How Newsweek's 'global cooling' story got its legs

Nine paragraphs written for Newsweek in 1975 continue to trump 40 years of climate science. It's a record that has the author amazed.

by Doug Struck, The Daily Climate, January 10, 2014

BOSTON – Temperatures have plunged to record lows on the East Coast, and once again Peter Gwynne is being heralded as a journalist ahead of his time. By some.

Gwynne, now 72, is a bit chagrined that a long career of distinguished science and technology reporting is most remembered for this one story.

Gwynne was the science editor of Newsweek 39 years ago when he pulled together some interviews from scientists and wrote a nine-paragraph story about how the planet was getting cooler.

Ever since, Gwynne's "global cooling" story – and a similar Time Magazine piece – have been brandished gleefully by those who say it shows global warming is not happening, or at least that scientists – and often journalists – don't know what they are talking about. 

Fox News loves to cite it. So does Rush Limbaugh. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has quoted the story on the Senate floor.

Gwynne, now 72, is a bit chagrinned that from a long career of distinguished science and technology reporting, he is most remembered for this one story.

"I have, in fact, won prizes for science writing," he said, with just a whiff of annoyance, in an interview this week.

Popping up - again and again

His April 28, 1975, piece has been used by Forbes as evidence of what the magazine called "The Fiction of Climate Science." It has been set to music on a YouTube video. It has popped up in a slew of finger-wagging blogs and websites dedicated to everything from climate denial to one puzzling circuit of logic entitled "Impeach Obama, McCain and Boehner Today."

From the latest crop:

Lou Dobbs on Fox News: "This cycle of science… if we go back to 1970, the fear then was global cooling. "

Rush Limbaugh: "I call [global warming] a hoax… A 1975 Newsweek cover was gonna talk about the ice age coming. So they're really confused how to play it."

Sean Hannity on Fox News: "If you go back to Time Magazine, they actually were proclaiming the next ice age is coming, now it's become global warming… How do you believe the same people that were predicting just a couple decades ago that the new ice age is coming?"

Donald J. Trump: "This very expensive global warming bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing.…"

'Accurate at the time'

Most of the time, Gwynne, who still writes on technology and science from his home in Cape Cod, Mass., takes it good-naturedly.

"It's part of the game, once you get from science to politics, that's the way it's played," he said. "I just hope people don't think I think that way."

And still, Gwynne notes of his story, "I stand by it. It was accurate at the time." [In fact, these studies were in the minority – the idea of global cooling being around the corner was not at all accepted by the majority of climate scientists.  This is yet another fine example of journalists' need to excite the reader.]

The story observed – accurately – that there had been a gradual decrease in global average temperatures from about 1940, now believed to be a consequence of soot and aerosols that offered a partial shield to the earth as well as the gradual retreat of an abnormally warm interlude. 

Some climatologists predicted the trend would continue, inching the earth toward the colder averages of the "Little Ice Age" from the 16th to 19th centuries. 

"When I wrote this story I did not see it as a blockbuster," Gwynne recalled. "It was just an intriguing piece about what a certain group in a certain niche of climatology was thinking."

Pushing the envelope 'a little bit'

And, revisionist lore aside, it was hardly a cover story. It was a one-page article on page 64. It was, Gwynne concedes, written with a bit of over-ventilated style that sometimes marked the magazine's prose: "There are ominous signs the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically..." the piece begins, and warns of a possible "dramatic decline in food production."

"Newsweek being Newsweek, we might have pushed the envelope a little bit more than I would have wanted," Gwynne offered.

But the story was tantalizing enough that other variations – somewhat more nuanced – were written by the New York Times and National Geographic, among others. The theory picked up support from some pretty reputable scientists: the late, esteemed Stephen Schneider of Stanford endorsed a book on the issue.

But there also was a small but growing counter-theory that carbon dioxide and other pollutants accompanying the Industrial Age were creating a warming belt in the atmosphere, and by about 1980 it was clear that the earth's average temperature was headed upward.

Even today, "there is some degree of uncertainty about natural variability," acknowledged Mark McCaffrey, programs and policy director of the National Center for Science Education based in Oakland, Calif. "If it weren't for the fact that humans had become a force of nature, we would be slipping back into an ice age, according to orbital cycles."

Missing the point

But earth's glacial rhythms are "being overridden by human activities, especially burning fossil fuels," McCaffrey noted. The stories about global cooling "are convenient for people to trot out and wave around," he said, but they miss the point: 

"What's clear is we are a force of nature. Human activity – the burning of fossil fuels and land change – is having a massive influence. We are in the midst of this giant geoengineering experiment."

And, Gwynne protested: "I wrote this in 1975!"

Born in England, Gwynne has written for a slew of American and foreign outlets. He left Newsweek in 1981, he ran Technology Review at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, covered space for High Technology, worked for The Scientist in Washington, moved to Hong Kong to run Asia Technology for Dow Jones, and returned to the United States to freelance in 1994. 

He remains the North American correspondent for Physics World, based in England, from which perspective he views the "weird and wonderful" American relationship with science. "It's been American science and scientists – particularly NASA – that showed the climate is changing," he noted. Yet, unlike in most of Europe, American politicians remain divided over climate science.

Political vs. science reporting

The unsavory afterlife of his 1975 story clearly has not soured his journalistic fervor. "I've been able to write for a lot of different audiences, physicists, engineers and the general public," Gwynne said. "I've been willing to accept that some of that is misused and misinterpreted."

By and large, he added, the U.S. science press has done "a pretty good job" of covering climate change. But "the political press doesn't check. It tends to do 'on the one hand, on the other hand.' A lot of reporters simply will not go into issues like global warming with any understanding that the sides are not equal."

Journalists should not ignore climate deniers, he cautioned. "You have to give all sides a fair hearing." But that does not mean they have to be treated equally "if they don't have the data." To do so, he said, is false balance "that leaves readers out on a limb."

"Your job as a journalist is to give each side its best shot," said Gwynne. Even if the ammunition is four decades old.

http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2014/01/newsweek-global-cooling-reporter

The Mendacity of Roger the dodger Pielke, Jr. -- self-aggrandizer, trickster and careerist

Stephen Schneider's Criticism of Roger Pielke Jr.: A Self-Aggrandizer, Trickster, and Careerist

Posted by Brad Johnson about one day ago

Our guest blogger is Paul Thacker.

Yesterday, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) gave the latest version of his global-warming-hoax speech on the U.S. Senate floor. Amid his bevy of references to anti-scientific opinionators, he cited University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., the son of the climate-change denying climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr., to claim that “long term . . . there is no evidence that disasters are getting worse because of climate change.”

Pielke, Jr., tweeted in response: “Sounds like here Mr. Inhofe is relying on sound science, r you against that? ;-)”

Despite Pielke, Jr.’s “sound science” assertion, his Inhofe-endorsed claim is false, as the eminent climate scientist Stephen Schneider described to me in 2009. Because he had no interest in a “blogging war” with the Pielkes, he didn’t publicly criticize Pielke, Jr.’s mendacity.

Two years ago this month, Stephen Schneider died. He was a great man. We could all learn something from him. Over several years, he and I had several discussions by email, person, and phone about how to deal with scientists who willfully distort scientific knowledge. In part, I think these people assault the very foundation of what makes us distinct from other animals: the ability to improve on prior knowledge in science.

During one of our discussions in 2009, I forwarded Schneider a Roger Pielke, Jr., claim similar to the one Inhofe cited yesterday. I asked Schneider why Roger engaged in this type of really unprofessional behavior.

Below, you can see Schneider’s reply.

—
- Forwarded Message 
—
-
From: Stephen H Schneider 
To: Paul D. Thacker <__ yahoo.com="yahoo.com">
Sent: Tuesday, March 3, 2009 4:13 AM
Subject: Re: Why does Pielke continue to prevaricate?

Thanks Paul, I guess, never any fun dealing with Roger Jr. I can’t figure him out, except that one consistent pattern emerges-he is a self-aggrandizer who sets up straw men, knocks them down, and takes credit for being the honest broker to explain the mess-and in fact usually adds little new social science to his analysis. I saw him do it at AAAS four years ago and called him on it afterward and he walked off steamed when I told him he just made assertions and that good scientists show empirical evidence. He is not worth arguing about, frankly.

Moreover, note the sleazy way he said it: no peer reviewed paper showing greenhouse EMISSIONS was causing increased damages. You missed that emissions part and assumed he meant climate change-he probably wanted you to miss it. How can we know which percentage of the damages are due to Ma Earth or due to us-no way to precisely separate them except by detection and attribution studies-which do separate them but not at the scale of a locality with hazardous damages. SO it is a set up. Like saying Katrina can’t be proved related to global warming driven by humans. Of course, warming didn’t make the hurricane, but it’s passing over warmed Gulf certainly had some impact in increasing intensity, but how much of that warming was from greenhouse emissions versus other factors-impossible to say and no one would in a peer reviewed journal. So it is a cherry picked framing that he then uses in broad conclusion form and you fell for it-like most probably would!! If he said there are no papers associating observedWARMING to damages, he’d be destroyed-just see the many examples in IPCC. He is subtly saying nobody did double attribution-see the attached from Terry and me on what that is. It is typical of a trickster and a careerist-which is how I personally see him-and so do most of my colleagues these days who I have discussed it with. Please do not copy or forward this-I am uninterested in a blogging war with either him or his father-as Sr. is wont to do.
Cheers, Steve
PS-On the link you gave in your email is Roger’s fifth point-note the trick:
“5. There are no peer-reviewed papers documenting a link between GHG emissions and the long-term trend in disasters.” This is a statement that nobody published a double attribution study on hazards-he’s close to being right on this trick, but not quite right if you count ecosystems as threatened-like in the attached.

Stephen H. Schneider
Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies,
Professor, Department of Biology and
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
Mailing address:
Yang & Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building – MC 4205
473 Via Ortega
Ph: 650 725 9978
F: 650 725 4387
Websites: climatechange.net
patientfromhell.org

—
- Original Message 
—
-
From: “Paul D. Thacker” 
To: __@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 7:25:25 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Why does Pielke continue to prevaricate?

I would like to say that Roger Pielk Jr. has recently blogged that there are no peer-reviewed articles linking climate change and an increase in disasters.

See here: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/qa-thread-to-in-response-to-joe-romm-5017

This is clearly not true. A viewpoint on this very issue was published several years ago in Science. And viewpoints, while not necessarily filled with new data, AREpeer-reviewed.

See here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;309/5737/1040.pdf

Certainly Roger saw the article because he sent in a letter with cherry-picked data trying to refute it. But disagreeing with an article’s conclusion is a little different from arguing that the article doesn’t…actually…exist. Isn’t it?

But that’s what Roger does. Why does he continue to mislead?

http://www.hillheat.com/articles/2012/07/31/stephen-schneiders-criticism-of-roger-pielke-jr-a-self-aggrandizer-trickster-and-careerist 

Rick Piltz: Stephen Schneider climate science expert credibility in climate change

Interview with Stephen Schneider on climate science expert credibility study

by Rick Piltz, Climate Science Watch, July 12, 2010

Climate Science Watch talked with Stanford University Prof. Stephen Schneider about his co-authored article, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Schneider discussed the rationale and implications of the study and responded to several criticisms that have been raised. See Details for video and text from the interview.

UPDATE: Dr. Schneider passed away on July 19, 2010, en route to give yet another talk on climate change.

Post by Rick Piltz and Rebeka Ryvola

Earlier CSW post:
June 21: New study finds striking level of agreement among climate experts on anthropogenic climate change

“Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that 97-98% of climate researchers examined who are most actively publishing in the field support the IPCC conclusions, i.e., are convinced by the evidence for human-caused climate change, and that the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of researchers questioning the findings is significantly below that of convinced researchers. The authors of this first-of-its-kind study used metrics of climate-specific expertise and overall scientific prominence to examine expert credibility among scientists who agree with or question the primary conclusions of the IPCC….

Stephen H. Schneider is the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Professor, Department of Biology, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, at Stanford University.

The video contains portions of our July 8, 2010, interview with Prof. Schneider. The transcript below contains more extended text from the interview, in addition to what is included in the video.

From Stephen Schneider interview with Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz, July 8, 2010:

CSW: The article on climate science expert credibility that you co-authored, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – what prompted this study?

Schneider: There are so many claims out there from all kinds of interests, about how climate change is ‘the end of the world,’ or ‘good for you,’ and people – policymakers and media – are understandably confused. Part of the problem is that over time the media has fired so many of its specialists that there aren’t a lot of people left to sort out the relative credibility of all the claims. So, since a lot of those people who deny that humans have any impact on climate are claiming that they have scientific expertise, we said let’s just put it to a test.

There’s a very well-known and widely used independent index, which is: how many papers have you published and how many times have people cited them in the scientific literature? Those people who chose to put themselves on lists and petitions denying that there was a human impact on climate, let’s see how many papers they’ve published, and how many citations they have. Those people associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), let’s check them and see if there’s a difference.

CSW: In terms of how you defined the groups in the study, you have one category that you refer to as “convinced by the evidence” – convinced by the evidence for anthropogenic climate change. The other group is the “unconvinced by the evidence.” Are you defining them by scientific perspective, or are you defining them by policy positions?

Schneider: It’s a bit controversial how you define anyone in categories like “convinced” and “unconvinced” since none of us – I hope – are 100% convinced of anything, or 100% unconvinced, but we can have a vast preponderance of evidence. There are lists where groups have organized themselves into pro, basically, and con human impacts on climate. Most of the ‘pros’ work on the IPCC, mainstream science, and most of the ‘cons’ do not. Only two or three are in common. They wrote petitions saying they didn’t think there was much likelihood of anthropogenic change, and we put them in the unconvinced category. That is, they put themselves in the unconvinced category. As far as those who spent much of their life working at IPCC, there’s a very high probability they are convinced this problem is real or they wouldn’t be putting in all this time. The bottom line is that we let people self-define and then we let the numbers fall where they were, in terms of the relative credibility of each of those groups – and the credibility was vastly different. Not surprisingly, those people who do work daily in climate science have a much, much higher citation count and more published papers than those who just claim it isn’t true but really, for the most part, are not prime workers in climate change.

CSW: Well then, what about the charge that the study, in effect, is creating a ‘blacklist’ of certain scientists? It’s saying that these are the skeptics, the unconvinced by the evidence, but they don’t have any credibility and so you shouldn’t pay any attention to them.

Schneider: Well it’s laughable that it’s a blacklist. A blacklist is what somebody like Joe McCarthy did back in the 50’s, or Senator Inhofe is doing now, when we all know it’s the senator who is deliberately distorting. How could we be doing a blacklist when we’re using the names that they gave? All we did was test it. The fact that they don’t publish very much is not our issue. This is a fact check.

It really matters what your credentials are. If you have a heart arrhythmia as I do, and I also have a cardiologist, and you also have an oncological problem as I do, I’m not going to my cancer doc to ask him about my heart medicine and my cardiologist to ask about my chemo, I’m going to the experts. Who’s an expert really matters. People with no expertise, their opinion frankly does not matter on complex issues. And in my opinion shouldn’t even be quoted when we’re talking about the details of the science.

When we’re talking about what to do about it, then every citizen’s opinion is just as important as anybody else’s, and everybody should be quoted. But not about how many degrees of warming there is – that takes a lot of knowledge, to be able to know what you’re talking about. That knowledge is very well reflected in the counts of the number of times people’s scientific papers have been cited by their colleagues. That’s where the mainstream climate scientists have a major advantage over those who are unconvinced. We feel that’s a robust conclusion, that most of the claimants that there’s no anthropogenic climate change are very weak scientists – by and large – and most of their comments are really not very scientifically credible.

CSW: I believe Judith Curry argued that, on your various lists, under “convinced of the evidence” you were including people who are ecologists and biologists, and who aren’t really experts in the climate change detection and attribution research. So that somehow skews your notion of how to sort people out in terms of credibility. What’s your response to that?

Schneider: Well, there are two responses. First of all, there are a couple dozen people in the world that work in ecology – that includes people like Terry Root, Camille Parmesan, and myself, among others – who actually look at the bloom dates of roses in your grandmother’s back yard and when birds come back. We do detection and attribution studies. Those people are in the IPCC and they are legitimate experts and they have published research in Science and Nature and PNAS and places like that. There was an entire chapter on it in [IPCC] Working Group II and those people, again, like Cynthia Rosenzweig, were included in the IPCC database.

But she does have a point, that not everyone in IPCC is an expert in detection and attribution. That’s certainly true. But when she said that the IPCC group that we used in our PNAS study should be cut down to something like 20% of the original. That’s hundreds of people, that’s still quite a lot of people. If you look at the “unconvinced of evidence” group, virtually nobody in it has ever published a paper on detection and attribution. So, by Judy’s own logic, that means it’s virtually a null set. That means there’s almost nobody in the unconvinced category who has any expertise whatsoever in detection and attribution. So, if you take her logic, and apply it symmetrically to the “convinced” and “unconvinced” you narrow the “convinced” group down to a smaller but still clear and robust population and the “unconvinced” has virtually no expertise, and their opinion becomes completely irrelevant.

Much more here:  http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2010/07/12/interview-with-stephen-schneider-on-climate-science-expert-credibility-study/

The 2011 Stephen H. Schneider Symposium "Climate Change: From Science to Policy" will be held in Boulder, Colorado, August 24-27, 2011

The 2011 Stephen H. Schneider* Symposium "Climate Change: From Science to Policy" will be held in Boulder, Colorado, August 24-27, 2011

The primary aims of the symposium are: (1) to pay tribute to Steve Schneider's contributions to climate science and to evaluate the historical significance of these contributions; and (2) to identify key challenges for the future - in climate science, in the development of meaningful climate policies, and in climate science communication - and possible ways to address these challenges.

This symposium will be more than a celebration of the scientific accomplishments of Steve Schneider. Our intent is to bring together scientists, science communicators, policymakers, students, and friends of Steve, and to harness the intellectual and creative energy in this group. We believe that the symposium participants can make significant progress on some of the issues Steve Schneider cared about. Such progress would be the best-possible tribute to Steve.

Further details of the symposium are available at the symposium website: http://woods.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/wp/?page_id=53

We hope you will be able to join us at what promises to be an extraordinary event.

With best regards,

Terry Root, Linda Mearns, Ben Santer, Chris Still, and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele

*Stephen Henry Schneider, the founder of the journal “Climatic Change,” was a leader in science communication and a world expert on interdisciplinary climate science. At the time of his death on July 19, 2010, he was the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University. An overview of his work is provided at www.climatechange.net

Climate Change Science and Policy, by S. H. Schneider et al., book review by Michael Oppenheimer, Climate Change, 105 (2011)

Climate Change, Vol. 105, Nos. 3-4 (2100) 625-626; DOI: 10.1007/s10584-011-0040-x



http://www.springerlink.com/content/9168622352504678/

Clive Hamilton: Silencing the scientists: the rise of right-wing populism

Silencing the scientists: the rise of right-wing populism

posted by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Climate Shifts, March 11, 2011

This piece by Clive Hamilton is worth a read. I recently had my own run-in with an individual who tried to get me sacked from the University of Queensland.  My crime?  Saying on ABC Stateline that the IPCC was a highly credible source of information on climate change.  Where do these people come from?

by Clive Hamilton on March 2, 2011

Last month, Americans were shocked at the attempted murder of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six bystanders. The local county sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, captured the immediate assessment of many when he linked the attempted murder to the rise of violent anti-government rhetoric and imagery, observing, “The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.”

When asked if the Congresswoman had any enemies her father replied: “Yeah. The whole Tea Party.” Many, including Giffords herself, had had a premonition that the inflammatory language of radical right-wing activists would sooner or later find real expression.

The same hate-filled rhetoric that created the circumstances in which Gabrielle Giffords was gunned down also stokes ferocious attacks on climate scientists and environmentalists in the United States. Debunking climate science is official policy at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News: a leaked memo from management has instructed reporters to always cast doubt on data reporting global temperature increases.

Some of the bitterest attacks on climate scientists are made by commentators employed by Fox News. Fox ranters Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity often ridicule climate science. Glenn Beck calls global warming “ the greatest scam in history” and gives air-time to Christopher Monckton to attack the work of climate scientists as fraudulent with his unique blend of statistical gobbledegook, invented “facts” and off-the-planet conspiracy theories. The network sometimes features Steve Milloy, an energy lobbyist who ran the The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, a front group initially devoted to denying the link between smoking and cancer. As James Hoggan points out in his book Climate Cover-Up, Milloy is introduced as an expert on “ junk science,” meaning climate science.

Another Fox regular is the former aide to Republican Senator James Inhofe, Marc Morano, founder of the most malicious anti-science blog, and the man who said climate scientists deserve to be publicly flogged. Last April on Fox News, Morano launched a virulent attack on Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University, calling him a “charlatan” and responsible for “the best science that politics can manufacture.” When Morano singles out a climate scientist for attack on his website, he includes their e-mail addresses and invites his followers to “get in touch.” Many of them do.

Cyber-bullies

Last year I wrote a series of articles detailing how Australia’s most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public domain. Each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview, they are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening e-mails. I have spoken to Australian climate scientists who have upgraded security at their homes because of threats from climate deniers.

The exposé of cyber-bullying was immediately picked up in the United States where the phenomenon is even worse. Scientific American gave it prominence and, in Britain, Nature did too, and many more stories of intimidation emerged into the light of day. Several scientists confirm that the volume of abuse reached a peak in the months after the Climategate story broke in November 2009.

Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, turned over to university security 19 pages of “extremely foul, nasty, [and] abusive” e-mails collected in the four months after the Climategate storm broke.  Another prominent climate scientist had a dead animal dumped on his doorstep and now travels with bodyguards.

Debunking climate science is official policy at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News; a leaked memo from management has instructed reporters to always cast doubt on data reporting global temperature increases.

Photo by  Dan Farber

Stephen Schneider, an eminent climatologist at Stanford University who died a few months ago, said last year that he had received hundreds of threatening e-mails.   Exasperated he asked: “What do I do? Learn to shoot a magnum? Wear a bullet-proof jacket?” He believed that a scientist would be killed, adding: “They shoot abortion doctors here.”  They shoot Congresswomen, too. When his name appeared on a neo-Nazi “death list,” alongside other climate scientists with apparent Jewish ancestry, the police were called in. Schneider said he had observed an “immediate, noticeable rise” in e-mails whenever climate scientists were attacked by prominent right-wing US commentators.

Paul Ehrlich was quoted in Nature saying: “Everyone is scared shitless, but they don’t know what to do.”  The story noted that the bullying and threats intensify after anti-climate science rants from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Marc Morano and Steve Milloy.  Except Limbaugh, they are all either employed by Fox News or appear often on the network.

Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame said the same about the hate mail he had received: “I’m not comfortable talking about the details, especially as some of these matters remain under police investigation,” he said. “What I can say is that the e-mails come in bursts, and do seem to be timed with high-profile attack pieces on talk radio and other fringe media outlets.”

The most influential “fringe media outlet” vilifying scientists is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Cyber-bullies and Fox demagogues are not the only ones out to punish Mann for his work. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has attempted to use state fraud laws to force the University of Virginia to release huge volumes of documents and correspondence in an attempt to show malfeasance by Mann when he was employed by that university (he is now at Penn State).  Cuccinelli claims that Mann had defrauded taxpayers in seeking grants for his research, but had no evidence to convince the court to grant subpoenas. A lawyer for the American Association of University Professors has said that Cuccinelli’s suit has “echoes of McCarthyism” and will deter others from undertaking climate research.

Official harassment

The campaign of harassment against scientists took a sinister turn last year when Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe called for some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists to be investigated for criminal violations. A document prepared by his staff on the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works claims scientists mentioned in e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia are guilty of manipulating data and obstructing its release. It lists federal laws they may have violated and names 17 climate scientists whom Inhofe claims should be investigated for possible criminal prosecution.

One of those listed, Raymond Bradley, the director of climate science research at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, responded: “I am worried about it, I have to say. You can understand that this powerful person is using the power of his office to intimidate people and to harass people and you wonder whether you should have legal counsel. It is a very intimidating thing and that is the point.”

The accusation of criminality against leading climate scientists takes the denialist campaign of harassment and intimidation to new depths, and immediately conjures up images of McCarthyism. In November 2009, Inhofe’s fellow Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin wrote to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demanding that scientists whose names appear in the stolen CRU e-mails be blacklisted from all further work with the IPCC.

According to Scientific American, deniers in Congress have used their offices to send “intimidating letters” threatening dire consequences to scientists working on climate change. One of the recipients, NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, said: “That is chilling the work of science in the agencies. It’s certainly very off-putting for scientists who want to talk about their stuff in public but fear the political consequences. Nobody wants to create an enemy on the Hill.”

In an editorial last March on cyber-bullying, Nature reported on Senator Inhofe’s attempts to criminalise climate scientists before commenting: “As a member of the minority party, Inhofe is powerless for now, but that may one day change.” That day came last November 2010 with the mid-term elections in which the Republicans, powered by a surge of support for the Tea Party, won a majority in the House of Representatives. Before the election Climate Progress noted that “every single GOP [Republican] Senate candidate now either denies climate science or opposes even the most moderate, business friendly, Republican-designed approach to reducing emissions.”

With the elections, both houses saw a flood of new representatives who are climate deniers. “Of the freshmen Republicans … 36 of 85 in the House and 11 of 13 in the Senate have publicly questioned the science.” McCarthyite congressman James Sensenbrenner is now the deputy chair of the House Science Committee, which plans to investigate the veracity of climate science.

“I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do,” Sensenbrenner said, as if the role of solar flares were a matter of personal belief and had not been thoroughly investigated by climate scientists. Suddenly Senator Inhofe appears less isolated and fanatical.

A series of inquiries has exonerated the scientists whose e-mails were stolen, and affirmed that there is nothing in them to undermine the science. If you read them, what the hacked UEA e-mails reveal is the enormous external pressure climate scientists work under. They show they have constantly been accused of being frauds and cheats; their work has been twisted and misrepresented; and they have been bombarded with vexatious freedom-of-information requests orchestrated by denialists.

It’s certainly very off-putting for scientists who want to talk about their stuff in public but fear the political consequences.— NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt

In short, they were caught up in a hot political debate that they did not really understand or want to be part of, yet they were the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote. This is the real story of Climategate. Instead, the scientists in question have seen their professional reputations trashed in the world’s media for no cause. After the media storm and a series of death threats, the head of the Climatic Research Unit Dr Phil Jones was driven to the point of suicide.

Moves are underway to suppress the dissemination of climate science. Last year the South Dakota legislature passed a resolution calling for “balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota,” the type of resolution that now sees creationism taught alongside evolution in some states. The draft resolution noted that the climate is affected by “a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological and ecological dynamics.” The inclusion of “astrological” and “thermological” effects suggests a woeful understanding of science.

Last February the Utah House of Representatives passed a resolution rejecting climate science. One supporter of the bill said, “environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.” In January of this year, a bill titled "The Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act" was put to the Oklahoma legislature that would require teachers to challenge theories including evolution, the chemical origins of life and global warming.

The culture war

In the United States there is now a deep divide between liberal and conservative voters in their beliefs about global warming. As is now well documented, the opening of this gulf was due to the fact that from the mid-1990s, Republican Party activists, in collaboration with fossil fuel interests and conservative think tanks, had successfully associated acceptance of global warming science with “liberal” views.

That global warming has been made a battleground in the wider culture war is most apparent from the political and social views of those who reject climate science outright. Among those who dismiss climate science, 76% describe themselves as “conservative” and only 3% as “liberal” (with the rest “moderate”). They overwhelmingly oppose redistributive policies, programs to reduce poverty and regulation of business. They prefer to watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Like those whose opinions they value — shock jocks and television demagogues — climate deniers are disproportionately older, white, male and conservative — those who feel their cultural identity is most threatened by the implications of climate change. While the debate is superficially about the science, in truth it is about deep-rooted feelings of cultural identity. This makes deniers immune to argument, and their influence will wane only as they grow old and die.

Clive Hamilton is the author of  Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change (Earthscan, 2010).

 http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=6508