Left as an Exercise

We lost a hero this week. Dr. Stephen Schneider died unexpectedly on July 19. In addition to much influential work in climatology, Schneider was a talented communicator and a great public speaker - he’s been compared to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Stephen Jay Gould, and even Carl Sagan in that regard. Although I never met him personally, I have long admired him as a scientist and public educator - he was not only the first climatologist I heard speak on the subject, but  his last book is also the most recent one I’d read. (And in light of the discussion brewing over Mich’s Empirical Surrender essay, it’s worth mentioning that although Schneider died of a heart attack, he was also undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer - a treatment regimen that he helped design.)

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.