Smug? No, pissed off because the people without the knowledge and/or the smarts to follow the science find journalists trained in the classics and fiction writers to be more authoritative than scientists working in the field, and because they have tried to turn a question of science into a issue of politics.
Long rant, lots of links...
The story of the Exxon Denial Cult begins here...a good 40 minute video showing the links between Big Tobacco "junk science" campaign and this. Some of the same players, even. "Noted" climatologists Singer and Seitz were previousy "noted cancer scientists".
video.google.com
One of the players in this is Repub. pollster Luntz. Shaped the campaign with focus groups (mini-cults) and word play. Not that his opinion really matters in the scientific part, but what does Luntz say now? He has resigned from the Church of Da Nile; he's no longer Egyptian.
Frank Luntz Accepts Global Warming Science
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 06.19.06
Business & Politics (news)
Many high-profile global warming skeptics have recently changed their position. We've mentioned Sir David Attenborough and Michael Shermer with his "data trumps politics" epiphany, but there are many more that we haven't written about like Gregg Easterbrook and John Tierney. The most remarkable cognitive flip to date must certainly come from Frank Luntz: He is the man who wrote the infamous memo (see page 7 of the pdf file for the part about global warming) coaching the current US administration on the best ways to confuse the issue and delay action (remember, Luntz, like Philip Cooney, is not a scientific - he is actually a political pollster). Well, Luntz has told the BBC that he now accepts the scientific consensus on global warming and has changed his position, but that he doesn't feel responsible for what the US government is doing with his advice (Australia, and recently Canada, have also been inspired by these tactics).
Full transcript:
Luntz: "It's now 2006. I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place and that the behavior of humans are (sic) affecting the climate."
BBC: "But the administration has continued taking your advice. They're still questioning the science."
Luntz: "That's up to the administration. I'm not the administration. What they want to do is their business. It has nothing to do with what I write. It has nothing to do with what I believe."
treehugger.com
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Science is a constant search for the truth in the world around us...atomic theory, gravity, whatever. Politics is a constant search for the lies that sell best to achieve your goal. If the Church of Exxon had a case to make, why couldn't they make it honestly? A few current examples...
Archbishop Benny Peiser...
'Peiser refuted Oreskes'
Objection: Sure, Oreskes found no one bucking the consensus, but her paper was refuted by Benny Peiser, who did the exact same survey and found very different results.
Answer: True, Benny Peiser did attempt a similar study and submitted it as a letter to Science responding to the Oreskes study. But for very good reasons, it was not published.
Peiser claimed to find 34 articles in his "reject or doubt the consensus view" category.
So, even B4 publication, ths story was out that...Ha, ha, no consuensus...and the truth?...
[Update] Since this was first written, there have been a couple of developments. First, I crossed Benny Peiser's path on the Prometheus blog. In the course of a lengthy thread under this post, I asked him directly about abstract (18) above, to which he replied, "I accept that it was a mistake to include the abstract you mentioned (and some other rather ambiguous ones) in my critique of the Oreskes essay."
Second, it appears he has since gone even further when pressed by an Australian television program, Media Watch. The transcript is here, and Tim Lambert summarizes it here. The gist is that he has backed down to the position that just one of his 34 abstracts fit his description as rejecting the consensus view on climate change -- and it was an editorial, not research of any kind.
The reason I still present this article in full, despite the backpedalling, is that as far as I can tell the retraction has been quiet and not proactive. Citations of Peiser's "work" continue to show up all over the place.
gristmill.grist.org
So a letter (not a peer reviewed article) that was never published containing 33 wrong abstracts and one supporting Letter to Ed is still being cited as proof that there is no AGW, and probably will be for another 10 years. Honest? Shit.
Another one...post IPCC, the Church was trumpeting that IPCC rejected the hockey stick. Article first appeared in WSJ, I believe.
The truth?
The handle is now 400 years longer, and there are now 12 studies, not 3. But the church would have you believe the model is discredited.
ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu
It refers to chapt 6.6 of the report. The graph is on pg. 467.
ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu
Index to all the reports, Working Group 1.
ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu
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If this was a stock, people would be yelling "Look at the trend, buy on the dips, no sigh of trend breakdown". But what we get is "no trend, CO2 from volcanos, bad data, inconclusive, friend of Gore, blahblah".
If the Church of Exxon has the truth, why do they lie? Why do they misquote? Why do they cherrypick lines from papers, and come to the opposite conclusion of the authors and then claim the author supports their case? If science is the search for the true answer, how come they build their case on lies?
Why is it that the scientific method only fails us on this issue (and maybe smoking/lung cancer)? Why does it work for gravity? Development of the bomb? DNA/genetic engineering?
Aids drugs? Organic chem and all we get from it? Getting us to the moon? Why doesn't it work here?
Why is it the media does equal time on this, to stay "fair and balanced"? Why don't they take that approach with AIDS? Peter Duesenburg and Nobel winner Kerry Mullis claim that it has never been proven that HIV causes AIDS. (I think they have a point...went back and read the original paper, and it was..they have HIV, they have AIDS, therefore HIV causes AIDS..absolutely no research like injecting HIV and see if you get AIDS). How come, every timer there is a discussion about AIDS, they don't put these guys on, too, for both sides?
How come they don't they give ET to the creationists? How come every time you see a 4 Billion YO world story, they don't give time to the people who think the earth is 7K, the flood was caused by a mile high megafountain blasting all the water from the inside of the earth, thereby carving the Grand Canyon in days, burying lots of trees that tuned into coal in 2 months?
Duh...
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Another dirty little secret the Church won't tell you...sometimes they say they are being censored, they can't speak (usually happens while they are speaking on the tube, but sometimes they say it in the media).
If you read IPCC, you will see things like "Ballunis and Soon contend (7).. but it has been refuted in(8,9, 10-, 11),
and Lindzen (13) but...(14,15,19,23,24)..."
Censoring? The only censoring is being done by the Shrubistas...Cooney et al.
Smug? I won't even be smug when this is no longer an issue; the only smugginess I'll get is when the folks behind this get the same treatment Big Tobacco got, at which point I will give you my "See, I tol' you".
It's gonna be your grandkids' world...you better get it figured out in a hurry.
closing video..
gristmill.grist.org |
