Commenting on lists and name-calling

Well, last week Marc Morano posted my email on his climatedepot website and his email blast, in the process of comparing me to the Stasi (secret police of the former East German one-party-rule Communist regime.) Over the past week I've had a stream of hostile emails in response.

Here I re-post an earlier reply I gave at Joe Romm's ever lively and thought-provoking site www.climateprogress.org:

As for web lists of statement signers: thanks Michael Tobis for saying it better than I ever could. Every list I compiled was from a statement already posted on the web. All the links are on my page of list sources
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/ ~prall/ climate/ list_sources.html

As for Marc Morano’s attempt to Swiftboat this as “Stasi-esque”: what amazing gall! He’s famous for having built a long list of climate skeptics during his term with Sen. Inhofe. Hypocrite! Why wasn’t that list “Stasi-esque?” Just because he agreed with their “side”?
Nothing in our PNAS paper justifies comparisons to the Stasi. We don’t *say* anyone should persecute or blacklist signers of either type of statement, because of course we *don’t believe* that. (Hard to believe I’m even having to say this at all.) What we say is that the media should consider people’s qualifications and standing (oooh!)
The only other way to spin this into something sinister is to argue that someone evil *might use* the lists to persecute people regardless of our intentions. That seems to be the main theme at Roger Pielke Jr’s blog.

That objection of what someone might do with the list really falls down on the point Michael makes so well, that all the source lists I compiled were already on the web. Anyone who could misuse my list could just as well have found the same names on the original sources, or many of the same names plus many more on Morano’s list – and not all on his list by choice.

Morano publicized his list relentlessly, and listed many more names as skeptics than I have. Morano also tended to quotemine, leading to false positives where the person in question would protest their inclusion as unrepresentative of their actual views, yet Morano would refuse to take them off. He’d just point to the mined quote he had, ignoring anything the source might say about being taken out of context or trying to tell him what their actual views are.

If the fear is that someone biased against supporters of one “side” could focus their bias on people on a list, why was it okay for Morano to subject people to that risk with his list? Was Morano’s list “Stasi-esque” as well? If not, why not?

Thanks again to those offering supportive comments on the PNAS paper. Since Morano published my email and compared me to the Stasi, let’s just say I’ve had a stream of unfriendly responses. (Oddly, people keep sending me really weak arguments like “there is no greenhouse effect” or predicting global cooling.)


That's the end of my posting on climateprogress. Site host Joe Romm aptly commented:

[JR: Remember, Morano publicly stated how he believes climate scientists should be treated: “I seriously believe we should kick them while they’re down,” he said. “They deserve to be publicly flogged.” He proudly linked to that interview on his blog.

]

Early reactions to Anderegg et al in PNAS

I'm the second author on the article "Expert Credibility in Climate Change" just out yesterday at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract. It's been written up several places, and is quickly making the rounds on the web, attracting a lot of comment and critique. I'll try to address questions or challenges here as I get time.


Today I received email from an author in Germany who said he was on the Stasi's list under the G.D.R (a horrific world, one that we who've never been there can scarcely imagine.)

I wanted to address his concern about my online list. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Dr. _______,


I can't imagine what it must have been like to live in the shadow of the
Stasi. I would never want to see anything like that take place today. At
least now Germany is one country again and is a democracy, and I think a
good example of it as well. I admire the mixed-member proportional
system you have. Here in Canada we have winner-takes-all voting, and our
Green Party has never won a seat in Parliament despite polling over 11%
of the national vote. There is a group here promoting a change to such
an MMP system, though we are having trouble getting people to think
about this with so many other concerns on the agenda, especially the
economy.

As for seeing my listings as some kind of "blacklist" - I'm quite
disappointed that people are viewing it in that light; that was never my
intention. I've only listed those whose names were already on an
existing public declaration, available on the web, and I list people who
signed affirmative statements as well (may we never see a day where any
government would persecute members of either group for their opinions!)

I want the media to understand who has really researched climate and who
has not. Conversely, I certainly don't want to silence or exclude anyone
from civil policy debate; no one of us has all the answers on what
policies we should adopt to prepare for the future, and I do want to
hear from others on their views. The policy process must be democratic,
even though that can be painfully slow. In the U.S. there is a
distressingly strong role for corporate spending on political campaigns,
with no limits at all since their Supreme Court's recent "Citizens
United" case. Companies like Exxon can dominate the discourse, leaving
ordinary citizen's voices little heard. Here again I think most European
countries have far more rational approaches to campaign spending laws. I
see corporate spending power and P.R. tricks as a more immediate threat
to the common good than actual (state) censorship of free expression.
Currently our major democracies have fairly good laws against state
censorship, which courts defend actively.

I believe that rational public action to prepare for a future without
fossil fuels is one key to keeping prosperity and peace, and avoiding
the prospect of conflicts over scarce and declining non-renewable energy
sources. Again, Germany is far ahead of either Canada or the U.S. in
making those sensible preparations. The professor just down the hall
from me works on thin-film solar panels; the joint-venture company
developing his technologies opened their factory in Bischoswerda in the
former GDR thanks to strong support from the German government.


[ I see I mis-spelled "Bischofswerda" in the email. Oops. Here's their WP page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bischofswerda ]

Pesky scientists - so annoying!

Scientists can be a real nuisance. They use big words, and act all smart and everything. Then they come around and tell us scary stuff like dangers we never even knew were there: radioactivity and cancer-causing chemicals and UV rays and nicotine. What a bunch of spoil-sports.

Plus, they are often very hard to pin down - we pick up some story (or rumour) about a new danger, and try as reporters to get their take on it, but as often as not, they can't even give a simple yes or no answer. It's all "likely" this and "probable" that, and "statistically significant" or "balance of the evidence" or whatever. Lots of "on the other hand" until you just don't have enough hands, or even fingers, to count the different angles they want to look at.

Now and then I think we'd almost rather not have those black and white answers that scientists hate to give. Take global warming, for example: if this is real, it's going to be quite a nuisance -- 'inconvenient,' so to speak. I mean, think about our lifestyle! It could cramp our ability to drive vehicles as big as some people's houses for personal security and -- let's face it -- ego gratification. I think a lot of us would just rather not know.

So now, we have to deal with scientists who keep coming out and saying 'yes, this is a real problem' - over and over again. They keep putting out declarations and open letters telling the world that our greenhouse gas emissions are already changing the climate, and forecasting that the problem has to get a lot worse if we keep on at the current rate. This is the problem with the IPCC - behind all the "very likelys" and "probables," they basically say the same thing: this is a real problem. This same theme keeps coming up in declarations signed by thousands of scientists - over 5000 of them, on eight statements issued since December 2009.

Okay, scientists, now you're just starting to scare us. You're also sounding uncharacteristically decisive. Those of us who aren't comfortable with your message may have to do something about this. Here are some of our options:

• call your views "alarmist"
  
• claim you are now too unified, so this must be 'group-think' and you're just bullying the numerous dissenters that we can't seem to find 
• find the handful of you who don't see the problem, and get them on TV a lot - a whole lot
  
• take out full-page ads in the NYT saying you are wrong, signed by over 100 non-experts
  
• get Rush Limbaugh to call you "socialists" and imply you want the UN to run everything
  
• host a string of anti-conferences with lots of non-experts, to make you look less convincing
  
• if all else fails, we can turn to Fox News!
  

Thousands of scientists worldwide push back against attacks on integrity of climate science

I've been quite busy updating my list of scientists who've signed statements on climate change. There have been several new declarations in the months since the posting of the stolen CRU emails; some of these have drawn signers numbering in the thousands.

These lists reflect a truly broad and widespread response from scientists to the attacks from contrarian bloggers on the integrity of climate science in general, the IPCC, and on individual climate scientists.

To emphasize just how broad the response has been, I've compiled a list of the names of the signers of these eight statements, with notations on which statements each one signed:
Five thousand scientists worldwide defend climate science

Here is a list of these most recent statements, with links to original sources. (The initials are the tag I've used to tag signers who are also authors in my database of climate author publication stats; after each I note how many signers already have their climate publication and citation stats collected in my table of climate science authors.)

• NAS10: May, 2010 statement from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences defending the integrity of climate science, and condemning "McCarthy-like tactics" against climate scientists. Discussed at DeSmogBlog and at ClimateProgress. [23 are tallied in my stats table]
  
• FR10: May, 2010 statement from over 400 600 scientists in France rebutting outrageous attacks on climate science by Claude Allegre. [55 are tallied in my stats table]
  
• NL10: May, 2010 statement from scientists in the Netherlands; 50 initial signers; now 196 Dutch and 96 foreign signers [13 are tallied in my stats table].
  
• OLFS10: March, 2010 Open Letter from U.S. Scientists on the IPCC, 320 signers (list) [53 tallied in my stats table]
  
• UCS10: March, 2010 US Scientists and Economists' Call to Action organised by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This builds on their similar 2008 statement, with over 2000 signatories. [178 tallied in my stats table]
  
• CSW09: Dec., 2009 letter to US Congress from 25 climate scientists responding to the stolen email controversy, posted by Climate Science Watch [all 25 tallied in my stats table]
  
• WWFC09: A Dec., 2009 open letter organized by the World Wildlife Fund--Canada to Canada's Parliament calling for action on climate, endorsed by 848 Canadian scientists. I've tagged over 60 already in my list.
  
• UKsc09: Dec., 2009 Statement from the UK science community signed by 1700 U.K. scientists, from 67 universities and 55 other institutions, re-affirming the integrity of climate science and data sources, in response to the University of East Anglia email break-in, which begins:
  

  We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.

  This is perhaps the strongest and certainly the broadest response from scientists to the UEA email controversy. [I've tallied 108 signers in my author stats data.]
  
  

It's so not easy being green

With apologies to Kermit The Frog... it's getting to where nothing is quite as green as it might seem.

I just got an appeal by email from the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee, a group I've supported for some years, about their opposition to a proposal for a large new hydroelectric dam in B.C. (that's British Columbia, for you outlanders.)

Now I know there are real ecological impact issues with any large hydro dam, and the submerged biomass decaying in low oxygen conditions emits methane - so such dams are not truly climate neutral. However, their letter brought up the kind of unexpected negative spin off that could make your head spin (off?) Here's their beef:

Over half the power from the new dam would be sold to natural gas extraction operations in the nearby Horn River Basin (drilling? or at least pumping, de-watering, purification and compression.) That new gas supply in turn would be piped east into neighbouring Alberta, where it will be snapped up by ... big dirty TAR SANDS operations. Oh, yuck.

So much for the green image of B.C. Hydro.

You just can't win. It is sooooo not easy being green.

Prof. Mike Mann speaks out

Here's a great interview with Penn State U Professor Mike Mann by Randy Olsen, author of Don't Be Such a Scientist.
Randy gets right to the key points on the recent campaign of attacks on climate science and scientists. Also worth a read is Randy's "part 1" about the embarrassingly unprofessional CBS News (tv) segment that broadcast most of a libelous YouTube video attacking Prof. Mann as a scientific fraud who makes up data. They put a thin coating of "balance" over this, with a verbal mention of Prof. Mann's exhonoration over criticisms arising from the stolen UEA emails, but on screen they kept playing the scurrilous attack cartoon the whole time, complete with captioning.
I could go on and tell everyone to read Randy's book, and about how Prof. Mann's work stands up in spite of the harping about the hockey-stick graph, stolen emails and all. But it's late so I just wanted to get a quick post to link to the interview - check it out and see for yourself.

Confused about climate? There's an app for that!

John Cook's excellent resource skepticalscience has taken an innovative twist: he's repackaged his quick comebacks to tired talking points from global warming skeptics or deniers into an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. (This may be a 'tipping point' for me to take the plunge on an iPod Touch that I've been 'i'-ing for a while.)
The great thing about this is that John's neatly organized material actually lends itself to just such a platform. Now, I am saying this without having bought that iPod Touch yet - but I've been quite impressed with his website. John boils down the essential issues and backs up his responses with links citing original peer-reviewed research.
John's new iPhone app is getting plenty of buzz in the media and online. Today it was picked up in the latest post on RealClimate (now that's the big time.)
Congrats, John!