This is lower than Lomborg.

There doesn’t seem to be any consideration for what leads scientists away from the Republican party. Perhaps years of their leaders denying evolution, denying health effects of certain chemicals, outright denial of climate science, calling their work a “hoax”, or attacking their research and in some cases, their colleagues is what leads scientists in another direction. According to Nisbet, the evidence that scientists identify less with Republicans or conservatives is not evidence that Republicans are at fault, but evidence that scientists are heavily biased and therefore must reach false conclusions (some of the “correct” conclusions identified by Nisbet are rather dubious, as noted here and elsewhere).

http://climateshiftproject.org/report/climate-shift-clear-vision-for-the-next-decade-of-public-debate/#spending-on-lobbying

Here’s how that section concludes:

With the exception of the figures for the environmental groups, this comparison of lobbying expenditures across coalitions should not be interpreted as reflecting the actual amounts spent on cap and trade legislation. Instead, in the aggregate, these totals are representative of the capacity for power and influence that each side could apply in 2009. Through their work building coalitions and alliances, the environmental groups were able to forge a network of organizations that spent a combined $229 million on lobbying across all issues. In comparison, the network of prominent opponents of cap and trade legislation spent $272 million lobbying across all issues. These figures represent a dramatically reduced power difference compared with past legislative debates over climate change.

—
NATURE editorializes today that the Climate Shift report “is a must read for anyone remotely interested in the climate change debate.”

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7343/full/472260a.html

I encourage everyone to go beyond the blog debate and engage with the research and ideas found in the report.

The key thing that Nisbet has not yet addressed is how he could possibly count the *entire* lobbying budget of BP and other industry members of USCAP in the pro-cap and trade column. On his press call yesterday rolling out the report Nisbet changed his tone a bit and said that his point was only to represent the amount “available” on each side to lobby on the climate bill. But use such figures in a tally of the money spent on both sides of the legislative fight is nonsense on stilts. One might look at my total yearly income, and my commitment to passing some kind of climate legislation, and then argue that my total income should count in the sum of total money available to the environmental movement to pass climate legislation. This would of course be ridiculous.

http://i49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg

Not even the global average shows a trend change before/after the huge postwar burst of CO2 output:

http://i49.tinypic.com/2mpg0tz.jpg

Logic alone dictates that history cannot be a hockey stick if actual thermometer records are immune to forming little hockey sticks themselves. And if history is not a hockey stick, temperature-wise, then claims that recent warming is alarming fail to even pass the laugh test.

Nature’s report: “Environmental groups and their supporters spend more money on climate-change and clean-energy activities and campaigns than sceptical right-wing groups and their industry supporters, according to a report by a US social scientist, who questions some of the most common reasons given for US political inaction on global warming.”
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110419/full/news.2011.248.html

“In many branches of science there are radical movements. Increasingly, both in the rich and poor worlds, scientists are involved in active advocacy which they see as an intellectual and ethical duty. ”

Page 133

I personally think ideology is more important than money in explaining the resistance to climate progress or climate legislation–but Romm’s analysis certainly calls into question Nisbet’s apparent claim that enviros are now outspending their opponents. (I say “apparent” because the strength of the claim seems to be stated differently by Nisbet at different times; see here http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/19/brulle-climate-shift-nisbet/).

I’m most taken aback, though, by Nisbet’s depiction of AAAS members:

“AAAS members are as ideologically like-minded as evangelical church members and substantially more partisan. Only black church members exhibit a stronger partisan lean than AAAS members and only Fox News viewers, Mormon Church members and Tea Party members exhibit a stronger ideological lean.”

But wait, surely “ideological” is a technical term here….right? And surely that’s how the report will be read.