Climate Reality

The Climate Reality Project is doing a live broadcast at 7pm in every time zone. If I got the embed correct, you can watch it below.

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'Here' presumably being Jonasinternalworld.

Back to your own thread, troll.

There's a neat little page on the website where you can donate up to $2,500 to Al Gore, and heaven knows, the man needs it.

By Rick Bradford (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

Yes that's exactly where the money goes. Nice work Rick. Have a biscuit.

Given that Al reputedly charges between $100-140 grand for an appearance (and gets it), is on the board of two leading edge IT companies and gets his science direct from the horses mouths, it's no wonder all the little Rick Bradfords around the world can only snipe impotently from the back row of the sidelines.

>I have not seen it mentioned at all here...

Well, that simply reflects your general powers of observation and research - or rather, the lack thereof. I responded to Exile Rowan on this aubject this [three days ago](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/september_2011_open_thread.php#…).

You're a bit slow on the uptake, and a bit lot useless about checking before you make an arse of yourself.

>...and Google gives you zero hits among the news outlets here.

When I did [the search](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Climate+Reality+news) I was told that there were "about 110,000" hits, and of the first few pages I checked almost all were real, actual news stories.

Once again, the trespassing troll demonstrates that he is full of it.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

Oops, the troll was removed in the interim.

Nevertheless, one can see what an ass he made of himself...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

Yes Jonas, comments from people who have their own thread are deleted from threads that are not that thread.

When you keep shitting in the public pool, you get banned. Giving you your own small pond to crap in is a grace given to you.

Please delete all OT conversations between posters. Annoying and irrelevant.

By Jeffrey Davis (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

Says Jeffrey, talking to the blog owner...

:-)

Climate Reality - 7 million views hit at 22:56 BST UK time.

Climate Reality - 8 million views hit at 23:54 BST UK time.

Next up for the final hour, Al Gore's presentation.

> ... gets his science direct from the horses mouths.

Correct animal, wrong body orifice.

By Rick Bradford (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

Rick Bradford of course has no explanation for the observations and events in the world that withstands even cursory examination, what with his own head being inserted in his nearest available orifice.

Viewing figures peaked at 8.62 million for the final hour.
10 would have been a nice round number, but a still very respectable outreach. Well done to the organisers.

Judith Curry's reaction on her blog (No, I will not link there) is predictable:
1. Complain about reference to deniers, while at the same time claim you are mostly trying to ignore the event (why?)

2. Mention Giaever's resignation from the APS (I think quite a few physicists will and should celebrate: another denier sinks his own ship)

3. Refer to WUWT coverage (seriously, Judith, seriously??)

4. Show a cartoon from Josh

Curry is sinking very deep in the mud, but clearly loves it there. Let's see when she resigns from her professional organisations because they are not 'skeptical' enough.

Yes, Judith, that's a challenge. If you so gladly cite Giaever's resignation, when is yours coming to town?

Ray Bradford: "Correct animal, wrong body orifice."

No, it's not from Fred Singer.

By Lars Karlsson (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

Sorry, that quote was from Rick Bradford.

By Lars Karlsson (not verified) on 15 Sep 2011 #permalink

SteveC: not much, but this makes the Jerry Springer show seem positively intellectual.

Marco - I spent wasted several minutes of my diminishing life-span wading through the comments on that thread, including a few from the Doyenne of Doubt herself, who is apparently chuffed at the number of requests she is getting for comment from the MSM. Like any unfolding disaster, it's fascinating to watch if you've got the stomach for it. Off for a shower now...

The Pakistan flood footage was great, and the breadth of topics excellent , but things went south when they got politicized. With Perry and Bacnmann flinging low hanging fruit, it's curious Al's reality show should stoop to cherrypicking to stretch his opening Two Minute Hate sequence to cover a two decade gap in the narrative.

It's simply Orwellian to blame 50's cigarette commercials on an institute founded by an astrophysicist in 1984, and taken over by oil lobbyists after the Soviet collapse. And perhaps a tad pusillanimous for a Laureate like Al to ignore how all that filthy Reynolds lucre funded the Nobel in medicine for prion research.

Judging by this script. the New Normality in pop history of science seems to be Just-so stories based on not interviewing the protagonists, preferably dead or born a century ago.

By Russell Seitz (not verified) on 16 Sep 2011 #permalink

> With Perry and Bacnmann flinging low hanging fruit, it's curious Al's reality show should stoop to cherrypicking

And that cherry picked would be what?

> It's simply Orwellian to blame 50's cigarette commercials on an institute founded by an astrophysicist in 1984

Nope, it's simply inaccurate. As in an inaccurate summation of the tale Al Gore told.

> And perhaps a tad pusillanimous for a Laureate like Al to ignore how all that filthy Reynolds lucre funded the Nobel in medicine for prion research.

It's a big word "pusillanimous". Do you know what it means? Because it makes no sense in that sentence.

> Judging by this script. the New Normality in pop history of science seems to be Just-so stories

Rather ironic coming from a post which is entirely made from just-so stories.

Russell Seitz @16

'It's simply Orwellian to blame 50's cigarette commercials on an institute founded by an astrophysicist in 1984, and taken over by oil lobbyists after the Soviet collapse. And perhaps a tad pusillanimous for a Laureate like Al to ignore how all that filthy Reynolds lucre funded the Nobel in medicine for prion research.'

Which just goes to show what they could have achieved if they had been honest enough not to try to spread doubt about the harmful effects of tobacco and instead used their dirty profits for humanitarian research. I am sure that you are aware of The Tobacco Documents project which demonstrates the culpability of the tobacco industry beyond all doubt.

But then, if you are, as I suspect, the Russell Seitz who features in Oreskes & Conway (pages 59-62 and 164-165) you obviously have your own form of denial to cling too.

Now with respect to 'Just So' stories about the dead, I wonder what Roger Revelle would have to say to you about this? There is a clue over at Eli's place:

If Richard Lindzen shows up at your door, slam it.

@All

Did any of you believers follow the Climate Reality day? Interested in any personal (not links to ther sites) views on how it went.

Admit my view on it is probably biased, supporting views from your side?

What believers? You?

> Admit my view on it is probably biased

This is like Hitler admitting he was probably a little bit down on the Jews.

@wow

I'd say that was a very politically incorrect thing to say wow. Others have been rightly criticised on this blog for making comparisons like that.

Yes, you would say anything. We've already seen that.

You see, it's not going to make you fine by saying you're biased. You need to work to avoid or remove that bias.

Just like if Hitler had admitted he'd been bad to Jews, we'd still do him for genocide (as we did with Milosovich).

@wow

The problem is the comparison you are making wow, it doesn't get better by rearranging the words slightly.

Shameful.

Does anyone here have something worthwhile and constructive about Gore's project?

Wow:
Cherrypicking? Have you read the NAS reports on climate change that appeared during Seitz's presidency? Did the program quote them?

http://books.google.com/books?id=TkErAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ch…

On critical examination, this made for TV movie seems to history of science as Singer's Heartland volumes are to the IPCC reports, and occasionally approaches their capacity for self parody-

I hold no brief for either production, having stated my own opinion in these matters a generation ago,.

http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/a_war_against_fire/

and many times since

http://takimag.com/article/climate_of_here#axzz1Y2nc8fO1

However, given this program's disregard for chronology, I have a duty to note that its intended victim would have turned 100 last July.

Lionel A:
Focusing narrative blame is old as Cicero, but historians of science, as opposed to writers of polemic spot ads are supposed to be enemies of narrative compression, and friends to primary source interviews.

http://www.nicolasnierenberg.com/uploads/1/1/6/6/1166378/hsns4003_02.pdf

This script's opening gambit is as devoid of both as the book behind it, and indulges in levels of ellipsis fit to make Marc Morano blush.

I am obliged you should mention Revelle, which do you judge more magnanimous: Singer's wringing of a deathbed endorsement from the 96 year old Seitz, or his being pursued beyond the grave by a minor Tennessee tobacco dynast for lending his name to R.J. Reynolds P-R men?

The column you refer to asks who speaks for tobacco research actually directed at improving the health of smokers, rather than neo-prohibitionist social engineering aimed at removing them from the scene. As I roll my own, I wrote it unbidden, though I would applaud Al's return to a career of public service raising bright leaf on his plantation.


The column you refer to asks who speaks for tobacco research actually directed at improving the health of smokers...

Anyone who seriously claims that tobacco companies were interested in improving the health of smokers has been smoking something that tobacco companies can't legally sell.

Tobacco companies consider it much more cost-effective to get children and teenagers hooked on cigarettes than it is to extend the lives of their current customers. For Big Tobacco, cheap, young replacement customers is what it has always been about.


Wow: Cherrypicking? Have you read the NAS reports on climate change that appeared during Seitz's presidency? Did the program quote them?

Under Seitz' leadership, did the George Marshall institute ever publicize the NAS climate-change reports that Seitz presided over?

By caerbannog (not verified) on 16 Sep 2011 #permalink

Presided over < /i> ?

Does Seitz' consent to those reports any more signify coauthorship than Roger Revelle's name beside Fred Singer's on the infamous Cosmos article?

The forward to Singer's "NPCC Report " materialized after his deathbed visit to a 96 year old man too blind to read or weak to type.

Russell Seitz@ 24

Lionel A: Focusing narrative blame is old as Cicero, but historians of science, as opposed to writers of polemic spot ads are supposed to be enemies of narrative compression, and friends to primary source interviews.

Be that as it may, your axe appeared to be being honed on the grindstone of the portrayal of the tobacco industry as sinister perverters of the truth - which it is clear they were. You yourself have had a hand in that campaign since too as this reveals:

Making the World Safe for Cigarettes

THINK, FoR A MOMENT, of the money that has
been spent to make sure that airline seats can
be used as flotation devices. When was the
last time that someone paddled away from an
aircraft wreck? Nevertheless, the federal government
wants you to know that it is concerned
with what might happen to you in an
airline crash .

Some logic there!

Using the same logic, as many ships sank with all hands what was the point of providing lifeboats for passengers and crew of oceanic liners?

I'll bet the crews of all those merchantmen sunk during World War II thought their lifeboats a waste of time and money.

You continue:

So tell me: Why doesn't the government
put some money into cigarette safety? Given
that some people are determined to smoke no
matter what the docs tell them, isn't their
safety something the feds should be concerned
about?

Hang on a minute, I thought you James M Olin, William Simon following types were all for de-regulation and small government. In REALITY it is the unfettered capitalism that has got us to this troubled place.

Banging on about the rights of smokers to smoke as a matter of freedom and liberty ignores the fact that with such freedoms come responsibilities. That is the part of the equation often forgotten.

Your associates consider it a right to make lots out of that capitalism, but what about the rights of the sweatshop workers and those 'little people' who have been screwed over by the big financial institutions and their darker cousins vulture capitalists?

Don't shudder and start calling me a communist for it is the humanitarian perspective from which my remarks come.

I am obliged you should mention Revelle, which do you judge more magnanimous: Singer's wringing of a deathbed endorsement from the 96 year old Seitz, or his being pursued beyond the grave by a minor Tennessee tobacco dynast for lending his name to R.J. Reynolds P-R men?

'Singer's wringing of a deathbed endorsement from the 96 year old Seitz'..., I thought I had indicated that it was Singer who had exploited Revelle, and I think there is little doubt about the veracity of that thinking. You seem confused, as you do with this:

The column you refer to asks who speaks for tobacco research actually directed at improving the health of smokers...

How do you work that out?

The 'column' I linked too was most certainly about the Revelle-Singer debacle of which Seitz took advantage later, along with others mentioned there.

As for 'cherrypicking' and not citing 'the NAS reports on climate change' in a 'made for TV movie', are you for real?

Considering the legions of documents, scientific papers and other materials that could be cited to support any arguments put across by the programme why should you take that one document as a deliberate omission?

Would it be realistic to cite all relevant material in the vast body of knowledge in such a production - of course not. The programme was not aimed at academics.

Logic fail again.

OK maybe it is a little uncomfortable finding yourself on the wrong side of history, but the chips have fallen on this, move on and continue to do the right thing, the right thing for humanity and our planets co-inhabitants. That latter being something that the younger Tschinkel should understand.

Now I am willing to concede that Oreskes et. al. may have fallen short of accuracy on some points (and my personal jury is still out on that until I have researched more - I have followed an interesting series of blog posts on ScienceBlogs on this very issue - opinion seems divided) but should this negate the overall message that the campaign to spread doubt about the science of climate change was conducted by some of the same people as did just that for Tobacco smoke, acid rain and ozone depletion?

No of course not, the record is too strong for that.

Lionel A.

Stop shouting and read what I wrote- I suspect I am more comfortable with the history of these matters than those trying to rewrite it.

I of course referred to my Forbes column. Nobody is working on the smoker's behalf, least of all tobacco companies banned from making health claims a generation ago.

That leaves the NIH and Big Pharma, - the nation's fifty million tobacco users have no independent voice inside the Beltway, while anti-smoking activists lobby for defunding governmental research on improving cigarette safety by reducing carcinogens relative to nicotine in ways analogous to improving the milage to emissions ratio of vehicles.

Pharma has an agenda of its own- continuing the profitable annexation of nicotine in ways that pay to advertise like patches and gum.

All of which should remind us that, in 1983, a year before the Marshall Institute was founded the first advertising gurus were recruited into the climate wars in order to to sell 'Nuclear Winter ' to the public.- as I pointed out at some length to the Senators Gore, Junior and Senior, at a two day 1987 Virginia Tech symposium entitled "Is nuclear winter real and relevant?" which they moderated, and which Steve Schneider and Tom Ackermann of TTAPS also addressed.

It's no use counseling Al to impose a fact checker on his writers, but dialing back on his method acting wouldn't hurt.

Nobody is working on the smoker's behalf

That's the best joke I've heard all week.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 18 Sep 2011 #permalink

> 24

> Wow: Cherrypicking? Have you read the NAS reports on climate change that appeared during Seitz's presidency? Did the program quote them?

Sorry, I think you need to get a dictionary.

That isn't cherrypicking.

> 22

> @wow

> The problem is the comparison you are making wow

Tone trolling now, git? This is what you do when you have nothing else to complain of.

And isn't it always the denialists who consider themselves compared to Nazis (whilst ironically calling jewish kids the Hitler Youth...).

> 29

> Lionel A.

> Stop shouting and read what I wrote

Lionel wasn't shouting.

And what you wrote was complete revisionist bollocks.

Russell

Lionel A.

Stop shouting and read what I wrote-

Shouting, me? Where-so? Any emboldened text was used to for a headline and then for a link to make that latter more obvious.

Well I did and re-read it several times, your post on this blog that is, because it was at times so vague and ambiguous there was some trouble in discerning your meanings. I have read that a message being obscured by a fancy turn of phrase is a common phenomenon from some quarters.

I suspect I am more comfortable with the history of these matters than those trying to rewrite it.

So why not be more specific as to what you are referring too. You leave much up to the reader to guess at, even one aware of the literature trail. The following being a case in point.

I of course referred to my Forbes column.

Which of course (and is this the one Making the world safe for cigarettes?) reads exactly like the Science & Society article to which I linked.

How was I supposed to know that it was this to which you referred in that first post of yours to which I replied? It seems that I must request a replacement crystal ball or get the telepathy channels repaired.

Nobody is working on the smoker's behalf, least of all tobacco companies banned from making health claims a generation ago.

I didn't think they were for one moment considering smoker's health - more like preserving the cash-cow and your article appeared to be providing cover for their campaign or am I expected to read your article as irony?

Oh! And by the way smoking can increase the cholesterol in arteries too. I should know. About ten years ago I suffered a cardiac arrest (and another about 36 hours latter whilst under intensive) which disabled a part of the heart making a stent in one vital as another had blown apart and is now defunct. A by-pass is of no use. This after years of being addicted to the weed aided by duty frees whilst serving my country ashore and afloat. All along of course I was grasping at the straws of what I now know to be tobacco industry propaganda to feed my denial of the dangers. Being a very fit and active person otherwise, and by only smoking on average 6 per day my lung function was still good and regular x-ray screening allayed any fears in that direction.

Now it is to the addictive powers of tobacco that patches etc, are addressed. I fail to understand how making a cigarette free of tar and nicotine would produce a product that would appeal to those addicted because of those very substances. I recall back in the early 1970s the pushing of 'Herbal Cigarettes' - what a joke they turned out to be. May as well have rolled ones own from drying the grass mowed from the lawn.

24
Like Oreskes, the program ignored a lot more that the inconvenient reality of the climate reports the NAS produced during Seitz's presidency.

Ignoring is role as a founding figure in the history of solid state physics - a subject on which he literally wrote the book: 'The Modern Theory Of Solids, in 1939, it left the naive viewer thinking his scientific metier was tobacco which seems unfair to Mr. Gore, who has much more extensive experience in the field.

The result is is worse than anti-historic- it's bad PR. Had the producers of Climate Reality had asked Jimmy Carville , or John Luntz- who undeservedly escaped mention in the program, they might have been warned attack ads directed against corporate disinformation shouldn't practice what they preach against.

> Ignoring is role as a founding figure in the history of solid state physics ... which seems unfair to Mr. Gore, who has much more extensive experience in the field.

OK, what the hell are you talking about? Al Gore didn't write The Modern Theory of Solids and he isn't considered a biological scientist either.

> asked Jimmy Carville

Who?

> John Luntz- who undeservedly escaped mention in the program

Who? And why should he have been mentioned at all?

> attack ads directed against corporate disinformation shouldn't practice what they preach against.

That's OK, then. The creators of Climate Reality haven't propounded disinformation, unlike your good self.

Russell Seitz is trying to defend the legacy of his grandfather Frederick, who wrote 'The Modern Theory of Solids' and had an exceptional career in physics.

Unfortunately the late Dr. Seitz's efforts with the Marshall
Institute (founding chairman) and R.J. Reynolds are very well documented, and form a sad coda to said scientific career.

I think Russell meant Frank Luntz, the communication consultant that helped with Republican Party speechwriting and 'messaging' for a number of years.

Frank started out minimising climate science (he proposed reframing 'global warming' as 'climate change' in all Bush admin communications). He seems to accept the science and has tried to distance himself from his earlier efforts in the last few years.

Wow

" "I've planted tobacco! I've hoed it, tilled it, harvested it, ..." -- Albert Gore. Jr, on the Congressional stump to his fellow Tennessee tobacco farmers .

Rob

Though he never engaged in biomedical research, as president of Rockefeller University, Frederick Seitz oversaw its large and successful program in the field , and was charged with securing support for it in the form of research grants from corporate donors. As I understand it, when he was about to retire, in 1978, a member of the Rockefeller U. board who also served on R.J. Reynolds board suggested Reynolds donate about $ 5 million annually in support of biomedical research at Rockefeller, with Seitz chairing its management, and adding his name to Reynolds research board. However, as a solid state physicist who never, as far as I know ,published in the life sciences he did not actively participate in Reynolds' tobacco research. In contrast , he actively managed the ongoing program on prion research at Rockefeller and other universities ,which culminated in the 1997 Nobel Prize in medicine, as was duly acknowledged in that year's Stockholm proceedings.

Not an iota of this appears in Oreskes polemic or Gore's webcast, the crowning absurdity of which is a voiceover blaming a collage of black and white cigarette commercials on a defense science think tank founded in 1984. This didn't stop Orsekes from patching together an anachronistic just so story that, based more on avoiding eyewitnesses than interviewing them, better qualifies as tabloid journalism than history of science.

Rob OC gives me too much credit in hypothesizing " Russell Seitz is trying to defend the legacy of his grandfather." Indeed an apology seems due the late Mrs. Arthur MacGregor Seitz Sr., as Frederick was nine years old when my father, Arthur MacGregor Seitz Jr. was born.

To quote the venerable Lehrer:

"Vunce ze rockets go up, who cares vhere zey come down?
Zat's not my department, said Wernher von Braun."

Actions have consequences Mr Seitz.

> " "I've planted tobacco! I've hoed it, tilled it, harvested it, ..." -- Albert Gore. Jr, on the Congressional stump to his fellow Tennessee tobacco farmers .

Yup. And I've grown blackberries. This doesn't make me a blackberry expert.

Of course, this may be the extremely low bar of achievement necessary to make someone an expert in your mind, which rather explains the "experts" you trot out to support your bullshit.

> Not an iota of this appears in Oreskes polemic or Gore's webcast,

Because it's irrelevant to him losing the plot completely and selling his expertise to the highest bidders.

> a voiceover blaming a collage of black and white cigarette commercials on a defense science think tank founded in 1984.

Where? It doesn't say that at all. Then again your smoking of non-nicotine products so evident in your posts so far could easily make you hallucinate.

> which culminated in the 1997 Nobel Prize in medicine

Al Gore got a Nobel prize too. However, this is irrelevant to the Climate Reality vid as is that 1997 Nobel prize.

However, you have to bring up lots of irrelevance because you haven't got an actual rebuttal of any of the information presented.

However, you have to bring up lots of irrelevance because you haven't got an actual rebuttal of any of the information presented.

Just so (sorry I could not resists that) Wow.

Seitz is blowing a load of smoke screens around his earlier tobacco industry advocacy, for that is what it amounts too.

I note that he has yet to respond to my #34 and also find it interesting that he has dropped the Seitz from his blog handle.

Further, as Oreskes and Conway make clear, as well as others, Frederick Seitz also tried to undermine the scientific understanding of ozone depletion and also stave of legislation against the dangers of passive somking, I make an exception and quote from Wiki (and not shouting here either):

The Institute [George C. Marshall] also promoted environmental skepticism more generally. In 1994, the Institute published a paper by Seitz titled Global warming and ozone hole controversies: A challenge to scientific judgment. Seitz questioned the view that CFCs "are the greatest threat to the ozone layer".[23] In the same paper, commenting on the dangers of secondary inhalation of tobacco smoke, he concluded "there is no good scientific evidence that passive inhalation is truly dangerous under normal circumstances."[24]

As you remarked Wow - so much revisionist bollocks has appeared in this thread - I am inclined to agree.

Time to stop shaking the rat I think, the point is made.

Oops! That Wiki link got scrambled, OK in preview, I edited text in a minor way, or so I thought and ended up with a fail. Probably dropped a backslash somewhere. It should look like this:

I make an exception and quote from Wiki (and not shouting here either):

Moral, always do a preview even after minor edits!

Lionel, I'm sorry but I found 34 rather too boring and tendentious to respond to, Imputing tobacco expertise to solid state physicists is about what one would expect of WIkipedia, but I must insist you distinguish between asserting the civil rights of smokers, of whom I am one, in the face of the incursions of the nanny state, and 'earlier tobacco industry advocacy.' It really isn't a a two pipe problem

To conclude, I believe the opening segment of Climate Reality fails the test of narrative coherence, because has holes in it a decade wide and there is a deliberate disconnect between the images shown and the voiceover. Though it makes a good story , the idea that tobacco ad men invented the one-dissident equals a debate principle is a gross anachronism- it dates back to Aristotle's Rhetoric .

The multiple choice sign-in on Tim's browser makes whether one's surname crops up somewhat problematic. Perhaps that's why we didn't catch yours.

I can only hope the facts just exposited will augment the very few contained in the voiceover sound bites , and assist inquisitive readers in reaching an informed judgement as to whether the program qualifies as a disinterested chronicle or a partisan narrative.

So you find requests to explain where the shouting you were complaining about tendentious and boring? But exciting enough to make the claim in the first place, I see...

> To conclude, I believe the opening segment of Climate Reality fails the test of narrative coherence

Except the opening segment isn't saying what you proffer it as saying.

Tendentious and boring? That's you.

'Climate Reality ' speaks for itself, as does the chain of reference in the Wiki- the authors of ref.15 repeat Oreskes & Conway' statements, but unlike their book , the ever candid Wiki leads to their undisclosed source- an article in that eminent public health journal, ,Vanity Fair. .
Anybody for peer review ?

> 'Climate Reality ' speaks for itself,

Yup, it does.

> the ever candid Wiki leads to their undisclosed source

What wiki discloses this? Searching for "Climate Reality" on Wikipedia comes up with a link that talks about "The Environmentalist" as top link, "Alliance for Climate Protection" second and "Climate change alarmism" third. NONE of which mention Climate Reality nor vanity fair.

Again your drug habit is causing hallucinations.

You need to show your results for peer review. Something you haven't yet done ANYWHERE.

'Imputing tobacco expertise to solid state physicists is about what one would expect of WIkipedia,'

Wiki is simply informing about the fact that a Frederick Seitz was used by the tobacco industry because he was a, up to that time, a respected scientist who's opinions would carry some weight, they hoped anyway. The tobacco industry that is.

Your smoke screen is too thin to obscure that I am afraid.

'but I must insist you distinguish between asserting the civil rights of smokers, of whom I am one'

So, using a technique of yours which is to go off at a tangent, in your case hoping no one notices but I am not worried about that, you are in the same club as Richard Lindzen in that you are a smoker and thus by your own admission suffer a failure in logic. You must be in denial about the dangers to continue so.

Besides there is the not so little matter of poisoning the air which others will breath. I'll let you into a secret that I doubt you will appreciate otherwise. Myself as an ex-smoker who has suffered for that I am badly affected even by passing through the cloud of smoke emitted by another whilst in the open air. Enclosed spaces where smoking is allowed would be lethal to me. Thus my freedom to attend veterans meetings was once severely curtailed, until that is a ban on smoking in pubs and clubs was enforced over here in the UK.

Sorry, but your continued evasion on this is going down like, to use an old naval expression, 'a lead balloon'. I'll remind you, at the risk of being boring and tendentious (Are you always this arrogant?) of an old saying about what one should stop doing when in a hole.

Now I am going to drop this bone and I don't particularly care if you appear to have the last word, be my guest.

One last word of advice - stop the tobacco habit, it isn't good for you amongst other things I have heard that it can destroy the ability to think logically.

Sorry Lionel , I meant to say very boring and extremely tendentious.

We knew what you meant to say, we just don't know why you said it.

Time for all Russell Seitz comments to be consigned to their own thread?