DC judge denies another effort to derail Michael Mann's defamation lawsuit

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Climate Science Watch

Superior Court of the District of Columbia

Moving forward to the discovery stage of Michael Mann's defamation lawsuit against the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute was expedited when District of Columbia Superior Court judge Weisberg on September 12 denied yet another motion by the defendants that would have created a procedural delay. If the defendants' are hoping that having a new judge on the case will bring a very different viewpoint, his first procedural ruling doesn't support it.

Text of the judge's ruling: Order Denying Defendants' Joint Motion for Interlocutory Certification of the Court's July 19, 2013 Orders under D.C. Code § 11-721

Excerpt:

Although this case undoubtedly involves complex and important issues at the intersection of the First Amendment and the common law of defamation as applied to public figures, there is not "a substantial ground for a difference of opinion" on the controlling questions of law. The [Court's July 19, 2013, order denying defendants' motion to dismiss] represents an application of relatively settled law to the facts as articulated in the complaint, and a conclusion that plaintiff has alleged enough to move his case forward to the discovery stage.

Judge Weisberg also prodded the case along with this footnote:

3 As an aside, the court observes that the litigation of this matter will be as expensive as the parties choose to make it. It appears that most of the relevant facts are well known. If the parties can get through the discovery stage with a minimum of acrimony, they should be able to advance the case to the summary judgment phase in relatively short order.

So, let's see what the discovery stage brings out.

Earlier CSW posts on this case:

Judge denies National Review's Motion to Reconsider ruling in Michael Mann's defamation case (August 30)

Michael Mann v. National Review et al. defamation lawsuit - new Plaintiff's briefs (August 19)

DC Court affirms Michael Mann's right to proceed in defamation lawsuit against National Review and CEI (July 19)

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/09/13/dc-judge-denies-another-effort-to-derail-michael-manns-defamation-lawsuit/

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Graham Readfearn: The undiscerning climate bookshelf

Climate sceptic book Taxing Air coming to an undiscerning book store near you

by Graham Readfearn, 

 

SHELVES in popular book stores can be undiscerning little buggers, as can the book stores themselves.

For example, I recently had cause to wander through the tightly-bound and bulging aisles of my local Dymocks book store. They have some really quite “special” offerings both online and in-store.

Even though we essentially know that astrology is, for all intents and purposes, basically b******s, I can report that the paperback version of “Practical Astrology” is “in stock.”

Failing that, there’s also “Homeopathy for your Cat” within the pages of which you can find out how magic water can cure your ginger’s urinary tract issue.

Are you a book shopping parent who has “wished for a handbook on each child”? Well tough, because Dymocks has sold out of “Homeopathy and Your Child” so you’ll have to work out your kid’s “physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs” some other way (by the way, I’m not singling out Dymocks here – most of the big high street book sellers also hawk similar enlightenment-crushing garbage).

And there are the books on climate change.

Without any prior knowledge, it’s easy to see how the average punter might be easily fooled by the line-up of  books cosying-up in Dymocks and elsewhere. As you can see by the image above, there’s some excellent stuff on offer from well credentialed authors and scientists.

There’s What We Know About Climate Change by MIT Professor of Atmospheric Science Kerry Emanuel. Just beneath, is The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the front lines from Professor Michael Mann, director of Earth System Science at Penn State University, also in the U.S.

And sharing the same shelf space, is Taxing Air written by Dr Bob Carter, an Australian geologist and advisor to about a dozen climate science denial organisations around the world, and John Spooner, a cartoonist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia.

Bob Carter’s fringe views on climate change (it’s all natural) make him a favourite of fossil fuel-funded propaganda unit the Heartland Institute and many, many other groups with similarly dismissive views on human-caused climate change and its risks.
Carter was recently let go by James Cook University in Queensland, where he had been an unpaid adjunct professor for over a decade, because he wasn’t pulling his weight.

Carter hinted – and his supporters screamed – that he had been booted out because he was a climate sceptic. I covered that case for DeSmogBlog and also summarised this and other recent goings on for the ABC Science Show.

But back to Taxing Air, which is yet another climate sceptic book with strong links to a conservative “think tank” – in this case, the Institute for Public Affairs, where Dr Carter is the Science Policy Advisor.

The IPA paid for copies to be sent out to Australian members of parliament and has also hosted a launch event for the book. Research has found that almost four out of five climate sceptic books published since the early 80s have links to conservative think tanks.

Dr Carter, it should be noted, has only written one scientific paper on atmospheric climate change, which claimed – wrongly as it turned out – to have found that recent global warming was down to natural cycles of water temperatures in the Pacific. 

One group of leading climate scientists who analysed carter’s paper concluded that the conclusions he and his co-authors drew were “not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in their paper.”

But is Taxing Air any good? Well, I have a copy which I’m still trudging through (I may not get to the end). But one academic who has finished it is Australian Ian Enting, and he is none too impressed. Mathematical physicist Enting (author of the Australian Mathematical Scences Institute book Twisted: The distorted mathematics of greenhouse denial) worked at Australia’s leading science agency, the CSIRO, for 24 years in atmospheric research and modelling of the global carbon cycle.

Enting has analysed the book, describing it as a “polemic” characterised by “half-truths and slanted misrepresentation” and “appalling hypocrisy.”

At one point, Enting’s document notes how one chart  in Taxing Air is taken from a leaked draft of the not-yet-published United Nations IPCC Assessment Report 5 (due out in two weeks).

The chart has been altered, Enting’s document notes, removing a shaded area that shows the uncertainty range which, had it been left in,
shows how climate models agree with the observations within the range of uncertainty. Enting finds dozens of other examples like this.

But my real reason for going into the Brisbane Dymocks store was to hunt out a copy of Killing the Earth To Save It, written by UK-based climate science denialist and wind-farm hater James Delingpole.

In the UK, it was published under the name Watermelons. There was something remarkable about the book which I had read and was keen to confirm.

The book was published by Connor Court, which has published several other climate sceptic books. The editorial board of Connor Court also includes the IPA executive director John Roskam.

The IPA also paid for Delingpole to tour Australia to promote his book in September 2012 – a favour which he returned by running a public appeal for people to donate cash to the Melbourne-based group, which doesn’t reveal its funders but has run a long campaign of climate misinformation.

But none of these are the “remarkable thing” I referred to earlier.

The remarkable thing was an entry in Chapter 8 – “Welcome To The New World Order.” Delingpole continues to spruik on his Daily Telegraph blog, most recently earlier this week. Here’s what Delingpole says on page 174 of my newly purchased copy:

Probably the best analysis of the Club of Rome’s tangible effects on global environmental policy comes courtesy of a website called “The Green Agenda”:

While researching [...] and during my academic studies, I have come across many references to the Club of Rome (CoR), and reports produced by them. Initially I assumed that they were just another high-level environmental think-tank and dismissed the conspiracy theories found on many website claiming that the CoR is a group of global elitists attempting to impose some kind of one world government. I am not a conspiratorial person by nature and was faced with a dilemma when I first read their reports. But it’s all there – in black and white.

 Indeed.

So what exactly is “The Green Agenda” which Delingpole tells his readers is offering this leading analysis? Here’s the source of the quote, on the website “The Green Agenda.” And who runs “The Green Agenda”? It is a sister site of The Watchman’s Post - which describes itself as a “Christian/ Messianic  End Time Messenger!” based in New Zealand.

That’s right. Delingpole’s “analysis” of a jumped-up conspiracy theory about plans for a one world government come direct from a group of Christian fundamentalists who preach about second comings and “end times.” The watchman’s website details the coming of an “anti-Christ,” “times of distress and tribulation” and “Triads of evil.”

Here’s a taster:

True Christians will be seen at best as ‘insane’ and at worst as worthy of elimination. However, note; the period being introduced at that time and rightly called the ‘Time of Tribulation’ will quickly degenerate into a terrible time of trouble for almost everyone in the whole world, not just believers in Jesus. [We will explain more, later!] We can add with conviction, that we believe the ‘Time of God’s judgmental anger’ is a separate period of time as indicated by the pouring out of the ‘Bowls of Wrath’ when all true Believers will be sovereignly protected! [We will explain later.]

Perhaps it might be worth checking a few more of Delingpole’s sources in “Killing the earth to Save It” which is described by News Corp. columnist Andrew Bolt on the back cover as “wonderful” with “devastating facts and lacerating anecdotes.”

Not just devastating and lacerating, but potentially world ending – apparently – just not in the way Bolt and Delingpole might have expected.

Oh, did I say that Killing the World To Save It and Taxing Air are available in “all good bookshops”?

http://www.readfearn.com/2013/09/the-undiscerning-climate-bookshelf/

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Daily Mail Lies! No 60% recovery in Arctic sea ice, no expectation of global cooling

September Arctic sea ice extent data since 1980 from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (blue diamonds).  "Recovery" years, meaning years when the sea ice extent is greater than the previous year, are highlighted in red to mock the repeated cynical claims of climate change "skeptics" that global warming has somehow stopped.  Many factors affect the annual summer decrease in Arctic sea ice extent, and it is illogical at best to claim any "trend" by cherry-picking only brief periods of data.  The obvious true long-term trend in Arctic sea ice extent (red second-order polynomial curve fit) is that it is declining at an accelerating rate.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=64

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Judge denies National Review's Motion to Reconsider ruling in Michael Mann's defamation case

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Climate Science Watch

Superior Court of the District of Columbia

"The Court finds that there is sufficient evidence in the record to demonstrate that Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits," said a DC Superior Court judge in her latest procedural ruling in the defamation case of Michael Mann v. National Review, et al. "The evidence before the Court indicates the likelihood that 'actual malice' is present in the [National Review's] conduct." 

On August 30 the Court denied the Defendants' Motion for Reconsideration of the Court's July 19 order, which had affirmed Prof. Mann's right to proceed in his defamation lawsuit. The text of the August 30 Court Order is here in PDF.

Some excerpts from the Court Order denying Defendants' Motion for Reconsideration:

Defamation

... The Court finds that there is sufficient evidence in the record to demonstrate that Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits. As the Court stated in its previous Order, the NR Defendants’ reference to Plaintiff “as the man behind the fraudulent climate change ‘hockey stick’ graph” was essentially an allegation of fraud by Plaintiff. ...

The Court clearly recognizes that some members involved in the climate-change discussions and debates employ harsh words. The NR Defendants are reputed to use this manner of speech; however there is a line between rhetorical hyperbole and defamation. In this case, the evidence before the Court demonstrates that something more than mere rhetorical hyperbole is, at least at this stage present. Accusations of fraud, especially where such accusations are made frequently through the continuous usage of words such as “whitewashed,” “intellectually bogus,” “ringmaster of the tree-ring circus” and “cover-up” amount to more than rhetorical hyperbole. ...

The evidence before the Court indicates the likelihood that “actual malice” is present in the NR Defendants’ conduct. ...

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress ("IIED")

... The Court finds that Plaintiff’s claim for IIED is similar to that for defamation. There is sufficient evidence before the Court to indicate “actual malice.” The NR Defendants have frequently accused Plaintiff of academic fraud regardless of their awareness that Plaintiff has been investigated by several bodies and his work found to be proper. The NR Defendant’s persistence despite the findings of the investigative bodies could be likened to a witch hunt. In fact, Plaintiff had nothing to do with the Sandusky case yet the NR Defendants seized upon that criminal act by a pedophile and did more, this Court finds, than simply comment on another article.

The Court agrees with the arguments advanced by Plaintiff. To place Plaintiff’s name in the same sentence with Sandusky (a convicted pedophile) is clearly outrageous.

Stay tuned.

Earlier posts of documents in the case:

August 19: Michael Mann v. National Review et al. defamation lawsuit - new Plaintiff's briefs
July 19: DC Court affirms Michael Mann's right to proceed in defamation lawsuit against National Review and CEI

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/08/30/judge-denies-national-reviews-motion-to-reconsider-in-mann-defamation-case/

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Peter Dorman: More Mental Clutter on Climate Change

by Peter Dorman, Econospeak, August 29, 2013

 

Certain topics seem to be Sisyphean: you do your best to clarify and then, there it is, the boulder of common sense sitting at the bottom of the hill, demanding to be rolled up once again.  Elementary issues in macropolicy, like the fact that contractionary fiscal policy is contractionary, exemplify this, but so do the basics of climate change.  Here the elements in question are that pricing carbon can go a long way toward avoiding the worst scenarios, that the primary channel is economic substitution, and that good policy pushes out the political limits to action.
Now consider a recent argument that gets all of this wrong.  It comes from Jesse Jenkins of The Energy Collective; I was pointed to it by the usually insightful David Roberts, who in this case misses the boat.  The Cliff Notes version goes like this:
1. Carbon accumulation in the atmosphere is the result of GDP growth and existing technology.
2. We don’t want to cut GDP growth, so the solution is technological innovation, primarily in energy.
3. Carbon pricing itself can’t accomplish this.  The correct price would equal the social cost of carbon (the damage done by emitting an extra ton, monetized), but voters are unwilling to support taxes this high.  This is because such taxes would achieve their purpose only through massive cuts in per capita income (GDP).
4. But modest carbon prices will generate revenue.  This revenue can be channeled by government into R&D.  Just like government-financed research gave us the internet, it can give us the future energy technologies that will put the global economy back within ecological limits.
Almost every detail of this argument is flat-out wrong, and the totality rolls the rock back down the hill and calls it a monument.
Just to give a little more heft to the starting point, read through this excerpt from a letter to the Financial Times by political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., quoted with approval by Jenkins:

Carbon emissions are the product of (a) GDP growth and (b) technologies of energy consumption and production. ... Thus, a “carbon cap” actually means that a government is committing to either a cessation of economic growth or to the systematic advancement of technological innovation in energy systems on a predictable schedule, such that economic growth is not constrained. Because halting economic growth is not an option, in China or anywhere else, and technological innovation does not occur via fiat, there is in practice no such thing as a “carbon cap.”
Where carbon caps have been attempted, clever legislators have used gimmicks such as carbon offsets or set caps unrealistically high so that negative effects on GDP do not result and the unpredictability of energy innovation does not become an issue.
It should thus not come as a surprise that carbon caps have not led to emissions reductions or even limitations anywhere. China will be no different. The sooner that we realize that advances in technology are what will reduce emissions, not arbitrary targets and timetables for reductions, the sooner we can focus our attention on the serious business of energy innovation.

So what’s wrong?
1. Pielke sows confusion with the word “technologies”.  In the standard IPAT decomposition, where Impact equals population times Affluence (GDP per capita) times Technology (impact per unit GDP), technology refers to the technologies in use, due to both how goods are made and what goods we use.  This is the relevant definition for understanding carbon emissions.  It does not mean “everything we currently know about how to produce stuff”, which is how it is sometimes used by economists.  What Pielke is doing is appealing to the logic of the first definition in order to invoke the second.  By a type of verbal illusion, he brings us from a recognition that how we produce stuff is crucial to the claim that everything depends on inventing new ways of doing it.
What he leaves out, of course, is substitution.  Even with existing “technology”, in the sense of everything we currently know, we have quite a bit of scope for producing things differently and changing the mix of what we produce.  We can use fuel-efficient cars rather than guzzlers.  We can teleconference rather than fly people to distant locations for meetings.  We can build wind turbines and the grid needed to support them rather than more coal or oil infrastructure.  There are gobs of opportunities for substitution in a modern economy, and the first purpose of pricing carbon is to make them happen.  This is not speculative.  Countries like the US, which have lower taxes on energy products, have higher energy consumption per unit GDP than countries, like those in continental Europe, that have higher taxes.  There really is a law of demand out there.
2. Innovation responds to prices.  When the price of computer RAM collapsed, software companies started cranking out feature-bloated, RAM-intensive products.  Funny thing about that.  As fossil fuel prices appear to move to higher plateaus, Boeing and Airbus work on more fuel-efficient planes.  No one made them do this; it’s how markets work, for better and worse.  This is not to say that governments can’t speed up the process by subsidizing research that private firms won’t undertake—of course they can.  But we will make a lot more progress a lot faster if carbon is expensive and there are financial incentives to economize on it.
3. The social cost of carbon is a chimera.  There is no way to put a credible price tag on a ton of carbon.  It’s the wrong way to think about what the problem is.  (Insurance is the right way.)  This means you can’t denounce carbon pricing because it fails to achieve some sort of “objectively correct” level.  It’s simply a tool to be used in conjunction with other tools.
4. There are lots of things that can be done by way of regulation to reduce carbon emissions, but most involve inconvenience.  You can force people to change how they build houses or what standards have to be met by appliances, but in practice this means people will have to do things they would not otherwise do.  Sometimes that’s not a problem: people often lack information and will be just as happy doing the regulatory thing as whatever they were doing before.  Quite often it is a problem: you prevent people from doing something they actually prefer doing.  For instance, you can change the parking rules so that people can’t stay more than 15 minutes in a parking space for a large swath of a city.  This will force them to use other modes of transportation but it will piss them off.  Just as there are limits to the acceptability of carbon prices, there are limits to the acceptability of regulations.  You want a mix of measures that pack the most emission reductions within the existing political constraints.   As you back off on one mechanism, like prices, you are more vulnerable to the constraints on the others.
5. And now a word about what determines those constraints.  Yes, the higher the carbon price the less willing people will be to vote for them.  But that constraint can be relaxed by structuring your program to give money back to the citizens in as visible a way as possible.  How much relaxation is not known at this point and may depend on other factors as well, but we need all the relaxation we can get.  That’s why taking carbon revenues and funneling them to businesses to promote R&D is really counterproductive.  (a) Give them back to voters.  (b) Don’t give them to businesses, which will get voters even angrier.
6. In any case, the binding constraint today is not the voter but the CEO.  The business community wants to fob the cost of pricing carbon and substituting other products and methods onto anyone else they can, so what we get are loophole-ridden systems in countries that have carbon pricing and no carbon pricing at all in places like the US.  But that is not about policy design—it’s simply the deep political economic funk we’ve all fallen into.  To do anything else, whether about macroeconomics or the climate, we have to find a way out of post-democracy.

http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2013/08/more-mental-clutter-on-climate-change.html

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Reuters' Ingrassia suppresses climate change news and favors false balance with discredited skeptic views

Reuters Boss Accused Of Climate Scepticism Denies Agency Has Cut Climate Reporting

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmogBlog, August 27, 2013

“At Thomson Reuters, we’re in the business of turning change into opportunity,” say the owners of one of the world’s biggest and most influential news agencies.

But the commitment of Reuters to reporting on arguably the most pressing issue in human history – climate change – is now being questioned.

In January, after almost 20 years working for Reuters, the agency’s Asia climate change correspondent David Fogarty was told his role was being axed, but that he could be the correspondent for the shipping industry. He resigned. While Fogarty’s position has apparently not been filled, the agency in late July appointed a dedicated “Gaming Correspondent” to “drive casino coverage in Asia.”

Fogarty had spent four and a half years as the agency’s climate change correspondent for Asia. But things started to change in early 2012. He was told that climate and environment stories were “not a priority” and as time went on, he says it became harder and harder to get climate change stories published.

In a blog post for the Reuters-focussed The Baron website, Fogarty recalled meeting Reuters boss Paul Ingrassia, who at the time was deputy editor-in-chief and is now managing editor.

He told me he was a climate change sceptic. Not a rabid sceptic, just someone who wanted to see more evidence mankind was changing the global climate. Progressively, getting any climate change-themed story published got harder. It was a lottery. Some desk editors happily subbed and pushed the button. Others agonised and asked a million questions. Debate on some story ideas generated endless bureaucracy by editors frightened to take a decision, reflecting a different type of climate within Reuters – the climate of fear.

Research by Media Matters, reported in The Guardian, found climate change coverage at Reuters had almost halved since Paul Ingrassia was hired in April 2011.

The Columbia Journalism Review’s Alexis Sobel Fitts spoke to “several” Reuters journalists, who, Fitts wrote, “said that since Ingrassia was hired, they’ve felt pressure from management to add 'balance' to climate change stories by including the views of global-warming sceptics."

“I’m really glad someone outside the company is looking into this,” said one staffer who did not wish to be identified. “I think this is the most worrying thing any of us have seen here.”

Reuters still retains some respected climate change writers, including the experienced reporter Alister Doyle and columnist Gerard Wynn. But Fogarty told DeSmogBlog:

Reuters remains one of the great names, a trusted brand, for news unbiased coverage. That hard-earned reputation has immense value because clients, the public and staff know they can trust the accuracy of Reuters news and that major issues will be covered fully and insightfully. So when there’s a major policy shift on coverage of an issue of global importance, it is fair to ask for an honest explanation. Reuters management has not done this and it is a fair question to ask why.

The Baron has also reported that a senior editor had clashed with Ingrassia over the way a climate change story was being covered. DeSmogBlog asked Ingrassia if there had been a policy shift at Reuters, if he classed himself as a climate science sceptic and if the agency would be hiring a replacement climate correspondent for Asia. Responding for the first time to the accusations that climate change has been pushed down the editorial pecking order, Ingrassia emailed DeSmogBlog:

My side of the story is that there is no story. On all issues that we cover, Reuters covers all sides and takes none, as our Trust Principles require. Just a few days ago Reuters exclusively broke the need [sic] of the latest IPCC climate report.  Other major news organisations credited us with the scoop. That fact speaks louder than the claims of a disgruntled former employee.

The Trust Principles operate across the Thomson Reuters business. Reuters’ news agency service accounted for only three per cent of the company’s $12.4 billion revenue base in 2012. But the reach and influence of the agency is large.

According to Thomson Reuters, its news service employs more than 2,700 journalists in almost 200 offices writing 2.1 million unique news stories a day. “Reuters news and insight reaches over 1 billion people each day,” the company claims.

Ingrassia was hired by Reuters in April 2011 from Dow Jones where he had been the president of Dow Jones Newswires from 1998 to 2006. Ingrassia had held various positions, including an editor and journalist with the Wall Street Journal, which was owned by Dow Jones. He won a Pulitzer Prize 20 years ago for his reporting on the auto industry while in the Detroit bureau of the WSJ.

Also during his time at Dow Jones, Ingrassia served as an unpaid director for several years with the free market think tank the Property and Environment Research Center. Tax forms and PERC newsletters suggest Ingrassia was on the PERC board from 2004 until around September 2006.

PERC, one of many think tanks to have accepted funds from ExxonMobil and Koch foundations, advocates environmental protection based on property rights and argues “the market process can be used to improve environmental quality.” PERC fellows have taken a number of positions on climate change, including citing scientists who claim climate impacts may be manageable and in some cases beneficial.

The think tank generally downplays the impacts of rising greenhouse gas emissions, opposes any subsidies for environmental protection and opposes regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Ingrassia has also voiced beliefs that the free market should be preferenced over government intervention when it comes to solving environmental issues.

In a September 2008 interview on National Public Radio, Ingrassia was asked if it was in the US government’s interest to invest in ways to make cars greener. He answered: “Well, why is government investment going to make it happen more quickly and more efficiently and more effectively than the free market?”

Earlier this year, PERC’s long-standing president Terry Anderson argued renewable energy would have little impact on reducing climate change impacts, so people should take out insurance instead.

Two PERC associates have also written climate change books aimed at schoolchildren – one published in 2002 and another in 2007 - and which both cited several climate science denial groups as reference material.

More recently, PERC fellow Jonathan Adler appeared to attack climate change deniers in conservative ranks, arguing it was possible to oppose regulating greenhouse gases while still acknowledging that human-caused climate change was a “serious problem.”

If the claims of David Fogarty and others within Reuters are right, then perhaps Adler might be the right person to make a phone call to fellow free marketer Paul Ingrassia.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/08/27/reuters-boss-accused-climate-scepticism-denies-agency-has-cut-climate-reporting

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No, Al Gore is not exaggerating or making stuff up

http://blog.ucsusa.org/al-gore-educates-the-public-on-climate-science-but-shouldnt-overstate-findings-215#update

UPDATE: August 23, 1:35 p.m.

According to Joe Romm at Climate Progress, the full transcript of Vice President Gore’s remarks, which was incorrectly transcribed by the Post, was:

“The scientists are now adding category 6 to the hurricane…some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5.”

We hope the Post will update its original article to reflect Gore’s original statement.

It’s also true, as Romm points out, that at least one scientist has gone on the record recently saying there might need to be a new category. And while to our knowledge there have been no official meetings or workshops to discuss a new Category Six, it is probably accurate to say scientists have independently discussed or considered it, though the meaning of “proposed” is open to interpretation.

In any case, I still believe politicians should focus on science that is more certain and more actionable from a policy perspective, such as the obvious rise in sea levels.

It’s also worth noting that there could be other reasons to change how we categorize hurricanes besides an increase in wind speed, namely public safety. Even a sub-category one storm that makes landfall can be incredibly destructive, and this will only be increasingly true with higher sea levels.

I believe it is important to stand up for science—no matter who it criticizes. At the Center for Science and Democracy, we believe this is essential for preserving a debate founded on the facts. Accepting what the science tells us (no matter how inconvenient), correcting mistakes when found (as here), and incorporating new information are all part of the scientific process. This is how we move forward and in this case, I hope we can.

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Fox News found to be a major driving force behind global warming denial

American consumers of conservative media like Fox News distrust climate scientists and don't believe the planet is warming 

Fox News is helping prop up conservative American global warming denial.

by John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli, "Climate Consensus - the 97%," The Guardian, August 8, 2013

A new study published in the journal Public Understanding of Science (PDF available here) surveyed a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 Americans in 2008 and 2011 about their media consumption and beliefs about climate change.

The results suggest that conservative media consumption (specifically Fox News and Rush Limbaugh) decreases viewer trust in scientists, which in turn decreases belief that global warming is happening. In contrast, consumption of non-conservative media (specifically ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, and The Washington Post) increases consumer trust in scientists, and in turn belief that global warming is happening.

The study also examined previous research on this issue and concluded that the conservative media creates distrust in scientists through five main methods:

1) Presenting contrarian scientists as "objective" experts while presenting mainstream scientists as self-interested or biased.

2) Denigrating scientific institutions and peer-reviewed journals.

3) Equating peer-reviewed research with a politically liberal opinion.

4) Accusing climate scientists of manipulating data to fund research projects.

5) Characterizing climate science as a religion.

Media Matters provides examples of Fox News engaging in all five of these tactics. One prime example involves contrarian meteorologist Joe Bastardi, a frequent climate misinformation guest on Fox News who Rolling Stone awarded the #1 dumbest thing ever said about global warming for claiming that CO2 "literally" cannot cause warming because it doesn't "mix well in the atmosphere."

In reality we've known for nearly 190 years that rising CO2 causes global warming, and we know for certain it's well-mixed throughout the atmosphere, as illustrated by measurements from around the world.

The results of this study can be compared to the PhD research done by my Skeptical Science colleague John Cook, at the University of Queensland. Cook surveyed representative samples of Australians and Americans regarding their political ideologies and the effect of consensus on their acceptance of human-caused global warming. After being shown evidence of the consensus on human-caused global warming, Australian acceptance of this scientific reality grew across the political spectrum, but especially among conservatives.

In the American sample, acceptance grew for most political groups, but especially among political liberals. In the American sample, there was also a small and extremely politically conservative group who actually became more likely to reject human-caused global warming in response to evidence of the expert consensus. Cook presented his data at the American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference on Climate Science Communication, shown in the video below at the 10-minute mark.

Cook's result appears consistent with the new study published in Public Understanding of Science, which found that exposure to conservative media decreases trust in climate scientists. In short, Fox News and other conservative media outlets plant the notion that climate scientists are somehow faking evidence for human-caused global warming. This makes viewers less trusting of climate scientists and less likely to accept that global warming is happening.

With conservatives tending to get their information from conservative media sources, this is increasing the political polarization on the subject of climate change. However, with the real-world effects of climate change constantly becoming more difficult to deny, this is not a sustainable situation. Eventually reality must break in, and there are signs that this is beginning to happen.

A growing number of American conservatives are demanding that the Republican Party stop denying the problem and begin participating in crafting the solution. For example, the list of conservatives supporting a revenue-neutral carbon tax continues to grow:

51 percent of Republican voters
Art Laffer, economic advisor to Ronald Reagan
Greg Mankiw, economic advisor to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney
George Shultz, Reagan's Secretary of State
Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate in economics
Bob Inglis, former Republican Congressman from South Carolina
A staffer for a House Republican
William Ruckelshaus, EPA Administrator under Nixon and Reagan
Lee Thomas, EPA Administrator under Reagan
William Reilly, EPA Administrator under George H.W. Bush
Christine Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator under George W. Bush

The list goes on. Moreover, 73% of young voters under the age of 35 associate denial of global warming with words like "ignorant," "out-of-touch" or "crazy," including 53% of young Republicans. Climate solutions are also growing in popularity due to their real-world success, with British Columbia's revenue-neutral carbon tax enjoying 64% support, and California's carbon cap and trade system experiencing 67% support.

The question now is how long the Republican Party's global warming denial and obstruction of climate solutions can last in the face of these growing numbers of Americans (including Republicans) demanding climate solutions. Climate misinformation from Fox News and other conservative media outlets may be stemming the tide against climate denial, but the tide is rising, both literally and figuratively.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/08/global-warming-denial-fox-news

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Michael Mann responds to factually incorrect letter to the editor of the Times-Dispatch

Climate change letter was personal attack

To the Editor, Times-Dispatch, August 5, 2013

Charlie Battig did a grave disservice to your readers by spreading falsehoods about me personally and about climate science in general in his recent letter, “McAuliffe sways left and right on coal.” Battig parroted discredited denialist talking points, e.g., “the globe hasn’t warmed over the past 16 years” (the past decade, in fact, was the warmest recorded).

Much of the letter, however, revolved around Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s 2009 attempt to subpoena my personal U.Va. emails with dozens of other climate scientists. Cuccinelli is a climate-change denier, and his efforts were widely viewed as a fishing expedition intended to find something embarrassing that he could use to discredit my scientific research on climate change. His actions were blasted as a “witch hunt” by The Washington Post, while this paper editorialized on them as a “search warrant without probable cause (that) might be kosher in totalitarian states.” The state Supreme Court rejected Cuccinelli’s subpoena with prejudice last year.

Battig attempts to defend Cuccinelli’s attacks based on discredited allegations and innuendo arising from the industry-funded “climategate” smear campaign, where thousands of scientists’ emails were stolen and then misrepresented by climate-change deniers in an effort to call into question the evidence for human-caused climate change. Battig conveniently fails to acknowledge that nine investigations in the U.S. and Europe found there was no evidence of impropriety in any of these emails and that the National Science Foundation’s inspector general investigated and thoroughly dismissed all allegations of misconduct made against me personally.

It is precisely these sorts of attacks by climate-change deniers that led me to write my recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, where I discuss my experiences as a reluctant figure in the climate-change debate.

Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor, Department of Meterology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor-for-august/article_833393bb-0d7e-5389-b90d-9edb451c2ddd.html

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