And I guess that I should cop to the fact that this note is to Allan Loudell who I heard do an appalling report on the tempest in a teapot that are these emails that wingnuts are insisting are some kind of catastrophe.
In this interview, Allan was speaking to a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor and their entire conversation was largely organized to talk about climate change as though it is a horserace. Particularly appalling was a question I heard Allan ask ( paraphrasing) noting that there are scientists who are the gatekeepers of the journals and they don’t let the deniers publish — is there anyone who can be trusted to talk about this issue or to definitively answer the questions? Again, I note that this is a paraphrase. But I was gobsmacked even by this question.
Because this question basically says that neither party in that conversation had any understanding how science works — how you go about officially adding to scientific knowledge. Instead, the entire subject was treated as though it were part of the usual political horserace — as inappropriate as that is, is apparently the only way our media can deal with big subjects anymore.
Scientists are as political as anyone — and their political behavior is usually in the service of getting funding, getting labs, getting promotions, jockeying for prizes. But no one finds a cure for cancer by winning the political horserace and no one disproved the turning lead into gold business by just shouting loud enough. Scientists — for all of their fractiousness, crazy people skills and whatever else you think their problems are — are undeniably looking to add to what we know about the world. Climate deniers are looking to create confusion and doubt on what we know about the world.
What was heartbreaking about that interview that I heard is that neither party seemed to know that there is a clear and proven way to add to the scientific body of knowledge. And it isn’t about getting past the ideology of the scientific journals. The real question for the media who insists on this horserace narrative is to ask they deniers why they have no science to back up their positions. Because if you can do the experiments or research and produce the data you actually become a player in the knowledge ecosystem.
But these people do no research, they do not experiments, the produce no data. Even the so-called scientists they do trot out to help create the confusion do no research in any field related to climate change. Which is how they never have any of their own data to work with or to talk about. But they have figured out that the media is always looking for two sides — not data or information, just two narratives — and that is how these deniers get any traction. Because now the media has a political story they can report on, when the studies at hand proceed and add to what we know rather out of the interest of the media.
Back in May I wrote this post on How to Spot Climate Change Deniers. Of course we have a minor infestation of them now, because the orders of the day for these people is to just go forth and repeat this story over and over until the media picks it up. And like the way that evolution is covered or the H1N1 vaccine is covered, climate change is reported in the way least likely to leave you knowing something about the subject at hand. Which is too bad, because there isn’t an ideology on whether this vaccine or that antibiotic actually works — it does or it doesn’t.
There ought to be a rule — if the only way you can report on a science topic is to default to the he say/she say model, consider that story not worth reporting on.
Note to the usual sockpuppets — this topic is not an invitation to post your usual BS. The usual BS gets sent to the spam filter or disemvoweled. There will be no further warnings.