Chris Mooney

“‘Denialism’ has no place in scientific debate,” my letter in Nature Medicine

by Michael Fumento on June 11, 2010 · 2 comments

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

The key sentence in the letter is this, “‘Denialist’ is an ad hominem argument, the meaning of which is defined entirely by the user, intended to discredit the accused without evidence.”

The “anti-denialism” campaign is, to use a word I rarely employ, a literal conspiracy–albeit something of an open one in that it’s openly pushed by Chris Mooney. (Inset.) The purpose is two-fold.

1) Brand those with the “wrong” scientific views not just as “kooks” or “nuts” but as literally pathological. This from a recent article in The New Scientist:

Instigators of denialist movements have more serious psychological problems than most of their followers. ‘They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder [according to one quoted "expert"]‘ “including anger, intolerance of criticism, and what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance.” The “expert” goes on to say, “Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem. That is why these movements all have the same features, especially the underlying conspiracy theory.

2) Lump those whose ideas you wish to defame with people who truly are whacko. Thus there’s no difference between not accepting the party line on global warming and believing vaccines cause autism or HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.

It is truly insidious and we’re going to be hearing a lot more from these people.

Yes, pseudoscience writer Chris Mooney IS dishonest.

by Michael Fumento on January 8, 2010

in Odds & Ends

You’ve heard of pseudoscience, of course. Well, Chris Mooney is a pseudoscientific writer. He twists and bends and remolds data any way he can to come to the “proper” conclusion.

Among his works, a book called “The Republican War on Science.” It was actually just a criticism of anything Mooney doesn’t like, portrayed as if emanating from the GOP. Another work of his was the 2007 book “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming.”

Yes, it was another argument that clearly global warming was leading to an increased number of hurricanes and intensity of hurricanes, a thesis I had criticized two years earlier when the whole thing erupted in the wake of Rita and Katrina. Pseudoscientists and pseudoscientist writers had built a whole thesis around a grand total of two data points, rather like looking at two stars in the sky and seeing the outline of Marilyn Monroe.

Well, the years went by and the 2005 season proved to be a total anomaly. Indeed, by the end of the 2009 season hurricane activity was at a 30 year low. I blogged on this and then later had a piece in Forbes Online.

Mooney, who has a blog sponsored by global warming cheerleader Discover Magazine, smirked and smiled about my blog rather than wait for the full evidence in my piece. I, in turn, thought he had seen the whole piece and on that basis interpreted his response as dishonest. Upon realizing my error, I apologized and told him I’d give him a chance to respond to the actual article that would indeed show hurricane activity was at a 30-year low.

Rather than wait, he presented a chart he claimed refuted my assertion. Problem is, as you can see here, his data effectively ended with 2008. I didn’t say 2008 was a 30-year low, I said 2009.

When I the article appeared I provided the hyperlink on his blog and asked for a response.

None. “The silence was deafening,” as they say. Mooney had titled his original blog “Fumento swings . . . and misses.” Now it was clear that Mighty Mooney had struck out.

My apologies for apologizing. Yes, Chris Mooney is dishonest.

Where did the global warming-caused hurricanes go?

by Michael Fumento on December 1, 2009 · 3 comments

in Environment, Features, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

Whoa! Did we just have a hurricane season? Doesn’t seem that way. “2009 hurricane season ends quietly with fewest storms since 1997,” declares one headline. “The season featured nine named storms, the fewest since 1997, and for the first time since 2006 no hurricanes made landfall in the United States,” states the article.

That’s quite a change since 2005, when the coincidence of two major hurricanes striking the U.S. and causing lots of damage, Katrina and Rita, led to a storm of allegations that global warming was causing cyclones to rise up in revenge against man. Most notable was far-left science writer Chris Mooney’s Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, which Amazon.com informs us is “bargain-priced” and probably for good reason. Mooney not coincidentally is also author of “The Republican War on Science” and “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future.” Perhaps it threatens our future, but in the meantime it’s very good for his wallet.

Not that Mooney was alone by any means. In my 2005 Scripps Howard column “Green Hotheads Exploit Hurricane Tragedy,” I provided what in retrospect proves an interesting blast from the past.

“The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name was global warming.” So wrote environmental activist Ross Gelbspan in a Boston Globe op-ed that one commentator aptly described as “almost giddy.” The green group Friends of the Earth linked Katrina to global warming, as did Germany’s Green Party Environment Minister.

Granted, as I’ve written recently there’s been no warming in the last decade. But there’s been no cooling since 2005, either. Same temperatures, far fewer hurricanes.

So as the Kingston Trio might sing, “Where have all the hurricanes gone . . . ? And where are all these blowhards now? Presumably blaming global warming for some sort of disastrous problem caused by a lack of hurricanes.

Climategate — the Real War on Science?

by Marlo Lewis on November 25, 2009 · 6 comments

in Environment, Global Warming

The huge pile of emails purloined or leaked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) last week does indeed “give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics,” as the Wall Street Journal stated yesterday. However, the main issue brought to light by these emails is even more serious.

In a column posted yesterday on Anthony Watts’s blog, amateur scientist Willis Eschenbach documents the many ruses and excuses CRU director Phil Jones and his allies employed over several years to deny outsiders access to the CRU gang’s temperature data and computer codes.

Skeptics have been accused of waging a “war on science“ because they frequently question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) interpretation of the rapidly expanding field of climate change research.

 But science is not a set of dogmas certified by government-funded bodies. Rather, as Mr. Eschenbach points out, science is fundamentally an ”adversarial process” whereby competing scientists attempt to reproduce — that is, invalidate — each other’s results. This process absolutely depends on each combatant allowing the others to examine his data and methods. Tactics designed to hide data and methods are anti-science even if — nay, especially if – those resorting to such tricks are big-name scientists.   

“Science,” writes Eschenbach, “works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with data and methods they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand.”

This means, says Eschenbach, that researchers who hide their data and computer codes to prevent others from replicating/invalidating their results “attack . . . the heart of science.” Such behavior is unethical and, as Eschenbach notes, likely illegal as well.

If you read only one commentary on Climategate, read this one. It is an eye-opener.