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by Warren
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Month 11, Day 23: Surprise!
The 2006 report criticizing Michael Mann and his colleagues for methodological slip-ups was in large part plagiarized, reports USA Today.
Goodness. I’m shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
There are two important things to understand about the news that a 2006 report to Congress which fostered a Republican cottage industry of climate conspiracy theorizing was substantially plagiarized. Dan Vergano’s article correctly notes that plagiarized material in the report doesn’t necessarily invalidate its conclusion that the climate scientists whose work Dr. Wegman examined made methodological errors. But the corollary point is that such problems don’t necessarily invalidate the climatologists’ conclusions. Innumerable subsequent studies have validated their work; the world is indeed getting hotter exactly as Mann and his colleagues predicted. Not that this will make a difference to the “climate zombies” entering the House of Representatives, who are now poised to spend the next two years holding irrelevant hearing after irrelevant hearing, wasting the time of scientists who are struggling to address the most significant threat humanity has yet faced in its millennia of existence on this planet.
Warren Senders
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Month 10, Day 8: Scientist Versus Idiot.
The Washington Post editorializes on Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, whose vendetta against climatologist Michael Mann has now reached obsessive dimensions. Read it and weep.
Virginia’s Attorney General is indeed an embarrassment, both to the State he nominally serves and to the legal profession. His posturings are representative of a virulent strain of know-nothingism which is profoundly damaging to the nation as a whole, despite its appeal to those politicians and voters who embrace the notion that expertise is inherently suspect. The Attorney General’s readiness to assert that this respected research scientist is engaged in a multi-year campaign of intellectual chicanery tells us a great deal more about Mr. Cuccinelli than about Dr. Mann. Unfortunately, American anti-intellectualism has resurfaced at precisely the time when scientific expertise is most needed, and willful ignorance has a profound moral dimension. With overall global temperatures rising and weather extremes increasing, the experiential evidence for climate change is no longer deniable. Another thing we can’t deny: Dr. Mann is a bigger asset to this country than the man persecuting him.
Warren Senders
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Month 7, Day 2: All The Specious Equivalence That’s Fit To Print
Newsweek has treated climatologist Michael Mann pretty shamefully. After Penn State’s Inquiry Panel completely exonerated Mann, Newsweek finally printed a pathetic excuse for a retraction, without acknowledging their own part in defaming his reputation.
It would be great to have actual journalism in this country, wouldn’t it?
It isn’t just the newspapers that have to retract their misleading reports about climatologist Michael Mann, whose work was unfairly maligned and misrepresented. Newsweek itself, which accused Mann and his colleagues of “massaging” their data, has some apologies to make and a retraction or two to print. Newsweek’s earlier articles on the “climategate” non-scandal were factually flawed, riddled with omissions and decontextualizations, and written carelessly and sloppily. So-called “journalism” of that standard is more appropriate for the celebrity beat; when reporting on science, it should be the first thought of a responsible news writer to make sure the truth is conveyed accurately. By hewing instead to a policy of spurious equivalence, where a fact from a scientist is “balanced” with a lie from an industry-funded spokesperson, Newsweek has helped damage the reputation of a man whose work on the science of climate change is (as PSU’s Investigatory Committee stated this week) beyond reproach. Michael Mann has been working to help all of us understand the facts of global warming, the greatest existential threat humans have ever faced. Newsweek has been obscuring the facts and aiding the forces of denial. We are all diminished by such irresponsibility.
Warren Senders