Why Climate Denialists Argue Even When It’s Clear They Are Wrong

From xkcd.com

It seems every scientist has been through it a million times. We see some climate science denier saying something that is so incredibly divorced from fact that we can’t believe they would so blatantly show off their ignorance. So we explain, we correct, we demonstrate their lack of understanding, and yet they continue.

Why? Do they not notice their ignorance, their lack of logic, their devolution into pedantic proselytizing? Are they so wrapped up in their belief systems that the very act of admitting actual facts would damage their self-worth? Or are they just trolls, thriving on their self-delusional belief that they are smarter than a fifth grader, not to mention every climate scientist in the world?

The answer, of course, is yes, all of the above, though not necessarily all at the same time in the same person. Since denialist positions are so often based on what they want to be true rather than what the facts demonstrate to be true, they cannot give in. To do so would result in such psychological discordance as to completely destroy their self-value.

However, the psyches of amateur denialists can be left for another essay; this one is about professional denialists. Why do the paid lobbyists and their designees continue to write Op-Eds and other opinion pieces in non-science, non-peer reviewed venues even when they know they will be immediately debunked?

The answer is actually self-evident in the question. Denialists know that they have no valid scientific argument; if they did they would present it in scientific journals, conferences, and debates. Their goal isn’t to demonstrate science, it is to manipulate public opinion. That is what lobbyists do, and they do it well. Their goal is to create the illusion of debate, the façade of uncertainty. By continuing the “discussion,” such as it is, in the media, they win. They know that a majority of the public won't understand the intricacies of the science, either by choice or by its complexity. Denialists know that the public will get an overall sense of whether the science is settled or not, and that it is on this vague feeling the public will make judgments as to whether immediate action is needed. Perception is more important than fact, and illusion of reality is much more powerful than actual reality.

The goal of the game

As Sherlock Holmes might say, “the game is afoot.” To professional climate deniers, the game is keeping the public confused and giving cover to politicians wishing to avoid taking positions (see "I am not a scientist").

A good example of this is the recent back-and-forth over an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal by computational physicist, Steven Koonin. The Op-Ed follows the usual pattern of being written by someone who is not a climate scientist, repeating misperceptions and misinformation already demonstrated to be false, and drawing conclusions not supported by the premises presented, faulty as they usually are. It’s the same spiel offered dozens of times before by Heartland Institute lawyer/lobbyist James Taylor and other designated denialists of the month. In each case the opinion piece presents a straw man to attack while ignoring all of the actual science and previous rebuttals of the same faulty premises repeated ad nauseam. The denial lobby knows their arguments don’t hold water, so why do they keep offering them?

Because they get rebutted. Immediately, repeatedly, and demonstrably. Every single time.

To scientists this might seem crazy. We think that constantly being shown to be wrong would be a persuasive reason not to say the same false thing over and over. We expect people to learn from their mistakes, not simply repeat them as if doing so would somehow make falsehoods true. That’s because scientists are used to arguing the science; professional denialist lobbyists, on the other hand, are arguing the public opinion. What is critical in this game is not what the science tells us, it’s the fact that to the public it appears as if there are two sides arguing with each other. Two sides + arguing = not settled. 

Lobbyists, aka, professional climate deniers, know this. The act of continued “discussion” is conflated with disagreement. It doesn’t matter that one “side” says something that has been repeatedly proven false while the other “side” presents actual facts; all that matters to the public is the appearance of disagreement. Some of the public will interpret this as meaning the science isn’t settled, others will use it as convenient reinforcement for an ideologically motivated position. In both cases, reality isn’t the driver – the manufactured doubt is the driver. 

That is the game being played by the denialist industry, one that they will always win. Scientific-reality-be-damned.

So should scientists take the time to rebut opinion pieces in politically motivated media outlets? Alas, the answer isn't a simple yes or no. We'll explore options in future posts, but scientists should consider whether their reply dowses a few few smoldering embers noticed only by foxholed fanatics, or fuels a wider conflagration that, in the end, further confuses the public. The latter, of course, is exactly what the professional denialists want.

[Graphic from http://xkcd.com/386/]

Googling the Internet - How Climate Deniers Get Their "Science"

Often, on the internet, you'll find a breed of amateur climate denier who, to be kind, boggles the mind. Some time ago one such person left a series of comments adamantly avowing that I was uninformed about climate science. With what turned out to be irrational self-confidence he asserted that he was more informed than I and could demonstrate "the truth" about the science by simply “Googling the internet.” Always curious, I asked for examples.

After a few days of requests he finally admitted that he was “doing some research in his spare time to find some urls” that would prove that there were thousands of climate scientists out there who disagreed with the scientific consensus. A week later he finally returned with his examples - a list of “urls” that he had trouble posting because they kept getting cut off from the screen view (so much for technical expertise).


Before taking a look at the “urls” he posted, let’s stop for a second and examine what we have so far, which, frankly, is a lot of exclamation without much of a point. Scientists who study climate are considered to be uninformed, and amateur denialists know this is true because they can “google the internet.” Yet, despite boasting of superior knowledge, it appears there hasn’t actually been much googling going on prior to all that boasting. 

Okay, so we have someone who feels that all one needs to do is a quick Google search to find scads of valid scientific information from climate scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus. And voila (a week later), we now have a list of URLs. In fact, 30 URLs were offered that, individually and cumulatively, could supposedly demonstrate that thousands of climate scientists refute the scientific consensus. One might assume this was an impressive list except for one major drawback - lack of science. What he provided was simply a jumble of miscellaneous links to blogs, newspaper articles, and a fraudulent fake survey. In technology terms, this is what is called a "data dump," or more accurately, a "Google and Go." To give you an idea of this treasure trove of information, the 30 URLs break down as follows:

 - 4 cite Senator Inhofe/Mark Morano’s “Minority Report,” a compilation of highly edited snippets mostly from a variety of politicians, lobbyists, and scientists in other fields with no actual climate research knowledge

- 6 cite the Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine (OISM) “petition project,” the fraudulent list of undocumented people who signed a one-paragraph pledge based on a faked article produced by a survivalist book seller


- 14 cite various lawyers and non-science lobbyists who work for fossil fuel and/or free market lobbying organizations

- 1 cites the hastily constructed “Climate Swindle” movie by Martin Durkin, who admitted to rather sketchy misrepresentation of the data and state of the science

- 4 cite blogs that actually support the scientific consensus (which he obviously hadn't read beyond the blog title)

- 1 cites an actual climate scientist

Wait, that last one actually cited a climate scientist? See, there is one climate scientist that disagrees with the scientific consensus (97% agree with the consensus). All those scientific data and virtually all active climate scientists must be wrong, because, hey, one climate scientist disagrees. Well, not disagrees, really. The only scientist cited in 30 URLs offered is Dr. John Christy, who admits that the planet is in fact warming and that human activity such as burning fossil fuels is a cause. So Christy actually admits that the scientific consensus is right, he just thinks it will be slower than do the vast majority of climate scientists. Not much of a refutation, even though he tries.

So 30 URLs, all but one to blogs and online newspapers and fake lists of mostly non-scientists.  That’s it. That’s the sole result of a week of “Googling the internet” to come up with "thousands of scientists" who disprove man-made climate change.

All of this explains why the professional climate denier organizations spend so much time writing Op-Eds, supporting misinformation blogs, and attacking scientists despite knowing that their misinformation will be immediately debunked. Because they know most amateur climate deniers either don't care about the science or simply don't bother to understand it (or, usually, both). Falsehoods and misdirections will still saturate the internet long after they've been found lacking in accuracy or honesty. Doubt is their product. And they know how to sell it.

Future posts will continue this series exposing climate denialism. Stay tuned for more of the tactics and tall tales of the climate denial industry.

Climate Denial Tactic - Repeat a Falsehood Enough and Maybe It Will Become True

This page recently started posting a series of articles exposing climate denialism, for example, this one about the kinds of unreliable sources used by denialists instead of science, and this one differentiating between professional and amateur deniers. A comment left on the post just prior to those highlights yet another denialist tactic - repeating falsehoods as if saying it over and over would somehow make it become true.

The post itself discussed a defamation lawsuit filed by climate scientist Michael Mann, the target of an unending stream of personal attacks since the publication of the "hockey stick" graph 15 years ago. The graph (and the dozen or so graphs just like it by myriad independent researchers since that time) represents a threat to those who would prefer not to deal with the science. So professional denialists have targeted it, and more directly, Mann.

As such, the amateur denialists eagerly repeat the falsehoods, usually in a way that demonstrates their ideological bent and ignorance of the actual science. I'll parse the comment here as representative of how amateurs work. The full comment can be viewed on the original post. Italicized portions below are verbatim from the comment:

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous" and his cousin "Fake Screen Name" are prolific commenters.

Mann became famous, of sorts, as a critical link in the chain that unequivocally demonstrates human activity is warming the planet.

Here the commenter is repeating a line from the first paragraph of my original article. It shows that he at least started to read the post, though the rest of his comment suggests that may be as far as he got. This is actually very common. Mention of Mann's name, much like the mention of Al Gore's name, tends to elicit a Pavlovian-like response among ideologally-motivated deniers. That response immediately initiates a fixed action pattern. The commenter goes on:

Unequivocally?

Yes, unequivocally. This has been voluminously detailed in the latest IPCC reports and dozens of other reports, not to mention all the thousands of scientific studies on which the reports are based. Adding a question mark allows the commenter to dismiss the reality without having the burden of actually explaining why.  

But here the rant begins to get a bit rabid. Using a technique often called the "Gish Gallop," he offers a series of rapid-fire falsehoods in the hopes their sheer weight will cause them to become true.

From a Mann who refuses to show his work? From a Mann who lied about being vindicated. From a Mann who lied about winning Nobel Peace prize. From a Mann who left MWP out of is HockeyStick. From a Mann who conveniently didn't chart Decline at end of his HockeyStick.

Okay, breathe. Another breath. Good. Now, each of these assertions is false. I'll address each in turn below:

1) Mann has, in fact, shown his work. His papers have all been peer-reviewed and published in top scientific journals, where he and his co-authors explain in detail his work. He has even made available his data. His work is some of the most scrutinized work in science. So the commenter's assertion is patently false.

2) Mann also hasn't lied about anything. As noted, his work has been reviewed by hundreds of other scientists and a variety of academic and scientific panels, including the National Academy of Sciences. That work, and Mann's statements, have all been validated, vindicated, and verified over and over again. Again, the assertion being made is patently false (and, in fact, libelous).

3) Likewise, your assertion about Mann lying about winning a Nobel Peace prize is absolutely false. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was "shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." Mann, along with all other "scientists that had contributed substantially to the preparation of IPCC reports," [was presented] with a personalized certificate "for contributing to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC."

4) Also false is the assertion that Mann left the MWP out of his "hockey stick" graphs. Most often this falsehood stems from a profound ignorance of the science. Many denialists like to cite one early, regional, schematic (not even real data) and ignore all of the actual data collected and analyzed on a global basis over the last 35 years. Mann correctly applies the data. Skeptical Science has a nice overview of the MWP for anyone who would like to dispel their ignorance.

5) The assertion that Mann failed to chart "Decline" is, not surprisingly given the commenter's track record, false. It also suggests profound ignorance of the data and use of proxies. Mann charted the actual instrumentally measured temperatures in years since we had reliable measurements. These are overlaid on the proxy metrics often used. The commenter seems to want scientists to plot proxy data that had been found to be unreliable and ignore all the actual measured temperature data. That would be scientifically indefensible.

To recap, every one of the rapid-fire statements made in that one ideologically-infused diatribe is false. All. False.

From here the commenter reveals his motivation for the divorced-from-fact rant:

AGW is an elaborate ruse by elitists to make them richer marketing Green products and supported by AGW Climatologists for lucrative funding.

Notwithstanding the obvious unfamiliarity with scientific research, this implies somehow all of the world's scientists, one hundred years of scientific research by thousands of independent groups, more than 100,000 peer-reviewed studies published in hundreds of scientific journals, every major scientific organization, every National Academy of Sciences, and millions of data points have all conspired to make a few elitists richer. Even physics has somehow joined this conspiracy.

Discussion of fantasy conspiracies will have to wait for another post. This post has focused on one basic tactic of climate denialists as so clearly illustrated by a single comment. Repetition of falsehoods doesn't make them true to anyone but the person repeating them, and that person usually has willfully chosen to remain ignorant of the reality.

Climate Denial on the Internet - Who are the Deniers?

Virtually every climate scientist agrees - the planet is warming and human activity is the cause. This is the unequivocal science. Yet there are people out there who go out of their way to deny that science. They are called deniers, or denialists, or sometimes just, trolls. But who really are the climate deniers?

The term "climate deniers," of course, is simply shorthand for people who deny the man-made causes of our current warming of the climate. One of the common tactics used by climate deniers is to rattle off the platitude "I'm not denying climate," or its corollary, "Climate has been happening for millions of years." So when we say "climate denial" we are referring to the active denial, misinforming, or ignorance of the undeniable body of data unequivocally demonstrating the planet is warming and that humans are the main cause. The science is clear; denial of that science is climate denial.

What deniers are not

But climate deniers come in multiple flavors and a good place to start understanding how to deal with deniers is to know who they are. One thing that is clear, however, is that the vast percentage of climate deniers are not skeptics. While they often label themselves as skeptics, like virtually everything else they say their use of the term is incorrect. Skeptics are those with knowledge of the field who look at the evidence (all of it) and remain incompletely convinced. Scientists are by nature skeptics, always questioning their own and others findings. It's how science works, so in those rare cases when virtually all scientists agree it's because the evidence is multifaceted and overwhelming. Climate deniers, on the other hand, are a particularly unskeptical crowd, accepting every non-science blogger's diatribe (and defending it even after it is summarily debunked) while simply denying all the actual science from actual scientists because it is inconvenient.

So deniers are not skeptics. That's the first thing to understand. The second is that there are two broad groups of climate deniers - the professionals and the amateurs.

The professional deniers

The professionals are those who are paid to deny climate science. The names most associated with climate denial are the Heartland Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute (as documented in the book, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway), a series of lobbying organizations associated with the billionaire Koch brothers, and a variety of other front groups whose names keep changing while their staff and paid spokespeople tend to overlapped considerably (denial organizations get a lot of mileage out of a very few people).

"Doubt is our product," as one tobacco executive so infamously put it in a memo that wasn't intended for public consumption, unlike the cigarette smoke that the industry was denying caused health effects. So too is this the primary goal of the climate denial industry. Some of the same players who once denied the tobacco/cancer connection, such as Heartland Institute and Fred Singer, now are paid by the fossil fuel industry to manufacture doubt about the unequivocal science of man-made global warming.

These professional deniers accomplish their creation of doubt by a variety of means that I'll go into in future posts, but the key tool they use is the internet. It is these professional denial lobbyists who create the content that they know will be plagiarized and shared unskeptically by the more ideological non-science followers, aka, the amateur denialists.

The amateur deniers

Once the professional denial lobby has seeded the internet via their paid bloggers (e.g., Climate Depot, WUWT, etc.), they rely on the amateur deniers to saturate the blogosphere with every sciencey-sounding, but already debunked, misinformational tidbit. Actual science by NOAA, NASA, the IPCC, and every other scientific organization is dismissed as "unreliable," while a blog post by some non-scientist with his pet conspiracy theory is taken as gospel. No matter that the blog post was already shown to be in error and largely in ignorance of the science. No matter that the post was plagiarized in its entirety from another blogger with no science background. No matter that that blogger had plagiarized it from some conspiracy nut blog, who stole it from someone else. The blogger says what the ideologue wants to hear so it by default, in the deniers mind, must be true and all those science organizations must be wrong.

Such is the rationale of amateur deniers. The combined information of nearly every climate scientist, every climate science organization, every National Academy of Science in the world, a hundred thousand peer-reviewed scientific studies, more than a century of research, millions of data points, and the realities of basic physics can all be washed away by an anonymous blogger posting easily debunked misinformation on a blog by a non-scientist receiving funding by lobbyists.

Such is the power of the internet.

Future posts will take a closer look at both professional and amateur climate deniers as we continue this series of periodic posts exposing climate denialism. Stay tuned for more of the tactics and tall tales of the climate denial industry.

[Graphic from Skeptical Science]

97 Hours of Climate Consensus...and the "Rebuttal" by Climate Science Deniers

It has been a fascinating week in climate science, in at least two ways that are illustrative of the public debate about the state-of-the-science. And it all stems from something called "97 Hours of Consensus," an internet campaign designed (literally) by John Cook and his colleagues at Skeptical Science.

The idea behind the campaign is to use caricatures of 97 active climate scientists (drawn by John Cook himself), along with quotes about the science by each, to highlight "the fact that 97% of climate scientists have concluded that humans are causing global warming." According to Cook:

Each hour, beginning at 9am Sunday EST, September 7^th, we'll publish a statement and playful, hand-drawn caricature of a leading climate scientist. Each caricature lists the scientists’ name, title, expertise and academic institution.

There is even a super-cool website showing all the caricatures together in a 3D format that you can rotate. Better yet, hover your cursor over each scientist and you can make them move - and their quote pops up on your screen. The "97 hours" ends on the morning of September 11th (EST) and has been garnering a lot of attention. A huge number of people have been tweeting and retweeting the clever graphics using the hashtag #97Hours, as well as sharing on Facebook. Here's an example, featuring Michael Mann:

In case you missed the significance, the 97 alludes to the various scientific studies that have been conducted, including one by John Cook and colleagues, that show at least 97% of active climate scientists agree that the data overwhelmingly (and unequivocally) demonstrate that human activity is causing the planet to warm. The consensus is based on millions of data points, hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers, decades of research, thousands of scientists' work, and well-known physics. Every major scientific organization and all the world's National Academies of Science concur with the fact that we are warming our planet.

The use of caricatures of leading climate scientists and key quotes to illustrate that 97% of climate scientists agree the data are unequivocal is a novel form of communication. I like it.

But the campaign also is revealing in another way - the response. The idea that nearly every active climate scientist agrees on global warming is a major threat to the climate science denier lobby, so like other things they find threatening, they attack it and its authors. One of many attacks on Cook's "97 Hours of Consensus" campaign took place on a Facebook page called "Climate Change Discussion" (CCD).

While ostensibly open to anyone, CCD is functionally dominated by climate deniers. As with most denial blogs, there are a handful of folks who seem to be constantly posting and commenting on the posts of others. Invariably what they post is wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally. But the site is a microcosm of other blogs so it is useful to do a quick catalog of the kind of tactics that are used by denialists.

When people honestly knowledgeable about the science post (whether they be climate scientists or simply others who have taken to time to learn the facts), they invariably cite some reliable scientific source and accurately present the data with the proper context (at least within the limits of a FB post), along with a link to that valid source. 

In contrast, those who deny the science of man-made climate change reflected by the consensus generally cite unreliable sources. When they do deign to cite an actual scientific organization (e.g., NASA or some journal article), they usually reinterpret/misinterpret it. But the vast majority are sources that are easily seen as unreliable, many of which have been debunked so routinely as to wonder how anyone could not be too embarrassed to cite them. To give some examples, the following is a list of "expert" sources cited in response to the "97 Hours" campaign:

• a blog by Andrew Montford, an accountant supported by the denial lobby and whose blogs have been thoroughly debunked time after time
• the GWPF, a fossil fuel and right wing political lobbying group featuring economists (and again, who has been repeatedly debunked) [Note: Since all of the below have also been repeatedly debunked, I won't keep repeating it here]
• various non-science bloggers with zero scientific or climate expertise (but with conspiracy books to sell!)
• opinion pieces (Op-Eds) in various business magazines and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc. (often the outlets are owned by media mogul and climate denier Rupert Murdoch)
• the ubiquitous James Taylor, a lawyer for the Heartland Institute, which is a lobbyist group best known for denying smoking causes cancer (funded by the tobacco industry) and attacking climate scientists (funded by a variety of anonymous sources and the fossil fuel industry)
• Kevin Sorbo, an actor and avowed libertarian ('nuff said)
• "Lord" Christopher Monckton, the non-scientist British speechifier whom the House of Lords has repeatedly told to stop lying about him being in the House of Lords (Monckton is a favorite of climate deniers and politicians despite the fact his presentations have been repeatedly shown to misrepresent virtually every source he cites)
• American Thinker, a libertarian blog for random non-science writers
• Stephen Milloy, a stock fund manager and lawyer who has a long history of being the "go-to" guy for every science denial lobbyist for the last three decades (smoking, DDT, mad cow, ozone). If you need science denied, Milloy is your man, despite not having any science training.
• Watts Up With That, a blog by a former TV weatherman (when the qualifications for such were "couldn't get the 'sport's guy' job"). WUWT features posts by anonymous bloggers and others under fake names, all of which are easily and almost instantaneously debunked.
• Friends of Science, a front group funded by the fossil fuel industry (one of many front groups that change names but usually have the same administrators and hired deniers on staff)
• Joanna Nova, a "performance artist" funded by the Heartland Institute and other lobbying front groups to write denialist comic books
• Climate Depot, a blog run by Marc Morano, a non-scientist, former Rush Limbaugh aide, former James Inhofe communications director, and currently paid by CFACT, a "free market" lobbyist group, to routinely misrepresent the science
• various other conspiracy theorists, non-scientists, anonymous bloggers, politicians, and just about anyone with an uninformed opinion but no scientific background who misrepresent the science...or are just oblivious to it.

This list is necessarily incomplete but representative of the kind of "expert" sources offered by the handful of climate science deniers who dominate the CCD page. But it reflects exactly what you see on every site where public opinion conflicts with the realities of the science. In nearly every case, the source is unreliable and the information provided has been debunked repeatedly.

To this litany we can add a myriad of silly memes ridiculing scientists and personal attacks on John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, and other authors of published studies. Overall, the postings by denialists reflect the practice of spamming the feeds of social sites with the usual falsehoods, misrepresentations, and misperceptions. All done with a confident swagger. And, needless to say, all divorced from the scientific reality.

Meanwhile, the planet continues to warm. 

So here we have contrasting strategies in science communication. On the one hand, John Cook and Skeptical Science (and the participating climate scientists) use humor to present quotes accurately reflecting the scientific community and the state-of-the-science. On the other hand you have some non-scientists spamming a Facebook page with a series of misperceptions, misrepresentations, and misunderstandings coming from a bunch of non-science bloggers and lobbyist-funded front groups, along with the more-than-occasional personal attacks.

That says a lot.

This is the first in a series of periodic posts exposing climate denialism. Stay tuned for more of the tactics and tall tales of the climate denial industry.

[Note: Graphics by John Cook on Skeptical Science]

The Importance of Michael Mann's Lawsuit Against the National Review

Anyone paying attention to man-made climate change issues no doubt has heard of Michael E. Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University. Mann became famous, of sorts, as a critical link in the chain that unequivocally demonstrates human activity is warming the planet. In 1998 and 1999 Mann published papers with co-authors Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes that included graphs now known to everyone as the "hockey stick" graphs.

A compilation of a tremendous amount of data, the hockey stick graph is notable because it clearly shows a startling upward rise in the temperature trend of our planet. Even non-scientists can easily see the sharp temperature increase. Which is why the climate denial lobby found it necessary to attack the graph.

Understand that by saying attack the graph I mean attack the lead author of the papers in which the graph is presented. As Mann himself discusses in his recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, the climate denial lobby employed a technique they have used often and which Mann calls the "Serengeti Strategy" after the way predators separate out one prey from the herd. Because the science of the graph itself is unassailable, these lobbyists have been attacking Dr. Mann's person continually for the last decade.

In science, each and every paper published must stand up to scrutiny. Mann's papers and graph have stood up to some of the greatest scrutiny every applied to a single piece of science. The conclusion - the graph is sound and it is supported by more than a dozen other independent studies that confirm that same trend. The lobbyists know this but continue to attack because, well, because that is what they are paid to do.

The lawsuit

Unfortunately for them, climate denial lobbyists found that Mann and the scientific community wouldn't simply accept the constant stream of falsehoods being said about them. After one particularly egregious attack on Mann (including a disgusting comparison to a pedophile), Mann sued for defamation. The case has been in the courts for over two years as the defendants have delayed proceedings in the hopes of overextending Mann's ability to pay for legal protection.

Ironically, given that science is inherently self-correcting, the lawsuit represents a critical step in restoring public trust in science. The public trust that has been damaged not by scientists' actions but by the distortions, misrepresentations, and outright fabrications of the climate denial lobbying industry. The climate denial industry, funded by fossil fuel and right wing ideological interests and carried out by a multitude of highly paid lobbyists and their media outlets, have been making up stuff and misleading for so long they seem to forget that what they say isn't true. They've lied about the hockey stick graph so often that they apparently felt a sense of entitlement to lie and impugn the character and reputation of any scientist that stands in their way.

Mann isn't the first scientist to be personally attacked because their science was irrefutable, but perhaps the outcome of this defamation lawsuit will inhibit future attacks on others. Perhaps the case will mean that lobbying organizations will no longer be able to intentionally disparage scientists, either individually or collectively. Perhaps scientists and policymakers can focus on understanding the science and the policy options that can help us deal with the science without being attacked by a science denial industry adept at lying about facts. And the unequivocal fact is, human activity is causing a warming of the planet. It's time for the lobbyists to stop lying and start informing policymakers about how policy can best fix the problem.

More on the lawsuit

An excellent article by Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists

Climate Science Watch

Brief of Michael Mann submitted September 3, 2014

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars by Michael E. Mann - A Book Review

If you ever wanted to know how it feels to be hunted by a pack of rabid wolves, Michael Mann’s The Hockey Stick is the book for you. The “hockey stick” graph became an icon in the Climate Wars, at least in the sense that it gave a target for the climate denialist industry to focus on in their efforts to deny the science. For those who are confused the bottom line is this – the hockey stick is robust, joined by a dozen other graphs into a veritable hockey team, and represents one small piece of multiple lines of evidence that demonstrate our planet is being warmed by human activity.

Mann begins by discussing how the hockey stick was “Born in a War” during the mid-1990s. As his own research was just beginning to develop, the climate denialist industry was already hard at work attacking other scientists like Ben Santer in what Mann calls the “Serengeti strategy.” In “Climate Science Comes of Age” and “Signals in the Noise” Mann takes us through the state-of-the-science and how his emerging research relates to the research of other scientists, including future co-author Raymond Bradley. In “The Making of the Hockey Stick” Mann gives us both the history and the science that led to the seminal paper commonly referred to as MBH98 and its follow up paper MBH99. The hockey stick papers. In short, the hockey stick is merely a reconstruction of northern hemisphere temperatures going back a millennia or so and based on a range of proxy data, that is, data from corals, ice cores, tree rings and other sources of long-term information that are used to define atmospheric temperatures. This one (relatively) simple graph was the result of “a substantial body of work.”

But as the science developed so too did the attacks on that science by fossil fuel industry lobbyists and their allies. The hockey stick graph became part of the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, and was perceived as a major threat to the denialist industry’s interests. It was actually only one of three figures used in that IPCC report showing the same sort of pattern of historical temperatures. As Mann discusses, the MBH papers didn’t even attempt to establish causality, but this fact – like most facts – didn’t seem to slow the denialist desire to set up the hockey stick as THE pedestal of climate change…and then proceed to try to tear it down.

Mann goes on in ensuing chapters to discuss the “Origins of Denial” (e.g., going back to the tobacco industry’s “doubt is our product” strategy), and the various critiques of the hockey stick. Some of the more interesting chapters have to do with the political attacks on Mann and his co-authors. The chapter “Say It Ain’t So, (Smokey) Joe!” refers to Joe Barton (“I apologize to BP” for holding them accountable for the Deepwater Horizon spill). Barton called a House hearing on the hockey stick based solely on an opinion piece written in the Wall Street Journal. Barton was universally chastised for abusing his position to carry on a political intimidation. Even other Republicans like Sherwood Boehlert and John McCain rebuked Barton’s clear attempts to harass scientists.

In “A Tale of Two Reports,” Mann relates the findings of two evaluations of the hockey stick paper – one by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) commissioned by Sherwood Boehlert, and one by a statistics professor named Edward Wegman commissioned by Joe Barton. The NAS review was conducted by a team of highly qualified scientists and looked intensively at the research. The Wegman team consisted of Wegman, one of his graduate students, and one other co-author. The NAS review universally reaffirmed the veracity and robustness of the MBH hockey stick. The Wegman report disagreed. Not surprisingly, evidence later determined that Wegman had collaborated with denialist organizations, had passed off much of Stephen McIntyre’s faulty work as his own, and as much as 1/3 or more of the Wegman report had been plagiarized. Despite reaffirmation by the NAS, the addition of a dozen other independent reconstructions all showing the same thing, and voluminous evidence from multiple lines of investigation all showing that the hockey stick accurately represents the state-of-the-science, the denialist bloggers still repeat the false talking points coming out of Wegman’s ethically-challenged and factually-deficient report.

There is much more in the book, of course, and along the way Mann also discusses the ubiquitous inability of any denialist argument to stand up to even the most basic scientific scrutiny. He discusses the cadre of industry-sponsored blogs that serve as an echo chamber for denialist talking points, even long after they have been thoroughly debunked many times (including, for example, the falsehood that the hockey stick is broken).

Mann further discusses attempts to intimidate climate scientists in chapters called “Heads of the Hydra” (whenever one false talking point is debunked, two more false talking points are tossed out and/or recycled from the ones already debunked), “The Battle of the Bulge” (about how the denialist industry has made a last ditch effort to harass and intimidate scientists now that the science has become undeniable), and “Climategate: The Real Story” (how the denialist industry coordinated an orchestrated disinformation campaign). Mann’s recounting of how the “hide the decline” false talking point required the convenient omission of 23 words and the combining of two completely unrelated topics for the denialists to create their fake scandal is enlightening.

The final chapter “Fighting Back” is about how climate scientists have started to defend themselves and the science against the vicious harassment and intimidation of the climate denial lobby. One example he lists is Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli’s witch hunt that was working its way up through the courts. Just this past week the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Cuccinelli had no basis for pursuing what all parties acknowledge is nothing more than a politically motivated attempt to intimidate scientists who are doing research politicians find ideologically inconvenient.

In an Epilogue, Mann notes that his views of the “role of the scientist” have evolved over the last 10 years. Previously Mann, like most scientists, believed the role of the scientist was to do scientific research and that others should take on the duty of communicating it to the public. Now he believes that it is a responsibility of all scientists to ensure that their science is accurately communicated, and sometimes that means being out there to correct the intentional disinformation pushed by the science denial lobby. All scientists should consider this advice.

I highly recommend this book.  I also highly recommend the book Global Warming and Political Intimidation by Raymond S. Bradley, the “B” of MBH98/99. Like Mann, Bradley has experienced first hand the “Serengeti Strategy” of harassment.

Photo Credit and to order the book: Amazon.com

How to Talk to Climate Deniers

Talking to climate deniers can be a difficult experience. And yet, scientists - and the public - must talk to deniers. Well, sometimes. The first step in any interaction with climate deniers is determining whether it is worth the time. Many times it simply is not. Deniers' own willful ignorance can in itself demonstrate to anyone watching the deniers' lack of veracity. For these deniers, which includes your typical internet trolls, interaction is what they crave, no matter how ignorant, obnoxious, and often, downright dishonest, they demonstrate themselves to be. Exploiting any interaction gives these folks the self-validation their psyche demands. They can be ignored.

But sometimes climate deniers spread falsehoods that aren't so easily recognized as such by passing readers or listeners. It is to these deniers that scientist Michael Raupach suggests climate scientists need to speak, though perhaps not in direct "debate." What Raupach really means is that scientists should be correcting the record and ensuring the public gets accurate climate science, not the falsehoods so often repeated by denialist groups. In a speech to the Australian Academy of Science, Raupach "called on his colleagues not to sit on the sidelines of the political debate about global warming and other environmental issues, given the evidence they present asks society to consider fundamental changes."


Invariably, it is the conservatives (or more accurately, the extreme political wing who call themselves conservatives but who are really more of reality-deniers) who ignore the science in favor of their rehearsed talking points. So how does one convince ideologically motivated people to stop denying the science and instead take responsibility for dealing with it?

Dana Nuccitelli, writing in the Guardian, says that "facts can convince conservatives about global warming - sometimes." He notes that in new research led by Sophie Guy, "across the participants as a whole,

People who were knowledgeable about climate change believed more strongly that it is happening, that it is being caused by human activities, and that it has negative consequences than those with less knowledge."

And also,  

"conservatives of a libertarian flavor were more likely to accept that global warming is happening when they had a better understanding of the climate. This indicates that some conservatives are persuadable; that information, evidence, and facts can potentially break through their ideological filter."

And yet, certain conservatives will actually be less persuaded by more information because they convince themselves they know better than actual climate scientists. This is the basis for the concept, "Confidence of the Dumb."

Science writer Chris Mooney notes another study in which the ample us of pie charts - not bar graphs, not data tables, not line charts, but pie charts - may be the best way to convince conservatives that man-made global warming is real and that debate should be focused on which policy options provide the best strategies for dealing with the science. Mooney argues that this technique emphasizes one fo the best ways of communicating anything - "You keep it simple, and you show pretty pictures."

Climate scientists would be wise to take that advice.

[Note: Pie chart from Skeptical Science]

Book Review – Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom by Peter W. Huber

Galileo’s Revenge is actually an older book published in 1991, and the author has written several since that time. But it is definitely must reading for both scientists and lawyers. Peter Huber is believer in free markets and works at the conservative Manhattan Institute. He is considered an expert on liability lawsuits and clearly feels that courts have mismanaged tort law by allowing spurious claims to move forward, often resulting in huge monetary awards to plaintiffs on questionable science. I suggest the reader quickly move beyond this motivation and seriously consider the information that is put forth in the book.

The book provides several chapters of example cases illustrating the abuse of the courtroom by “experts” pushing specious, and often illogical, scientific explanations for serious injuries or harm. He includes the famous sudden acceleration cases in which the Audi 5000 was targeted as inexplicably bursting forward even though the driver “had their foot jammed on the brakes” (though nothing was shown to be wrong with car). Also liabilities associated with accusations that obstetrician mishandling of birth caused cerebral palsy (since proven false), chemically-caused disease (most of which was shown to be untrue), cancer caused by trauma (not true), the mosaic theory against Benedectin (shown to be specious), and ignoring lifelong smoking to “prove” asbestos caused cancer, etc. There are even cases won by plaintiffs because they had real fear of living close to tuberculosis patients even though there was no medical basis for such a fear. One could add other examples that have occurred since publication of the book.

But the real thrust of the book is how the courts have gotten away from a landmark 1923 ruling (Frye), which “allowed experts into the courtroom only if their testimony was founded on theories, methods, and procedures ‘generally accepted’ as valid among other scientists in the field.” This held sway until the 1970s when expert testimony came to be allowed “if scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact.” According to Huber, at this point mainstream scientific consensus was no longer a requirement, and any fringe theory could be advocated in the courtroom even if it was in conflict with established scientific belief. Together with liability insurance and the tendency to sue those with deep pockets, Huber believes this accounted for many of the huge awards being given to cases based on questionable, or even false, scientific and medical testimony. He spends some time in each chapter describing the unscrupulous “experts” that were hired to provide the needed testimony in such cases.

This book predates the 1993 Daubert ruling, which provided for standards of evidence to be used in court. Daubert superseded the Frye standard of generally accepted by the scientific community, and set a number of additional guidelines for the court to use to determine scientific reliability: testable technique or theory; known error rates of technique or theory; and methodology that has been peer reviewed. These are similar to some of the suggestions offered by Huber in his final chapters. He notes that “a scientific fact is the collective judgment of a specialized scientific community. Good science is defined not by credentials but by consensus.” He argues that there must be careful development of rules for the admissibility of legitimate evidence. There should be a scientific consensus on what the data tell us, not some theory acceptable only to the expert on the witness stand.

I highly recommend this book as a thought starter for all scientists and lawyers. From here readers should move on to more recent books on the topic. And consider Huber’s final words as he suggests that “the best test of certainty we have is good science – the science of publication, replication, and verification, the science of consensus and peer review; the science of Newton, Galileo, and Gauss, Einstein, Feynman, Pasteur, and Sabin; the science that has eradicated smallpox, polio, and tuberculosis; the science that has created antibiotics and vaccines. Or it is, at least, the best test of certainty so far devised by the mind of man.”

Is It Time to Shut Down Climate Deniers?

Recently I asked, "Is Climate Denial Dead?" The answer may surprise some. What is clear is those that deny the unequivocal climate science aren't going to give up easily. After all, they have massive vested interests in misrepresenting the science: the fossil fuel industry has an interest in protecting the externalization of costs that gives them such extraordinary profits; the right wing/libertarian groups have an interest in protect their members' desire to be unburdened with the costs of regulation that protect human health and the environment; and the climate denier lobbyists have an interest in, well, continuing to get paid to misrepresent the science just as they have been in denying smoking causes cancer, CFCs widened the ozone hole, smokestack emissions caused acid rain, and every other denial of science they have been paid to "manufacture doubt" on over the years. [FYI, see here and here]

Which gets us to an interesting development in the world of public relations, PR. These firms can be considered an amalgam of law firms, lobbyists, and advertising agencies. Their objective is to "sell" whatever idea their clients want the public to believe. They shape public opinion, which the wide swings in political polls demonstrate are extremely malleable. As the Guardian has noted:

Public relations firms have played a critical role over the years in framing the debate on climate change and its solutions – as well as the extensive disinformation campaigns launched to block those initiatives.

But its seems PR firms may have decided that misinforming the public on climate science, i.e., being a party to climate change denial, is no longer in their best long-term interests. It certainly isn't in the best interests of their families, their businesses, or their countries. At least ten of "the top 25 global PR firms" have publicly stated that "they will not represent clients who deny man-made climate change." This includes such big names as WPP, Waggener Edstrom (WE) Worldwide, Weber Shandwick, Text100, and Finn Partners. Edelman, which was singled out by the Guardian in their first article as not committing to deny the deniers, did apparently agree in a follow up Guardian article.


This follows on the heels of a recent decision by the BBC to stop giving air time to climate deniers. Perhaps this is a growing trend.

Of course, those very same deniers of climate science will wildly scream that the system is being unfair to "opposing views." But like everything else climate deniers profess, it isn't true. Science grows from its inherent skepticism. Rather than suppress alternative hypotheses, science embraces them. Any research that suggests a conclusion different from previous research is enthusiastically challenged by other scientists. The entire idea of science is to try to pick away at any hypothesis proposed to explain our observations. Hypotheses that don't hold up are discarded and the search continues. But when that hypothesis stands up to all that scrutiny, usually over many years, hundreds of other studies, and millions of data points, it can become the established understanding.

Climate science deniers, of course, can do scientific experiments, publish in scientific journals, and present at scientific conferences. But they don't. Instead, they misrepresent other people's research, publish opinion pieces in business magazines, and saturate the blogosphere with falsehoods and misrepresentations. Climate science deniers don't offer opposing science, they offer opposition to the very idea of science. They offer political opinion that is contradicted by the science.

So it is a good thing if PR firms and media outlets refuse to give air time to climate science deniers and other deniers of science. Honest debate can only occur when deniers of science are no longer allowed to pollute the debate with repetitions of known falsehoods. Which is what they do.

Meanwhile, climate science continues to grow our knowledge. Every year we collect millions of new data points. And those data tell us unequivocally that human activity, primarily our burning of fossil fuels, is warming our planet. There are serious ramifications to this scientific fact. The debate is over what steps to take to deal with the science, not the science itself.

This is What Scientists Can Do to Stop Climate Science Denial in Congress

As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) noted in his on-the-floor rebuttal of the ubiquitous science denial of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), "the only place where denial is 'credible' is here in Congress where money from fossil fuel interests" is prevalent. Whitehouse was responding to Inhofe's latest act of denial, the blocking of a simple non-controversial resolution introduced by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) that acknowledged the National Climate Assessment conclusion that man-made climate change is happening.

In the Senate, any Senator can block resolutions even if the other 99 Senators want to vote for it. Inhofe is renowned for his "global warming is a hoax" talking point, which he repeats whenever he gets the chance. Not surprisingly for someone from the fossil fuel-dependent state of Oklahoma, Inhofe receives considerable campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.

This isn't the first time Whitehouse has stood up to climate deniers. But this particular event provides a useful exemplar for how scientists can stop climate change denial in Congress.



As the video above shows, Whitehouse is well-versed in both the science of climate change and the rebuttals to common talking points used by climate science deniers. Clearly he has been listening to scientists. I discussed the role of scientists in making policy in this earlier post, and this shows the value of scientist involvement.

Whitehouse points out some of the critical science that shows Inhofe's statements are misinformative. Whereas Inhofe repeats the talking point that "atmospheric temperatures haven't risen/have plateaued/are cooling/are whichever of the many versions he pantomimes (all false),"  Whitehouse correctly notes that the vast majority (97+%) of heat goes into the oceans initially and that atmospheric temperatures are more susceptible to short-term variations. Whitehouse got his information from scientists; Inhofe got his information from lobbyists.

Whitehouse also points out that virtually all climate scientists agree that the voluminous data unequivocally demonstrate that our actions are warming the planet. While Inhofe cites a ridiculous and fraudulent "petition," Whitehouse correctly notes that every scientific organization in the world confirms what NASA, NOAA, the US Navy, the Department of Defense all tell us. And if federal government scientific organizations aren't enough, Whitehouse tells us that the Property Casualty and Reinsurance Industry, the US Congress of Catholic Bishops, and major corporations like Coke, Pepsi, Walmart, Mars, Google, Apple, and Nike all are very concerned about climate change.

All of this has come from scientists. It is scientists that have provided their services to regulators and policy makers so that they can provide informed, scientifically-based, rebuttals to the political talking points of the climate science deniers in Congress. Even the younger Republicans decry the science denial among the Republican Party old guard/Tea Party wing. "People know better," Whitehouse says. And they do.

One of Whitehouse's most direct statements rebutting Inhofe is "To say that we have no warming is just not factual."

That's where we scientists need to step in. It is our role, and our obligation, to communicate the science accurately and repeatedly to those policy makers who take to heart their public responsibility to act on, rather than deny, reality.

Does Language Influence Climate Denial?

The language of science can sometimes be hard to follow for non-scientists, just as the language of all professionals is unfamiliar to anyone outside those professions. But can language actually influence something like climate denial? Perhaps so.

The latest Ipsos Global Trends Survey asked several questions related to the causes and severity of the ongoing trend in global warming, also called man-made climate change. The results show that "the US leads the world in climate denial," with 52% of Americans agreeing with the statement that “The climate change we are currently seeing is a natural phenomenon that happens from time to time.” In tandem, 32% of Americans disagreed with the statement: “The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity.”

This finding is shocking. For both questions the United States was the worst denial of the twenty countries surveyed. And for both questions the United States is absolutely in denial of the nearly unanimous understanding of the world's climate scientists, the world's National Academies of Science, and the world's major scientific organizations. Not to mention basic physics.

How could this be? Supposedly the United States is the most educated country in the world (okay, this point is debatable, but let's assume we're at least generally educated). And yet we deny science that is unequivocal.

Science journalist, and author of several books including Unscientific America (with Sheril Kirshenbaum), suggests that it has something to do with the English language. According to this survey, the worst three man-made climate change denier countries are the US, the UK, and Australia, all English-speaking countries. Canada, with a recently increased denialist government, came in seventh.

Mooney goes on to suggest that perhaps being English-speaking is a secondary characteristic and that the real cause and effect is something else. All of these countries have political systems that reflect highly ideological differences, where reality is simply ignored if it doesn't support your political beliefs and more concordant "factoids" are substituted in its place. Thus, the science is inconvenient for politics, so it is denied.

The presence of Rupert Murdoch's media empire seems also to be a factor. Murdoch owns many media outlets in three of the for worst denier countries. These outlets, like Fox News with its blatant discarding of reality in favor of pure political ideology, push the idea of a grand scientific conspiracy. Rupert's far-reaching ownership essentially allows him to create whatever false reality he wants and be assured that it will metastasize via the paid and unpaid ideological blogosphere. Toss in obscenely  funded "think tanks" (i.e., paid lobbyist organizations posing as non-profit groups), all of whom are well experienced with "messaging," and the denial movement is able to talk over the abilities of scientists to communicate technical information.

So in a way, language most definitely does influence climate denial, though not in the way originally suggested by Chris Mooney. Mooney does nail the language in the final sentence of his article:

In language, we're Anglophones; but in climate science, we're a bunch of Anglophonies.