This is not going to be a eulogy post. There are many better ones out there, which I suggest you read nonetheless. (The third, from Dan Moutal, also includes a digest of Schneider’s talks, so you can begin to see why I hold him in such high regard.) Instead, I’m going to point out a disturbing trend I’ve noticed in the reaction to his passing.

Consider, say, the Climate Progress eulogy (the first one I’d seen outside of the initial report on Revkin’s twitter feed). The second comment consists of nothing but a quote-mined passage that, bereft of all context, is frequently used by inactivists to slander Schneider. This has been rebutted again and again - most comprehensively on Schneider’s own site (look under “Double Ethical Blind”) - but is still a favorite by those who would rather attack the messenger than deal with the message. And of course, the timing is absolutely impeccable.

Then, I noticed others - a disturbing trend of personal attacks against Schneider, often very early in the comment threads. Some, such as this early commenter at the Wonk Room, are very obviously so desperate to slander him that they leap before they look, while others were somewhat more measured but nonetheless slanderous (oh, and look, there’s the quote mine again). There are others, typically on news sites that allow comments, and almost always within the first handful of remarks. (The entire comment thread on The Globe And Mail is downright depressing.)

The professional inactivists have chimed in since then, usually with some degree of passive-aggressiveness. To put this in context, the most civil was probably from S. Fred Singer (who evokes the quote mine while avoiding actually quoting it). Compare that to Steve McIntyre, who - as is typical for that site - manages to insinuate fraud without actually using words that would get him in legal trouble. It only gets worse from here, with people flat-out attacking him immediately after his death - James Delingpole flat-out dismisses convention as his opening line, for instance, while Phelim McAleer gets all preachy (and Marc Morano’s fire hose link clearinghouse, which I refuse to link to, spread that vitriol to his huge audience, even as his own personal comment on Schneider’s passing wasn’t an attack).

I find this approach to be appalling and deeply disturbing.

This year, I’ve taken up cycle touring, trying to get enough exercise and experience in to consider a run to Vancouver next year. So far all I’ve managed to get in are weekend jaunts, which in general I quite enjoy. Last weekend, a small group and I did one such tour, designed to be an introduction to other new tourists, which turned out to be about a 90km ride followed by a 3km hike through the brush. It’s the third such jaunt I’ve done this year, but the first one I’ve done with a camera, and the first one I’ve had people ask me to blog, so…

Destination: An undisclosed location about 95km west of Edmonton. The site probably would have been easier reached via canoe; we had to hike in through the brush at the end. The site had no potable water, which was a serious drawback (although we had methods of purifying river water).

Route: Highway 627 most of the way, followed by range roads.

Group: Six, all from the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society. The others were Erich (the organizer), Angela, Chris, Hana, and Courtney. I’d previously toured to Elk Island with Erich, but Chris, Hana and Courtney had never been touring (or camping, in some cases) before. Chris had no compact camp gear and had to make judicious use of bungees (we wisely left his tent behind; he shared mine), and Hana rode in wearing a heavy hiker’s backpack on a four-speed cruiser. Adam and his dog Pippin rode in on a moped in advance to prepare the site, and met us when we arrived.

Vehicle: As usual, I chose the trike (a blue 2007 Catrike Expedition), which I’d used on the previous tours. During the trip, Erich noted that my pedal bearings were quite stiff, and I felt the need for a true bailout gear, which is oddly lacking from the stock Expedition given how it’s built for cargo. However, that only really factored in on one or two hills (such as the nearly 35% grade, 720-meter hill out of the site, done as a “warm up” on the return trip), and I had no problems maintaining tour pace for most of the trip. The rear derailleur was giving me some indexing problems, so I switched to friction mode during this trip and caught myself wondering why I hadn’t done that sooner.

Equipment: Mostly my standard tour equipment. This was also the first trip I’d made with a camera (well, a phone with a camera), my own cookware (previously I’d borrowed my father’s) and my new, high-compression clothes from the MEC clearance racks (good choice, though I’m short of socks). The only thing I think I was missing that I will definitely bring on other trips would be more antihistamine for the medical kit; I didn’t realize how effective that was at handling the agony from a small legion of bug bites.

Food: I didn’t bring enough - three apples, two bananas (should have brought at least three), a large block of cheap cheese, six instant oatmeal packs (note: the campsite had no potable water sources), and two pouches of trail mix. I opted for two spare bottles full of my homemade Gatorade replacement, which was a very, very wise choice given the destination, but the lack of water rendered some of my staples (soup mix) and a few  extras I usually bring (cocoa and small instant coffees) basically worthless, so I left them behind.

Cost: As always, a huge advantage to cycle touring is the low cost. This entire trip was free except for consumables (food), and the roaming text fees I’d racked up. Total cost was about $10. Not bad for a weekend of camping.

Ride Notes:

Day 1: We got off to a late start, intending to leave at 10am but leaving closer to 11:30 due to poor weather. The rain dried up just before we left the city, though. We took frequent breaks and a very, very early lunch - both of which bothered me; once I’m warmed up I don’t like having to stop and warm up again every half hour or so. I think these also contributed to a general feeling of exhaustion around 80km in; during an uphill stretch along Range Road 43, I basically felt my legs fail.

Having to hike several kilometers through not-quite-cleared brush carrying panniers (designed for a bike rack, not shoulders - although I’d anticipated this and rigged up shoulder straps) didn’t do much to improve my mood, especially since I got swarmed by way too many mosquitoes and had so many bites on my feet that I must have scratched off about three layers of skin. Thankfully, Adam had spare antihistamines; I knew mosquito bite itch was an allergic reaction, but didn’t connect that antihistamines could control it until he suggested it.

End of Day Trip Computer: 93.0 km, 5:27 moving, 3:01 stopped, moving average 17.0kph, peak speed 60.0 kph, elevation 684m. (The speed and time values  include the on-foot hike, hence the lower moving average. We averaged about 20kph on the highway.)

Day 2: The higher water level and fewer mosquitoes made this day much more enjoyable, though we didn’t stay long. Due to leisurely pack-up times and each of us spending a long time filtering water (the filter was slow and the pump jammed; fortunately Erich and I had brought water treatment drops), we ended up making it to the bikes at around noon. Since they’d forgotten their water bladder with the bikes, I donated about 2L of water to Erich and Angela (leaving me with about 1.8L in a bladder and 0.8L of homemade Gatorade), and we set out. The initial hill was… a bit of a workout without any warm-up, but not too unmanageable.

After about 6km, though, the group decided to stop for lunch and some people took a nap in the shade. I had just hit my stride and was getting a bit annoyed at this (low blood sugar from a small breakfast does a real number on my patience), so when 4k down the road there was another stop (I couldn’t figure out why), I basically decided to press on home solo. I managed this with very few stops, too - 77km with only 13 minutes of stop time, including the traffic lights once I got back to the city. I did run out of water with about 20k to go, my rear and knees were slightly sore by the end of it, and I did get a pretty severe sunburn (despite sunscreen) on my shoulder, but other than that the ride wasn’t a problem in the least. I actually managed a faster peak speed and wasn’t even tired by the end of it. On an extended tour I wouldn’t push myself quite so far (doing that for 60k is probably peachy, 77 was pushing it), but since I was getting home afterwards, I didn’t mind.

However, one block before the final stop, I go to switch from a main road to a service road and my left wheel skids on a patch of gravel, causing me to hit a lamp post. This bent my top chainring inward, essentially crippling my trike to ride only on the small chainring. Given how I’d gone for years on that crankset without any trouble whatsoever, and how I’d spent part of the weekend talking to Erich about replacing that very component, I’m not too concerned about the damage - though for some reason that’s the part of the trip that everyone I’ve spoken to seems the most concerned about.

I found out later that Courtney (who had the most problems with uphills) ended up getting exhausted and called for a lift on the way back; her dad picked up everyone else’s gear as well, lightening their loads substantially. They arrived safely, about two hours after me, and when I returned about an hour and a half after that to pick up a few things, everyone was passed out.

End of Day Trip Computer: 87.0km, 4:57 moving, 1:12 stopped, moving average 17.3kph, peak speed 53.5 kph, elevation 675m. (I lost GPS tracking for one fast-moving segment of this trip, hence the shorter odometer and lower peak speed. On the bike I averaged 21-22kph on the highway.)

Photo Gallery:

Has that spoiled us?

I started asking this question around the time the healthcare reform bill in the United States was being debated, and liberal dissatisfaction was becoming more loudly voiced. A lot of the left wing felt that they had been betrayed because they had voted an overwhelming political majority into office and were still unable to enact significant policy changes. My personal opinion was “you were expecting to vote real changes into being, just like that?”. It was cynical of me…but it was also informed by knowledge of history. Labour organizers did not just vote the right to strike and organize into being. It was bought with decades of protests, illegal strikes, organizations, and walkouts, and often with the lives of union organizers, as was the case in the Grabow Riot to list just one example. In countries where labour laws are weak, union organizers still run the risk of being murdered. Woman’s suffrage activists, by necessity, could not just vote the women’s vote into being. They paid for it with protests and hunger strikes. I have yet to hear of any health care reform activists being arrested, put in restraints, and force fed. It’s also not enough to say “oh that happened way back then”; the last atrocity is always sooner ago than we’d like to admit. The response to the recent protests in Toronto was abominable, but compared to the 1985 firebombing of the MOVE organization headquarters in Philadelphia, we got off easy. And so on. The electoral unrest in Iran should have been a reminder to everyone what the bad old days were like.

Even more disturbing than this ignorance of history among the left was the willingness to ‘take our toys and go home’ among some elements. The Democrats don’t give us health care or cap and trade in the first two years of the Obama administration? Vote ‘em out and we’ll get real Democrats next time!!!…as though any progressive policy victory in history could have been possible without long and continued legislative and public pressure. There never was any option besides a tentative first step, and that’s what I felt the HCR bill should have been viewed as. Celebrate its passing, and get ready to fight for the next one as soon as possible. If Americans want that public option, it will probably be another several major Senate crises before they get it. Likewise energy policy reform. That is going to be at least three major policy battles, each one I predict being covered as “the last great step in energy policy reform” by the media. Hopefully we’ll get them out of the way in the next ten years. A single definitive victory just doesn’t happen for progressive causes, even when major legislation is passed; did racism disappear with the Civil Rights Act?

I apologize for the stream-of-consciousness structure of this piece, and the departure from the more reasoned essays on this site for a simple opinion dump. But I’ve had trouble finding the words to express my concern that progressivism has forgotten how to employ radical actions. I use “radical” in the sense that Howard Zinn used it, as someone who believes the political system is fundamentally compromised (as opposed to a “liberal” who thinks progress can come from within the system alone). By endorsing this radicalism I am not saying we shouldn’t bother with the system; you can be pragmatic, and you should always vote for the causes important to you. I merely hold that working within established political systems is nowhere near sufficient. I also want to state that being radical doesn’t mean endorsing violent action. On the contrary, violence in the name of progressive causes would not only be immoral but counterproductive. The “system”, as much as there is one, has law enforcement and the state military on its side, along with a media that loves stories about dangerous extremists to sway public opinion with. Violent action is still playing by the system’s rules, and as the recent events in Toronto demonstrated, it’s better at that game than us.

Real radical action, outside of the permitted boundaries of political activism, has been marked by an ingenuity and determination that refuses to let anti-progressive forces frame the conflict, as they do so easily now. Strikes. Walkouts. Boycotts. Humiliating satire as performed by the Yes Men. In the case of HCR, I considered the possibility of forming extralegal health insurance cooperatives, where populations of middle class earners agree to pool funds to pay for each others’ medical care in case of emergency, managed in the style of consumer and labour cooperatives like Mon Dragon. It probably wouldn’t be a viable alternative, and it would be vulnerable to extralegal fraud, but if phrased in terms of “would you rather be screwed by your neighbours or insurance company execs?”? If you found an alternative that could drive consumers from the private companies, you’d see a lot of the resistance to a public option weaken. Alternatively, there would likely be attempts to make these cooperatives illegal, which would be easy to exploit politically at best (”Senator X voted against hard-working Americans just trying to take care of each other!”) and political suicide if the cooperatives were actually popular enough to make an impact. That is the kind of creative, outside-the-rules, hit-them-in-the-wallet thinking that I don’t feel there is enough of in progressive discourse today. It’s just an idea, and not a very good one, but it illustrates what is lacking in our political discourse and strategy.

We need to realize that there is a lack here and it must be addressed. Let’s face it: if tweeting, voting, and making angry blog posts is all progressives can use in terms of strategy, then we have been crippled, in a devastating way, at a very bad time.

I admitted it. Then, I thought ‘Now what?’.

It took me a while to reconcile these positions. The first thing I realized, immediately, is that excuses for how skeptical I can be in all other cases won’t do. To the skeptic who is convinced I am holding a belief irrationally, my willingness to follow the evidence in other cases doesn’t justify the case in which I don’t. I hold that antivaxxer nonsense is dangerous, faith healing illusory, and homeopathy a waste of time. I don’t believe in any New Age superstitions. I’m a strict materialist (everything is either physical or information on a physical medium), and I disagree with any explanations of TCM or concepts of chi that involve magical energies. While I agree that most explanations of the phenomena behind TCM are unscientific, I do believe that there is an actual phenomena there that can be exploited for medical purposes (and eventually explained scientifically). I even have a very limited amateur hypothesis attempting to explain how it can work, that is consistent as I can make it with my layman’s understanding of the science. I have standards and heuristics for evaluating TCM practitioners, and only visit those who are both well versed in Western medicine and referred by members of the martial arts community whom I trust. All of this is besides the point. Those who insist on the strictest consistent standards of proof must say I’m cheering on a placebo. That I degrade other placebos does not change that fact. Moreover, without objective and rigorous evidence, I cannot prove them wrong. There’s still a debate on the efficacy of TCM going on in the academic circles, but in this case “still in debate” means “not enough objective proof yet”.

So, then, why do I not change my opinion? I came to believe in the efficacy of TCM for a reason, after all. A personal history of effective TCM treatment, as well as similar histories with people I knew personally, was where I first became convinced. My practice with the internal (‘soft’) martial arts and studies in cognitive science eventually led me to form a hypothesis of my own on how the mind interacted with the body, and how TCM utilized this. I do have evidence - but it’s anecdotal. I do have an explanatory framework - but it’s personal. What I can use to make sense of the phenomena in a way that convinces myself is utterly inadequate for convincing others. Yet I have no reason so far to doubt my own judgment or senses. Is there a solution?

It is completely possible for an individual to come to a position by way of evidence that is anecdotal and context specific, such that there would be no reason for others with a different experience to come to that position themselves. The intellectually responsible thing to do in this case is admit to what I call empirical surrender - admitting that, while I do not believe that I am wrong, I can not deny having no objective way to prove that I am right. Thus, everyone else should not take my position seriously without further proof. After all, the problem here isn’t with what I believe, but with my lack of evidence for arguing my position to other people. I don’t have to change my beliefs. I just have to admit I don’t have what people should demand before changing theirs.

I find this arrangement entirely satisfactory. There are some other people who have come to similar conclusions as mine from their own personal experience, and we can discuss the details and debate the fine points on how we think TCM works. But I don’t need to be committed to the details of my position. Perhaps someday, overwhelming, crushing evidence against the efficacy of TCM will emerge alongside a strong neurological explanation of what exactly was happening when I went under the needle. Then I will have to throw up my hands and say “Okay, I give, these guys have it”. Or perhaps, TCM’s effectiveness will be vindicated in the future, and a theory similar to the hypothesis in my mind become mainstream. But I’m not a scientist, and I don’t do the work that would make me an authority on this issue. So I should leave to the people who are, and who do.

I offer the idea of empirical surrender to the world at large because it also has the nice potential to reconcile two seemingly opposing forces: the standards needed to maintain intellectual responsibility, and the viewpoints of people who feel threatened by such. Many perfectly responsible and civilized atheists, for example, make the point when arguing against creationism or various other religious falsehoods that people can believe whatever they like and hold whatever faith they choose. They simply can’t pretend that they have evidence when they don’t. Now, that’s a perfectly reasonable stance. Freethinkers, practically by definition, have an aversion to ‘thoughtcrime’ approaches and understand it’s pointless to try and police what people think. So granting all the freedom to believe, regardless of the irrationality of the belief, has to be a given. However, by insisting on evidence, we may indeed be demanding something of others’ belief systems that are threatening. The implication, to many religious who feel threatened by atheism, is that their belief systems are meaningless because they lack the evidence and sound reasoning that our belief systems value. This is especially difficult for anyone who has conflated believability with support from authority. There are a lot of people like that, and to fight pseudoscience like creationism, climate change denial, or antivax quackery, we need to be able to reach them.

Offering people the option of empirical surrender sidesteps all that. It just means that there are two kinds of reason to believe a proposition: personal reasons, which only apply to you, and solid evidence, which is good enough for everybody [1]. Thus, if you lack solid evidence, but there is no solid evidence specifically disproving your position, then you are not stupid or crazy for holding your belief [2]. However, it would be dishonest of you to try and convince other people that your beliefs are true without solid evidence, you know, the reason to believe something that applies to everyone.

This cuts out and denies positions like creationism and antivax quackery, while still leaving a safe space for fuzzier positions like belief in some sort of God (or in the general efficacy of TCM). It does not require the hardened skeptics to ’soften’ their approach (such as by attempting a “science and religion are compatible” position) since those declaring empirical surrender will cease acting like they have evidence when they don’t, which is all a skeptic could ask for. The best thing about this proposal is that it is palatable to anybody on the losing side of a skeptical debate as long as your ego can accept people disagreeing with you - unless, of course, you have a vested interest in getting people to believe something in opposition to evidence and rational inquiry. In which case, you’re probably some sort of con artist. The interests behind denial of anthropogenic climate change, for example, have too much money riding on the outcome to admit that no one should take them at their word. Likewise, homeopaths will have trouble marketing their product if required to give a disclaimer stating “we have no evidence and you shouldn’t support us at the expense of the medical practices that do”. But that’s tough beans for them. Everybody should enjoy the right to believe whatever they wish; but the ‘right’ to deceive others, nobody should enjoy.

And while I do believe in the effectiveness of acupuncture, I can admit I may be wrong. Rather than risk deceiving others, then, I will keep my belief to myself.

Though if you’re looking for an acupuncturist or reiki practitioner in Toronto, I can recommend a few names.

[1] Assuming of course a sound explanatory framework, in light of which the evidence makes sense. Remember that the sun’s rising and setting through the sky was once construed as evidence for a geocentric universe until we changed our framework and saw that the phenomena, while still existent, did not prove what we thought it did. But that tangent is the subject for another essay. You could teach a phil of sci course on it, and brighter minds than mine have.

[2] You may be guilty of some cognitive dissonance, but there’s little shame in that. I personally think the ability to compartmentalize is a useful and essential cognitive trait in humans, usable for good as well as ill.

I am a friend of Brian’s with a background in cognitive science and adult language instruction, though my interests run to many broader subjects (which I’ve discussed and debated Brian on, if you’re wondering why he lets me post here). I’ll leave this as a comment thread for anyone who wishes to make more specific inquiries about myself and my part on Left as an Exercise.

Best wishes and happy reading to you all.

A few days ago, I saw an interview between Rachel Maddow and J. D. Hayworth, a conservative former Representative currently challenging John McCain from the right. During that interview, something happened that crystallized a thought in my mind, which may actually explain the entirety of the ideological communication gap. Here’s the followup to the video, highlighting the exchange in question at 3:10:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the interview, Hayworth makes a statement of fact about the contents of a Mass. Supreme Court ruling, which Maddow, having read the ruling, contests. (I’ve checked the ruling too; it does not contain anything like what Hayworth is saying.) When pressed on this, the following exchange happened:

Maddow: What you said… I don’t think it’s true, sir.
Hayworth: Well, that’s fine. You and I can have a disagreement about that.
Maddow: Well, it either is true or it isn’t. It’s empirical.
Hayworth: Okay. Well, I appreciate the fact that we have a disagreement on that…

My initial thought was “Hmm. This guy actually things empiricism is a matter of opinion?” followed by thinking about the obvious links to truthiness. I would normally have filed this away and moved on, but it was still on my mind the following morning.

By now I’m thinking: What if these guys actually do hold that verification is just another opinion? That empiricism is just one way of “knowing”, and fact-checking is no better than soul-searching?

These misconceptions are downright dangerous. We’ve seen them in academia before - specifically, this is one of the core principles behind the kind of postmodernism we saw during the so-called “Science Wars“. Go ahead and read that, I’ll wait.

When applied to politics, this same pattern - treating fact-checking (arguably the political equivalent of the search for truth) as equally valid as opinion - appears to be prevalent through the current leaders of the right. (The irony here is that academic postmodernism was mostly practiced by the academic left.) Of course, if only the right views reality as opinion, then naturally anything chained to reality is seen as biased, which only helps to reinforce this particular delusion.

A spectacular example of this, by the way, would be comparing messenger-conflation amongst the postmodernists (for instance, choosing to reject fluid mechanics because it was developed in a male-dominant society, and thus we needed a feminist theory of fluid mechanics - oh, how I wish I were joking) with something like the basis for Gore’s Law (which, as I understand it, is something like this: “global warming = Al Gore (Democrat), therefore everything said about warming from any source must necessarily be Democrat”). In both cases the message is rejected due to some negative impression held about the messenger (with or without justification, and in any case unrelated to the content of the message itself, making this essentially an ad-hominem fallacy).

Going back to Colbert, “reality has a well-known liberal bias” takes on new meaning in this light.

Time to bust out Sokal and Jacoby and hope for some insight.

To all non-science-people:

To all anti-science people (should any stumble upon this): Let me spell it out for you - the previous link was meant as satire. Though, given the cut-and-paste style of pseudoskepticism (illustrated wonderfully by Kate at ClimateSight and Nexus Six), it’d be interesting to try something similar and see if someone bites.

Definition 2: Unnamed (longstanding tradition re: Godwin’s Law)
After a Nazi or Hitler comparison is made, the thread is over. He who has made such a comparison has just lost.

Definition 3: Quirke’s Exception
Any intentional triggering of Godwin’s Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. (That is, the exception to Godwin’s Law is intentionally invoking Godwin’s Law.)

Definition 4: Monckton’s Exception
Comparisons of nonviolent activists to the Hitler Youth are kosher, even face-to-face, and especially if the person you’re speaking to is Jewish. (See also: Monckton’s Justification and Monckton’s Solution).

If you’re unfamiliar with this exception’s namesake, pick a random article or two and see for yourself. If he didn’t exist, comedians would have to invent him - but the comedians would have the good taste to keep him locked away and medicated rather than letting him try to influence global policy with his conspiracy theories.

If you aren’t aware of the CRU hack, there’s an app for that. There’s a lot of good coverage on this, but there’s also a positively ludicrous amount of noise as well. The videos by Potholer54 and Peter Sinclair go into that somewhat, and there’s always SwiftHack if you want up-to-the-second information on it. (Aside: It’s sad that we need that, but oh well…)

This post isn’t about that, though. It’s about what’s not in the e-mails, and thus not causing any fallout. One of the best passages on this subject was also one of the first, from RealClimate:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Let’s take a look at the most common conspiracies and see what the CRU was saying about them in private over the last 13 years. The answers, below the fold, could be shocking.

Note: I’m using East Anglia E-mails to search the mails, and I’m putting their results up in the order that search returns them in (roughly in chronological order). I would also like to preface by saying I do NOT condone the illegal theft of private communications, and am only doing this in an effort to counter some of the noise out there.

AL GORE

Let’s start with the 800-pound polar bear in the room, the great standby of the conspiracy theorist, Al Gore. Surely, if he was behind a conspiracy of science, his interference or orders would be mentioned by the researchers frequently, right?

Search the hacked mails for “gore” and you’ll find a grand total of six references from thirteen years worth of mail (some dating back from when Gore was Vice President and others spanning the time An Inconvenient Truth came out, i.e. when he’s making headlines). Let’s look a bit deeper.

Of those six references, we see the following:

1. The first time the name “Gore” appears in the mails is in text quoted from an Associated Press article from 2001, reporting on the removal of Bob Watson from the position of IPCC chair (later replaced with current chair Rajendra Pauchari). The article reveals memos (obtained via FOIA) from Exxon-Mobil to the Bush White House requesting Watson’s removal - these memos refer to efforts to “restructure the U.S. attendance at upcoming IPCC meetings to assure none of the Clinton/Gore proponents are involved in any decisional activities.” The mail exchange itself discusses the implications of a change in IPCC chairmanship (and is honestly worth a read, since not everyone disagreed with it). This is part of a label for the Clinton administration, not the work of Gore himself, and it’s an Exxon staffer mentioning the name, not a scientist.
2. The next mail also has Gore’s name coming up in a quote from inactivists (specifically, Christopher Monckton). Monckton is complaining about Gore’s actions directly here (instead of just namedropping), but all Gore did in this exchange was challenge Monckton’s list of skeptical scientists with the Oreskes essay. The exchange between inactivists resulted in inviting Penn State climatologist Michael Mann to the discussion, and he flips out about it – specifically, about their misrepresentations and misreading of the IPCC AR4. Mann is one of the more colourful figures in climate science, but even in his outburst, there’s nothing on Gore - here, it’s a reference from inactivists yet again. (Note that Monckton is infamous as a conspiracy theorist, provocateur, and compulsive liar.)
3. This time it’s yet again quoted from an inactivist press release, specifically from Fred Singer’s SEPP (all of those are separate links). The actual scientific discussion here starts with Dr. Ben Santer calling for help against this type of misrepresentation of science. He isn’t complaining about the SEPP itself, but rather about the paper the release is promoting, specifically Douglass, Pearson, Christy and Singer 2009 (i.e., a scientist disputing a published piece of science, also known as standard scientific practice). (I would also like to highlight that Dr. Santer himself was the subject of personal attacks a decade earlier from a group Singer is affiliated with, the George C. Marshall Institute. The editorials attacking him are mirrored on Singer’s SEPP website. Note that they are basically claiming that making changes in response to peer review is the same as doctoring a report. Santer’s replies in self-defense (which were also signed off on by the other IPCC authors at the time) are not mirrored by the SEPP.) Here, as above, Gore’s name is a mere namedrop from inactivists, not part of the scientific discourse.
4. This time it isn’t even referring to Al Gore: His name shows up here as part of the URL of PlanetGore, the National Review’s climate change inactivist commentary clearinghouse. (The specific link was from Gavin Schmidt (of RealClimate) asking for information about the latest Stephen McIntyre attack against the hockey stick, for the record.) This is the only time a scientist mentions the word “gore”, and it’s part of a label, not referring to Al.
5. Gore is mentioned in another quoted inactivist screed (this time by names I don’t recognize), and not even mentioned as a major player. The screed is yelling about tree ring data accuracy and the IPCC reports, and it tosses Gore’s name out as an example of a “carbon control advocate” (note: irrelevant to the thesis of the argument). The scientists are talking about how to properly respond to these allegations and pointing out what’s wrong with his scientific claims - not a word about Al. This is another namedrop from inactivists.
6. The most recent time the word “gore” shows up is in text quoted from a Pat Michaels editorial (itself quoted from a mail from Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the editor of Energy And Environment, cc’d to Benny Peiser). The actual discussion in this mail is a conversation thread complaining about the accuracy of Boehmer-Christiansen’s understanding of science by citing Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick as experts on dendrochronology (their only publications on the subject have been rebutted many times). The scientists aren’t discussing Gore at all (in fact, it’s little more than a namedrop by inactivists. (It’s also worth noting that Pat Michaels, the author of the original namedrop, is one of the few inactivists with scientific credentials, and he is quite vocal about the Earth having warmed (disproving the “earth is currently cooling” meme that some say the e-mails show) - see the ending segment from the Sinclair video for one recent example.)

That’s it.

For all his supposed involvement and importance to the scientists, and for all the “smoking guns” present in those mails, there’s a dearth of discussion of Gore – every time (except once) his name appears, it’s by inactivists, and only one of those is actually referring to things he’s done instead of just namedropping. The scientists themselves simply aren’t discussing him.

Of course, this obviously means the Secret Warmist Dual-Class Lawyer/Ninjas have instructed the scientists in staying silent, further proving the conspiracy. I mean, honestly.

Day 2:

GEORGE SOROS

If you listen to any of the right-wing rhetoric on pretty much any issue one can have a progressive stance on, George Soros is the enigmatic financier passing along millions of dollars to activists, arguably to… well, we’re not quite sure. Google “soros conspiracy” and you’ll find several versions of this; a few hits of “I’m feeling lucky” should sate any curiosity on the subject. (For a real laugh, check out his article on Conservapedia.) Obviously, one would expect The Boss to show up multiple times in the Vast Warmist Conspiracy, since he holds the pursestrings of the Bavarian Climatati.

Searching the hacked CRU mails for “soros” returns… zero results over the last thirteen years.

Obviously, the warmists use a code-name for this fellow. I mean, honestly.

Well, that was unimpressive. I’ll include a second one for the day, searching for the term “socialist” (as in “socialist conspiracy to redistribute wealth and destroy capitalism”).

Searching the hacked CRU mails for “socialist” reveals… zero results over the last 13 years.

Hmm. Maybe they use the -ism version of the word.

Searching the hacked CRU mails for “socialism” reveals… zero results over the last 13 years.

Obviously, the message discipline of this conspiracy runs deep - literally no discussion on the core elements of the conspiracy! I mean, honestly.

Day 3:

SILENCING SKEPTICS

A very common claim about the CRU hack is that it proves -PROVES!!! (allcaps and exclamation swarm required) - that the CRU scientists were silencing skeptics, blocking their papers from publication. This would, of course, be scandalous, if it were true.

A discouraging point to this particular conspiracy theory is the “redefine peer review” mail - it refers to keeping a pair of papers out of the IPCC reports. The conspiracy theorist who would actually read the IPCC report would notice that these papers were in fact cited and discussed in the report.

But what about the other, slightly-lesser-known mails? Surely, there must be something there.

Saving me some work, Potholer54 did a spectacular video on just this very subject - including repeating this exercise for some of the more respectable skeptical research. Check it out:

Obviously, the scientists involved in silencing these particular skeptics were employed somewhere other than the CRU, and these separate “cells” (if you will) do not communicate with each other. I mean, honestly.

More to come as I finish compiling them. I’ll aim for one a day.

I’ll be brief. Don’t bother. While Unscientific America was vapid and shallow, it at least provided an effective overview of the subject. Denialism, on the other hand, is nothing but case studies of health-related antiscience scares (from Vioxx to GMOs). Even the section on antivaccination is strangely lacking - I’ve seen blog posts and magazine articles that do a better job on the subject (irony alert: That second link is authored by Chris Mooney, who also wrote Unscientific America). Oh, and they do it without citing Gavin Menzies as an authority on Chinese history. (If you’ve never heard of the fellow, he’s as much a Chinese historian as Immanuel Velikovsky is an astrophysicist.)

There’s precious little discussion on denialism in Denialism, except by example - and all of the examples have a narrow focus (mistrust of medical and agricultural science). There’s nothing on your traditional denial movements (a parting shot on AIDS deniers and one mention of moon-landing hoaxers, but nothing on creationism) and, surprisingly, a dearth of information on the most well-known contemporary denial-orchestration movement of our time (the tobacco fiasco), nor the most dangerous (climate denial). There’s nothing prescriptive in it except an even more vapid cry for better scientific communication - in other words, Unscientific America, only even less clear (at least Mooney and Kirshenbaum had the courtesy to discuss the role of journalism here). The only positive thing I can say about it is that it spends ample time reminding us that antiscience denialism is not isolated to one side of the political spectrum - while the majority of the non-antivax denial movements nowadays are predominantly right-wing, anti-health denialism has always had its claws stuck in the left, which is quoted from extensively.

Save your time and money. If this material interests you, Doubt Is Their Product is a far, far better book on the subject, even without trying to be - it actually discusses not only the tactics involved, but the path of information and the methods used by professionals to reshape debate. (It even has a strong medical denialism bias, and it *still* outperforms Denialism as an overview!) I suppose Denialism might have a place on a health policy wonk’s bookshelf, but as for a student of denialism, give it a pass.

See also: Tom Philpot: ‘Denialism’ Misses Its Targets.