Chris Mooney: The science has been coming in saying that global warming is real, human-caused, and it keeps getting stronger scientifically.
Chris Mooney is a journalist and the author of the 2009 book, Unscientific America. Mooney spoke about the reasons behind what he calls American inaction on climate change.
Chris Mooney: It’s a problem of politics plus media leading to inability to function on this issue. We’re a divided country and we handle science issues according to politicization and divisiveness, rather than according to what the science actually says.
Mooney pointed to the decline of print media, and the rise of political blogs. He believes good communication of science may now rest with scientists, themselves.
Chris Mooney: The scientific community is going to have to find new ways of getting that information out. Or else it may be the case that we can’t get society to act on the best scientific knowledge that we have. And that may be catastrophic.
He said that scientists have learned a powerful lesson about the need to communicate what they know with the public.
Chris Mooney: I think the scientific community is ready to change – in fundamental ways – how it engages with the public. That means one key part of the equation is going to be functioning better. Hopefully that will create a more scientific America, slowly.
In addition to his concern about the declining quality and quantity of vetted science news, Mooney talked about his belief that science media has suffered at the hands of a number of popular conservative blogs that he termed, ‘anti-science.’
Chris Mooney: It’s the kind of tactics being brought against science I haven’t seen before. It’s staggeringly frightening to watch how much of a revolt against science you can have in this country on an issue that’s politicized like that.
He said that at the same time, scientists have not reacted properly to the attacks against them.
Chris Mooney: Scientists are so worried about the fact that climate research and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are coming under brutal attack. There have been some mistakes made but nothing justifying the kinds of attacks that have come. My point is okay, the situation’s bad. What are you going to do about it? Because this is a new media world. You need to adapt to it.
Mooney spoke about “ClimateGate,” in which emails between climate scientists were hacked and made public.
Chris Mooney: Scientists needed to realize that capacity was there to create a semblance of scandal. They needed to respond immediately, loudly, and with one voice, saying, ‘Okay, we’re looking into these things, but these things are not fundamental to what we know. The science rests on many foundations.’
Cris Mooney is an ideologically righteous crackpot, and global warming will never be fair, balanced, or accurate until half of the peer review process is comprised of right winged fundamentalists who also happen to be scientists.
Mooney should have no problem with this, because it cannot possibly adversely affect the science if, as he loves to claim… “science doesn’t work that way”, but you can bet that he will have a problem with it.
And I note LOUDLY that Mooney NEVER listens to the many criticisms of this kind that you will find him receiving from many bright and scientifically literate people all over the net.
He is a useless unscientific crank, like so many others just like him who play politics with science.
I’m not sure what your grievance is here you seem to be tearing down Chris Mooney for no specific reason. Are you taking issue with his claims? His criticisms? His methods?
I cannot agree more with his message of scientific illiteracy. Simple confusion of the meaning of some common words is an obstacle for people to understanding the true strength of the support for a great deal of the modern theories that meet with some much resistance, disbelief and contempt.
I’m fairly sure that I was specific about his stance on global warming “illiteracy”, and you are welcome to agree with him all day long, but this will never make you right.
Not really that specific… Are you saying the peer review process itself is not fair and balanced? or that because the process is not split between left and right sided scientists others don’t see it as fair and thus it is not trusted?
Where are these many criticisms coming from?
Why do you (seemingly) not agree that scientific illiteracy is not a problem? Are you a teacher? Professor? Educator? Scientist?
What do you mean “plays polotics with science?”
Do not agree with the actual research conducted in relation to global climate change? not believe it? or have other alternate theories?
Just looking for clarification?
Yes, I’m saying that the peer review process is not fair and balanced since it is thoroughly dominated by left winged activists scientists who commonly let their ideological beliefs affect the way that they interpret evidence. While it is true that “Science doesn’t work that way”… scienTISTS most definitely do.
My name is linked to one very clear example of how this occurs within the scientific community, and here is another, although this one is related more to theoretical righteousness than ideological… on the surface anyway:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2462
You can find valid criticisms within the comments of most any global warming article, where you will always find a few people who actually do know what they are talking about but are still skeptical of the meaning and accuracy of the scientific findings for the reasons that I’ve given. Mooney has written a number of these articles, as well as others that are similarly infected by ideological righteousness, but he never changes his mantra and any fool who uses Al Gore as a scientific source is not the least bit interested in the integrity of the science education.
Illiteracy is a common problem, but not the kind that Mooney includes when he rants about the “antiscience” movement, which is actually a anti-politics-in-science movement.
Example:
Chris Mooney on climategate:
“Scientists needed to realize that capacity was there to create a semblance of scandal. They needed to respond immediately, loudly, and with one voice, saying, ‘Okay, we’re looking into these things, but these things are not fundamental to what we know. The science rests on many foundations.’”
Mooney the journalist hasn’t got the first clue what is or is not fundamental or valid concerning the science of “climate change”, yet he somehow knows that scientists need to be loud and firm about its integrity anyway… uh huh… what a passive political conspirator this ignorant pawn OBVIOUSLY is.
I think that it would be equally ignorant of me to think that we don’t affect the environment, but what it all actually means is a whole nother rotting can-o-worms since we too are a part of nature, the ecobalance that we arose from, and the thermodynamic process that we *contributing members* ****serve**** to enhance. How freaking arrogant of these people to think that we are so detached from the process.
Why are we neutral to Milankovitch if we aren’t doing our part to counterbalance the long term trend 100,000 year long trend toward glaciation?… hmmmm?
This balancing process used to be well understood by scientists before fanatical liberal activists decided to save the world from ourselves…….. again!
And that’s why we need another kind of counterbalance in the peer review process, to provide an equally clueless right winged check on the left winged fanatics who currently control the system.
You accept that we are causing change or at least positively effecting the overall trend but you think that, as we are a part of nature, we should not do anything to recognize and try to moderate of lessen the effect we are having?
Also what is the purpose of the political agenda behind climate change?
I don’t mean to argue I really am curious to hear your thoughts
Jim E says:
“You accept that we are causing change or at least positively effecting the overall trend but you think that, as we are a part of nature, we should not do anything to recognize and try to moderate of lessen the effect we are having?”
I’m saying that if left to their own desires… liberal scientists will carry this way too far in the opposite direction toward environmental stagnation and equally certain death. That’s why we need the counterbalancing effect that we would get from equal representation from the right in the peer review process.
Jim E says:
“Also what is the purpose of the political agenda behind climate change?”
To save the world by killing us with left winged “goodness” that isn’t regulated by right winged “goodness”.
Oh yeah… please click on my linked page to find out why these Copernicanism practicing religious fanatics are the way that they are.
Chris Mooney did not mention the very poor state of American public education, especially science education, as a contributing factor to public misperception of science.
It’s a big part of the problem.
I remember talking to Dr. Juerg Matter – he’s working on storing CO2 inside of rocks (!!!) in Iceland. He said the
Icelandic public strongly supported the project – cleared the way with permits, etc. – not only because everyone was seeing the effects of global warming firsthand (glacial melting), but also because they’re superbly educated, so their fears about moving forward with new technology to counter warming did not get the best of them.
That’s a really good point, Beth.
Dear Island,
Perhaps the problem is not with Chris Mooney’s ideas or his appreciation of science as the best available evidence for how the world we inhabit works.
It appears to me that your words say speak volumes about the ideological foundation of your thinking than it says about Chris Mooney’s point of view. Have you considered how your own perspective could be speciously formed by ideology?
Many too many of us, who are blindly devoted to the predominant global political economy, are adamantly advocating the plunder and dissipation of Earth’s finite resources more recklessly as well as the pollution and degradation of its frangible ecology much faster than we are willing to acknowledge. The idolatry of greed rules and rules absolutely. The children’s future is being mortgaged and their very existence threatened. And to what end? So their elders can conspicuously consume, excessively hoard, unsustainably live and wholly avoid responsibility for rectifying the colossal mess we are making of Earth in our time; so the children can confront some unimaginable, human-driven apocalypse for which their arrogant, avarcious and shameful elders are largely responsible.
Island, could you and others please comment on whether or not the all-too-human exercise of intellectual honesty and moral courage, supported by science, will ever be associated with the public interest? Dissembling, deceit, disinformation, defraudation, degeneration, dehumanization and idolatry of the global Economic Colossus by self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us appear to be the sum and substance of what is idiotically and imperiously presented as “in the public interest”.
Thanks,
Steve
Dear Island,
Scientific illiteracy may not be nearly so much a threat to the children’s future as is ideological idiocy.
Please consider for a moment that the Masters of the Universe among us, who maintain a measure of control over the global political economy and the mainstream media, do not want the human community to know that necessary, unwelcome change is in the offing. These leaders are all about holding onto wealth, power and the status quo, come what may in the future. It appears to me as if one certain thing humanity cannot keep doing much longer is the very same thing we are so adamantly and foolishly doing now as the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe choose to recklessly speed up the ever increasing, seemingly endless growth of the global economy as well as to deceptively manipulate human beings into going along with a conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and unrestrained overpopulation agenda.
If the Masters of the Universe keep advocating and doing what they are doing now and the family of humanity keeps getting what we is getting now, I fear that sooner rather than later everything the human community believes we are doing to protect life as we know it and to preserve Earth as a fit place for human habitation will be ruined. In the not too distant future a distinct probability could exist that one of two colossal calamities will occur. The wanton dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of Earth’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort unless, of course, the world’s ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point humanity’s runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.
Sincerely,
Steve
[...] example, makes a habit of this. And Chris Mooney – a journalist who’s supposed to be helping scientists hone their communication skills - isn’t much much better. (See also here, here, [...]