The Tracker hopes everybody who is following the whirlwind of politics and self-recrimination around and within climate science reads the article on Greenwire by Alex Kaplun that the NYTimes picked up on Friday. The news is that another batch of emails (leaked but not hacked) gives intimate detail on the pain, frustration, and fury among mainstream climate scientists afflicted by the sideshows over IPCC report-fudging and hacked e-mails of the last two months.

The Washington Times‘s Stephen Dinan also reported on the same  emails. They were exchanged  among members of the National Academy of Sciences but,  it must be stressed, were not generated by any panel working for the Academy in any official capacity. Dinan selects for examination the  climate change believers’ discussion of buying a newspaper ad to take the fight to the skeptics.

Oh, that’ll work. Newspaper ads, especially in the NYTimes, are so effective in changing the mind of the public at large! Not. A recurring theme of recent weeks is that despite being among the more rational among us, scientists are oddly baffled and helpless when under hostile fire from outside the academy. It gets amplification in this latest bit of email leakage.  The idea is that scientists tend to play fair, and in a fight like this being  fair is what gets you nowhere. McCarthyism comes up.

At his NYTimes-affiliated DotEarth blog Andrew C. Revkin provides links and selected passages from some of the better commentary on the issue.

At Mother Jones Kate Sheppard today reports climate scientists as living in a bunker, with mentality to match. She, as do several others, highlights a quote from old-time environmental researcher and campaigner Paul Ehrlich: “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentleperson’s debate, we’re in a streetfight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.” Included here are several pertinent, illustrative links to the blowback the mere discussion of bare-knuckle battle by mainstream climate science is getting from the skeptic’s camp, chiefly this one.

If similar episodes in other fields tell us anything it is that debating the lunatic, the dishonest, and the opportunistic among anti-science groups seldom cures the delusion they promote. Just watch UFO-advocates carve up some innocent astronomer on Larry King Live. Ditto with anti-evolutionists or pro-Nessie arguers. Scientists should stick to science, should say what they think, should not flinch from engagement … but should also recognize that  agents such as environmental advocates and gov’t officials (or news columnists and editorials) may be constitutionally better suited for day-t0-day knife fighting over public opinion and policy.

And science journalists should give their general assignment colleagues a hand by reporting the fray honestly, fully, and with the due diligence to note, prominently, which assertions do and which assertions do not tend to be backed by research that survives such niceties as peer review. The IPCC erred some in that regard. But others err a lot more.

Late Addition:

• USA Today‘s Dan Vergano (see comments) reminds me that he reported late last week a poll’s suggestion that scientists are overreacting to all the bad news as significantly eroding the public’s faith in science, climate or general. The piece does a fine job putting the current run of news into longer perspective.

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.