At the AAAS meeting in San Diego last month, I spoke with EarthSky’s Lindsay Patterson, and the resultant podcast just went up. You can listen here, or by playing the embedded audio below, and I’ve also pasted some transcribed sections below:
And now, the write-up: (more…)
There are now over 60 comments at the Point of Inquiry forums on the latest show. So this one has clearly produced a lot of dialogue.
I want to continue to blog about some of the most memorable content–and in this respect, there was nothing like the show’s closing. I asked for Mann’s final words, and boy did I get them. He pointed out that the strength of climate science alone was clearly insufficient to stop the denial movement, and said that we probably should have expected a revival of that movement in the past three months–although even he didn’t expect how low it would go:
Despite all the talk a few years ago about ‘the debate being over’…the forces of anti-scientific disinformation were just lying dormant. But they would be back. And so this didn’t surprise me at all, and in fact, I fully expected that, in advance of the Copenhagen summit, that we would see an increased number of in attacks.
I guess what we all underestimated was the degree, the depth of dishonesty, dirtiness, and cynicism to which the climate change denial movement would be willing to stoop to advance their agenda. That’s the only thing that I think surprised many of us.
You can catch it all at around minute 39-40. Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet, I encourage you to listen to the Mike Mann interview here, and to subscribe to the Point of Inquiry podcast via iTunes.
It’s live here, and here’s part of the show description:
For the scientists who study global warming, now is the winter of their despair.
In the news, it has been climate scandal after alleged climate scandal. First came “ClimateGate,” then “GlacierGate,” “Amazon Gate,” and so on. In public opinion polls, meanwhile, Americans’ acceptance of the science of global warming appears to be declining. Even a freak snowstorm now seems to sow added doubt about this rigorous body of research.
In response to growing public skepticism—and a wave of dramatic attacks on individual researchers—the scientific community is now bucking up to more strongly defend its knowledge. Leading the charge is one of the most frequently attacked researchers of them all—Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann.
In this interview with host Chris Mooney, Mann pulls no punches. He defends the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change, and explains why those who attack it consistently miss the target. He also answers critics of his “hockey stick” study, and explains why the charges that have arisen in “ClimateGate” seem much more smoke than fire.
Once again, the show is here, and you can subscribe on iTunes for further episodes…
Update: The show airs just in time, apparently; Joe Romm documents yet another unfair and bogus attack on Mann, this time from the Wall Street Journal….
Following this discussion thread at the CFI/Point of Inquiry forums, I’ve decided to announce my show’s guest a week early from now on, and call for audience questions for him/her. I’ll take a sampling from those questions that appear on the forums, and ask them on the air.
The guest for Friday is going to be Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, and we’ll be talking about the unprecedented wave of recent attacks on climate research–and climate scientists. So I am sure there will be many, many questions that folks will come up with. Don’t leave them in comments here–although comments are open. Leave them on this CFI forum thread if you want me to consider them. (Note that I believe you’ll be required to register over there.)
Michael E. Mann is Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State, and author of the famous “hockey stick” study, as well as dozens of other peer reviewed papers. He’s also a contributor to RealClimate.org, and is the author, with Lee R. Kump, of Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming:
So any questions for Michael Mann? If so, leave them here–and they may just make their way into the interview!
Also, compose your questions sooner rather than later, as we’ll be recording fairly early on this week…..
This is one of the main stories here at the AAAS meeting in San Diego:
SAN DIEGO—A symposium organized here at the last minute by two of the world’s most prominent scientific organizations addressed recent attacks on an increasingly beleaguered climate science community. The panel met in the uncertain aftermath of the release of e-mails stolen from prominent climate scientists and critiques of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The panel of academics was convened by National Academy of Science President Ralph Cicerone, in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW), which is holding its annual meeting here. At a time when the biggest headlines on science have been over the flaws or legitimacy of climate science, said Cicerone, recent skirmishes over climate research “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science [overall].” He cited a number of recent polls, which show a “degradation” in the respect of the public for science in general.
Climate researchers have taken the biggest hit. They are feeling the brunt of what IPCC author Chris Field has described as a “feeding frenzy” since the November e-mail release. “The situation is completely out of hand,” said Texas A&M climate scientist Gerald North. “One guy e-mailed me to say I’m a ‘whore for the global warming crowd.’ ” His PowerPoint presentation included a slide quoting conservative talk show host Glenn Beck: “If the IPCC had been done by Japanese scientists, there’s not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri that should have occurred.”
I get the sense that scientists and their institutions are so concerned over what has occurred in the past few months that there are going to be very real changes made, so as to ensure that better defenses of science are mounted in the future. It will be very interesting to watch what develops on this front…
I haven’t read all the new material yet that my good friends at DeSmogBlog are producing. But I have long been suspicious of the attacks on leading climate researchers, like the recently vindicated Michael Mann, because they are so obviously diversionary, and yet also so obviously strategic.
There is no doubt that those attacks have been mounting; I believe a new and full scale “war on science” is afoot in the climate arena, something I hope to say more about shortly.
But in the meantime, it appears that following ClimateGate and GlacierGate, we are once again getting some revelations taking on the other side. Maybe this means the pendulum will shift, and good science can move back off the ropes, where it has been for too long. We’ll see. I’ll be watching closely.
Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle has a really important article out about how, basically, the good guys lost a major battle in the climate war over the past few months. Some combination of the weather, ClimateGate, the relative failure of Copenhagen, and now, the decreasing likelihood of the U.S. Senate passing cap and trade have shifted a mood of climate optimism–which I certainly felt about a year ago–to one of deep despair. “The climate surrounding climate change has changed, and not for the better for those seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,” writes Berger. Sadly, I have to agree.
What went wrong? That’s a very long story, and Berger relates much of it. For my part, I am convinced the fundamental factor is that our camp egregiously misunderestimated the skeptic/denial camp and what it was capable of. Our thinking went something like this: “the science keeps getting stronger, and now we have Obama…the tide has turned.” And so we were lulled into a false sense of security. Now, there is a hell of a lot of regrouping to do, and I am not even sure where to begin. But one thing is certain: We should never again assume that science alone is going to make the political difference on this issue, no matter how strong it gets.
Things have been so nuts for me over the past few days, I haven’t even been able to blog my Washington Post Outlook piece from Sunday about the need for better science communication in the wake of the devastating blow dealt by the ClimateGate scandal. The piece has been drawing tons of supportive private emails, as well as lots of online critiques and reactions, and fully 800 plus comments on the Post’s website, many of them from climate deniers.
Anyway, the article starts like this:
The battle over the science of global warming has long been a street fight between mainstream researchers and skeptics. But never have the scientists received such a deep wound as when, in late November, a large trove of e-mails and documents stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia were released onto the Web.
In the ensuing “Climategate” scandal, scientists were accused of withholding information, suppressing dissent, manipulating data and more. But while the controversy has receded, it may have done lasting damage to science’s reputation: Last month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40 percent of Americans distrust what scientists say about the environment, a considerable increase from April 2007. Meanwhile, public belief in the science of global warming is in decline.
The central lesson of Climategate is not that climate science is corrupt. The leaked e-mails do nothing to disprove the scientific consensus on global warming. Instead, the controversy highlights that in a world of blogs, cable news and talk radio, scientists are poorly equipped to communicate their knowledge and, especially, to respond when science comes under attack.
A few scientists answered the Climategate charges almost instantly. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, whose e-mails were among those made public, made a number of television and radio appearances. A blog to which Mann contributes, RealClimate.org, also launched a quick response showing that the e-mails had been taken out of context. But they were largely alone. “I haven’t had all that many other scientists helping in that effort,” Mann told me recently.
This isn’t a new problem….
Read here, there’s much more….on science communication strategies, how to fight the evolution war, and so forth. In essence, the piece builds on some of the central arguments of Unscientific America, but strained through the new example of ClimateGate, which is surely the number one reason yet that scientists have got to mobilize in the way that we recommended in the book. Hope you enjoy…
While in Copenhagen, I spoke with the folks from Fora.tv for a ten minute interview covering a wide range of topics. These included the dysfunctional way in which our culture processes information about science in general, and about climate science in particular; the continuing stream of misinformation about global warming (particularly the bogus claims that we haven’t had any warming in a decade); the increasing allure of the geoengineering option as progress on emission cuts continues to stall; the reasons for heeding climate models, despite their flaws; and the dangerous possibility that the warming we ultimately see could be on the high end of the current projections.
You can watch it all here, and I have also embedded it below:
It has been brought to my attention that I am mentioned, once, in the “ClimateGate” email stash. If you go here and search for my name, you find this, an email from Tom Wigley of NCAR, who I have interviewed for various stories:
From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Fwd: FW: Press Release from The Science & Environmental Policy Project]]
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:17:14 -0700
Cc: carl mears <mears@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Frank Wentz <frank.wentz@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Steven Sherwood <Steven.Sherwood@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, John Lanzante <John.Lanzante@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “‘Dian J. Seidel’” <dian.seidel@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Melissa Free <Melissa.Free@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Karl Taylor <taylor13@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Steve Klein <klein21@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Leopold Haimberger <leopold.haimberger@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “Thorne, Peter” <peter.thorne@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “‘Philip D. Jones’” <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Dear all,
I think the scientific fraud committed by Douglass needs to
be exposed. His co-authors may be innocent bystanders, but
I doubt it.
In normal circumstances, what Douglass has done would cause
him to lose his job — a parallel is the South Korean cloning
fraud case.
I have suggested that someone like Chris Mooney should be
told about this.
Tom.
In searching my emails, I was never told about this, and certainly never wrote anything about the situation, which I am not familiar with. As a journalist, though, I certainly do want to receive tips of things to write about, and I frequently do from a wide variety of folks. With only the most rare of exceptions, I never get around to writing anything; but in this case, I wasn’t even tipped.
Still, I can see why scientists concerned about global warming, and accepting of the scientific consensus, would want me to cover the topic, including its political side. By 2007 I already had a track record for exposing the misinformation campaign to mislead the public about climate change, something I continue to do today. And given that there is such a misinformation campaign–with “ClimateGate” being the latest and perhaps the most severe example–we need scientists and journalists alike striving to set the record straight.
I guess that that’s my way of saying that, as with virtually all of the “ClimateGate” emails that I have seen, the single one mentioning my name is not very surprising–especially as it regards me, who never even heard of this until now.
photo: vanessa woods
