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Comment by sambeau | Hacker News Reader

This calls it:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkabl...

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.”

(Note: I wish he hadn't put the word "scientists" in quotes as it, sadly, undermines a good editorial piece.)

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Hell, just start Googling people from the list of contributors. The first is "Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_All%C3%A8gre

> In 1996, Allègre opposed the removal of carcinogenic asbestos from the Jussieu university campus in Paris, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of "psychosis created by leftists". The campus' asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.

I think I'd pass on his endorsement, personally...

And the second is J. Scott Armstrong, Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School.

Isn't it accepted fact right now that removing asbestos creates more cases of cancer then leaving it where it is? What happened at the time was a very un-rational and unproductive response - the removal of all asbestos everywhere, with no regard to costs and side-effects.

Given that he's also arguing with a Nobel Prize winner in physics that atmospheric drag doesn't affect falling objects, I doubt his opposition was that nuanced.

Leaving asbestos where it is can be better, but it'd depend on how well contained it is. If it's in a building that's showing its age, removal might be the only option.

> Allègre is an ISI highly cited researcher.[1]

I doubt it's ok to paint him with a wide brush. He seems like a very intelligent person, extremely respected in his field and who's not afraid of a good controversy. Exactly what was the context of the falling objects dispute I don't know, but it's a fair chance there's some context to it. From a cursory look it seems to be more about how to teach the phenomenon then about the physics involved.

He was also right about Kilimanjaro - changes in snow cover there likely did relate to longer-term trends and to local agricultural deforestation reducing the amount of moisture in the air and likely did not significantly relate to local or world temperature changes.

I'm willing to give him benefit of the doubt on "nuance" given the number of filters we're seeing things through here. (It's bad enough relying on wikipedia for climate-related info at all, but when it's on a relatively obscure topic based on source material in another language, that's a whole new level of indirection.)

Was it the asbestos that allegedly killed 22 people, or was it the asbestos removal effort - against Claude's advice - that did so? Given that he objected in 1996 and the article claiming some number of deaths and injury was written in 2007, the timing works with either interpretation...

Wikipedia has a picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jussieu_d%C3%A9samient%C3%...) of the facility during asbestos removal. Given that they've taken out everything but the metal frame of the building, I doubt many students were going to class in the building as they removed it.

Where did you get the information that the alleged deaths/sicknesses were of students rather than, say, construction workers?

Common sense? The dangers of asbestos were well known in 1997 (hence its removal!), it's a developed nation that enforces protective measures for workers, etc.

Losing 22 workers in France in the 1990s/2000s on a single asbestos removal project is extremely unlikely.

...and losing 22 students due to asbestos in a single building isn't unlikely, according to your common sense?

Since 1959 in an entire campus, not one building. There'd be many, many more students passing through over five decades than there would be construction workers in a 10 year cleanup effort.

Unfortunately, it's not just the WSJ, it's anything related to News Corp and Murdoch.

Here's a list of media sources you shouldn't trust:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Co...

The piece is not designed to be credible to you and me. Its simply so that Fox News can report "New evidence that global warming is a myth is being reported today by a respected newspaper."

I don't think that it's wrong to put the word "scientists" in quotes. Consider this: it seems that one of the 16 concerned individuals is Burt Rutan. He is a well-known aerospace engineer who has a high level of skill in a difficult technical field, and he has accomplished a great deal in his life. But is he a scientist? That might be the reason for the scare quotes.

My problem is that it justifies one of the points made in the letter, that: if you are a scientist who makes a case against global warming you are actively excluded from the scientific community.

Not really, no. "Scientists" was likely in quotes because the list includes people like Burt Rutan, who isn't one.

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