In his “exclusive” story, titled “Top Climate Scientist's Exoneration Won't Be the Last Word,” Fox News’ Ed Barnes suggests that the Penn State investigation that cleared Dr. Michael Mann of any wrong-doing was a “whitewash” designed to protect the “millions of dollars in grant money it gets by having Mann on the faculty.”
Barnes claims that Penn State’s decision to exonerate Mann generated “a storm of controversy” and “came under severe attack.” Reading his inflammatory language, you might think that a whole lot of academics and scientists ridiculed the inquiry. Who is this angry mob that generated such a “storm of controversy?”
Actually, the Barnes storm is comprised of only three people - a mining executive, the wealthiest member of Congress, and a former FoxNews.com columnist.
The former FoxNews.com contributor, Steve “The Junkman” Milloy, is better known for his role as apologist and shill for the tobacco, chemical, mining and oil industries than for his expertise critiquing university review boards. What are Milloy’s qualifications to serve as judge and jury in denouncing a highly-regarded university’s review process? Milloy runs JunkScience.com, a website that defies all manner of scientific realities, arguing that everything from DDT to secondhand smoke to asbestos is perfectly healthy for you.
The second is blogger Steve McIntyre, creator of ClimateAudit.org and 30-year veteran of the mining business. Some may consider McIntyre qualified to attack Michael Mann, since he's gone to great lengths along with Ross McKitrick to attack Dr. Mann. Both of their Mann-eater papers were re-published and distributed by the ExxonMobil-funded George C. Marshall Institute. McIntyre says he’s more interested in mining these days than climate science, unless it’s about Michael Mann of course.
The third is the wealthiest member of Congress, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose net worth is north of $250 million thanks to his success as CEO of Directed Electronics and its “Viper” car alarm. (That’s actually Issa’s voice barking ''please step away from the car.”) But how exactly is this successful former CEO, Army veteran and holder of a bachelor’s degree in business administration qualified to question the work of a highly-regarded climate scientist?
Though certainly known for stormy behavior and severe attacks, do these three men really constitute a “storm of controversy?”
I suppose when you throw in a dash of the right-wing Commonwealth Foundation (which released a 12-page policy brief ripping Penn State for exonerating Mann), and a sprinkle of the right-wing-on-training-wheels Young Americans for Freedom (which launched a petition to re-investigate Mann), then in Ed Barnes’ world you can safely forecast a raging storm with a 100% chance of severe attacks.
Barnes even slapped an “Exclusive” tag on his new piece, hoping to catch new readers, even though the content is largely rehashed from his two-month-old article from February , featuring the same quote from Steve Milloy and same argument from Steve McIntyre. That’s pretty exclusive, indeed.
Barnes and others at Fox News have played a central role in the “Climategate” echo chamber, providing a megaphone for skeptics trying to spin the stolen CRU emails into scandal every which way, and continuing the long smear campaign against Michael Mann.
Despite all their rants, the inquiries into Mann and the CRU scientists have found no evidence of the data tampering or interference with information requests that FOX and friends hoped would emerge from their “ClimateGate” dud. They can’t tolerate the fact that Dr. Mann and Phil Jones and others have been largely vindicated. So they resort back to spin. And when that doesn’t pan out, they spin again.
It’s dizzying just trying to follow it, really.
Follow Brendan DeMelle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bdemelle
Now here is why I don't believe the warmist. It is cold! Yes this winter I still had to scrape my windshield, plug in my car block heater, crank up my furnace, and cover up to avoid frost bite. Where is this global warming I want some now! The fact is I have been waiting patiently for Calgary to become warm but it still is way too cold. If global warming was such a threat you think the great white north would be a little warmer by now. No such luck.
"Now here is why I don't believe the warmist."
Science Denier Trick #1: pretend that the honest, scientific side of the debate represents a mere religious belief.
" It is cold!"
Science Denier Trick #2: refuse to acknowledge the difference between weather and climate.
more myths exposed
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7564682/Cows-absolved-of-causing-global-warming-with-nitrous-oxide.html
Answer: Infinitesimal
The IPCC agrees. Read their Technical Reports under the heading Global Warming Potential (GWP). Carbon Dioxide is dead last well behind water vapor and a plethora of other gases.
Science Denier Trick #3: lie about what scientists have said.
Here's what the IPCC really said about CO2: Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas (see Figure SPM.2)."
Text: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-human-and.html
Figure: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-spm-2.html
Check out these polls genius.
Seen the latest US Gallup poll?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/12/gallup-americans-global-warming-concerns-continue-to-drop/
Or maybe this one in the UK?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/05/inconvenient-truth-in-britain-skepticism-on-the-rise/
Or How about this one in Germany?
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-53441.html
Or the fact that the French gave up on carbon taxing?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/23/french-give-up-on-carbon-tax-plan-for-now/
"Contrary to UEA’s claims, there is no valid statistical procedure supporting the substitution of tree ring proxy data going the wrong with instrumental temperature data to create a false rhetorical impression of the coherence of the proxy data. Indeed, as I observed in my submission, Mann himself had condemned the merging of instrumental and proxy data as follows:
No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually
find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum [realclimate]."
http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/31/tricking-the-committee/
A timeline for the “breathtakingly ignorant” follows.
2007: record Arctic ice minimum in 2007 – big news, unprecedented, shocking, Navy postgraduate school scientist says Arctic summers to be ice-free ‘by 2013′
2008: ditto, this year’s ice recovery is just a blip, it’s really caught in a “death spiral”
2009: ditto, this recovery for a second year means nothing – Arctic continues death spiral, you people are breathtakingly ignorant
2010: Arctic sea ice approaches normal for this time of year, first time since 2001 – “…reactions to the 2007 melt were overstated…we must be more careful in not reading too much into one event
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/03/quote-of-the-week-33-what-no-death-spiral/#more-18153
You managed two tricks in one post. Impressive.
Science Denier Trick #4: projecting the science deniers' ignorance onto the rational people.
Science Denier Trick #5: giving one piece of data extraordinary weight while ignoring all other evidence.
April 6 (Bloomberg) -- The extent of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean grew until the last day of March, the latest the annual melting season has begun in 31 years of satellite records, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-06/arctic-sea-ice-melting-season-posts-latest-start-on-record.html
The funny thing is, the last time anyone tried such a partisan approach to science, it was under Stalin. Read about Trofim Lysenko, and you'll see how poorly partisan science works.
That's not to say that the science deniers are Stalinists, of course. In fact, I'd guess that most of them have a healthy dislike for Stalin. Nevertheless, by attacking science on ideological grounds, they are certainly repeating one of Stalin's greatest mistakes.
A healthy skepticism about science is one thing, but this anti-science hysteria that has somehow become the conservative "norm" is not healthy. In fact, it's a threat to America, because real science feeds technology, and technology enables us to have and defend a modern lifestyle.
(1) When different claims get bundled together.
(2) When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate.
(3) When scientists are pressured to toe the party line.
(4) When publishing and peer review in the discipline is cliquish.
(5) When dissenting opinions are excluded from the relevant peer-reviewed literature not because of weak evidence or bad arguments but as part of a strategy to marginalize dissent.
(6) When the actual peer-reviewed literature is misrepresented.
(7) When consensus is declared hurriedly or before it even exists.
(8) When the subject matter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus.
(9) When “scientists say” or “science says” is a common locution.
(10) When it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies.
(11) When the “consensus” is maintained by an army of water-carrying journalists who defend it with uncritical and partisan zeal, and seem intent on helping certain scientists with their messaging rather than reporting on the field as objectively as possible.
(12) When we keep being told that there’s a scientific consensus.
It's incredibly easy to list those things and just assume that it's all true in climate science. These lists build a myth of corruption without having to levy specific complaints--and that's good enough for people who love to be political, irrespective of the damage they do to the reputation of science and scientists working to understand and solve common problems.
And by the way, Jay Richards is an advocate for Intelligent Design. He can go play with his irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum.