First of all, a short message to Galen Hall, Colleen Schmidt & Thomas Nicholas, who launched the defamatory attack on the Planet’s most prominent field researcher of Arctic sea ice and Oceanography:

Galen Hall, Colleen Schmidt & Thomas Nicholas
Young future scientists? Galen Hall, Colleen Schmidt & Thomas Nicholas. (Source: YouTube & Twitter)

A message to Hall, Schmidt & Nicholas

Like all relative beginners into this field, you guys need to reflect on the state of ‘climate politics’ for the past 50 years, and its very strong urge to do nothing, in part because such vast profits are involved in the fossil fuel scene and the economic growth scene, and in part because of the Tragedy of the Commons and because the fatal consequences of doing nothing are so far away.

Mechanisms like the above conspire to paint a real field research expert like Professor Wadhams as an outcast, a fringe or an extremist, or indeed, like you say, a gentleman who is ‘just wrong’.

History of Science, as exemplified by Tyson’s Cosmos 2

Sadly, the world of science and the history of science have largely been driven by motives like your own, where somehow you don’t personally appreciate the findings of some other scientist, and thus you choose to dismiss him, not based on the science per se, but rather on whatever you can find to discredit the scientist in question. Therefore, Wadhams isn’t completely right when he says you guys are not scientists, because the history of science supports the likes of you, because while the scientific process actually is, the science community was never perfectly scientific.

The scientific community and individual scientists are fallible and fall victim to discrediting campaigns, rumours and propaganda, just like the rest of humanity. That’s partly why the IPCC can get Climate Change so vastly wrong!

Can we Fix It? Really?

Lastly, when scientific exploration reveals a situation for the Planet and our Civilisation that’s significantly dire, there’ll be some scientists (and some activists) saying we can still fix this if we do XYZ, and others who say it’s now beyond fixing. You cannot then as a young person, with Teen Spirit or whatever, simply judge those two major camps and say you ‘like’ the camp saying we can fix it, even though that sounds nicer to you! (Incidentally in this case, you’d support Peter Wadhams, whom you just insulted in the worst way.)

The We Can Fix It camp could be wrong, and personal non-scientific reasons might cloud their judgement and make them cling on to the Fix It attitude.

The following is Professor Peter Wadhams’ remarks on your attack paper & videos.

Just slightly edited for clarity.

I was very surprised, I mean, I don’t mind at all having my work analysed critically by other scientists who know something about science, but to be insulted by little kids who have absolutely no knowledge whatever about the Arctic, is pretty annoying, because Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall & Colleen Schmidt are using that simply as a way of getting at Bendell, because they don’t approve of his philosophy.

Peter Wadhams, Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University

So these kids who know nothing, took it upon themselves to insult my entire lifetime of scientific work, because of a political aim of their own. And that sort of arrogance — it’s arrogance as well as ignorance — doesn’t stand them in a good way, if they want to be scientists in the future. Because Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall & Colleen Schmidt are not scientists now, and at this rate they’ll never become scientists.

Peter Wadhams, Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University

There are no ‘hundreds of scientists’ ganging up to say nothing much is happening, this is complete fantasy dreamed up by these students. And then Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall & Colleen Schmidt say that even a cursory search reveals that the magnitude of Wadhams’ predictions are off and so is his timeline, well, they haven’t even done a cursory search! Because if they had’ve done, they would have seen that it’s absolutely in line with what we know about how albedo changes when ice disappears.

Peter Wadhams, Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University

Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall & Colleen Schmidt are arguing from a position of personal ignorance and malice at the same time, which I find distinctly revolting. And you wouldn’t want a new scientist to start off with that kind of arrogance, because he’s wrong, they’re wrong.

Peter Wadhams, Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University

It’s defamatory because any claims I make about what’s going on are based on 50 years of field research, which is about 49.5 years more than Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall & Colleen Schmidt have done, and it’s based on scientific results.

Peter Wadhams, Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University