On John Timmer
Dec 17, 2014
Bishop Hill in Climate: Sceptics, Greens

John Timmer is someone I come across from time to time on Twitter. He describes himself as the "Chief science wrangler for Ars Technica" which is a publication you can find here. Timmer has a fairly yawnworthy post up here, in which he seeks to justify use of the term "denier". It's not really worth much of your time, except for one paragraph. This one:

For example, atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen has been a prominent figure trotted out to suggest that climate scientists have gotten it wrong; but he also seems to think health authorities got it wrong with smoking

The link is to a Newsweek article, the relevant sentence of which is this:

[Lindzen will] even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking.

Uh huh. Which brings us onto this transcript of an interview Lindzen gave in Australia, I think in 2012:

Anna: ...Did you dispute that there was not a link between smoking and health problems?
Richard: I have argued as most people who have looked at it that the case for second-hand tobacco is not very good. That was true of the World Health Organization also said that...With first-hand smoke it's a more interesting issue. There's clearly an issue ...The case for lung cancer is very good...

Illuminating, isn't it? About John Timmer, I mean.

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