to ocean acidification, a scientist would know that any increase from our burning of fossil fuels is so minute as to be less than natural variations. As to the death of some farmed oysters in Washington State, most biologists realize that living organisms are multi-parameter creatures that can suffer from a variety of illnesses that may seem similar. Non-native species may not be suitable for the farming intended in local waters. As to the claimed rise in deep ocean temperature, you obviously need to be a scientist to be a little skeptical of all you have been told. Convenient answers to inconvenient problems should trigger a lot of questions. Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics) Corbett, Oregon USA gordonfulks@hotmail.com
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