Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic

[snopes]

Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration.

In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the surfacing of a few e-mail messages that seemed to show that his contrarian views on global warming had been suppressed by his superiors because they were inconvenient to the Obama administration’s climate change policy. Conservative commentators and Congressional Republicans said he had been muzzled because he did not toe the liberal line.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/sc...rth/25epa.html

[crocoduck_hunter]

Gee, never seen a politician do that before.

[Dropbear]

...that he holds a doctorate in economics, not in atmospheric science or climatology; that he has never been assigned to work on climate change; and that his comments on the endangerment finding were a product of rushed and at times shoddy scholarship,...

Conservatives: we don't need no fancy relevant knowledge, practical experience or quality research.

Dropbear

[Wintermute]

Originally Posted by Dropbear

Conservatives: we don't need no fancy relevant knowledge, practical experience or quality research.

Dropbear

Actually none of that is important. What is important is if his methods, and conclusions are correct. Basically his writings should stand on their own merit, and personal attacks really do not debase his claims. I have no idea if he is right, but I think it is a tad simple to dismiss him by missing the question is if his point is valid.

[Tarquin Farquart]

How is being a climate change sceptic a conservative position? I would have thought conservatives would be keen to keep the status quo global temperature.

[Dropbear]

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

How is being a climate change sceptic a conservative position? I would have thought conservatives would be keen to keep the status quo global temperature.

I don't know about the UK but the climate change sceptics are much more prevalent on the conservative side here in Australia, and from what I've seen, in the US.

I suspect that this is because conservatives tend want to keep doing what they are doing - which they see as working out reasonably well, and don't want to change. Preserving the social and economic status quo trumps preserving the climate status quo unless it can be proven that not changing would certainly and immediately cause a problem.

Dropbear

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by Dropbear

I don't know about the UK but the climate change sceptics are much more prevalent on the conservative side here in Australia, and from what I've seen, in the US.

They're generally conservative here too.

[Archie2K]

I don't understand it. A conservative can argue that massive state intervention isn't the way to combat climate change, but I don't get why so many seem to deny that it is happening in the first place.

[Il-Mari]

Originally Posted by Wintermute

Actually none of that is important. What is important is if his methods, and conclusions are correct. Basically his writings should stand on their own merit, and personal attacks really do not debase his claims. I have no idea if he is right, but I think it is a tad simple to dismiss him by missing the question is if his point is valid.

What is relevant is that his opinion wasn't solicited in the first place, his views are already well known within his department, and his unsolicited 'report' was poorly made:

Dr. Carlin, long known as a skeptic on global warming, was not invited to submit comments on the document. But he was determined that his views be heard.

...

Agency officials and outside experts who reviewed his report as a result of the outcry over the episode have said they found it wanting in a number of ways. It included unverified information from blog posts, they found, quoted selectively from journal articles, failed to acknowledge contradictory information and may have borrowed passages verbatim from the blog of a well-known climate change doubter.

In the interview Thursday, Dr. Carlin admitted that his report had been poorly sourced and written. He blamed the tight deadline.

It's not part of his job to comment on such matters, he wasn't asked to, and he doesn't have the background to. Each of those is already a good enough reason for officials to reject his writings. His final report was also poor, and arguably shows that he doesn't have that great of an understanding of the subject either.

As Dropbear effectively points out, none of that stopped conservatives from claiming that a 'climate change skeptic' was being wrongfully silenced.

- Il-Mari

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by Archie2K

I don't understand it. A conservative can argue that massive state intervention isn't the way to combat climate change, but I don't get why so many seem to deny that it is happening in the first place.

Massive denial, and its cousin, the conspiracy fantasy, are "cultural warfare" techniques of remarkable antiquity. They tended to be more successful before the information age. For instance, numerous military leaders, from Bayazid to Napoleon, have marched in great triumph back to their capital cities -- after having lost a battle.

Orwell's 1984 was a blast aimed at communism for its tendency to "deprogram" the truth; what's sad is that those who were the most vigorous anti-communists have so thoroughly adopted this specific technique.

Silas

[diddy]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

Massive denial, and its cousin, the conspiracy fantasy, are "cultural warfare" techniques of remarkable antiquity.

The deniers also call love to tout any action against the status quo by any organization an "act that reeks of socialism". Its a great way to divide lines if you can manage to make the opposing position look foolish

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by diddy

The deniers also call love to tout any action against the status quo by any organization an "act that reeks of socialism". Its a great way to divide lines if you can manage to make the opposing position look foolish

The good news is that, while the label "liberal" was succesfully demonized in the Reagan era, the label "socialism" isn't serving to taint anything it is hurled at. The tactic has misfired for being applied too broadly; people have seen through it. You can't just recite the magic incantation, "That's socialism" and have people say, "Well, then, I'm against it."

In so many ways, the anti-thought opposition -- the mind-set that is opposed to higher education -- "ivory tower elitism" -- has engineered its own destruction, very much the same way Soviet communism did: by standing in opposition to individual critical thinking. The Soviet system was brought low in part by informal communication between individuals. And the "know nothing" counterpart in the U.S., as well, has isolated itself, not least by the exaggerations of right-wing hate radio.

(Most of us are willing to listen to someone who says, "I think you are wrong, and here is why." But when they say, "You want America to be enslaved," they cut themselves off from any form of rational debate.)

Silas