The role of Fred Seitz
From my files:
On October 11, 2007, I received a letter from Frederick Seitz, signed as
“Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U. S. A.
President Emeritus, Rockefeller University.”
Seitz (Fred, not Russell) writes that “Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful”.
The letter from Seitz has a return address of
GWPP
Box 1925
La Jolla, California 92038
The GWPP stands for Global Warming Petition Project.
Fred Seitz urged me to read an article by Arthur Robinson, Noah Robinson, and Willis Soon, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (vol. 12, pp. 79-90, 2007), entitled Environmental Effect of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. The institutional affiliation of the three authors is listed as the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, in Cave Junction, Oregon. The article has the same format and font as the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS took the unusual step of specifically denying any connection with the article. Here is the Robinson, Robinson and Soon article.
In his letter, Fred Seitz urges me to sign and return a petition rejecting the Kyoto protocol of 1997. The petition asks for my name and my academic degree (BS/MS/Ph.D).
The number of people who signed and returned the petition were later touted as people who denied global warming in the Global warming Petition Project.
Posts
59 comments:
At least we can understand what the appalling Fred was saying which is more than you say for his prolix Cousin
When mentioning Oreskes, Russell will comment, just as night follows day.
Love the OISM website. You can buy "ministry in song", acquire Nuclear War Survival Skills, get a homeshcooling kit that includes 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and 1913 Noah Webster's Dictionary, learn about multiculturalism, and more!
Did you know "this new word, "multiculturalism."...has been brought to us by the dead hand of government and by political agitators who seek to use American schools as mechanisms for social engineering rather than institutions of learning."
I seem to have struck a nerve in that Greg has elected to remind us once more what a 'cutaway' is. The tobacco-free letter he received clearly testifies to the dangers of delegating perceived authority, but as as Oreskes neglects to mention that Fred Seitz turned 96 on July 4, 2007,
may I ask if Greg has ever asked himselfself who wrote it, and when ?
I ask because I'm still wondering how the cataract stricken nonagenarian was able to rea the thousand-page NIPCC report, and write a lauditory introduction to it on his nursing home deathbed, when Singer showed up with the volume the day before he died ?
Shades of Roger Revelle !
Stanford's Robert Proctor is likely the foremost historian on the tobacco industry, see Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, a huge, but terrific book.
pp.445-448 is "Rockefeller's Seitz and Lederberg."
The idea was taking RJ Reynolds' money to do "distraction research", all fine stuff, but always "any cause of disease except tobacco."
The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library of course is a rock-solid source.
This search yields 362 documents.
Of course, if anyone thinks tobacco companies give money out of benevolence, I can offer a good selection of used bridges at good prices.
I think there are several issues here.
1) The Tobacco money for non-tobacco issues as PR move, and laundering of reputations via the reputation of the respected scientists being supported for non-tobacco research. Here the minimal bad thing would be to knowingly be taking dirty money to pursue one's particular research aims. For an institution like The Rockefeller, never without funds, it is perhaps more questionable than an everyday bunny doing the same deal with the devil. The reason being one is specifically loaning the reputation of ones institution to the givers of the "free" money. Certainly big oil likes to tout their environmental concerns in advertisements galore. Perhaps there is an analogy.
2) An association later in life with the climate agitation crowd, perhaps facilitated through earlier contacts, or one's name being in certain rolodexes, or various emeritus type behaviors all rolled into one.
3) I do not wish to put words into Russell's mouth, but there appears to be a sort of libertarian idea about smoking that also pervades arguments anti Oreskes.
4) Question: is the idea that Oreskes is purportedly bad on this one facet of the smoking issue, and that is a categorical problem for her entire oeuvre?
The first round of that Oregon petition drive, with the phony PNAS paper, appeared in 1998, when Frederick Seitz was in his mid-eighties and personally very active in publicly attempting to sow doubt about climate science (e.g., his 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed accusing the IPCC collectively and Ben Santer personally of corruption and deception in the SAR).
It's worth reading Myanna Lahsen's ethnography of denial, "Experiences of Modernity in the Greenhouse," which draws upon interviews Lahsen conducted with Frederick Seitz and William Nierenberg to understand what made them such powerful opponents of climate science.
In case you also have normal people as readers, you may need to provide more interpretation. For example, that a medical journal is not a good place for a climate paper. That the editor likely does not know the experts to ask to check the validity of the manuscript. That this is a typical strategy of the mitigation sceptics to get their flawed manuscripts published.
Do I remember correctly that "Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons" sounds like a scientific journal, but is actually a libertarian propaganda tool with no scientific credibility whatsoever?
All links are broken.
Thanks for reminding us of the date of the Oregon petition, which I gather was ( irony safe zone alarm ) the brainchild of former Linus Pauling Institute President Arthur Robinson.
Who but a Libertarian would note the Oregon Institute was in large part founded on the $ 575,000 in serance pay Robinson recieved from Pauling's Institute .
PP , Oreskes also fails to note that in consequence of RJR-Nabisco's merger history, Rockefeller University and its late President recieved not just tobacco money, but funds from the sale of that deadly and highly addictive trans-fat delivery system, the Oreo Cookie.
Victor Venema
Do I remember correctly that "Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons" sounds like a scientific journal, but is actually a libertarian propaganda tool with no scientific credibility whatsoever?
Exactly so.
Pinko Punko:
"3) I do not wish to put words into Russell's mouth, but there appears to be a sort of libertarian idea about smoking that also pervades arguments anti Oreskes."
On that subject, Russell's reason appears to have been hijacked by his nicotine addiction.
Mal is living proof that entry level anti-tobacco advertising may habituate users to higher doses of authoritarian cant.
All that is necessary for prohibition to prosper is indifference to incremental losses of liberty.
Yes, yes, Russell, we know that's just the addiction talking.
You'll recall I told my story here last summer about escaping my own nicotine addiction more than 30 years ago -- long before "entry level anti-tobacco advertising" was a thing. I'm not receptive to self-deceiving arguments that enslavement by an addiction is somehow a liberty.
Nevertheless, as long as it neither cuts my throat nor picks my pocket, I support your freedom to deceive yourself, while I also enjoy the liberty of calling you out for a fool.
"White hierarchical individualistic males were motivated to resist claims of environmental and certain other risks, we conjectured, because the wide-spread acceptance of those claims would justify restrictions on markets, commerce, and industry—activities important (emotionally and psychically, as well as materially) to the status of white men with those outlooks." - Dan Kahan
There's a gender divide on nuclear power, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.
tobacco/nuclear power/land use/etc - it's all just a white male thing
Perhaps Mal should rid the world of folly by founding Americans United For Tobacco-Free Libraries,
Purging the nation's bookshelves of the works of such avatars of addiction as Twain, Eliot and Einstein would spare its youth the moral hazard of second hand tobaccothought.
As an ex-smoker, I'm an strong advocate for the freedom and liberty of all smokers to smoke anytime and anywhere they want, from within the confines of a Donovan chamber full of an explosive mixture of gasoline fumes. Smoking is among vilest of all intrusions on the rights of non-smokers to peaceably enjoy a simple walk outdoors without being assaulted by lungfuls of disgusting, foul air. Have you ever ridden in an elevator with a smoker after his smoking break outdoors, or even on an empty elevator after a smoker has been on it? It's absolute torture. I often encounter pockets of the vile stuff outdoors when there isn't even a smoker in sight. It persists and hangs in the air for many minutes after the blissfully selfish and uncaring offender has left the premises. It even makes a neighbors' dog wretch and sneeze when we encounter it on our walks. A friend's apartment was rendered uninhabitable when a smoker lived in the unit next door. Ask me how I really feel about it.
Taylor B
Strong is the force of hypocrisy in this one. We await report of the horrors he experiences from the emissions of that wretched dog, and how he manages to inhabit his pyrotoxin-belching car as it outcombusts a thousand cigar smokers.
Whatever must he think of candles, chestnuts roasting on a open fire, pan-blackened redfish incense in churches, asphalt paving , sweaty horses , and cheap perfume?
I clean up after the dog, which is a lot less revolting than breathing second-hand smoke. When you've donned a closed-loop apparatus to contain your disgusting habit, we might have a discussion.
Taylor B
What I am understanding from Russell's argument is that he is claiming a distinction between Seitz -tobacco and Seitz - climate. I think the other side is claiming that the difference there is more of an evolution.
PP:
I have always deplored the elision of science and advertising, but I question the historicity of Oreskes narrative . State of the art advertising best practices began shaping environmental consciousness raising campiagns a decade before the Climate Wars began, and from what I've observed ,those practices were enbraced with professional zeal by P-R operatives on both sides.
Those clamoring for behavoral change in the name of climate modeling today should recall what I publically told Steve Schneider three decades ago about a 'sophisticated one dimensional model we both called into question in print between 1884 and 1987: that I feared the 'neclear winter ' P-R campaign would go down as a bad joke played on strategic policy analysts at the expense of the credibility of climate modeling on the eve of the greenhouse debate.
That's why I wrote then that " Having known Sin at Hiroshima, science was bound to run into advertising sooner or later."
Far from proving cautionary, the transient success of Sagan & Ehrlick's apocryphal Apocalypse focused the attention of both sides of K-Street on the tactics attending its fame,'
But from telethons to science by press conference, all of those means were drawn from the existing arsenal of Madison Avenue. T ry as they may to reframe it, Oreskes & Conway's polemic is less about the history of science than advertising.
An example of the consequences of "state of the art advertising best practices" at work:
"The plaintiffs in the case alleged the companies didn't do enough to warn customers about the dangers of smoking, engaged in unscrupulous marketing and destroyed documents, according to Canadian broadcaster CBC.
"Quebec Superior Court Judge Brian Riordan ruled that all three of Canada's legal tobacco manufacturers -- Imperial Tobacco; Rothmans, Benson & Hedges; and JTI-MacDonald -- must pay $15 billion Canadian ($12 billion U.S.)."
There are obvious differences between the advertising campaigns of tobacco companies who lied and colluded to sell a deadly product to billions of addicted consumers, and the efforts of climate scientists to bring attention to policy choices that have significant public health and safety consequences, even if the scientists' positions contain debatable errors. Equating Sagan & Ehrlich or Oreskes & Conway to decades of tobacco companies' false advertising seems a bit disingenuous.
Russell apparently isn't aware that the TTAPS team had a second paper in 1991 which demolished Schneider and Thompson 1984. ST84 made a crucial mistake--their model had plume heights 1/3 of the accurate figure. Obviously, less soot got lofted to the stratosphere, thus "Nuclear Autumn." But those like RS who already had the answer they wanted apparently stopped reading the literature after getting ST84 to quote. The extent of damage from nuclear winter is still an open question. In any case, no one in their right mind thinks a nuclear war is a good idea.
BPL:
In any case, no one in their right mind thinks a nuclear war is a good idea.
This always seems to get forgotten by those forever rehashing the less important details of long-ago disputes.
Pinko Punko: "What I am understanding from Russell's argument is that he is claiming a distinction between Seitz -tobacco and Seitz - climate. I think the other side is claiming that the difference there is more of an evolution."
Heh. The DesmogBlog entry on the Oregon Petition has this unkind thing to say about the late F. Seitz:
"It’s interesting to note that Fred Seitz, the author of the cover letter, is also the former medical advisor to RJ Reynolds medical research program. A 1989 Philip Morris memo stated that Seitz was 'quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.'
"However, nine years later, it seems that he was 'sufficiently rational' to lead the charge on Robinson’s Oregon Petition. It also seems that Seitz was still sufficiently rational to sit as the Chair of Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project.
"Seitz passed away on March 2, 2008, after spending his declining years working with global warming skeptics such as Fred Singer."
ANonymous is being disingenous at best- the point is that Madison avenue and K Street have been mechandising doubt about product dangers since the days when refrigerators were filled with sulfur dioxide or ammonia.
Isn't BPL aware of the Scope and NAS reports on the subject or the dozens of studies that followed them- none of which predicted anything apporaching what Sagn termed his 'apocalyptic predictions. Denial is the word that best descibes the DIY review artile to which he refers.
The baseline and worst cases considered by TTAPS and the attendent biological consequences paper resulted in a millionfold reduction in sunlight, and arctic remperatures globally , from time-temperatuer curves encompassing from 10,800 to 22,000 degreee-days-- 'winters ' indeed, leading Sagan and Ehrlich to conclude "the extinction of Homo sapiens "
with Erhlich telling the world in a War of the World's style radio dramatization " We're getting reports of water freezing on the equator;people are dying of thirst in the tropics"
Relying on self-citation, the 1991 review by the same authors simply ignored the bulk of the critical studies , none of which indulged in the serial worst-case parametrization of TTAPS, and none of which reproduced its 'baseline' or worst case results.
For contemporary comments see Steve Schneider's 'Whatever happened to nuclear winter ? , in Climatic Change , my 2011 reply to Alan Robock in Nature
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7354/full/475037b.html
Russell: "Whatever must he think of candles, chestnuts roasting on a open fire, pan-blackened redfish incense in churches, asphalt paving , sweaty horses , and cheap perfume?"
AFAIK, unlike nicotine, none of those are used as insecticides.
I like the new reCAPTCHA, but it's making me hungry 8^D!
Are you related to Fred, Russell?
Russell: "ANonymous is being disingenous at best- the point is that Madison avenue and K Street have been mechandising doubt about product dangers since the days when refrigerators were filled with sulfur dioxide or ammonia."
If that's the entirety of your point, it's a pretty trivial one, and not very clear from your prior comment. I don't think it detracts much from Oreskes & Conway's overall assessment that the same people backed by considerable resources have colluded and used the same tactics to discredit climate science and obscure the health risks of smoking. There seemed to be an implicit criticism of "those clamoring for behavoral [sic] change in the name of climate modeling today" by comparing them with Sagan & Ehrlich and the advertising tactics of the tobacco industry and climate denialism. If that wasn't your intent, sorry, but please try to write more clearly so others can understand you. If that was your intent, it's hardly an apt comparison and easily rejected.
Re: "candles, chestnuts roasting on a open fire, pan-blackened redfish incense in churches, asphalt paving , sweaty horses , and cheap perfume" I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of occasions I've had to deal with all of those alleged offensive odors in the past year, and they're easily avoided. I can't walk across the street or conduct any business in the small metropolis where I live without being assaulted by the stench of inconsiderate smokers. I run a gauntlet, holding my breath, sometimes having to dodge into traffic to get around knots of pedestrians emitting clouds of foul odors that cling to clothing, hair, and skin. As far as automobiles, I'd have no problem with the banning of private vehicles and petroleum fueled internal combustion engines from our downtown, as well as smoking.
Taylor B
Cigarettes and their ilk are one of the few manufactured products that if you use as intended will affect your health for the worse.
The pont is the narative incoherence-- and gross anachronism , of eliding 1950's TV cigarette ads and 1990's climate denial while ignoring the intervening two decades of environmental advertising and Cold War peace movement P-R.
Enlisting culture wars combattants as cultural historians may be an invitation to historiographic disaster, but in political terms that's how the game is played .
Mal: Desmog's characterization:
"the former medical advisor to RJ Reynolds medical research program. "
Is dead wrong on both points .
Fred Seitz had no medical experience whatever . Hisclaim to fame was as the solid state physicist who wrote the 1938 classic The Modern Theory Of Solids
As a condition of Rockefeller accepting the RJR grant, he specifically vetoed the perfrormance of any medical research on tobacco. It is my understanding than lions share of the 5 mill a year went to the prion research that won the 1993 Nobel-- a truth whose inconvenience to Naomi's polemic may be reflected in the disconnect of emphasis between her book and the movie John's reviewing, which focuses instead on fire retardants - the unkindest cutaway of all.
RS: Denial is the word that best descibes the DIY review artile to which he refers.
BPL: What part of "ST84's plume heights were too short by a factor of 3" did you not understand?
BL
What part of cherypicking don't you understand : Natural history gives the lie Turco's wishful thinking about vertical transport - The empirical behavior of both forest fire and oilfield fire plumes at highr than TTAPS fuel loadings and thermal fluxes is that soot is observed to partition between boundary layer and lower tropopause , vitiating TTAPS stratospheric transport assumptions-- something you will never learn if you restrict your reading to to the original authors instead of consulting the intergovernmetal studies they so conspicuously fail to cite .
If you want some feeling for how their stonewalling was recieved , try Elliot Marshall's New Republic essay 'The Little Chill." The nuclear winter die hards are the holotypes of climate denial.
Russell:
"Desmog's characterization:
"the former medical advisor to RJ Reynolds medical research program. "
Is dead wrong on both points ."
In 2010, the NAS published a "Biographical Memoir" of F. Seitz by Charles P. Slichter. Slichter wrote (p. 28):
"He also joined a research advisory committee to help the R. J. Reynolds Company make medical grants to universities."
It appears that DesmogBlog's characterization was right on at least one point. To be scrupulously fair, however, Slichter's memoir says nothing about Seitz being a medical advisor.
Tell you what, Russell, I'll write a simulation myself and see what comes out.
Good luck one major analytical beef was that TTAPs never published the FORTRAN code for their I-D model, but the basic protocol seems to have been to tell the system's programmer to turn off the sun for forty days and forty nights to see if something bad happens.
As the subject was thermonuclear war, some thought this a fair use of the precautionary principle, but when you max out 38 papameters in a row to get an optical depth of e to the twentieth, some people begin to get suspicious- capisce?
BL:
thanks for the clarification , but seldom do good deeds go unpunished ; in the moral calculus of the film
" joined a research advisory committee to help the R. J. Reynolds Company make medical grants to universities."
gets you pilloried in a polemic cutaway to a half century old black and white cigarette ad full of actors in lab coats. instead of celebrated for setting up the funding for a successful run at the Nobel Prize in Medicine.''
If you think I'm making this stuff up, try this for comparison:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/25/nierenberg-vs-oreskes-round-2/
What Seitz & Nierenberg actually wrote about climate policy on watch in the 1960's scarcely resembles what they signed off on several decades later. They invoked the Energy Crisis as a clear and present national security concern overriding future climate, but finding them unwilling to pay attention to state of the art GCM's , I felt obliged to make a different case for decision making in the face of uncertanty myself in this [obviously dated } 1990 National Interest article--
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/a_war_against_fire/
I
What is lost in the fog is that Russell, despite his smoking habit, has not embraced the usual libertarian denial. That makes him quite unusual and worthy of considerable respect, since it cannot be easy. He also is, as he complains, identified with opinions he does not appear to support. Also, I love his humorous montages.
That said, I've always thought a rather high proportion of climate deniers are also cigarette smokers. It's an unintended consequence of an otherwise well-meaning and useful campaign to get toxins out of the public domain.
Another one is the almost universal habit of smokers to not put out their cigarettes, which I suspect is the cause of a good few unnecessary fires.
The resentment of people irritated at the impingement on their freedom is a difficult problem to address.
I'm a big fan of freedom, but I'm an even bigger fan of the future of the human race, and exploitation of hatred does not help.
We are all going to need to make some compromises, and I don't see exactly how we are going to attain those compromises in a society addicted to its privileges.
Hey, when the national policy is Mutually Assured Destruction, who's going to quibble about a little credible exaggeration of the effects of getting into that, eh?
Besides, there are better ways to nuke'em 'til they glow -- do it right, and people will pay for it.
Susan,
I agree almost entirely, except that Russell's insightful contributions are not lost in the fog for me, as I've tried to express previously, despite my strong disagreements on a couple of points (primarily, from a policy perspective, the significance of uncertainty in the climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling). Arguing whether the climate sensitivity is 1.5C or 5-6C is like arguing whether it's more dangerous for a child to play roulette with one bullet in the chamber or three. My revulsion with the vile smoking habit gets the better of me, but on that point I don't see a need to compromise, nor could I even if I wanted to. I don't think I should have to restrict my life to accommodate oblivious and inconsiderate tobacco smokers (and I'm not saying that Russell is either), although I'm often forced to. I've had far too many otherwise fine walks and other simple pleasures ruined by vile tobacco smoke, in addition to the loss of both parents and several close relatives to smoking related illnesses.
Taylor B
What though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;
Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile?
In vain with lavish kindness the gifts of God are strown;
The heathen Smoking Stasis my fine kreteks bemoan!<
Then we all fell ill as mariners will
On a diet that's rough and crude
And we shivered and shook as we dipped the cook
In a tub of his gluesome food
All nautical pride we cast aside
And we ran the vessel asho-o-ore
On the Gulliby Isles where the poopoo smiles
And the rubbily ubdugs roar
With apologies,
Taylor B
>If you think I'm making this stuff up, try this for comparison: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/25/nierenberg-vs-oreskes-round-2/
Beware your wishes.
Dr. Connolley "Oreskes said something wrong so I'm gonna trust NN's nitpicking" may be a correct typos on thy Wiki, but discounts every NN pulled from the auditing bag of tricks. His "I did not read anything anyway" looks like thin historiography to rely on if one is into that kind of thing.
Fred's role at Reynold's can't be explained away by the Nobel race.
If uncited material from Vanity Fair and the Ecosyn and Bushhitler websites and a preference for twisted ellipsis over direct quotation from primary contemporary sources, defines your taste in historiography, O&C may well be your cup of tea.
That there were some serendipitous results from RJR funded research is really not germane. The goal was, for the most part, to fund research that would point in any direction other than tobacco.
F. Seitz's role was to identify research projects that fit in with RJR's goals. Was he pulling a fast one on RJR and pointing them to research solely for altruistic purposes (the benefit of mankind), or was he pointing them to research that he hoped/believed might absolve tobacco of the various ills ascribed to cigarette use?
The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but there is a distinct and not so subtle difference in intent.
If our Stoatness is all Russell has to correct WN's and Fred's hagiographies, then we're rehearsing a ClimateBall episode that has been played five years ago:
> Nicolas is depending on our failure to keep the big picture in mind. From a science standpoint, GMI is an inexcusable, disgusting organization. It is the antithesis of what genuine and honest inquiry should be. William Nierenberg’s part in its founding is terrible, and it is simply not credible to pretend that he was not engaged in the same anti-regulatory shenanigans as his organization- no matter how much Nicolas would like us to believe otherwise. No matter what Nicolas says about Oreskes and Conway’s writing, keep that in mind. Listen to what William himself said in his own words.
https://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/william-nierenberg-merchant-of-doubt/
A narrative ain't incoherent because it elides things, BTW. It's usually the opposite. The problem would be that O&C's story fits too well.
Defending the George Marshall Institute is unwinnable. Bashing at O&C is a redhibitory counterattack.
Back to the first question I asked before John switched threads -
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2015/06/rabbit-run-goes-to-movies.html
Where's the beef?
The $575,000 Robinson used to start the Oregon Institute was not a severance package but a settlement in lieu of the $25 million which he had sought in a law suit after his dismissal from the Pauling Institute.
http://tinyurl.com/3hqkebq
John Puma
> Back to the first question I asked before John switched threads
Since when Russell has been elected King at Eli's?
Speaking of Robinson, here's a comment to TB's post:
he youtube video is Nierenberg talking to the 17th annual meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Who are they, you may be wondering? They are associated with OISM.
[...]
The institute is headed by Arthur B. Robinson, who received the Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. Robinson established OISM in 1980 after a disagreement with his mentor Linus Pauling.[1] Other listed faculty are biochemist Martin D. Kamen (died in 2002), Nobel prize-winning chemist R. Bruce Merrifield (died in 2006), Salk Institute biochemist Fred Westall, electrical engineer Carl Boehme, physician Jane Orient, chemist Noah E. Robinson, and veterinarian Zachary W. Robinson.[2]
The OISM circulated the Oregon Petition, a “Scientists’ Petition” on global warming, in collaboration with the late Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences. OISM founder Arthur Robinson is a global warming skeptic.”
They give the Petr Beckmann Award. From the DDP website,
“The Petr Beckmann award is given by DDP to individuals who demonstrate courage and achievement in defense of scientific truth and freedom. Marc Morano of http://www.climatedepot.com received the award in June of 2010.”
https://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/william-nierenberg-merchant-of-doubt/#comment-2476
What was the disagreement between Robinson and Pauling, again?
Does Russell dispute that Fred has worked for a project that gave Marc Morano the Petr Beckmann award?
never:
Re OISM, JPandS, DDP, et al: again, see Anti-Science Associations: Rand Paul, Jane Orient, Art Robinson, Willie Soon And Friends
Click on the graph to expand.
One nit there: Morano should be underlined as a winner of the Petr Beckmann Award, in honor of a guy who spent much of his life trying to disprove relativity.
Rand Paul was involved with AAPS for a decade or two.
Do recall that Frederick Seitz was SEPP (Singer)'s Chairman of the Board ... including for 2 years after his death, according to SEPP's IRS Form 990s.
Thanks, John.
Here's the first document that I get searching for "frederick seitz ad tv newspapers":
> Initiated a strategy to publicize and communicate the results of a Marshall Institute report that challenves the scientific basis of various environmental regulations. The report was written by world-renowned scientist Dr. Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus of Rockfeller [...]
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/document/page?tid=eau93e00&page=2
Would that be "beef" to you?
Russel,
It is clear you don't have much respect for O&C but it is not really clear to me how much of MoD you dispute. Do you have a post on this issue which lays out all your specific complaints?
Russel,
It is clear you don't have much respect for O&C but it is not really clear to me how much of MoD you dispute. Do you have a post on this issue which lays out all your specific complaints?
No beef NEA- the question was about tobacco ads - please look at the previous thread, which John switched by creating this one-
The subject was my assertion that changing subjects is the MoD MO.
> uncited material from Vanity Fair and the Ecosyn and Bushhitler websites ...
> twisted ellipsis [rather than] direct quotation from primary contemporary sources
Russell, you're too clever when you write about this.
This deserves the John Mashey treatment, side by side, soberly, sorrow not snark.
I recall reading your comments, I recall looking into some of them a bit and deciding you're right and there are some real problems there deserving correction. And I couldn't reconstruct or find that stuff now. Please, do the tedious: organize it.
This sort of thing isn't unusual. There's always one more error.
After publication, the Mashey treatment is needed to make clear what's fixable.
Nitpicking, in my view, is a primary social grace we primates should respect.
But that requires admitting we're lousy.
Lettuce imagine that 2nd hand cigarette smoke were health-neutral. It would remain an obnoxious public habit because it stinks and its stink adheres to the hair, skin, and clothes of not-only-nearby people like glue. What if someone derived joy from misting restaurants, stores, churches, and bars with eau de skunk mixed with Elmer's glue? Ah, personal liberty. But who would defend it with the same sad mix of Epicurus and Spengler as the people who defend smoking?
> the question was about tobacco ad
Was it?
Here's the one I recall:
Woud you care to treat us to an example of Fred Seitz trying to propagandize the public directly ?
I think that the evidence I provided satisfies that question.
***
You have failed to respond to the only question I asked you, BTW.
Neverendingaudit:
Talk about cutaways! Heres what ir responded to and you have twice ignored - the first full para in John's previous post reads [emphasis added ] :
The movie starts off with Stanton Glantz, professor and tobacco-control activist, speaking about the efforts of the tobacco companies to deny the findings of medical science, that smoking causes cancer. The tobacco companies fought back with a PR campaign. They did not bother to engage with the scientific community, because that would have been hopeless. Instead, the tobacco companies aimed to propagandize the public directly, bypassing the scientific community. The tobacco companies financed the work of a handful of denier scientists, including Fred Seitz ...
SoHo show us
The link to the Mighty Robinson Robinson Soon article that Fred wanted you to read is bad. The correct URL is now http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/GWReview_OISM150.pdf
The National Academy of Sciences statement disclaiming any connection to the project or its misleading wrapper is http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s04201998
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