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This is a comment I made to Ron Bailey on Reason Magazine's "Hit and Run" blog:

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/05/global_warming_disease_hype_.shtml

Hi Ron,

I can't seem to find a post on this subject elsewhere on Hit and Run (maybe I'm not patient enough), but I understand you're going to be in a debate with Chris Mooney at a Skeptics Society conference in June.

My understanding is that the (highly dissapointing) topic is whether the "left" or the "right" abuse science more.

I have a suggested alternative debate topic...and one that I think is perfect for the Skeptics Society: "Resolved: The IPCC Third Assessment Report 'projections' for methane atmospheric concentrations, CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resulting temperature increases, constitute pseudoscientific rubbish."

You could take the Affirmative and absolutely destroy Chris Mooney. It would be a "Scopes Trial" moment.

You could point out that:

1) Without an assessment of probabilities, the "projections" are not scientifically valid, as Jesse Ausubel (11 year Fellow of the National Academies of Science, 5 year Program Director of the National Academy of Engineering) has pointed out.

2) That because they have no assessment of probabilities, they are as scientifically invalid as the "Limits to Growth" series of books (30 years and counting of pseudoscientific alarmism).

3) Even James Hansen has admitted that the "scenarios" with the most alarming results were presented to get the attention of the public, e.g., when he wrote in Scientific American in March 2004:

He wrote this in Scientific American in March of 2004:

"Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions."

4) That the IPCC TAR comments on how the "scenarios" represent "alternative futures":

“Scenarios are images of the future or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts.”

...which is so close to dialog from the Terminator movies, it's hilarious.

5) The methane atmospheric concentration projections were known to be false, even ***at the time of publication*** of the IPCC TAR.

I could go on and on (as you probably know). But I hope you'll push very hard for a change in the topic of the debate. As I wrote, I think the new topic would be absolutely perfect for the Skeptics Society's mission (as I understand it) to debunk pseudoscience, and to substitute reason for mysticism.

Best wishes,
Mark Bahner

P.S. I'm posting this same comment on Roger Pielke Jr.'s website...and even Chris Mooney's blog. Of course, if Chris Mooney is smart (which he seems to be, based on what I've read), he won't touch this topic with a ten-foot pole. He'd be crushed.

Thanks David for posting this. As far as a framing for debating the politicization of science, I can't imagine a worse one than the following which appears of the schedule of this event:

Chris Mooney v. Ronald Bailey:
"Distorting Science: Who’s Worse, The Left or the Right?"

Partisan food fight anyone?

"Chris Mooney v. Ronald Bailey:
"Distorting Science: Who’s Worse, The Left or the Right?"

Partisan food fight anyone?"

It's even worse than that. Is Ron Bailey on the "Right?" If so, if he agrees that Leon Kass has distorted an issue of science on stem cells, has he agreed that the "Right" is distorting the science?

What about Bjorn Lomborg? Or Gregg Easterbrook? Both of them have been very critical of what they see as distortions of environmental science. (Personal disclosure: in some cases, I agree with them, and in other cases, I do not.)

When Lomborg and Easterbrook are correct, are they scoring a point for the "Right" or the "Left?" What about when they are wrong?

Even better (or worse?), what about Michael Crichton? Michael Crichton has apparently exclusively given political contributions to *Democrats*:

http://www.newsmeat.com/celebrity_political_donations/Michael_Crichton.php

So any of his errors/distortions are errors/distortions of the Left, right? (Or Right?)

I beg to differ regarding the topic of the Bailey/Mooney panel as solely a partisan food fight. It is a starting point of some importance although most thinking personalities do not fit succinctly into left and right camps.

Mooney reminds me very much of Brad Knickerbocker, the environmental writer/editor at that 'objective'font, The Christian Science Monitor. I had a running debate with the paper in the mid 90's regarding whether violent responses in ecological debates could be predominately attributed to agitated red necks, as Knickerbock maintained. The trend was obvious towards virtually (and remarkably) no violence from idled resource workers and bureaucratically dispossessed property owners even while a relative explosion of eco-terrorism was underway.

I gave up on the Christian Science Monitor over their intransigence on this issue at the time.

Mooney is only the latest of those at least tacitly supporting lefist political outcomes to have turned the public perception of the debate over science spinning into a right-left question. Given the broad side of a barn kind with evolution and to a lesser extent stem-cell research issues, the left feels that they can make an analogy between issues such as these, where they have the upper hand in the broad scientific and opinionmaking community, and issues where they are on less secure scientific footing, i.e. scientific guilt by association.

I think there is little doubt that this panel will arrive at global warming science anyway, although I think the weakest of Mooney's premises is relying on the outcome of the CFC policy debate as setting the evidentiary context for how wrong Republicans/Liberatians/Skeptics might be. Even the left leaning Scientific American publishes reports that the Pinatubo signature is the largest in the ozone record of the 1990s, see, e.g. this months article on supervolcanic eruptions citing research on stratospheric interactions of vocanogenic sulphate aerosols.

Given Shermers's high profile and thinnly supported defection from skepticism on global warming this month I wonder about the depth of his own skepticsim in this arean, but I credit him with having been willing to assemble this retinue of commentators and expect that topical choices won't obscure wider content in the formal and informal social processes of such a gathering.

I'll see you there.

Brian