The Climate Change Asylum
I have no problem with a leading climate scientist taking issue with how the media portrays his profession. And if Gavin Schmidt would have kept his criticism of recent press coverage limited to the UK, he’d be on semi-solid ground. (He’d also be vulnerable to charges of mischaracterizing this coverage as one big “fact-free” monolith.) But Schmidt leaves reality behind when he goes after two American journalists in this manner:
Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators ““ Curtis Brainard at CJR and Tom Yulsman in Colorado ““ have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts.
No doubt Schmidt is being sarcastic here, for surely he doesn’t mean that two “prominent and respected US commentators” would be advocating for “fact-free” journalism. No, what Schmidt is really saying is that all this stuff about the IPCC and its chairman, and those stolen emails from a few months ago warrants little legitimate media coverage.
Michael Tobis, nodding his head, writes:
Just because there are lunatics willing to spin a sort of tale doesn’t make it, you know, actual news.
Yulsman’s rejoinder over there is worth noting, especially this:
Just because I and many other science journalists believe this story should be covered doesn’t mean that we are advocating for shoddy journalism. All I called for was for journalists here to follow the story wherever it leads. If it leads to a conclusion that the accusations have been blown up all out of proportion, then that is the story.
But right now, all Americans are getting is Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other bloviators of their ilk who are filling the vacuum left by the absence of responsible journalism. Are you actually saying that you would like to cede the playing field to them? Or that if the press ignores the story it will just go away. If you believe that you are more naive than I thought.
I’m having some trouble understanding this point of view.
“If it leads to a conclusion that the accusations have been blown up all out of proportion, then that is the story.”
Yes, but the truth is fundamentally a story about the press and how it has been manipulated, not about the science itself nor the scientific community. Had the press paid no more attention than was warranted in the first place, there would be no story.
How would it get “blown up out of all proportion” without the participation of the press?
Tell me Michael, just how much attention was warranted here in the United States? I get the sense that you think we journalists should just take it on faith that it’s all bullshit and ignore it.
Are you really suggesting that when suggestions of impropriety are raised about an organization that is central to efforts at reorganizing the entire world economy, with potential impacts on billions of people on this planet, we should just ignore it? Please tell me more specifically just what you are arguing. And if I’m wrong, please set me straight.
Whether you like it or not, once all this stuff got out into the public square it became a big story. And it should have been up to responsible science and environmental journalists (all six or so who remain…) to figure out what was going on. We got a horrible story on page 1 of the New York Times by John Broder “” a lesson in false balance. But we haven’t gotten much responsible coverage. That’s what Curtis Brainard and I have been calling for. Nothing more, nothing less.
Right now, the story is being twisted and hyped by some in the British press. And with little responsible coverage here in the United States, the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other lying bloviators are rushing to use that crap to fill the vacuum.
Bottom line: If you think ignoring the accusations against the IPCC, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, et al would just make it all go away, you live in a fantasy world.
It’s hard for me to imagine any organization for which there are no suggestions of impropriety. In a world where bad information is so easy to come by, the press’s job becomes choosing the good information and highlighting it. When the press gets that wrong at the behest of an insistent and biased interest group, the public becomes misinformed.
You guys are being played like a fiddle and you shouldn’t be.
If you want a story, talk about yourselves.
If Beck and Hannity want to spin their tale their way and people who listen to nothing but their ilk all day choose to believe them, that is a problem, and I don’t know what to do about it.
But when people who read what until recently have been legitimate sources see the same crap, that is the press’s fault.
There is obviously nothing going on. Hassled scientists doing their best to get a message out to the world have been punished for this for a long time. Now that the message very nearly got out, the ante has been raised. The lives of innocent, well-meaning, smart hard-working and ethical people are being mangled by false accusation, innuendo and character assassination, and great risk is accruing to the future of the planet.
The main thing I’d like to see in the press is some examination of how the press could get this so badly wrong as to damage the future of the whole world, which now seems to be what is happening. Don’t miss this article for an example:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/now_its_timesgate.php
This is not a story about climate science. This is a story about propaganda and the vulnerability of the press.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Michael,
You really need to think of the context this latest media wave hit. It was after the CRU story played out. Around the time the glacier story broke, there were also potential conflict of stories about the IPCC chair, a wave of commentary about he handled the glacier mistake and those conflict of interest accusations, etc. Then there’s another mini-wave on IPCC disaster calculations, followed by more commentary on IPCC process, and of course, all this feeds on itself.
And yes, amidst this feeding frenzy, we see ample evidence of irresponsible and bad coverage, of which Lambert has been justifiably highlighting. Alas, the existence of a few bad actors doesn’t negate the legitimacy of pursuing all these story strands–and, as Tom Yulsman argues, following them where ever they lead.
Sorry, that’s the way the clumsy media beast works. And by the way, there’s a reason why newspapers are considered the first draft of history. Not because they are willfully wrong, but because the full story is often not known as papers are reporting it. Hence the ugly, piecemeal process that folks like you and Gavin decry.
Sorry, but the newspapers are wilfully wrong. A couple of dishonest journalists are driving the whole thing. I discovered this by doing the most elementary fact checking — checking documents to see if they say what these journalists say they do and emailing interviewees to see if they’ve been accurately quoted. Why aren’t journalists doing this?
Tim,
What you discovered: is it revealing something (obviously bad) of those journalists, AND in addition, revealing that the dominant UK media meme on the IPCC and climate science in the last month has flowed from those same journos you’ve been flogging?
I haven’t followed the daily flow of the UK coverage in any definitive fashion, but I’m suspecting that the majority of the stories have not been artificially driven by just a few journalists. I’m open to persuasion, though, as that would be quite a story, and I’d be all over that.
So what would it take to persuade you?
Expand your case, so it’s not just supposition. Explain how the Guardian and other papers wrote all those stories based on what Rose, Leake et al published.
Keith: As you know, research shows that on a wide variety of issues “” from elections, to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, to animal experimentation “” partisans on opposing sides of a political issue consistently say the press is strongly biased against their point of view. They cannot tolerate any departure from their orthodoxy. And so the independence of journalists infuriates them.
Because of their orthodoxy, Tobis will never actually listen honestly to anything you, I, Curtis Brainard or Andy Revkin have to say or write. Like the deniers they love to decry, they simply ignore the plain language on the screen and cherry pick what they want to confirm themselves in their own sanctimony.
Their behavior is not unusual, of course. If you’re uncomfortable living with ambiguity and complexity, and most especially if you’re incapable of thinking outside of your carefully constructed comfort box, you will over-simplify complex issues, and demonize those who dare jostle the box. And most especially, you will never, ever admit that you were wrong.
I think I know what’s coming next in this discourse. It will not be something like, “Okay, Keith, I appreciate everything you’ve written on how humans are altering the planet, and I do agree with you about the watchdog role of the press. Yes, the IPCC could use some accurate, fair, responsible scrutiny. But I don’t think you fully appreciate just how awful the British coverage has been . . .” If he did that, he’d have to actually read what you’ve written and think about it before hitting the keyboard. No, I bet what’s coming next is an accusation of “false balance.”
Okay, Keith, I appreciate everything you’ve written on how humans are altering the planet, and I do agree with you about the watchdog role of the press. Yes, the IPCC could use some accurate, fair, responsible scrutiny. But I don’t think you fully appreciate just how awful the British coverage has been.
OK, Tom, so you bet wrong.
Oh, and the American coverage too, less so in extent but comparably in degree.
As far as I know, nobody says IPCC as an institution or climate science as a scientific culture is flawless or above scrutiny. Certainly I don’t.
But for the press to fan the flames of the extreme paranoia that is rampant these days so as to make greenhouse policy politically impossible is spectacularly out of proportion to any actual flaws that have come to light.
Those of us who work in the field know that our colleagues are mortal and that the system we work in is flawed as well. In that it is no different than any other human enterprise. Given the stakes, it is inevitable that there would be forces seeking to make mountains out of such molehills as they can find.
The failure of the press to put these into realistic context has been monumental. The complaints I have had about the press for some years now have been utterly dwarfed by the complaints I have of the last few months, and I was complaining pretty hard then.
The facts are that some people understand the climate system better than others, and the ones who understand it best are convinced that the current behavior of humanity is dangerous. There is no training manual, no standards of professional behavior, for what a scientist should do under these awkward circumstances.
We have been banging this drum for thirty years now, and just as the message seemed to finally be getting through to government and industry, this bizarre collection of minor errors and small marginal decisions gets spun into the scientific scandal of the ages. Is this timing a coincidence?
People with no idea of how science is structured or conducted are convinced that there is massive fraud on the basis of a typographic error here, an impatient statement there, some cutting of corners on onerous regulations hither and some egotism there. Meanwhile, policy decisions that are fifteen years overdue (yes, Kyoto was appropriately timed and scaled as a beginning) seem to be put off another decade, at great risk to, well, everything.
No there’s no false balance here. It’s just that the arms of the press that aren’t explicitly culpable are being hopelessly credulous, and totally forgetting the nature of the arguments that almost got us to at least pretending to be serious about them in Copenhagen.
The entire world needs to cooperate. There is a very comfortable and sustainable future that is in our technical capacity, but whether it is in our social capacity is very much in doubt. For the press to ignore this in favor of shabby scandalmongering is not just a matter of injustice, though it is that.
There aren’t words for the mistake the press is making. The fate of many things is at stake here, the reputation of the press not the greatest among them.
I hope you understand that whatever complaints I and other climate professionals had about the press a few months ago are as nothing compared to the ones we have now.
Michael,
You are really overwrought on this, and for naught. Here’s a thought experiment: where do you think climate policy would be situated today had there been no CRU scandal, no stories of IPCC miscues? Where would climate policy be had there been none of the bad press for climate science since December?
Exactly where it it is today. The Copenhagen outcome would have been the same, the U.S. Congress climate bill would still be on life support, and China would still be the big stumbling block it is. You really don’t get this, do you?
Romm has already said that anti-science ideologues (along with bad progressive messaging) bear the blame for this turn of events. You seem to hold the press just as responsible. Romm knows better–he’s just looking for convenient scapegoats. But you’re not like that, you honestly believe the press is one of the big culprits. Sorry, I don’t understand how you have settled on this.
This is like being a mosquito in a nudist colony – so much opportunity that it’s difficult to know where to start. So I’ll just pick one and go with it –
Tom Y said:
Tell me Michael, just how much attention was warranted here in the United States? I get the sense that you think we journalists should just take it on faith that it’s all bullshit and ignore it.
So far that ‘s pretty much what’s happened. There’s been a rash of bloggers, in this country and others, who’ve wondered where the American press has been since November. There’s been speculation as to why the American press is consciously committing collective suicide by covering everything in the world except the one story that “might” actually make a difference – Climategate and the follow-on stories. If Climategate is a fraud, if the IPCC stories are not true – where is the proof? Where are the vaunted investigative journalists of the American press corps? I’ve seen/heard a lot of – nothing. Except from people like Romm and Schmidt calling BS on the whole thing, but failing to present anything like proof of their allegations or proof of the “fraud” – or even reasonable explanations. The “move on, there’s nothing to see here” line just doesn’t work because there is so obviously a LOT to see. And very little of the American media that doesn’t have thier heads in their armpits, hiding from the truth (whatever that might be).
If the public can’t trust the media to actually investigate and report the story, preferably honestly, then what good are the media? And why should the public pay to keep them on life support? For my part, I stopped buying newspapers at least 5 years ago. I don’t watch TV and I rarely go to the network websites.
What I just said is that the American media has failed to do what they get paid for. Personally, I fired them long ago. Apparently, more and more of the public are in the process of firing them as well.
PS – “honest reporting” does NOT involve going into the story with preconceived storylines. That would be like deciding what the science “should be” and then using only the evidence that proves the desired conclusion, but ignoring (or hiding) anything that opposes it. Preconceptual reporting is neither prettier nor more honest than preconceptual science.
Fascinating. Both ends of the spectrum are convinced the press has failed.
One side says we should have ignored the story; the other says we have ignored it.
And Oso, your litany of complaints has the same exaggerated tone as Michael’s. So tell me, where are you getting your unbiased news and information from, since you’ve stopped buying newspapers (and presumably stopped reading them online)?
Keith – My wife would be shocked if I claimed to be unbiased. So would I.
I am certainly biased against ignorance, stupidity, reality-challenged politics and preconceptual science. For that reason I only occasionally drop in on Realclimate or similar sites, but I check WUWT & Co every day. I’ve found a considerable level of reality and an amazing level of actual science there – often in the articles, but even more so in the comment sections. You’ve noticed, I suppose, that I check in here fairly often, too. You can take that as a compliment if you like. There is also a short list of other blogs/websites that provide information. For example –http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
For the rest of the world, most of what I need to know comes from casual headlines or other Internet sources (although generally not the major networks). I’ve found that I don’t need to be constantly “connected” – if I need to know something (anything) the knowledge is usually available for the asking. And I do ask.
My “complaints” are based on reality – the media has spent years trumpeting that Arctic ice will disappear in – what? – 5 years, 10 years – whatever. Fact is that they don’t know, neither do the “scientists” that feed them the “information”. Nor is there any real evidence to back up the claim. Basically, I see it as scaremongering for political/financial purposes.
Then there are the claims that the temps and sea level rise are increasing “faster than we expected” – which the media are all too happy to announce to the world. But which are entirely false.
Which brings us to one of my favorites – the Hockey Stick. I may be an engineer, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid, ignorant, uneducated – or gullible. I’ve also had a good education in the art of the scam. But that’s another story. So when someone tries to feed me a line of BS that says the MWP never happened, I first check to make sure my wallet is secure. And in this case, that’s directly appicable.
The other participants in this discussion may have some problems with my attitude. That would be good – if it gives them incentive to actually investigate their programmed responses. In the past, I’ve found myself in their position – it took me 3 years of intensive investigation to find (and believe) the truth and adjust my attitude about a particular subject.
Not to worry, you won’t have to put up with me for a while – I’ll be on Springer Mt a week from now, headed north on the Appalachian Trail for 700 miles, then flying to California to thruhike the Pacific Crest Trail. I’ll be back in October or November if the knees hold out.
Oso,
Wow, those are some impressive hikes. Maybe if some of the leading protagonists and antagonists in this debate headed out together into the backcountry for a few months…
Keith, if you trace back how the most damaging memes were propagated, you usually get back to Rose or Leake and their fabrications. Because they are supposed to be news reporters other reporters blindly copy from them. But you just reflexively defend reporters criticized by mean bloggers.
Keith –
These are “fun hikes” for us (my wife and myself). We’ve done all of the long distance hikes before – more than once in some cases. 2011 or 2012 will be the Continental Divide Trail again.
Check out the website.
Anyway, I only have one more comment on the subject at hand. The idea that “who” started “which” scandal story is important is pure BS. What matters is – is it true? How did it happen? Is there a reasonable explanation? Should someone resign/apologize/be prosecuted? And I don’t get to the prosecution idea lightly.
But “killing the messenger” is just stupid. And there’s a direct analogy between the attitude about this and the attitude about those who disagree with one’s science. I’m gonna leave youy with a directly applicable quote (the last part is particularly applicable) –
A scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. If the predictions agree with the observations, the theory survives that test, though it can never be proved to be correct. On the other hand, if the observations disagree with the predictions, one has to discard or modify the theory. (At least that is what is supposed to happen. In practice, people often question the accuracy of the observations and the reliability and moral character of those making the observations.)
From – “The Universe in a Nutshell” by Stephen Hawking
I won’t be back to this particular discussion –
OK – I lied. But only because I just found this and thought you might be interested –
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-the-worlds-biggest-story-everywhere-but-here/
There’s no question but that when one gets equal criticism from left and right that is a good indication that one has the story about right. This is different. You are getting criticism from the scientific community on one side of the argument.
There is no scandal, besides the fact that so many people have allowed themselves to be convinced of a scandal. There certainly is no conspiracy of the sort that some people are happy to believe in. The early history of such a conspiracy, and the unanimous consent of all the world’s major scientific bodies, is woefully difficult for them to account for.
The press needs to actually apply some investigative skill here.
MT: “There’s no question but that when one gets equal criticism from left and right that is a good indication that one has the story about right. ”
But that’s not true either, even for purely politiucal stories, although journalists and other people who see themselves as centrists fervently wish it was. Especially when any sort of checkable fact gets involved, the press has a responsibility to state what that fact implies, notwithstanding that it offends one side or the other.
Steve, right. I was sloppy. There is never a guarantee that the truth lies in between. Sometimes one or the other side is wrong. Sometimes both.
I should have said that it’s not necessarily a bad sign when both sides are mad.