The Igloo

405   the evening of light’s Golden Jubilee: Cary O’Dell, “Light’s Golden Jubilee (October 21, 1929),” Library of Congress, Added to the National Registry 2005.

 

405   the last words from a fellow genius: Einstein had two other strange interactions with Edison: both not in person, both involving sound. In 1921, Einstein made his first visit to America. He traveled to Boston, announced, “I am happy to be here and expect to enjoy my visit to this city and Harvard.” And he ran into Edison in absentia.

This comes from Walter Isaacson’s Einstein biography. (Isaacson is the writer who did that Steve Jobs biography everybody read.)

 

While in Boston, Einstein was subjected to a pop quiz known as the Edison test. The inventor Thomas Edison was a practical man, getting crankier with age (he was then 74), who disparaged American colleges as too theoretical and felt the same about Einstein. He had devised a test he gave job applicants that, depending on the position being sought, included about 150 factual questions. How is leather tanned? What country consumes the most tea? What was Gutenberg’s type made of?

The Times called it “the ever-present Edison questionnaire controversy,” and of course Einstein ran into it. A reporter asked him a question from the test. “What is the speed of sound?” If anyone understood the propagation of sound waves, it was Einstein. But he admitted that he did not “carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” Then he made a larger point designed to disparage Edison’s view of education. “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think,” he said.

 

The Times was bluff about it. They reported, “He did not tackle the whole proposition but so far as he went failed and thereby became one of us.”

And then, his second visit to America, one decade later, a man named Silvo Cassi bulled his way into Einstein’s company. (The Herald Tribune introduces Cassi as a “former Italian dialect radio entertainer,” a job which either does not exist or exists only for Sacha Baron Cohen.) Einstein, visiting Manhattan, was staying in New York Harbor aboard the S.S. Belgenland. Cassi, “by an inordinate amount of persistence,” made his way to Einstein, explained in Italian that he had recorded the tribute Einstein had made to Edison over the radio two years earlier.

Einstein “expressed delight at the unusual opportunity offered.” A ship’s steward found a portable record player, and, via’s Edison’s old invention, Einstein had the chance to reexperience time, re-hear what he’d said to Edison on that October Jubilee night.

 

The New York Times, “Einstein Sees Boston; Fails on Edison Test,” May 18, 1921.

Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Simon and Schuster 2007. Chapter Thirteen, “The Wandering Zionist, 1920–1921.”

New York Herald Tribune, “Own Voice, Two Years Old, Returns To Einstein On Recent Trip to U.S.,” March 15, 1931.

 

406   that Union of Concerned Scientists report: Union of Concerned Scientists, Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, Union of Concerned Scientists 2007.

 

407   Roger Revelle gave Time: Time, “One Big Greenhouse,” May 28, 1956.

 

407   the unnerving Soviet policy of smiles: Time, “The Perils of Peace,” May 28, 1956.

 

407   to support two circuses: Time, “End of the Trail,” May 28, 1956.

 

407   belong to our entertainment past: And then Time had the pleasure of writing off the final big circus, six decades later. David Von Drehle, “The Last Act,” Time, May 15, 2017.

 

407   “this process may have a violent effect”: Time, “One Big Greenhouse,” May 28, 1956.

 

407   “striking changes in climate”: Waldemar Kaempffert, “Science In Review: Warmer Climate on the Earth May Be Due to More Carbon Dioxide in the Air,” The New York Times, October 28, 1956.

 

408   Climate change was human-caused: NASA’s fascinating, disturbing consensus website directs you to the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.

NASA, “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate Is Warming,” Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Accessed 7-25-22.

CA. Gov, “List of Worldwide Scientific Organizations: The following are scientific organizations that hold the position that Climate Change has been caused by human action,” Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.

http://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-organizations.html

Accessed 7-25-22.

 

408   now looked “winnable”: Stephen H. Schneider, Science As A Contact Sport: Inside The Battle To Save Earth’s Climate, National Geographic Society 2009. Introduction, “The Global Playing Field,” 5.

Schneider is listed on the book’s cover as a “Collective Recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize”: that’s the medal split between Al Gore and the IPCC. Schneider, a Stanford professor and one of the great early explicators of climate change, worked so hard with the Intergovernmental Panel he eventually came to describe it as his “pro bono day job.” Schneider died in 2010, and so did not have to undergo the unpleasantness and indignities detailed here.

 

408   “It is fatal to enter any war”: Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter 13, “The Battle of the Bulge,” 192.

 

408   their long conflict behind them: Dr. Schneider warned against it. In an early to fellow climate scientists from January 2009. See note at this section’s end.

 

409   “By early 2009”: Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter 13, “The Battle of the Bulge,” 192.

 

By early 2009, a troubling complacency had emerged among climate scientists. Perhaps it was the result of a confluence of seemingly game-changing events over the preceding few years: the rather conclusive and well-publicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment, the increased public awareness resulting from the highly successful movie An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore, the generally improved media coverage, and the images of devastation thrown up by several natural events—such as the 2005 hurricane season and hurricane Katrina in particular—that served as wake-up calls to the public of potential looming threats from climate change. On top of that, Barack Obama’s recent election seemed to portend the prospect of a more science-friendly climate in Washington, D.C. To many of my colleagues, the climate wars had been won—in favor of the science. From here on out, there was still important climate science to be done, but in the public arena, it would all be about policy, solutions, and moving forward in confronting the twin challenges of climate change mitigation (to lessen the extent of further heating of the planet) and adaptation (to become more resilient in the face of impending climate changes already in motion).

However, it was increasingly clear to me that the climate change denial campaign was not simply going to fade away. There was too much at stake for the special interests behind the scenes.

 

409   “America’s most reviled company”: John A. Byrne, “Philip Morris: Inside America’s Most Reviled Company,” Business Week, November 29, 1999.

Merlo specifically mentions the story in her court testimony two years later—and in her office patriotism can’t quite get the title right.

 

merlo. There have been articles written over the last many years; one, most significantly, by “Business Week” calling us one of the most reviled companies in America.

 

Not “one of”; the most. The tongue believes the brain.

Trial Testimony of Ellen Merlo, Boeken v. Philip Morris Inc., May 2, 2001. Bates Number: MERLOE0050201. 9.

 

409   “We should have sooner embraced”: Trial Testimony of Ellen Merlo, Boeken v. Philip Morris Inc., May 2, 2001. Bates Number: MERLOE0050201. 8.

 

409   “As long as one kid smokes”: Trial Testimony of Ellen Merlo, Boeken v. Philip Morris Inc., May 2, 2001. Bates Number: MERLOE0050201. 37-8.

 

merlo. This is very serious business. We devote a lot of money to it. In fact, it’s the one area when we have to look at our budget and conserve that never gets cut. Youth smoking prevention is a number one priority.”

 

409   a “pressure group”: Mark Schrope, “Consensus Science or Consensus Politics?”, Nature, July 12, 2001.

 

409   “fraudulent nonsense”: ABC News, Dan Harris, Interviewer, “Global Warming Denier: Fraud or ‘Realist’? Physicist says don’t worry, humans will benefit from a warmer planet,” March 23, 2008.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=4506059&page=1

Accessed 7-25-22.

 

409   “Now, are they all scientists?”: PBS Frontline, “Climate of Doubt,” John Hockenberry Intervew With S. Fred Singer, October 22, 2012.

https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-climate-doubt/

Accessed 7-25-22.

 

409   found the flavor “bizarre”: New Scientist, “Netropolitan: Greenhouse Sceptics,” June 26, 1999.

 

409   a former tobacco guardian: Mark Hertsgaard, “While Washington Slept,” Vanity Fair, May 2006.

 

410   no shame on his face: For example, his interview for PBS Frontline, “Hot Politics,” April 24, 2007.

 

410   “Shockley’s old friend Seitz”: Jeff Hecht, “Destroyed By Dark Forces; How Can Someone Go From Being A Nobel-Prizewinning Physicist And Entrepreneur To A Detested Outsider?”, New Scientist, June 10, 2006.

 

410   as the live chairman of his board: Richard Littlemore, “Mashey Report Confirms Heartland’s Manipulation; Exposes Singer’s Deception,” Desmog, February 14, 2012. “Mashey’s report also produces evidence that Dr. S. Fred Singer, who Heartland keeps on a $5,000-a-month retainer to spread disinformation about climate change, claimed Dr. Frederick Seitz as the chair of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) for two full years after Seitz died.”

https://www.desmog.com/2012/02/14/mashey-report-confirms-heartland-s-manipulation-exposes-singer-s-deception/

Accessed 7-25-22.

John Mashey, “Fake Science, Fake Experts, Funny Finances, Free of Tax,” Desmog, February 14, 2012. “Singer claimed Frederick Seitz as Chairman for two years after his demise.”

https://www.desmog.com/2012/02/14/fake-science-fakexperts-funny-finances-free-tax/

Accessed 7-25-22.

 

410   “We’re embracing it”: Federal News Service, “Press Conference With Secretary Of Energy Samuel Bodman; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson; And National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration Administrator Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher; Subject: The Findings Of The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change,” Location: U.S. Department Of Energy, Washington, D.C, February 2, 2007.

Secretary Bodman took care to close the case. “As the president has said, and this report makes clear,” he told the cameras and microphones, “human activity is contributing to changes in our Earth’s climate, and that issue is no longer up for debate.”

 

Dan Duray, “White House Concedes Humans Contribute To Global Warming,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 3, 2007.

 

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman later told a news conference that the report was “sound science” even as he insisted that the Bush administration had always accepted scientific studies pointing to man-made climate change.

 

The EPA administrator got into the Sound Science act, too. U.S. Federal News, “Bush Administration Plays Leading Role In Studying, Addressing Global Climate Change,” February 2, 2007.

 

“I congratulate my colleagues at the IPCC for their years of research, and look forward to using their scientific findings as we continue America’s efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions,” said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. “Through our commitment to sound science and innovation, the Bush Administration has built a solid foundation to address the environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.”

 

410   “It is clear that something is going on”: Joe Nocera, “Exxon Mobil Just Wants To Be Loved,” The New York Times, February 10, 2007.

 

411   “internal rifts and weakening support”: Andrew C. Revkin, “Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other,” The New York Times, March 9, 2009.

 

411   “It’s almost a lost, lost battle”: Suzanne Goldenberg, “Meet the Sceptics: Barack Obama may be worried about greenhouse gases — but not everyone is. Suzanne Goldenberg reports from this week’s gathering of climate change deniers,” The Guardian, March 11, 2009.

 

411   Who turned it around for them?: A few climate voices agitated against confidence. Warning this could be the most dangerous time: with the denial community harried, panting, bleeding, and loathing you from the corner.

Stanford’s Stephen Schneider—who died the following spring—warned in a January 2009 email to fellow climate scientists, “Good luck with this, and expect more of it [attacks] as we get closer to international climate policy actions.” Schneider signed off, “Expect that all weapons will be used.”

Stephen Schneider, To: Ben Santer et al, “Subject: Re: (Fwd: data request),” January 6, 2009.

 

411   sixty Freedom of Information requests: Sir Muir Russell, Chair, “The Independent Climate Change Emails Review,” Commissioned by the University of East Anglia, July 2010. Chapter Ten, “Compliance With FoIA/Environmental Information Regulations”, Paragraphs 23, 34.

Richard Girling, “The Leak Was Bad, Then Came the Death Threats,” The Sunday Times (London), February 8, 2010.

Olive Heffernan, “Climate Data Spat Intensifies. Growing Demands For Access To Information Swamp Scientist,” Nature, August 12, 2009.

 

The investigation adds there was another shelling: ten stragglers, arriving between July Thirty-first and August Fourteenth.

An amusing thing about the requests was about a fifth having the same typo: involing for involving. (They’d all been copy-pasted from the same cite.) Michael Mann is funny on this in his beleaguered memoir.

 

[The template read] “I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]. . . ”

A typo in the template (involing in place of involving) could be found in many of the submissions, and in one case, the submitter left in the boilerplate “insert 5 or so countries” rather than actually filling in the names.

 

Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012. Notes to Chapter 13, “The Battle of the Bulge,” 331.

 

411   One thousand emails: Kate Sheppard put together a wonderful timeline for Mother Jones magazine. The haul was 1,000 emails and 3,587 other documents — including raw data and code.

Kate Sheppard, “Climategate: What Really Happened? How climate science became the target of the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known,” Mother Jones, April 21, 2011.

 

411   The whole climate “conspiracy”: James Delingpole, “Climategate: The Final Nail In The Coffin Of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?”, The Telegraph (U.K.) Blogs, November 20, 2009.

This included Delingpole’s “disarming” bio: “James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books . . . ”

 

411   “a public disaster”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming, Guardian Books, 2010. Chapter 15, “A Public Disaster.”

 

411      might “never fully recover”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files. Chapter 16, “Avalanche at the IPCC.”

 

411      “Now the foes of limits”: Andrew Revkin, “The Distracting Debate Over Climate Certainty,” Dot Earth, The New York Times, February 10, 2010.

https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/the-distracting-debate-over-climate-certainty/

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

411      In 1973 Harvard was retained: Specifically through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the NIH’s 27 centers and institutes.

 

In 1973, a blue-ribbon commission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences called for research into the health impacts of the nation’s expected switch from oil to coal in the wake of the Arab oil embargo.

[Frank] Speizer, by then a Harvard School of Public Health researcher, joined pediatrician Benjamin Ferris to propose to the health sciences agency an ambitious, long-term study comparing the impacts of air pollution in six different American cities.

 

Brad Johnson, “How One GOP-Controlled Committee is Waging A War on Science,” The American Independent Institute, June 24, 2014.

The E.P.A. is credited along with NIEHS in the eventual Harvard study publication by The New England Journal of Medicine.

The Congressional Research Service summarizes the sponsorship as simply National Institute of Health. Eric A. Fischer, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology, “Public Access to Data from Federally Funded Research: Provisions in OMB Circular A-110,” Congressional Research Service, March 1, 2013.

 

412      industrial dandruff: EPA, “What Are the Harmful Effects of PM?”, Particulate Matter (PM) Basics, Particulate Matter (PM) Pollution.

https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics#effects

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

The environmental economist Arden Pope has a great lecture about this—link below. (Pope was an author of the Six Cities Study.) “Now where do fine particles come from?” Pope asks his audience. “Primarily from burning things. Burning diesel, burning gasoline, burning coal, burning wood. You burn things and you get smoke. And smoke is made primarily of fine particles.”

Pope goes on, “These fine particles are more toxic primarily because they are small enough that they can enter deeply into your airways.”

Arden Pope, Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Economics, Brigham Young University, “Air Pollution and Health,” Sevier Citizens For Clean Water, Richfield, Utah, February 15, 2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNSD33SzYj0

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

412      followed across one and a half decades: D. W. Dockery, C. A. Pope III, J. D. Spengler, J. H. Ware, M. E. Fay, Ben Ferris, Frank Speizer, “An Association Between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities,” The New England Journal of Medicine, December 9, 1993, 329:1753-1759.

The NEJM study gives the exact number as 8,111.

Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, Basic Books 2012. Chapter Five, “Zones of Incomprehension,” 150.

 

Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/f12-six-cities-environmental-health-air-pollution/

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

412      the Harvard Six Cities Study: D. W. Dockery, C. A. Pope III, J. D. Spengler, J. H. Ware, M. E. Fay, Ben Ferris, Frank Speizer, “An Association Between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities,” The New England Journal of Medicine, December 9, 1993, 329:1753-1759.

 

412      The Harvard researchers promised confidentially: Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water. 154.

 

412      age, marry, cough, stay well, get sick.: The work was extremely well-detailed; participants sampled air every day.

 

Philip J. Hilts, “Studies Say Soot Kills Up To 60,000 In U.S. Each Year: Call To Redirect Efforts,” The New York Times, July 19, 1993.

 

At the E.P.A. Dr. Joel Schwartz, the lone epidemiologist among scores of toxicologists, noticed the report . . . Dr. Schwartz also found that another scientist, Dr. Douglas W. Dockery of the Harvard School of Public Health, had carried out studies of daily pollution levels in six eastern cities. There, the particle pollution had been measured every day, an unusually good record since the Federal Government requires only one measurement a week.

 

412      2.5 microns and under: The work was groundbreaking for detail. This is from Grant’s “Prevailing Winds,” at the Harvard School of Public Health, and is somehow thrilling: all that work being done for the premier time, the way Dave Keeling was the first person to really lovingly measure with such clinical passion carbon dioxide, or John Tyndall to get the subject completely under manual control.

And interestingly for us, this grows out of that London 1952 killer smog, where the Oxford and Cambridge track teams couldn’t make out the course.

 

Ever since a toxic black cloud dubbed the “Great Smog”—made up primarily of coal-burning emissions and diesel exhaust—hovered over London in 1952 and killed more than 4,000 people within days, environmental scientists had worried about the mysterious ingredients composing industrial haze. In the U.S., that concern intensified in 1973 following the Arab oil embargo, when power plants were expected to substitute cheap, high-sulfur coal for expensive oil. What could the nasty emissions from dirtier fuel do to people?

Harvard School of Public Health’s Ben Ferris, a legendary public health professor who died in 1996, and Frank Speizer, professor of environmental science, proposed to find out: They would sample the air quality in six Eastern cities with varying degrees of pollution while simultaneously monitoring the health of thousands of those cities’ residents. Among their team were the wiry, intense Jack Spengler, [who] built personal air quality monitoring equipment that participants wore; and the tall, reserved Dockery, who traveled from city to city, setting up air pollution monitors in residents’ homes. Jim Ware, professor of biostatistics, joined the team in 1979. Later, Joel Schwartz, professor of environmental epidemiology, would join the team and become one of its most prolific authors.

Their goal was simple: to identify links between illness and death rates and air pollution levels. They sampled the air for toxic emissions, including sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, a brew of acids, metals, petroleum byproducts, diesel soot, and other potentially harmful substances that readily deposit deep in the lungs.

 

In Business Week, Dr. Joel Schwartz, another member of the Six City team, expounded on the disturbing reasons.

 

One theory espoused by Harvard epidemiologist Joel Schwartz is that mammalian lungs have evolved defenses against large air particles. But they haven’t had time to fashion a defense against smaller particles from burning fuels, which can lodge deep in the lungs and may affect both the immune and central nervous systems.

 

John Carey, “Tiny Particles, Big Dilemma,” Business Week, August 4, 1997.

 

412      Because of fine particles: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/f12-six-cities-environmental-health-air-pollution/

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

“ ‘We could hardly believe the effects were as large as they appeared to be,’ says Brigham Young epidemiologist C. Arden Pope III.” John Carey, “Tiny Particles, Big Dilemma,” Business Week, August 4, 1997.

 

412      “The effects of air pollution were about”: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

 

413      The New England Journal of Medicine published: Douglas W. Dockery, C. Arden Pope III, John D. Spengler, James H. Ware, Martha E. Fay, Ben Ferris, Frank Speizer, “An Association Between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities,” The New England Journal of Medicine, December 9, 1993, 329:1753-1759.

It’s online. And—having proved so influential—cool to see.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199312093292401

Accessed 7-25-22.

 

413      “one of the single most influential”: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

 

413      the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans: There was another influential long-term study out of the American Cancer Society, with an interpretive boost from Brigham Young University. This comes from Devra Davis’ When Smoke Ran Like Water.

 

Arden Pope, an economist at Brigham Young University with an interdisciplinary grasp of public health, then expanded on the Harvard work. Using the American Cancer Society’s continuing survey of more than half a million volunteers in 154 cities for eight years, he published analyses in 1995 showing that persons living in more polluted areas had a higher risk of dying in any given year than those living in cleaner areas.

 

Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water, 151.

The NRDC’s publication, The Amicus Journal, offers another good summary of the road from Six Cities to EPA.

 

In the meantime, the particulates fight was heating up. EPA had seemed in no great hurry to review its particulate standards in light of the new evidence, as required by law, so the agency got a push from an American Lung Association lawsuit in 1993. That suit started EPA on a tortuous scientific and political process. As it was playing out, further studies gave weight to the thesis that the lives of thousands of Americans are being shortened by a year or two, on average, through exposure to particulates at levels well below the current standard.

In December 1993, Douglas Dockery and other Harvard School of Public Health researchers released the Harvard “Six City” study, which tracked the health of more than 8,000 people for fourteen to sixteen years; it showed that fine particles increased the risk of premature death for residents of the most polluted city by 26 percent over that for residents of the least polluted city. Two years later, the American Cancer Society Study, which tracked about 500,000 people in 151 cities, reported that people living in areas most polluted with fine particles had a 17 percent greater risk of mortality than those in areas with the lowest levels. And in 1996, the NRDC report Breath Taking applied these findings to 239 cities, and found that approximately 64,000 people may die prematurely from heart or lung disease every year due to particulate pollution.

Then, at long last, after reviewing hundreds of scientific studies, EPA proposed a tougher particulates standard in November 1996. It included the first-ever standard for the finest, most dangerous particulates, PM2.5.

 

Renee Skelton, “Clearing the Air: an epidemiologist takes on the worst air pollution problems of our time,” The Amicus Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2, Summer 1997.

John H. Cushman, Jr., “E.P.A. Advocating Higher Standards To Clean The Air: Industry Warns of Costs,” The New York Times, November 25, 1996.

John H. Cushman, Jr., “Administration Issues Its Proposal For Tightening of Air Standards,” The New York Times, November 28, 1996.

And the Times editorial board saw what was to come. In their diagnosis (“The proposed regulations have already stirred the biggest political ruckus in Carol Browner’s four-year tenure as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency”); their prediction (“vigorous debate”); especially their title.

Editorial, “The Looming Clean Air Battle,” The New York Times, November 29, 1996.

If you’d like to see how the E.P.A. makes announcements, their particle release document is here.

Environmental Protection Agency, “PR Fact Sheets To EPA Proposes Air Standards For Ozone: Scientific Review Process For Proposed Air Quality Standards,” November 27, 1996.

https://archive.epa.gov/epapages/newsroom_archive/newsreleases/e55169512c4fea6b8525646000192bbb.html

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

413      Some say the ensuing fight: Joby Warrick, “A Dust-Up Over Air Pollution Standards,” The Washington Post, June 17, 1997.

Dick Thompson, Dan Cray, “Smog Test,” Time, December 9, 1996. “In a decision that EPA chief Carol Browner calls one of the most important of her career, the agency proposed tough new standards,” Cray reports. “The stage is set for what could be the biggest environmental battle of the decade.”

 

413      all the way up to a hundred: Hillary J. Johnson, “The Next Battle Over Clean Air,” Rolling Stone, June 18, 2001.

 

413      The brawl brought together: Bill Lambrecht, “Source Disclaims Ad On Air Rules,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 7, 1997.

The NAM was an all-around player: organizing resistance, working at the state and local level, even drafting the memes.

“In an opinion piece sent to newspapers recently, Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote: ‘From using one’s fireplace and using a power mower to shooting off fireworks and enjoying back-yard barbecues on the Fourth of July, the lifestyle of millions of Americans would be severely impeded by the long and irritating arm of we-know-best government.’”

Renee Skelton, "Clearing the Air," Amicus Journal, Summer 1997:

 

One active player is the National Association of Manufacturers, which includes representatives of the oil, mining, auto, chemical, steel, and electric utility industries. It is leading a coalition of more than 600 members in a multimillion-dollar campaign. Often working through groups with benign-sounding names, such as Citizens for A Sound Economy, they argue that the tighter standards are unnecessary and costly and will jeopardize American freedoms. One radio ad, which ran for a time in Chicago, featured a son talking to his father about his fear that the standards would cost him his job. Then this exchange took place:

Son: These new regulations would drive up the price of cars, force people into car-pooling maybe even end up banning things like barbecue grills and lawnmowers.

Father: Force us to change the way we live, huh? Amazing, since it can’t be justified for health reasons.

 

David Corn, “A Bad Air Day: Will Industry Lobbyists Foul Up the E.P.A.’s Newly Proposed Regulations?”, Nation, March 24, 1997. “Not since the NAFTA tussle or health care reform has corporate America assembled such a monster of a lobbying machine,” Corn writes. “Before the EPA released the proposed standards, industry began preparing for war.”

In the figures department, “environmental and health groups are trying to counter the industry avalanche. It’s hardly an even match. According to a study by Public Citizen, twenty-seven corporations and trade associations battling the standards (a small slice of the opposition) spent $72 million lobbying Congress in the first half of 1996 alone.”

 

413      a “fierce battle”: John H. Cushman, Jr., “Clinton Sharply Tightens Air Pollution Regulations Despite Concern Over Costs,” The New York Times, June 26, 1997.

So did Science: “the fierce battle over its tough new standard for particulate air pollution.” Jocelyn Kaiser, “Panel Backs EPA and ‘Six Cities’ Study,” Science, August 4, 2000.

 

413      Harvard’s School of Public Health: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

Jocelyn Kaiser, “Showdown Over Clean Air Science,” Science, July 25, 1997. “Industry and environmental researchers are also squaring off over the science behind the rules on fine particles in what some are calling the biggest environmental fight of the decade.”

Business Week called it a “monumental regulatory brouhaha.” (John Carey, “Tiny Particles, Big Dilemma,” Business Week, August 4, 1997.) Rolling Stone deemed the industry strategy “a ferocious, five-year assault.” (Hillary J. Johnson, “The Next Battle Over Clean Air,” Rolling Stone, June 18, 2001.) The Nation (“Bad Air Day,” May 24, 1997) characterized it as both avalanche and war. Industry Week reported, “The EPA has proposed many controversial regulations in its 26-year history. But none has been more explosive.” (“Clean-Air Contention,” May 5, 1997.)

Arden Pope, the Brigham Young economist who co-authored the Six Cities report and analyzed the American Cancer Society data set that helped confirm the EPA’s regulatory decision, also calls it the decade’s fight.

Arden Pope, Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Economics, “Air Pollution and Health,” Sevier Citizens For Clean Water, Richfield, Utah, February 15, 2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNSD33SzYj0

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

413      “an extraordinary multi-million dollar campaign”: Joby Warrick, “A Dust-Up Over Air Pollution Standards,” The Washington Post, June 17, 1997.

 

413      the vital America of nostalgia and dreams: Joby Warrick, “Clean Air Standards Opponents Circle the Backyard Barbecues; Both Sides Escalate Debate as Hill Fight Looms,” The Washington Post, January 24, 1997.

 

413      “In church, people were all shook up”: Joby Warrick, “A Dust-Up Over Air Pollution Standards,” The Washington Post, June 17, 1997.

 

413      Regulation could mean the end: William H. Miller, “Clean-Air Contention,” Industry Week, May 5, 1997. “In opposing the proposed rule, industry executives have found allies in many state—and local—government groups . . . Governors warn [EPA] plans might require such politically unpopular steps as mandatory car pooling, limits on power boats and lawnmowers.” Industry Week—which would know—added that industry was in a “rage.”

 

413      be a whole Life Without a Summer: Jim Drinkard, “Clean-Air Decision Follows Yearlong Lobbying Campaign,” Associated Press, June 25, 1997.

“Citizens for a Sound Economy began airing aggressive television and radio ads hammering home another lobbying theme: New air standards would curtail the lifestyles of Americans by banning outdoor barbecues, lawn mowers and fireworks and set limits on the plowing of farm fields. The EPA denied any such results and denounced the ads as scare tactics.”

 

413      legislate away the Fourth of July: Bill Lambrecht, “Source Disclaims Ad On Air Rules,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 7, 1997.

The thickness of what must be laid on did not trouble industry.

Extra ad V.O.: “For more than 200 years, Americans have celebrated their independence and freedom with fireworks every Fourth of July. But if the federal government imposes new air quality standards, you could have to find a new way to celebrate.”

Congressional Quarterly (Syndicated), “EPA Foes Use Snappy Ads,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 24, 1997.

Brad Johnson, “Republicans Wage Anti-‘Secret Science’ Campaign Against The EPA,” The American Independent Institute, June 25, 2014.

 

413      concealing something: Arden Pope is sharp, funny, and practical about this.

“In fact the Harvard Six Cities and the American Cancer Society study were being called secret science,” he said. “Junk science. Now, remember they were published in the top peer-reviewed medical journals. There’s nothing else you can do as a researcher.” He laughed. “How could it be secret? We just published it.”

Arden Pope, Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Economics, Brigham Young University, “Air Pollution and Health,” Sevier Citizens For Clean Water, Richfield, Utah, February 15, 2007.

 

413      promised its Six Cities subjects confidentiality: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

 

Critics from industry, members of Congress, and some governors demanded that Harvard release the raw data. “We declined,” says James H. Ware, then HSPH acting dean and now Frederick Mosteller Professor of Biostatistics. The team had promised participants that their personal data would never be released. When Harvard refused, critics accused the researchers of conspiracy and pressured Congress to hold hearings.

 

Arden Pope discusses the workings in his 2007 Six Cities lecture. It’s neat to learn how this works.

 

You can’t turn over data from these cohorts because you actually sign — before you can do a study like this, you have to have what’s called IRB approval. Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects. They will always require that you have a consent form, and the consent form will always have a confidentiality agreement in it. So we have confidentiality agreements with everybody that participates.

 

Arden Pope, Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Economics, Brigham Young University, “Air Pollution and Health,” Sevier Citizens For Clean Water, Richfield, Utah, February 15, 2007.

 

414      “Give us your data!”: Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, Basic Books 2012. Chapter Five, “Zones of Incomprehension,” 154.

 

414      “Harvard, release the data!”: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/f12-six-cities-environmental-health-air-pollution/

Accessed 7-26-22.

 

414      “You’d wake up in the morning”: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

 

414      “What are they hiding?”: Associated Press, “Industry Hits Clean Air Study,” March 5, 1997.

 

414      recalled that having industry: Jocelyn Kaiser, “Showdown Over Clean Air Science,” Science, July 25, 1997. “Critics of the science behind the new rules launched their assault. ‘We’d go to meetings and testify at hearings,’ says Dockery, ‘and they’d say, “We get different results.”‘”

 

414      “To have a hostile group”: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

 

414      “undermine future research”: Elaine Appleton Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fall 2012.

 

414      a “major victory”: Jocelyn Kaiser, “Panel Backs EPA and ‘Six Cities’ Study,” Science, August 4, 2000.

 

415      in the neighborhood of twenty billion: Grant, “Prevailing Winds.”

 

415      “The standards have had the largest”: This is at Douglas Dockery’s page on the HSPS site.

“Douglas Dockery, John L. Loeb And Frances Lehman Loeb Research Professor Of Environmental Epidemiology,” Harvard School of Public Health.

https://drclas.harvard.edu/people/douglas-dockery-0

Accessed 7-26-22.

Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” HSPS. The OMB assessment was made in 2011.

 

415      “the net effect on average life expectancy”: Grant, “Prevailing Winds,” HSPS.

 

415      “We teach people to be”: This is Jack Spengler, the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation. Who’d been with the study since 1974; he’d built the air monitors worn by the participants.

 

415      the National Ambient Air Quality Standards: Environmental Protection Agency, “40 CFR Part 50: National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter; Final Rule,” July 18, 1997. (“NAAQS,” as below, being its around-the-office name.)

https://archive.epa.gov/ttn/pm/web/pdf/pmnaaqs.pdf

Accessed 7-26-22.
 

415      “passed quietly one evening”: Philip J. Hilts, “A Law Opening Research Data Sets Off Debate,” New York Times, July 31, 1999.

 

415      Shelby’s motivation: David Michaels, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, Oxford University Press 2008, Chapter 14, “The Institutionalization of Uncertainty,” 176. “According to all accounts at the time, the motive behind the action was the displeasure of corporations most responsible for air pollution, including the oil industry, diesel engine manufacturers, and coal-burning power companies, that they did not have access to the raw data at the heart of the ‘Six Cities Study.’”

 

415      “to minimize the possibility and opportunity”: Sen. Richard Shelby, “policy essay: Accountability and Transparency: Public Access to Federally Funded Research Data,” Harvard Journal on Litigation, Summer 2000.

And it must have been a fun irony: for the Senator to publish in the journal from the same university that was home to the Six City Study.

 

415      “We proposed the Shelby”: Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Basic Books 2005, Chapter Eight, “Wine, Jazz, and ‘Data Quality,’” 109.

 

416      important government-funded raw science data: David Michaels, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, Oxford University Press 2008, Chapter 14, “The Institutionalization of Uncertainty,” 177.

“The Shelby Amendment was an open invitation for anyone to use the Freedom of Information Act to harass scientists, question their work, muddy the waters, delay action, and perhaps even steal intellectual property,” Michaels writes. He adds, “Industry made certain that privately funded research is not covered. That is, according to the logic of this legislation, industry should be free to dredge and manipulate the data of government-funded work, but federal agencies and outside groups should not be free to reanalyze industry-sponsored research submitted to the agencies during the regulatory process. Right there you have the tip-off to the hidden agenda of the Shelby Amendment.”

 

416      “The unfortunate fact”: Gavin Schmidt, To: Ben Santer, “Re: Further fallout from our IJoC paper,” December 2, 2008.

Schmidt continues, “The contrarians have found that there is actually no limit to what you can ask people for (raw data, intermediate steps, additional calculations, residuals, sensitivity calculations, all the code, a workable version of the code on any platform etc.), and like Somali pirates they have found that once someone has paid up, they can always shake them down again.”

 

416      “This just sounds like a nightmare”: Jennifer Couzin, “Access to Data: Making Science An Open Book,” U.S. News and World Report, March 29, 1999.

 

416      when he crewed on the Shelby Amendment: David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, Chapter Seven, “Defending Secondhand Smoke,” 88. “Who on Capitol Hill realized that Big Tobacco was behind the Data Access Act?”

Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Basic Books 2005, 109: “In 1998, in a dress rehearsal for the Data Quality Act, Tozzi worked on the so-called Shelby amendment—named after its official ‘author,’ Alabama Republican senator Richard Shelby—for Philip Morris. Also a brief insert to an appropriations bill, and equally loathed by the scientific community…”

 

416      “our hook”: Philip Morris, “Force Field Analysis,” May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324814-4818.

That hook could be used for numerous catches, including the big, elusive fish.

“If successful the plan could ultimately minimize the scientific basis for smoking bans and result in reasonable smoking restrictions policies. Additional objectives from implementation of this strategy are: communicating the overall issue of ‘junk science’ especially as it relates to weak epidemiological studies and diminishing the credibility of the EPA in the eyes of the public, with elected officials and the media.”

 

416      “unique and unprecedented opportunity”: Philip Morris, “Force Field Analysis,” May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324814.

In SRIC Innovation, “Sound Science Project” (May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324784) it’s described as “the current ozone/particulate opportunity.” These people, honestly.

 

416      “leverage” business opposition: SRIC Innovation, “Sound Science Project,” May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324784-4788.

The manufacturer also aimed to “leverage consultants who have ‘EPA’ and ‘Democrat’ connections.”

 

416      “focus on meeting our objectives”: Annamaria Baba, MPH, Daniel M. Cook, PhD, Thomas O. McGarity, JD, Lisa A. Bero, PhD, “Legislating ‘Sound Science’: The Role of the Tobacco Industry,” American Journal of Public Health, Vol 95, No. S1., S20_S27, July 2005.

As the writers note, “A Philip Morris planning document explains that the debate about the Environmental Protection Agency’s new outdoor air regulations is ‘remarkably similar to the ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] issue . . . Because of the parallels between the ETS issue and the new clean air regulations, already established and existing political and business coalitions could be used to focus on meeting the objectives of the tobacco industry.’” With this final outcome: “Legislative solutions to ensure that public policy is based on sound science.”

 

416      “reopened”: SRIC Innovation, “Sound Science Project,” May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324784.

 

416      They would connect “access to data”: Philip Morris, “Sound Science Project Plan,” December 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2078839087.

 

416      “Freedom of Information”: SRIC Innovation, “Sound Science Project,” May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324784-4788.

 

416      Best case: Philip Morris, “Sound Science Project Plan,” December 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2078839087.

It was paramount to their strategy: using the language (Junk and Sound Science) they’d helped spread. As Philip Morris put it that spring, the objective was, “Link Environmental Tobacco Smoke to junk science in public’s mind and in media so that ETS is not seen as a significant health risk.” And note, of course, the project name. Promote the concept; then link to the concept.

SRIC Innovation, “Sound Science Project,” May 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2081324784.

 

416      “We miss this opportunity”: Philip Morris, “Sound Science Project Plan,” December 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2078839087.

 

416      “Our attempts to influence legislation”: Philip Morris, “Sound Science Project Plan,” December 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2078839087-2078839122.

 

416      “We are who we are”: Philip Morris, “Sound Science Project Plan,” December 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2078839087-2078839122.

Philip Morris documents are sort of likably regimented.

This is on the page their strategists called “SWOT Analysis.” An acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats—within whose four quadrants, as the sages might say, can be found all of life.

 

416      In December 1997: Philip Morris, “Sound Science Project Plan,” December 1997, Philip Morris. Bates Number: 2078839087-2078839122.

 

416      handed off responsibility: Jim Tozzi made this crystal to Chris Mooney. “Tozzi worked on the so-called Shelby Amendment,” Mooney writes. “Tozzi confirmed in interviews that he worked for Philip Morris on ‘data access.’” And, “‘We proposed the Shelby; we were the first ones on the Shelby amendment,’ he says proudly.”

Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science. Notes to Chapter Eight, “Jazz, Wine, and Data Quality.” 109, 309 (note).

 

417      “members who voted for it”: George Hager, “House Passes Spending Bill,” The Washington Post, October 21, 1998.

 

417      Forty pounds: Katherine Q. Seelye, “Spending Bill, Laden With Pork, Is Signed Into Law,” The New York Times, October 22, 1998.

The bill was also (to give it its third dimension) one-and-a-third feet tall.

 

417      3,825 pages: George Hager, “House Passes Spending Bill,” The Washington Post, October 21, 1998.

 

417      “Only God knows”: George Hager, “House Passes Spending Bill,” The Washington Post, October 21, 1998.

 

417      “Please do not release this”: Jim Tozzi, To: Matthew Winokur, Philip Morris, “Subject: Re: Language on Data Access in Treasury Appropriations Bill for FY ‘99 (H.R. 4104),” October 12, 1998. Bates Number: 2065231124-2065231127.

Jim Tozzi underlined this no-loose-lips stealth request.

 

417      “Tozzi just confirmed the language”: John Hoel, To: Thomas Borelli, Philip Morris, “Subject: Re: Data Access,” October 21, 1998. Bates Number: 2078333931-2078333932.

 

417      “serious, unintended consequences”: Eugene Russo, “Does Accountability Legislation Threaten Integrity Of U.S. Research Enterprise?”, The Scientist, February 14, 1999.

This was biochemist Bruce M. Albert, who was succeeded in the National Academy presidency by Jim Hansen-fan (“I can’t think of anybody better”) Ralph Cicerone.

 

417      Tozzi’s next assignment: Annamaria Baba, MPH, Daniel M. Cook, PhD, Thomas O. McGarity, JD, Lisa A. Bero, PhD, “Legislating ‘Sound Science’: The Role of the Tobacco Industry,” American Journal of Public Health, Vol 95, No. S1., S20_S27, July 2005.

 

The data access act was passed in September 1998 and implemented a year later, on October 8, 1999. During this year, Philip Morris hired Jim Tozzi to coordinate industry efforts to ensure that OMB [Office of Management and Budget] implemented the new law consistently with industry interests. A contract dated December 24, 1998, shows that Philip Morris Worldwide Regulatory Affairs hired Tozzi to “work with federal agencies to encourage implementation of the recently enacted data access and data quality provisions.” Philip Morris planned to compensate Jim Tozzi with a monthly retainer of $65,000. Shortly after Congress enacted the data access act, Tozzi met with OMB to develop a strategy for implementing both data access and data quality provisions. In December 1998, 3 months after the data access act became law, he submitted a workplan on data access and data quality to Matt Winokur of Philip Morris. Winokur was director of Philip Morris Worldwide Regulatory Affairs and a member of the five-person “sound science issues team.”

 

Perhaps unaware of the ample documentation, Jim Tozzi was a bit opaque with Chris Mooney re: working with Philip Morris on the Data Quality Act. Mooney had interviewed him for the May 2004 Washington Monthly; it may simply be that the American Journal of Public Health study came out one year later. And there were also the many accounts Jim Tozzi offered about his own role (“procedurally, that was the best decision I ever made”) in the aspirin fight.

 

Thomas O. McGarity, Sidney A. Shapiro, Rena I. Steinzor, Joanna Goger, Margaret Clune, “Truth and Science Betrayed: The Case Against the Information Quality Act,” Center For Progressive Regulation, March 2005.

 

In mid-December 1998, Tozzi circulated a “proposed work agenda for 1999” . . . Later that same month, Tozzi’s liaison at Philip Morris submitted a contract request form specifying that MBS [Tozzi’s company] would “work with federal agencies to encourage implementation of recently enacted data access and data quality provisions” and would be paid $65,000 per month and not to exceed $780,000 for the year.

 

Philip Morris, WRA Contract Request Form, December 24, 1998. Bates Number: 2064779000-2064779001.

 

417      “The Data Quality Act”: Megan Twohey, “Jim Tozzi: On Jazz and OMB,” Federal Paper, November 18, 2002.

 

417      “crowning achievement”: Dan Davidson, “Nixon’s ‘Nerd’ Turns Regulations Watchdog,” Federal Times, November 11, 2002. In “Paralysis by Analysis (Washington Monthly, May 2004) Chris Mooney also notes the jump: “Now Tozzi has a chance to change the rules of the game itself.”

 

417      President Clinton signed it into law: President William J. Clinton, “Statement on Signing the Consolidated Appropriations Act, FY 2001,” The American Presidency Project, University of California at Santa Barbara, December 21, 2000.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-signing-the-consolidated-appropriations-act-fy-2001

Accessed 7-27-22.

 

417      “It couldn’t be stopped”: Thomas J. Bray, “Garbage In, Regulation Out; When It Comes To Cooking Books, The Feds Are Gourmets,” The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2002.

“It’s like kudzu, baby,” Tozzi told Chris Mooney in 2004. (“Paralysis by Analysis,” Washington Monthly.) “You can spray it, shoot it”—but can’t ever stop it.

 

417      and drafted the law himself: Rick Weiss, “‘Data Quality’ Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2004.

“Tozzi wrote the Data Quality Act and arranged for its congressional passage after the 2000 elections.”

Bryant Urstadt, “One-act Farce,” Harper’s Magazine, June 2003.

“Where can a corporate lobbyist hide thirty-two lines of stealth legislation? Right here, between a land transfer to the Gerald R. Ford Foundation and some details about cost-of-living allowances at the Office of Personnel Management, on pages 153 and 154 of the 712-page federal budget for the year 2001[.] Who would conceive of such a thing?” asks Urqhart. “In reality, the act was written by Jim Tozzi, a current lobbyist whose clients include such corporate citizens as Philip Morris . . .”

Donald Kennedy, “Turning the Tables with Mary Jane,” Science, May 4, 2007.

 

417      “We sandwiched this in between”: Rick Weiss, “‘Data Quality’ Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2004.

Less effusively, Rena Steinzor, Director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic, warned the Post, “It’s a tool to clobber every effort to regulate. In my view, it amounts to censorship and harassment.”

 

418      “knew about the buried language”: Rick Weiss, “‘Data Quality’ Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2004.

And then two years later a Tozzi colleague wrote in to Science, explaining that the data amendments had not been passed in the dead of night (contradicting Jim Tozzi’s own delighted recollection), that Tozzi had not been in the employ of tobacco during its passage, and that data quality had nothing to do with data access. (And for good measure, that it was wrong to think of Philip Morris as tobacco-ish. They were in fact “a multiproduct company.”)

Because control of the event can partially be obtained and exercised via shaping its recollection and interpretation: essentially under the same rationale by which insurrectionists traditionally seize control of the broadcast towers, and repressive governments now will throttle access to the internet. An advance of the last few decades was understanding you could pick up the microphone and broadcast the really useful adjustments once everybody else had wandered away.

William G. Kelly, Jr., “Correcting the Record on the Data Quality Act,” Science, January 11, 2008.

 

418      the National Assessment on Climate Change: Chris Mooney, “An Inconvenient Assessment: Seven years ago, scientists published a pioneering study to help Americans understand the implications of climate change. Here’s why you’ve never heard of it,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2007.

“As Myron Ebell of the CEI has commented of the National Assessment: ‘To the extent that it has vanished, we have succeeded.’”

Myron Ebell was the guy to whom Phil Cooney, the emboldened climate editor, deferred.

“Many members of the public heard about the Cooney ‘fox in the henhouse’ story,” writes Chris Mooney. “But media accounts rarely emphasized that the war on the National Assessment lay at its heart. In fact, [a climate official] charged in federal court that Cooney ‘played a lead role as White House agent for enforcing the suppression of the National Assessment and the systematic removal of meaningful reference to it.’”

 

418      “State efforts are spotty”: Sharon Begley, “Are You Ready For More? In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal. Why we’re unprepared for the harrowing future,” Newsweek, June 6, 2011.

It was the cover story: a tornado funnel doing its index-finger-of-God pointing beside a farmhouse. Under the words “Weather Panic: This Is The New Normal (And We’re Hopelessly Unprepared).”

That is: we had attained, perhaps, a new level of Too Late. A level beyond where Adaptation would do the unfortunate trick.

 

The idea of adapting to climate change was once a taboo subject. Scientists and activists feared that focusing on coping would diminish efforts to reduce carbon emissions. On the opposite side of the divide, climate-change deniers argued that since global warming is a “hoax,” there was no need to figure out how to adapt. “Climate-change adaptation was a nonstarter,” says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. “If you wanted to talk about that, you would have had to talk about climate change itself, which the Bush administration didn’t want to do.”

In fact, President Bush killed what author Mark Hertsgaard in his 2011 book, Hot, calls ‘a key adaptation tool,’ the National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the vulnerabilities in regions of the U.S. and ideas for coping with them. The legacy of that: state efforts are spotty and local action is practically nonexistent. “There are no true adaptation experts in the federal government, let alone states or cities,” says Arroyo.

 

418      “Tozzi’s time bomb”: Chris Mooney, “Paralysis by Analysis: Jim Tozzi’s regulation to end all regulation,” Washington Monthly, May 2004.

Thomas Frank also had recourse to an explosive simile. Just a higher caliber detonation.

This is from Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared America, Metropolitan Books|Henry Holt 2008. Chapter Seven, “Putting the Train In Reverse,” 169.

 

The bureaucratic neutron bomb—a device that would kill regulation but leave the regulatory agencies themselves intact and, apparently, on the job. In 2001 a figure from OIRA’s [Office of Information and Regulatory Affair’s] glory days built that device: the Data Quality Act, drafted by none other than Jim Tozzi and passed into law with a little help from a friendly Republican representative but with no hearings and no public notice. As implemented by George Bush II, it allowed outside parties—usually corporations or their lobbyists—to challenge the studies on which regulatory agencies based their decisions . . . the Data Quality Act exposed the regulatory process to interception and attack at every point.

And, yes, attack is the correct word. Although technically the law merely provides for the familiar give-and-take of the scientific method, it has in fact been used almost exclusively to slow things down and screw things up; studies of global warming, action on dangerous herbicides, and warnings against eating too much sugar have all been crushed in the regulatory logjam. According to one reporter, Tozzi, the author of the law, has [been] dreaming of finding a way “to induce regulatory sclerosis.” And with the Data Quality Act he found it.

 

418      “a dreary world of bare-knuckled trench warfare”: Daniel Hornstein, Chapter Five, “The Data Wars, Adaptive Management, and the Irony of “Sound Science,” in Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor, Eds, Rescuing Science from Politics Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, Cambridge University Press 2006, 104.

 

418      The nation’s official definition: Donald Kennedy, “Turning the Tables with Mary Jane,” Science, May 4, 2007. (As the piece points out, “Donald Kennedy is the Editor-in-Chief of Science.”)

First, Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) introduced an Amendment to the 1999 Omnibus Appropriation Bill charging the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to guarantee access, under the Freedom of Information Act, to data produced with the use of federally funded research. After two rounds of rule-making, OMB issued a final order putting the Shelby Amendment in regulatory form. That opened the door to the DQA [Data Quality Act], an amendment to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. OMB, in response, required each agency to establish guidelines ensuring the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity” of information it disseminates. DQA’s legislative history is sparse, because like the Shelby Amendment, it was tacked onto an appropriations bill in the dark. Its real author was an industry lobbyist named Jim Tozzi, who had also worked on the Shelby Amendment. Thus, the DQA is often called “Son of Shelby.”

It should not surprise us that the DQA has seen heavy use. The ink on the OMB regulation had scarcely dried when the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, headed by none other than Jim Tozzi, urged its constituents to use DQA to challenge the “junk science” offered to support health and environmental regulation. Naturally, the Center for Progressive Reform exhorted its troops to get active on the other side. Who won? It wasn’t even close. By 2004, the Washington Post had counted 39 serious challenges under the DQA, of which 32 had been filed by industry or industry organizations.

 

418      “If you were John Q. Citizen”: Marilyn Geewax, “Law Allows Businesses To Dispute Regulations; Alleged Errors In Agencies’ Data Can Now Be Challenged,” Knight Ridder News Service, October 6, 2002.

 

418      “like doing a giant crossword puzzle”: Steven McIntyre, “A Few Inconvenient Truths,” Climate Audit, June 14, 2006.

“I thought that it would be an interesting personal exercise rather like doing a giant crossword puzzle.”

https://climateaudit.org/2006/06/14/a-few-inconvenient-truths/#comment-52944

https://climateaudit.org/2006/06/14/a-few-inconvenient-truths/

Accessed 7-27-22.

 

419      “Nothing in McIntyre’s life”: Colby Cosh, “Centre of the Storm: Colby Cosh profiles the gentle Canadian who has changed the climate science world,” Maclean’s, December 13, 2009.

 

419      scholarship to MIT: Colby Cosh, “Centre of the Storm: Colby Cosh profiles the gentle Canadian who has changed the climate science world,” Maclean’s, December 13, 2009.

 

419      “despite having a good mind”: Antonio Regalado, “Global Warring: In Climate Debate, the ‘Hockey Stick’ Leads to a Face-Off,” The Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2005.

 

419      “I am well-educated”: Mary Ormsby, “Portrait Of A Local Climate Skeptic,” Toronto Star, December 12, 2009.

 

419      “no credentials in applied science”: Colby Cosh, “Centre of the Storm: Colby Cosh profiles the gentle Canadian who has changed the climate science world,” Maclean’s, December 13, 2009.

 

419      “would not have happened without one man”: Fred Pearce, “Climate Wars: The Story of the Hacked Emails | Battle Over Climate Data Turned Into War Between Scientists and Sceptics,” The Guardian, February 9, 2010.

 

Climategate would not have happened without one man: a Canadian squash-playing blogger and data obsessive in his early 60s called Steve McIntyre.

 

420      “It is my understanding”: Steve McIntyre, To: Dr. David Verardo, National Science Foundation, December 18, 2003.

http://www.climateaudit.info/correspondence/nsf.031218.htm

Accessed 7-30-22.

“Public Law 106-554,” 106 Congress, Government Printing Office, December 21, 2000.

Jim Tozzi’s Data Quality Act can be found on page 153, Section 515 (sec. 515).
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-106publ554/pdf/PLAW-106publ554.pdf

Accessed 7-30-22.

 

420      on NASA, too: Steve McIntyre, “NASA Evasion of Quality Control Procedures,” Climate Audit, December 28, 2007.

https://climateaudit.org/2007/12/28/nasa-evasion-of-quality-control-procedures/

Accessed 7-30-22.

Jim Tozzi apparently admired this use of his law so much, it ended up posted at one of his websites: The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness.

https://www.thecre.com/quality/2008/20080101_quality.html

Accessed 7-30-22.

Steve McIntyre, “A NASA Request for Review,” Climate Audit, January 3, 2008.

https://climateaudit.org/2008/01/03/a-nasa-request-for-review/

Accessed 7-30-22.

Steve McIntyre, “Hansen and the ‘Destruction of Creation,’” Climate Audit, August 20, 2007.

https://climateaudit.org/2007/08/20/computer-programming-and-the-destruction-of-creation/

Accessed 7-30-22.

 

420      to the NOAA: Steve McIntyre, “NOAA Gridded Data,” Climate Audit, March 21, 2007.

https://climateaudit.org/2007/03/21/noaa-gridded-data/

Accessed 7-30-22.

Steve McInytre, “NOAA: HadCRU3 Data Not ‘Influential,’” Climate Audit, August 8, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/08/08/noaa-hadcru3-data-not-influential/

Accessed 7-30-22.

 

420      against an informal website: This is Google Senior Software Engineer Tim Lambert at National Geographic’s ScienceBlogs.

Tim Lambert, “Steve McIntyre and the Data Quality Act,” Deltoid, ScienceBlogs, December 29, 2007.

 

I wonder where McIntyre learned about the ins and outs of the Data Quality Act? Has he been hanging out with tobacco lobbyists?

 

https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/12/29/steve-mcintyre-and-the-data-qu

Accessed 7-30-22.

The site maintained by Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, et al, RealClimate.org, is a fabulous resource.

https://www.realclimate.org/

Accessed 7-30-22.

 

420      Freedom of Information steroided this genial man: NOAA ended up including one of McIntyre’s data amendment requests in an official presentation on data policy—the bigness of which pleased Steve McIntyre so much he blogged about it.

Steve McIntyre, “Climate Audit and NOAA FOI [Freedom of Information] Policy,” July 3, 2008.

https://climateaudit.org/2008/07/03/climate-audit-and-noaa-foi-policy/

Accessed 7-30-22.

 

Tom Karl and Larry Tyminski, NOAA Data Management Committee Co-Chairs, “Overview of NOAA Archive Policy,” NOAA Science Advisory Board’s Data Archiving and Access Requirements Working Group (DAARWG), Chicago, IL., May 24-25, 2007.

http://www.joss.ucar.edu/daarwg/may07/presentations/KarL_DAARWG_NOAAArchivepolify-v0514.pdf

Accessed 7-30-22.

 

420      “a playground bully”: Ben Santer, To: Thomas R. Karl, NOAA, “Re: [Fwd: FOI Request],” November 11, 2008.

 

I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. . . We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully.

 

420      a chain of events resulting in just that: This was noted by some right from the start.

Dockery, backed by Harvard University, refused, citing confidentiality agreements with the 8,000 people who had shared medical histories and death certificates with the researchers. . . . But the researcher’s effort to protect the privacy of a few thousand people has paradoxically threatened that of millions more. Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, driven by both a conviction that publicly funded data such as Dockery’s should be available and by a desire to aid industries in his home state, last fall slipped a provision into the massive 1999 appropriations bill . . .

 

Jennifer Couzin, “Access to Data: Making Science An Open Book,” U.S. News and World Report, March 29, 1999.

 

420      the Canadian contacted his journal editors: Steve McIntyre, Thomas Crowley, “The Crowley-McIntyre Letters,” Climate Audit, July 01, 2005.

In this case, Dr. Elisabeth Kessler of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Editor-in-chief of Ambio, A Journal of Human Environment.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/07/01/the-crowley-mcintyre-letters/
Accessed 7-30-22.

 

420      “possible legalistic technicality”: Steve McIntyre, Thomas Crowley, “The Crowley-McIntyre Letters,” Climate Audit, July 01, 2005.

Q: Are you now or have you ever been — or have you ever known — a federally funded scientist?

This is Steve McIntyre:

 

You mention that your Ambio 2000 article did not use federal funding, although you have received federal funding for other articles . . . the stated sources for your Ambio 2000 data have been supported by U.S. federal funding and obligations might well ensue from obtaining the data from these authors.

 

420      “I’m usually happy to send people stuff”: Richard Monastersky, “Demand For Their Data on Climate Chills Scientists,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 15, 2005.

 

421      climate’s “great Satan”: “Centre of the Storm: Colby Cosh profiles the gentle Canadian who has changed the climate science world,” Maclean’s, December 13, 2009.

 

421      “the nation’s most hated” Neela Banerjee, “The Most Hated Climate Scientist In The US Fights Back: Michael Mann Is Taking a Stand For Science,” Yale Alumni Monthly, March April 2013.

The disproportion between Mann in career and in person, and Mann as a target of opprobrium, has been noted by many, including Mann himself. This is Kate Sheppard in Mother Jones.

 

It’s difficult to imagine how a guy who spends most of his time looking at endless columns of temperature records became a “fucking terrorist,” “killer,’ or “one-world-government socialist.” It’s even harder when you meet Michael Mann, a balding 45-year-old climate scientist who speaks haltingly and has a habit of nervously clearing his throat. And when you realize that the reason for all the hostility is a 12-year-old chart, it seems more than a little surreal.

 

Kate Sheppard, “The Hackers and the Hockey Stick,” Mother Jones, May/June 2011.

 

421      “When other kids were partying”: Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Chapter One, “Born in a War,” 5.

 

421      “Some of my U. Mass colleagues”: Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Chapter Four, “The Making of the Hockey Stick,” 41.

 

421      “a young man in a hurry”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter Eight, “Breaking the Hockey Stick,” 101.

 

422      Mann published in Nature: Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, Michael K. Hughes, “Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries,” Nature, 392 (1998): 779–787.

Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Prologue.

 

Some proxy records, such as the layers contained in deep ocean sediments, record only the coarsest changes, such as the coming and going of the major ice ages over eons. Other proxy records, such as tree rings, ice cores, corals, and lake sediments, can potentially tell us about climate conditions such as temperature, rainfall, or wind patterns for a single year or season. By using an array of such records, we can establish a year-by-year chronology of the climate changes of past centuries.

In the late 1990s, my coauthors and I published an attempt to use such paleoclimate proxy data to obtain a quantitative assessment of how Earth’s surface temperature had varied in past centuries. We published our original findings, which spanned the past six hundred years, in 1998, and the following year we were able to extend the analysis back over the entire past millennium. The picture that emerged was a wiggly curve documenting past temperature changes over the entire Northern Hemisphere (the hemisphere with the most data) and indicating a sharp rise in temperature over the past century. 

 

422      got profiled by the Times: William K. Stevens, “New Evidence Finds This Is Warmest Century in 600 Years,” The New York Times, April 28, 1998. (This is the same William K. Stevens who signed off—thinking of readers, and children's children—with “Good luck to you and to them.”)

 

I was caught completely off-guard by the amount of media attention the article received. Generally, one is lucky to get a nibble or two from the local media in response to press releases on a published scientific paper. This time was different. No sooner had the press releases gone out (one from U. Mass, another from Nature, and a third from the National Science Foundation) than the phone calls began coming in nonstop. Our study was written up in the New York Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, and a host of other major U.S. newspapers. Articles soon appeared in Time magazine and U.S. News and World Report. We even made it into Rolling Stone (though not the cover). I was asked in one afternoon to do television interviews with CNN, CBS, and NBC. In the CBS interview, John Roberts put it to me bluntly: “So does this prove humans are responsible for global warming?” He repeated the question at least three times during the interview, clearly not having gotten the money quote he was fishing for. I wouldn’t take the bait. I repeated that our results were “highly suggestive” of that conclusion, but I wouldn’t go further than that. I well knew that establishing that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context alone did not establish that human factors were responsible for it. Any conclusion about causality required the use of climate models to estimate the relative contributions of the various factors, including human increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, hypothesized to be responsible for the observed changes.

 

Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Chapter Four, “The Making of the Hockey Stick,” 49.

 

422      A year later, in 1999: Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, Michael K. Hughes, “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations,” Geophysical Research Letters, 26 (1999): 759–762.

 

422      “If the job of scientists is”: Fred Pearce, the Climate Files, Chapter Eight, “Breaking the Hockey Stick,” 102.

 

422      A dozen studies: Fred Pearce, “Grudge match; The crucial evidence for global warming is fatally flawed—or so we are told. Fred Pearce reports on the great hockey stick fight,” New Scientist, March 18, 2006.

 

Here Mann is on a winning streak: upwards of a dozen studies, some using different statistical techniques or different combinations of proxy records (excluding the bristlecone record, for instance), have produced reconstructions more or less similar to the original hockey stick.

 

In 2018, Mann himself put the figure higher. “The highest scientific body in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed our findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006. Dozens of groups of scientists have independently reproduced, confirmed and extended our findings, including a team of nearly 80 scientists from around the world who in 2013 published their finding in the premier journal Nature Geoscience that recent warmth is unprecedented in at least the past 1,400 years.” Michael Mann, “Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message,” Scientific American, April 18, 2018.

 

422      “The goddam guy”: Fred Pearce, “Grudge match; The crucial evidence for global warming is fatally flawed - or so we are told. Fred Pearce reports on the great hockey stick fight,” New Scientist, March 18, 2006.

 

422      “the top secret ‘Junk Science’”: Steve Milloy, “Kyoto Count-Up,” FoxNews.com, February 22, 2005

https://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,147995,00.html

https://junkscience.com/2005/02/kyoto-count-up/

Accessed 7-31-22.

Milloy had worked with Tozzi — and was also the final executive director of the TASSC, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. Small world.

 

423      their first Hockey Stick attack: Kate Sheppard, “Climategate: What Really Happened? How climate science became the target of the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known,” Mother Jones, April 21, 2011.

 

McIntyre’s entrée into the climate debate came with a paper he coauthored with economist Ross McKitrick that critiqued an earlier version of Mann’s hockey-stick graph. The paper was published in the November 2003 issue of Energy and Environment. It’s a publication known for providing a platform to skeptics—which is why, among the trove of hacked emails, there’s one from Mann urging colleagues to “dismiss this as [a] stunt, appearing in a so-called ‘journal’ which is already known to have defied standard practices of peer-review.” Mann predicted that “the usual suspects are going to try to peddle this crap.”

Sure enough, McIntyre and McKitrick were soon invited to Washington for a brief arranged by the George C. Marshall Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), both free-market think tanks that have been heavily funded by ExxonMobil and other oil interests. They were also asked to meet with Sen. James Inhofe, who has called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

 

423      that he was “auditing” Michael Mann: Steve McIntyre, “Show Us the Data,” National Post (Can.), February 15, 2005.

Mary Ormsby, “Portrait Of A Local Climate Skeptic,” Toronto Star, December 12, 2009. “McIntyre’s business background told him a statistical audit was a better gauge.”

 

423      “McIntyre, it seems”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter Eight, “Breaking the Hockey Stick,” 93.

 

423      “I would NOT RESPOND”: Michael Mann, To: Phil Jones, Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, “Subject: Re: Fw: Rutherford et al. [2004],” December 3, 2004.

 

423      hailed from Singer Land: McKitrick was a fellow at the Exxon-sponsored denial group the Fraser Institute—a couple of years later, the Institute would host the climate authority Lord Christopher Monckton. McKitrick was also affiliated with Friends of Science—who would sponsor the Lord’s Canada visit.

 

423      “fanning the flames of climate skepticism”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter Eight, “Breaking the Hockey Stick,” 91.

 

423       “McKitrick’s friends stoked”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter Eight, “Breaking the Hockey Stick,” 96.

 

423      Strange turn of events: Kate Sheppard, “The Hackers and the Hockey Stick,” Mother Jones, May/June 2011.

 

McIntyre’s paper made headlines. A few days after publication, he was featured in a front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal that pitted his hockey-stick critique against the whole of global warming science, saying he had “helped to reopen the debate.”

Few scientists will ever get that kind of coverage for their life’s work, let alone for a single article on someone else’s research. But McIntyre’s critique came at a time when those seeking to block action on climate change were on the defensive—many had been pilloried for their ties to industry and right-wing think tanks, and public opinion was turning toward action on climate change. At this pivotal moment, reopening the debate was just what the skeptics, and their industry backers, needed.

 

423      “splashed across the front page”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter Eight, “Breaking the Hockey Stick,” 96.

The full paragraph is like a little clip to keep on your phone to understand why some stories flourish in a media environment—essentially, they get watered and planted in the sun by interested gardeners—and some do not.

 

An essentially obscure paper in a second-ranked journal was splashed across the front page of Canada’s National Post with a political spin: “A pivotal global warming study central to the Kyoto Protocol contains serious flaws.” In news terms, the timing could not have been better. The protocol was set to come into force later that month. And it allowed the Bush administration, which had reneged on the protocol after coming into office, to claim the deal had been discredited.

 

Antonio Regalado, “Global Warring: In Climate Debate, the ‘Hockey Stick’ Leads to a Face-Off,” The Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2005.

 

423      a science defender later asked on CNN: This was Bill Nye on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, December 7, 2009.

 

423      “On a personal basis”: Stephen McIntyre, “Our Research Covered In The National Post,” Climate Audit, February 3, 2005.

https://climateaudit.org/2005/02/03/national-post/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

423      “I’m gratified by the coverage”: Stephen McIntyre, “Wall Street Journal – Feb. 14, 2005,” Climate Audit, February 13, 2005.

https://climateaudit.org/2005/02/13/wall-street-journal/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

424      “The trial had become the punishment”: Rich Cohen, Sweet N’ Low, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2006. Chapter 17, 124. The punishee is Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, founder of both the FDA and the Non-Smokers’ Protective League. “There were hearings. Wiley was exonerated. But wrecked. The trial had become the punishment.”

 

424      resulted in vindication: Andrew C. Revkin, “Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate,” The New York Times, June 22, 2006.

 

424      “There are people who believe”: Fred Pearce, “State Of Denial; A Bitter Battle Is Brewing Between Mainstream American Climate Scientists And The Minority Who Deny That Human Activity Is Causing Global Climate Change,” New Scientist, November 4, 2006.

Michael Mann grew to understand this. Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter Seven, “In the Line of Fire,” 107.

 

More carefully orchestrated and promoted contrarian attacks were to come. It would become increasingly clear to my colleagues and me that the intent of the attacks was to undermine not just the IPCC, but all of climate science. The attacks would make their way into White House policy and onto the floors of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. They would become increasingly personal, aimed at singling out specific individuals, me in particular, as if the entire weight of the scientific case for human-caused climate change rested on a handful of scientists.

 

424      In profiles the Canadian: Colby Cosh, “Centre of the Storm: Colby Cosh profiles the gentle Canadian who has changed the climate science world,” Maclean’s, December 13, 2009.

Margaret Wente, “Climate Science’s PR Disaster,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ont), December 1, 2009.

Colby Cosh, “Centre of the Storm,” Maclean’s, December 13, 2009.

 

424      “rarely makes charges personally”: Fred Pearce, “Battle Over Climate Data Turned Into War Between Scientists And Sceptics,” The Guardian (U.K.), February 9, 2010.

 

Strident though his website often is, McIntyre has usually avoided outright personal abuse . . . McIntyre rarely makes such charges personally but, they complained, he ‘continues to take absolutely no responsibility for the ridiculous fantasies and exaggerations that his supporters broadcast.’”

 

424      “Nigel Persaud”: Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter Five, “The Origins of Denial.”

As a bonus, Michael Mann offers a quick definition of “sock puppet.” So, people who aren’t even moderately online, enjoy the lexical stylings of a Cal and Yale educated scientist.

 

Not all “amateurs” are what they appear to be. A primary goal of the disinformation machine is to manufacture an illusion of grassroots support. This can be achieved by hiring ringers to pose as ordinary citizens, posting standard contrarian talking points and responses in online news threads, blogs, and the like. Prominent climate change deniers have occasionally been identified making use of a so-called sock-puppet (a “fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company”). Stephen McIntyre, for example, was found leveling online attacks hiding behind the sock-puppet “Nigel Persaud.”

 

424       “a flat-out” liar: Steve McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “MBH Respond to M&M,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, November 8, 2003.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/5s52FX08mPA/m/5_yWtLLEy14J

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

424      “a complete fabrication”: Steve McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Mann’s Files Disappearing,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, December 9, 2003.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/FXdjxZk-xTY/m/eTlod2oI3DYJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

424      “furtive and guilty”: Steve McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Mann’s Files Disappearing,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, December 9, 2003.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/FXdjxZk-xTY/m/eTlod2oI3DYJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

424      “The above pretty much shows”: Steve McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Auditing the Auditors #1,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, January 2, 2004.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/C3yxnsE8850/m/FU5pdMLIJewJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

Notice how close this is to the self-depiction of denial journalist James Delingpole. Two varieties of a certain kind of sound: “James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything.”

As Nigel, the gentleness slipped. When readers failed to appreciate the work of Steve McIntyre, Nigel claimed they were “frothing at the mouth” or “foaming” or, simply, “lazy.”

 

I take it that you have conceded that your frothing at the mouth about the supposed non-existence of the proxy PC calculations was merely that—frothing at the mouth—and that your present silence is a concession that your statements were untrue.

 

If you can stop frothing at the mouth for a moment, think about what is going on in the temperature PCs.

 

Stephen McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Re: Looking Hard at What M&M Did,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, July 25, 2004.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/yT-oPyjDG0Y/m/EGva5ltHm4IJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

For “foaming” (“Most topics on this board are just people foaming at the mouth”) there’s Stephen McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Re: Looking Hard at What M&M Did,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, July 26, 2004.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/yT-oPyjDG0Y/m/-3lL4ZTCYjgJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

“Lazy” is too fun to skimp.

 

In January on this board, responding to one of your diatribes[,] there was a reference to the PC calculations being up since October. You were too entrenched in your diatribes then or too lazy to look, as you are too entrenched in your diatribes now . . .

This board itself proves that M&M [McIntyre and McKitrick] had their stuff up. It’s Mann that is the question mark.

 

Stephen McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Re: Looking Hard at What M&M Did,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, July 24, 2004

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/yT-oPyjDG0Y/m/uFNtIZXF80UJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

Commenters sometimes guessed.

 

Nigel rears his ugly head again, I see. Are you a colleague of McKitrick’s by any chance? . . . Nigel, you appear desperate to try and rationalize McIntryre & McKitrick’s position. Why? . . . One person has already asked [why] the only posts you make are on this one issue.

 

Then McIntyre would stop posting for a while. Or change the subject. Or murmur something noncommittal: “Most topics on this board are just people foaming at the mouth.”

 

David Ball, “Re: Muller on Mann et al PCA: M&M are right, the hockey stick shape reflects the unconventional method, not the data,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, October 16, 2004.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/s7uzckycbus/m/LIRtPif-mvsJ

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

When commentators finally identified the Canadian hand within the Google sock, Steve McIntyre did not deny. See Tim Lambert at National Geographic’s ScienceBlogs.

Tim Lambert, “Climate Audit Follies,” Deltoid, ScienceBlogs, August 21, 2005.

https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/08/21/climate-audiot2

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

424      McIntyre noticed some unprotected files: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming, Guardian Books, 2010. Chapter 12, “Free the Data.”

 

424      “A Mole”: Stephen McIntyre, “A Mole,” Climate Audit, July 25, 2009.

http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      One even posted poetry: John Goetz, “Comments: A Mole,” Climate Audit, July 25, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/#comment-188928

Accessed 7-31-22.

. . . and U2’s “Elevation.”

425      “I doubt that I would bear up well”: Stephen McIntyre, “A Mole,” Climate Audit, July 25, 2009.

http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/

Accessed 7-31-22.

This was under a YouTube video: Jack Nicholson conducting his own mole investigation from Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006).

 

I’ll keep my eye out for secret agents from MI-5. The data’s in a safe place, but I doubt that I would bear up well under waterboarding.

 

He encouraged and dampened reader speculation with the same hand.

One reader asked, “Do we get to play 20 questions to figure out who the mole is?”

“Please don’t,” McIntyre replied,

 

Given the Met Office’s serious view of the consequences, it could compromise the mole’s career. I ask that people don’t indulge in such speculations.

In any event, I got it anonymously.

 

Steve McIntyre, “Comment: A Mole,” July 25, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/#comment-188719

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      “More news on the Climate Research Unit molehunt”: Stephen McIntyre, “Met Office/CRU Finds the Mole,” Climate Audit, July 28, 2009.

http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/28/met-officecru-finds-the-mole/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      “The ‘Mole’ risked his career”: Henry A., “Comment: Met Office/CRU Finds the Mole,” July 28, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/28/met-officecru-finds-the-mole/#comment-189027

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

McIntyre replied,

 

I do not know precisely who the mole is (and fordprefect—please don’t ask me to parse what others say: take me at my word) nor do I entirely understand his/her motives in the security breach. Nor do I assume that the mole necessarily had my best interests at heart. We’ll see how things turn out.

 

Stephen McIntyre, “Comment: Met Office/CRU Finds the Mole,” July 28, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/28/met-officecru-finds-the-mole/#comment-189035

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      Had McIntyre put a good person in jeopardy?: For worried example:

 

I hope “The Mole” approved of Steve in making public his or her generosity.

 

Pete M, “Comment: A Mole,” Climate Audit, July 26, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/#comment-188840

Accessed 8-2-22. 

The Mole must have known it would go public here in ClimateAudit.

 

Gene Nemetz, “Comment: A Mole,” Climate Audit, July 26, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/#comment-188847 

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

425      “I had some fun with it”: Kyla Mandel, “McIntyre’s Mission: An Obsessive Quest to Disprove Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick,” Desmog, November 30, 2014.

https://www.desmog.com/2014/11/30/mcintyre-mission-obsessive-quest-disprove-michael-mann-hockey-stick/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      “It caused quite a commotion”: The weird thing: As Nigel Persaud, McIntyre had taken a pretty unbending, zero-tolerance stance when it came to untruthfulness.

 

. . . once Mann says some untrue things, you can’t give him the benefit of doubt on the other matters.

 

Steve McIntyre as Nigel Persaud, “Auditing the Auditors #1,” Google Groups, Sci.Environment, January 2, 2004.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.environment/c/C3yxnsE8850/m/p0nwYjDBAd4J

Accessed 7-31-22. 

 

425      “discourteous”: Stephen McIntyre, “Santer’s Boss Seeks to ‘Clarify Mis-Impressions,’” Climate Audit, January 30, 2009.

http://climateaudit.org/2009/01/30/santers-boss-seeks-to-clarify-mis-impressions/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      “graceless”: Stephen McIntyre, “Hansen Frees the Code,” Climate Audit, September 9, 2007.

https://climateaudit.org/2007/09/08/hansen-frees-the-code/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      he filed a charge of academic misconduct: Stephen McIntyre, “Schmidt’s Conspiracy Theory,” Climate Audit, May 16, 2012.

https://climateaudit.org/2012/05/16/schmidts-conspiracy-theory/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      Older men calling themselves citizen scientists: Willis Eschenbach, “Citizen Science: Dr. Roy Spencer’s Ill Considered Comments on Citizen Science,” Watts Up With That, October 9, 2013.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/09/dr-roy-spencers-ill-considered-comments-on-citizen-science/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      “an unanticipated outpost”: Fred Pearce, “Climate Wars: The Story of the Hacked Emails | Climate Change: Battle Over Climate Data Turned Into War Between Scientists and Sceptics,” The Guardian, February 9, 2010.

 

425      Alaskan sport-fishing guide: “Curriculum Vitae: Willis Eschenbach,” Willis Eschenbach, Desmog.

https://www.desmog.com/willis-eschenbach/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

425      “Just a guy trying to move science forwards”: Willis Eschenbach, Stephen McIntyre, “Willis Eschenbach’s FOI Request,” November 25, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/11/25/willis-eschenbachs-foi-request/

Acccessed 7-31-22.

 

426      “I am sure that we can bring this”: Willis Eschenbach, Stephen McIntyre, “Willis Eschenbach’s FOI Request,” November 25, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/11/25/willis-eschenbachs-foi-request/

Acccessed 7-31-22.

  

426      “FOIA attacks”: Stephen H. Schneider, Science As A Contact Sport: Inside The Battle To Save Earth’s Climate, National Geographic Society 2009. Chapter Four, “A Fragile Planet,” 147.

Spencer Weart, “Global Warming: How Skepticism Became Denial,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1, 2011.

 

Personal attacks proliferated. Leading researchers were assaulted with countless questions and demands for information, often disingenuous, and even investigations and lawsuits. They were insulted, slandered, and sent so many death threats that some had to take security measures. The only comparable case in science was the vilification and threats showered on prominent defenders of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Even that did not reach the broad scale and public prominence of the attacks not only on individuals, but on the community of climate scientists as a whole. Some leading climate scientists found a large part of their time had to be spent not doing research, as they would have preferred, but responding to attacks and denial.

 

426      “You have to ask them to do something”: Stephen McIntyre, “Reply From Cicerone of NAS,” Climate Audit, September 18, 2006.

https://climateaudit.org/2006/...

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “an engineer”: John M. Broder, “Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate,” The New York Times, March 2, 2010. “Willis Eschenbach, an engineer and climate contrarian who posts frequently on climate skeptic blogs . . . “

 

426      “I work building houses”: Willis Eschenbach, “How Clouds and Thunderstorms Control the World’s Temperature,” The Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, Chicago, IL, May 2010.

https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/videos/willis-eschenbach-iccc4

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

Joseph Bast, Heartland Institute President, stuck for an explanation as to just what it was Eschenbach did, introduced him to the Fourth International this way: 

“In any event, the next speaker is Willis Eschenbach, who’s a — I guess a Renaissance Man. He, uh, has done many things. He is a climate researcher. And an active and energetic blogger. Um: and even spent a little time working for the Peace Corps. Spent a little time in the South Pacific learning how to surf. So, um—Willis can talk to you about a whole lot of experiences that he’s had.”

The title card the Fourth International Conference settled on was “Independent Climate Researcher.” Which fits the bill. A sort of non-uniformed, unarmed, never-trained, ad hoc soldier.

At the Seventh International Eschenbach was introduced like so: “He’s currently employed as a house carpenter.”

Before the introducer explained the real reason for Eschenbach’s celebrity. “Finally, he has the odd distinction of being the person who filed the first Freedom of Information request to the University of East Anglia. Unwittingly setting off a chain of events which eventually culminated in Climategate.”

Eschenbach, who in this appearance sounds exactly like the comic actor Will Forte playing Willis Eschenbach, eventually explains, “I work building houses.” With a disarming laugh: “Nobody cares what my ideas about science are.”

Willis Eschenbach, “Global Warming’s Impact on Ecosystems,” Seventh International Conference on Climate Change, Chicago, IL, June 27, 2012.

https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/videos/willis-eschenbach-iccc7

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “scientist Willis Eschenbach”: James Delingpole, “Climategate: Another Smoking Gun . . .” Daily Telegraph Blogs (U.K.), December 8, 2009. “Just when you think it can’t get any better, along comes this cracker of an expose at Watts Up With That, courtesy of scientist Willis Eschenbach.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20100216184313/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019301/climategate-another-smoking-gun/

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “I have absolutely no credentials”: Willis Eschenbach, Fourth International Conference on Climate Change. “I have absolutely no credentials at all. I have no scientific education.”

https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/videos/willis-eschenbach-iccc4

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “a very experienced computer modeler”: Christopher Booker, “Unscientific Hype About The Flooding Risks From Climate Change Will Cost Us All Dear,” Daily Telegraph (U.K.), February 26, 2011.

 

On Friday came the fullest and most expert dissection of the Nature paper so far, published on the Watts Up With That website by Willis Eschenbach, a very experienced computer modeler.

 

Most expert.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120218062457/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8349545/Unscientific-hype-about-the-flooding-risks-from-climate-change-will-cost-us-all-dear.html

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “Just about any field of science”: Willis Eschenbach, “Global Warming’s Impact on Ecosystems,” Seventh International Conference on Climate Change, Chicago, IL, June 27, 2012.

https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/videos/willis-eschenbach-iccc7

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

As an amateur scientist I have a huge advantage. In that: just about any field of science that I look at, I know absolutely nothing about. In Buddhism they call this beginner’s mind.

 

426      “In Buddhism they call this”: And—because this reader obviously can’t resist—some C.V. highlights. In the jobs portion, Eschenbach additionally lists “crab unloader,” “art class model,” “professional blackjack player,” and “probably a few others as well.”

Willis Eschenbach, “Curriculum Vitae: Willis Eschenbach,” Desmog.

https://www.desmog.com/willis-eschenbach/

Accessed 7-31-22.

For the bloodily interested: There’s also a complete Willis Eschenbach debunk available online:

“Who Is Willis Eschenbach?”, Popular Technology, October 17, 2013.

http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/10/who-is-willis-eschenbach.html

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “arch-inquisitor”: Fred Pearce, “Climate Scientists Contradicted Spirit Of Openness By Rejecting Information Requests,” The Guardian, February 9, 2010.

 

426      “Needless to say”: Stephen McIntyre, “Quantifying the Hansen Y2K Error,” Climate Audit, August 5, 2007.

https://climateaudit.org/2007/08/06/quantifying-the-hansen-y2k-error/

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “Freedom of Information time is close”: Stephen McIntyre, “Comment: Quantifying the Hansen Y2K Error,” Climate Audit, August 8, 2007.

https://climateaudit.org/2007/08/06/quantifying-the-hansen-y2k-error/#comment-98198

Accessed 8-1-22.

 

426      “When I ask them”: Antonio Regalado, “Global Warring: In Climate Debate, the ‘Hockey Stick’ Leads to a Face-Off,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2005.

 

426      “Leading researchers”: Spencer Weart, “Global Warming: How Skepticism Became Denial,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1, 2011.

 

427      McIntyre on a career NASA scientist: Stephen McIntyre, “Is Gavin Schmidt Honest?”, Climate Audit, October 29, 2005.

This must have been one of those rare, make-charges-himself times. (Schmidt was a Jim Hansen colleague at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.)

https://climateaudit.org/2005/10/29/is-gavin-schmidt-honest/

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

427      “Most saw them”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 12, “Free the Data,” 150.

 

During 2008 the emailers continued to debate what to do about a rising tide of Freedom of Information requests. Most saw them as a threat to their work – not because they would uncover fraud, but because they took up their time. Many thought disruption was the true purpose of the people who submitted the requests.

 

427      already publicly available: Kate Sheppard, “The Hackers and the Hockey Stick,” Mother Jones, May/June 2011.

 

McIntyre and others kept at it. In 2008, he sought raw data and email correspondence from Benjamin Santer, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Santer refused, arguing that the data were already publicly available. In a letter to a fellow scientist he vented that the time-consuming request was part of “a calculated strategy to divert my attention and focus away from research.”

 

427      “You should have no problem”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter Ten, “Satellites, Stats, and Bogeyman Santer,” 120. This reader kind of loves the scare quotes around audit here.

“I gather,” Ben Santer emailed McIntyre, “that your intent is to ‘audit’ the findings of our recently published paper in the International Journal of Climatology.”

 

 

427      “You will need to do a little work”: Believing himself the story’s hero, McIntyre had posted Ben Santer’s entire email online. Same opening sentence as above.

 

 

Dear Mr. McIntyre,

 

I gather that your intent is to “audit” the findings of our recently-published paper in the International Journal of Climatology (IJoC). You are of course free to do so. I note that both the gridded model and observational datasets used in our IJoC paper are freely available to researchers. You should have no problem in accessing exactly the same model and observational datasets that we employed. You will need to do a little work in order to calculate synthetic Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) temperatures from climate model atmospheric temperature information. This should not pose any difficulties for you. Algorithms for calculating synthetic MSU temperatures have been published by ourselves and others in the peer-reviewed literature. You will also need to calculate spatially-averaged temperature changes from the gridded model and observational data. Again, that should not be too taxing.

In summary, you have access to all the raw information that you require in order to determine whether the conclusions reached in our IJoC paper are sound or unsound. I see no reason why I should do your work for you, and provide you with derived quantities (zonal means, synthetic MSU temperatures, etc.) which you can easily compute yourself. . .

Please do not communicate with me in the future.

 

Ben Santer

 

Stephen McIntyre, “Santer Refuses Data Request,” Climate Audit, November 10, 2008.

https://climateaudit.org/2008/11/10/santer-refuses-data-request/

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

427      had been “insolent”: Stephen McIntyre, “Comment: Santer Refuses Data Request,” Climate Audit, November 11, 2008.

https://climateaudit.org/2008/11/10/santer-refuses-data-request/#comment-167444

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

427      As additional punishment: Ben Santer, “Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind,” RealClimate, February 24, 2010.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/close-encounters-of-the-absurd-kind/

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

I replied that Mr. McIntyre was welcome to “audit” our calculations, and that all of the primary model data we had employed were archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and freely available to any researcher. Over 3,400 scientists around the world currently analyze climate model output from this open database.

My response was insufficient for Mr. McIntyre. He submitted two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for climate model data—not for the freely available raw data, but for the results from intermediate calculations I had performed with the raw data. One FOIA request also asked for two years of my email correspondence related to these climate model data sets.

. . . When I invited Mr. McIntyre to “audit” our entire study, including the intermediate calculations, and told him that all the data necessary to perform such an “audit” were freely available, he expressed moral outrage on his blog. I began to receive threatening emails. Complaints about my “stonewalling” behavior were sent to my superiors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at the U.S. Department of Energy.

 

 

427      “If Santer wants to try”: Fred Pearce, Climate Files, Chapter Ten, 121.

 

He felt that McIntyre was more interested in conducting “fishing expeditions” for his data than in doing genuine research . . . “I believe McIntyre is pursuing a calculated strategy to divert my attention and focus away from research.”

 

427      “We’ll see if Santer ever sent the data”: Stephen McIntyre, “Comment: Santer Refuses Data Request,” Climate Audit, November 10, 2008.

https://climateaudit.org/2008/11/10/santer-refuses-data-request/#comment-167499

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

427      “bringing their lab into disrepute”: Ben Santer, To: Gavin Schmidt et al, “Re: Further fallout from our IJoC paper,” December 2, 2008.

 

427      from an ornament into a blemish: Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt, Bloomsbury, 2010. Chapter Six, “The Denial of Global Warming,” Introduction, 1:

 

Ben Santer is the kind of guy you can never imagine anyone attacking . . . He’s one of the world’s most distinguished scientists — the recipient of a 1998 MacArthur “genius” award and numerous prizes and distinctions from his employer — the U.S. Department of Energy — because he has done more than just about anyone to prove the human causes of global warming. Ever since his graduate work in the mid-1980s, he has been trying to understand how the Earth’s climate works, and whether we can say for sure that human activities are changing it. He has shown that the answer to that question is yes.

 

427      He wrote the director: This was Thomas R. Karl, who ran the NCDC at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency —a co-author on the International Journal of Climatology piece.

 

I believe that our community should no longer tolerate the behavior of Mr. McIntyre and his cronies. McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse. He deals in the currency of threats and intimidation. We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an “audit” by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues.

In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the “derived” model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully.

 

Ben Santer, To: Thomas R. Karl, NOAA, “Re: [Fwd: FOI Request],” November 11, 2008.

 

428      “McIntyre often made it clear”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter One, “Two Tribes Go To War,” 20.

I think the chapter title is a circa 1985 Frankie Goes to Hollywood reference. Just checked. Yes it is.

 

428      Exactly what that legal scholar had predicted: . . . When writing about Jim Tozzi’s data laws.

Daniel Hornstein, Chapter Five, “The Data Wars, Adaptive Management, and the Irony of ‘Sound Science,’” in Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor, Eds, Rescuing Science from Politics Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, Cambridge University Press 2006, 104.

In fact, “data wars” is the phrase Fred Pearce finds, without reference to or apparent readerly knowledge of Daniel Hornstein. That’s the effect of a good guess: not only the outcome, the description of that outcome. Pearce, The Climate Files, 13, 112.

 

428      a “siege mentality”: Fred Pearce, “Climate Wars: The Story of the Hacked Emails | Climate Change: Battle Over Climate Data Turned Into War Between Scientists And Sceptics,” The Guardian, February 9, 2010.

 

Whether it was democracy in action, or defence against malicious attempts to disrupt research, climate scientists were driven to siege mentality by persistence of sceptics.

 

Pearce elsewhere calls it a “bunker mentality.” Pearce, The Climate Files, 2, 13.

 

428      Steve McIntyre had always wanted it: Kate Sheppard, “The Hackers and the Hockey Stick,” Mother Jones, May/June 2011.

 

The fights over the hockey stick eventually faded from the headlines, but the data war raged on. McIntyre turned his attention to pursuing the data that climate scientists had drawn from to conclude that the planet is drastically warming. He was particularly interested in East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, keepers of one of the most complete sets of temperature records in the world. He asked the unit for raw data, but was rebuffed.

 

428      “He might already have it”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 12, “Free the Data,” 156. “In early July, McIntyre appealed to the University of East Anglia against being refused the CRU’s raw temperature data. He might already have it, but there was a principle at stake.”

 

428      “Nowhere have I encouraged readers”: Stephen McIntyre, “Comment: A Mole,” Climate Audit, July 25, 2009.

https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/25/a-mole/#comment-188949

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

428      “Quite the opposite”: Just as he’d never seen anything particularly earth-shattering in Michael Mann’s work. McIntyre wrote one climate scientist in 2006, “The hockey stick and its cousin series do not, of themselves, have a great deal to say about the great issue of doubling carbon dioxide.”

Steve McIntyre, “Thacker’s ‘Sources,’” Climate Audit, April 13, 2006.

https://climateaudit.org/2006/04/13/thackers-sources/

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

The climate scientist was Jerry Mahlman, Director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab at the NOAA. Two years earlier, Mahlman had explained the following to the Bush-era Senate.

 

Global warming is real and is a phenomenon that humans have created. Climate scientists worldwide have understood its essence since the so-called “Charney Report” of the National Research Council 25 years ago. Our burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) is the indisputably direct cause of the ever-increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This added carbon dioxide acts directly to warm the planet. There is no scientific controversy about these facts. The eventual warming amounts for Earth are expected to be substantial, but with some remaining uncertainty concerning how much warming we will receive for given scenarios of future amounts of carbon dioxide, and other “greenhouse” gases.

. . . I look forward to the day when I might see the public policy process responding within the U.S., and the world, to address these serious challenges to the future of our planet. Thank you. I would be pleased to address any questions that you may have.

 

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, “Statement,” U.S. Senate, Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation, Hearings on Climate Change, March 3, 2004.

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2004/3/climate-change

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

428      “Mr. McIntyre’s unchecked, extraordinary power”: Ben Santer, “Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind,” RealClimate, February 24, 2010.

 

428      “It was clear that by 2009”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 12, “Free the Data,” 152.

 

In retrospect, it was clear that by 2009 things were coming to a head. Freedom of information requests were piling up. The scientists were increasingly angered at how long it was taking to fend them off. It would, they felt, be even worse to deliver all the data being requested. They could only see that such acquiescence would result in further demands.

 

429      “FOIA.zip”: Kate Sheppard, “Climategate: What Really Happened? How climate science became the target of the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known,” Mother Jones, April 21, 2011.

 

McIntyre’s latest requests for both the raw CRU data and the email correspondence between scientists about those data were formally denied on November 13, 2009. Four days later, a massive bundle of files named FOIA.zip was anonymously posted on several prominent skeptic blogs and RealClimate. In it were years’ worth of the climate scientists’ email exchanges … Sometime on or after November 12, more than 1,000 emails between climate scientists and 3,587 other documents, including raw data and computer code, were copied from the CRU server. The files were posted online, with duplicates posted to several other servers around the world. At 7:24 a.m. EST, a link to the files appeared in a comment on McIntyre’s Climate Audit.

 

Climate Audit has an interesting breakdown of the leak.

Stephen McIntyre, “The Mosher Timeline,” Climate Audit, January 12, 2010.

https://climateaudit.org/2010/01/12/the-mosher-timeline/

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

429      signed himself “Mr. FOIA”: Rebecca Leber, A.J. Vicens, “Seven Years Before Russia Hacked the Election, Someone Did the Same Thing to Climate Scientists,” Mother Jones, December 2017.

 

Mr. FOIA has reemerged twice since 2009 . . . We still know very little about “Mr. FOIA”—the online persona who claimed to be behind Climategate. 

  

429      “the messy unraveling”: James Delingpole, “Watching the Climategate Scandal Explode Makes Me Feel Like A Proud Parent,” The Spectator (U.K.), December 12, 2009.

 

429      “Now I want to tell you”: James Delingpole, “Climategate and the War Against Man, Bear, Pig,” Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, The Heartland Institute, May 2010.

His voice has the basically un-reassuring quality of all voices excited by the nearness of a microphone.
https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/videos/james-delingpole-iccc4

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

429      “James Delingpole, whose teeth”: Sam Wollaston, “Grand Designs,” The Guardian, July 24, 2005.

 

429      “A BBC personality introduced himself”: James Delingpole, “My Moment of Rock-Star Glory At A Climate Change Sceptics’ Conference In America,” The Spectator (U.K.), May 25, 2010.

This is Delingpole’s Spectator column. Which had one of those let’s-be-honest-shall-we? titles: “You Know It Makes Sense.”

On the other hand, it is from James Delingpole that I learned the U.K. term for this type of personal journalism: A “me-column.”

James Delingpole, “I’m Boring, I’m Ugly, and I Can’t Write,” The Spectator, July 5, 2003.

 

430      “I’ve been lucky enough”: Neil Cross, “My Literary Top 10,” Pulp.net, November 2008.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110122145812/http://www.pulp.net/top10/07/neil-cross.html

Accessed 8-2-22.

 

430      “the intense, bespectacled student”: Imogen Ridgway, “Why It’s Toff At the Top,” The Evening Standard (London), July 22, 2005.

 

430      the libertarian Heartland Institute: S. Fred Singer, Craig Idso, Climate Change Reconsidered, The Heartland Institute 2009. Craig Idso’s father being Sherwood Idso—the Greening of Planet Earth guy. The Keelings measure CO₂. The Idsos prevaricate about the measurements.

 

430      “A warmer world will be”: Some old friends reencountered here.

Michael Mann, Tom Toles, “Deniers Club: Meet The People Clouding The Climate Change Debate: They’ve Stalled Action With A Campaign Of Deliberate Misinformation,” The Washington Post, September 16, 2016.

 

S. Fred Singer is the most prolific of the deniers-for-hire. … he left academia in 1990 to found a think tank, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, with a mission of debunking the science of ozone depletion, climate change, tobacco and other environmental and health threats. He has received considerable funding from corporate interests, including tobacco company Philip Morris, seed and pesticide company Monsanto and energy company Texaco. His many works include a 2009 report titled “Climate Change Reconsidered,” which concludes that “a warmer world will be a safer and healthier world for humans and wildlife alike.”

 

430      “who isn’t a serious spliffhead”: James Delingpole, “The Ups and Downs of Hash,” The Evening Standard (London), September 15, 2003.

 

I like the buzz you get when trying to place a detailed order with your dealer. . . Most of all, I like the fact that you are contributing to an economy where absolutely nothing of the proceeds will end up in the hands of a Government given to squandering its funds on [positions] for Race Awareness Officers and Lesbian Outreach Executives.

 

430      “most harrowing acid experiences”: James Delingpole, “Rodney King Saved My Life,” Telegraph Blogs (U.K.), June 18, 2012. The author on two favorite topics: substances and self-valuation.

 

I got another really good scene for my novel Thinly Disguised Autobiography . . . Which Tom Wolfe’s daughter reckons is one of the best books she’s ever read. And she’s right, it’s a total bloody masterpiece, perhaps the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, with definitely the best E scene in literature and probably the best acid scene apart from maybe the one in Julian Cope’s Head-On.

 

Or this bit from his microclimate of a website, Delingpole World.

Thinly Disguised Autobiography, mentioned above, is the writer’s closest-to-himself novel; as a craft exercise, the title demonstrates a rare effect: somebody borrowing a joke while failing to understand that joke at the same time.

Dave Eggers’ title A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius seems to have been on Delingpole’s mind. (Elsewhere he describes his own work as “at least as wittily post-modern as Dave Eggers.”) But A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is (a) truth in advertising—the book is about family loss; and (b) what, all things being equal, we deep-down hope to find ourselves reading.

Thinly Veiled Autobiography is also (a) truth in advertising—it is very much its author’s modestly transformed experience; but (b) what, all things being equal, what we deep-down hope to not find ourselves reading.

This comes from the area of Delingpole World where a visitor is invited to purchase content.

 

In some ways this is the best book I have ever written and the best I will write. It is a masterpiece. Knowing it’s a masterpiece is why I came down very hard at the time [on] some of [the] sniping critics . . .

You will like if: you’ve been to or are going to go to university (especially if it’s Oxford or Cambridge); you want to read the best set-piece about Ecstasy in literature, and one of the best about LSD . . . Oh sod it, just read it. It’s a blooming work of genius.

 

Extra credit: in this promotional link to the most impressive work the writer will ever produce, Delingpole has retained the same proof-reading error for at least a decade. (I fixed it above.)

 

Knowing it’s a masterpiece is why I came down very hard at the time of some of sniping critics who just didn’t get this.

 

2023: https://delingpoleworld.com/thinly-disguised-autobiography/ 

11 Years ago:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121208074931/http:/jamesdelingpole.com/wordpress/james-books/thinly-disguised-autobiography/

Accessed 7-31-22.

 

430      “an explorer’s heart”: See also: “No Votes For Pooh,” The Spectator, November 8, 2003. (“Where in A.A. Milne is there a single scene about what it’s like to take Ecstasy? Or about wanking? And where is the boldly experimental, strangely lyrical passage at the end where the narrator drifts off in this drug-induced reverie . . ?”) “Dickens Delivers,” The Spectator, November 1, 2008. (“About 25 years ago, during a particularly bad acid trip, I had my soul stolen by Mister Migarette.”) “Pleasure But Not Ecstasy: This Drug Perambulation Fails To Score with James Delingpole,” Sunday Telegraph (London), January 13, 2002. “Glasto: Hits and Myths,” Sunday Telegraph (London), June 22, 2003. (“And as the LSD I’d inadvisedly consumed…”) “Territorial Imperative,” The Spectator, December 19, 2009. (“I think it’s the problem with Christmas generally. The whole season reminds me of a slightly dodgy Ecstasy pill. ‘Am I up yet?’ you keep asking yourself.”) Etc.

 

430      “The trustafarian dude”: James Delingpole, “The Grim Reefer,” The Spectator, June 14, 2003. An important part, apparently, of his self-presentation and self-concept. “You’re like Hunter S. Thompson in a pair of green wellies.” Toby Young, “From One Hustler to Another,” The Spectator July 19, 2003.

 

430      He had done time as a food writer: James Delingpole, “Eating Out: Brotherly lunch. DENIM, 4a Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2,” Independent on Sunday (London), January 17, 1999. “Everyone thinks that being a restaurant critic is the best job in the world. But it isn’t at Christmas.”

He offers the same demur half a year later: “Some people think it’s the cushiest job in the world being a restaurant critic.” Then continues, “I’ve definitely eaten classier bacon.” James Delingpole, “Restaurant: A Happy Ending — Jacobs On the Mall; 30a South Mall, Cork, Eire,” Independent on Sunday (London), July 11, 1999.

 

430      travel reporter: James Delingpole, “How To Be Cool When It’s Hot: All You Need For A Perfect Holiday,” The Times (London), July 27, 2004. “Out of pure altruism, I have made you a list of the 10 things that you absolutely must remember to take with you on holiday.”

James Delingpole, “Pack the Linen Suit: Forget the Essentials, James Delingpole Prefers to Take Luxuries on Holiday,” The Times (London), July 29, 2003. “You might think that only a fool would take a dinner jacket on holiday . . . Suppose the head of the local cocaine cartel invites you for a sampling tour round his plantation, but only on condition that you’re properly dressed.”

 

430      shopping correspondent: James Delingpole, “Jeans To Die, Cry, and Sigh For . . . From the Hottest and Hippest To the Most Classic, From the Most Expensive (£259) To the Best Bargain (£50), James Delingpole, With Expert Help, Finds the Perfect Pair,” The Times (London), April 18, 2005. “How are you supposed to know which ones are cool and which ones are designer rip-offs?”

With the advent of e-commerce, the writer stood ready to act as docent. James Delingpole, “e-Shopping: How To Buy The Best On The Net. This Week: Beach Gear,” The Daily Telegraph (London), July 20, 2002. “Bucket and Spade. The best selections are at the Early Learning Centre, www.elc.co.uk (e.g. bucket set with fetching shark motif, pounds 3).”

 

430      “A few years ago on a Caribbean island”: James Delingpole, “Clash of Egos; Television,” The Spectator, November 27, 2004.

 

431      “Science is bloody boring”: James Delingpole, “A Beautiful Mind; Television,” The Spectator, April 17, 2004. Benedict Cumberbatch played Hawking. Re science: “No one barring a handful of boffins remotely understands it.” Bonus: Boffin is U.K. slang for nerd.

 

431      “pathetically” Googling himself: James Delingpole, “A Novelist Writes: Modern Fiction Is So Tedious,” The Times (London), August 28, 2004.

 

431      “People say I look a bit”: James Delingpole, “I’ve Never Met A Girl Who Hero-Worships Martin Amis As I Do,” The Spectator, March 20, 2010.

 

It’s secretly one of the main reasons my friends [and] I decided to come to this Emirates Festival of Literature. To hang with The Mart. The great Martin Amis. Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds pathetic.

 

James Delingpole, “Why I Daren’t Admit To Being a Tory: James Delingpole Has Discovered That If You Are Right-Wing, the Best Thing To Do Is To Keep Your Mouth Shut,” The Spectator, January 04, 2003. “I felt terribly privileged [because] the guest list included Martin Amis.”

Martin Amis had become a private integer on the Delingpole exchange. For tracking progress; for measuring compensation schemes. “When [Amis’s novel] The Information was being touted round, there were two offers at the £500,000 asking price.” (James Delingpole, “Diary,” The Spectator, September 29, 2001.) “But obviously I’m still open to offers . . . if you pay me Martin Amis rates.” (James Delingpole, “What A Lot of Rubbish; Television,” The Spectator, January 6, 2001.)

 

431      “Delingpole has a talent for something”: Anthony Quinn, “I Tell You These Things Because They’re True,” The Daily Telegraph (London), August 02, 2003. “If hustling alone were enough to guarantee fame, then James Delingpole would already be among the top rank of celebrities.”

 

431      “but I don’t think it’s for novel writing”: Some lines must’ve especially cut.

“Amusing enough if you are categorically not waiting for the next Martin Amis.” Nicholas Lezard, “Losing the Plot Oh So Slowly,” The Evening Standard (London), July 21, 2003.

 

Delingpole quasi-reviewed himself. (To make the comparisons assigned reviewers wouldn’t. The Corrections reference is a bit of a head-scratcher.)

 

My new book, Thinly Disguised Autobiography, is not just good. It’s absolutely bloody amazing. The drug scenes make Irvine Welsh look like Mary Poppins; the sex scenes are more realistic than the real thing; it’s the finest dissection of the English class system since Evelyn Waugh; the dialogue rocks . . . it’s at least as wittily post-modern as Dave Eggers but without the cloying sentimentality; the squalid bits outfoul Martin Amis; it’s better edited than The Corrections [?]; and the ending, when with sorrow you reach it, turns out to be so blindingly brilliant . . .

 

James Delingpole, “I’m Boring, I’m Ugly And I Can’t Write,” The Spectator, July 5, 2003.

Two weeks later, this anguished billboard. “Please buy my book. Lots and lots of copies.” James Delingpole, “Novel Approach,” The Spectator, July 19, 2003.

Eleven more months. “My dirty, funny, druggy, shockingly honest novel is coming out in paperback . . . And because I am a shameless whore prepared to do anything for publicity I am going to tell you about one of the most painful and embarrassing periods covered in the book.” James Delingpole, “New Ranges For Sloanes,” The Spectator, June 15, 2004.

 

431      “You don’t make nearly enough effort”: The title was, “From One Hustler to Another.” Toby Young, The Spectator, July 19, 2003.

Young couldn’t find a way around the four heroic syllables either. “For starters, I don’t quite get this is-it-or-isn’t-it-an-autobiography thing,” Young wrote. “Like Martin Amis including a character in Money called ‘Martin Amis.’ [I]t’s a bit irritating.”

 

431      “bloody good for the writing.”: William Leith, “A Writer’s Life: James Delingpole — the Novelist Tells William Leith Why He Is Happy To Write About Himself,” The Daily Telegraph (London), July 19, 2003.

The profile begins, “James Delingpole says, ‘I think there are two sorts of writer. There’s the Jeffrey Archer type, who can’t write for toffee, but is quite good at thinking up plots, and then there’s the sort like me . . .’ ”

And the reader feels a stab. One of the rare interviews promoting Delingpole as a literary figure. And his lead-off is an unconscious borrow from . . . who else?

“Can’t write for toffee.” Martin Amis, The Information, Crown 1995. 200, 203, 327 (twice), 330, 351 (twice), 354 (the “for toffee” part).

 

431      the way a literary person: William Leith, “A Writer’s Life: James Delingpole,” The Daily Telegraph (London), July 19, 2003. “I do have this terrible self-punishing streak in me, really flagellatory. I’m not sure if it’s good for me as a person. But it’s bloody good for the writing.”

 

431      “climate change is the biggest scam”: James Delingpole, “Climate Change: The Greatest-Ever Conspiracy Against The Taxpayer,” Brietbart.com, March 28, 2016.

 

431      a global “conspiracy”: James Delingpole, “My Moment of Rock-Star Glory At A Climate Change Sceptics’ Conference In America,” The Spectator (U.K.), May 25, 2010.

 

431      a “cabal of activists”: Activists pursuing, for what it’s worth, an “eco-fascist agenda.” (James Delingpole, “So I Was Right About the B.P. Oil Spill,” Daily Telegraph Blogs, August 2, 2010.)

Eco-conspirators including but not limited to: the British Prime Minister, the British Meteorological Office, “all but five members of the last parliament. And also the BBC, the Prince of Wales, almost every national newspaper, the European Union, the Royal Society, the New York Times, CNBC, the Obama administration, the Australian and New Zealand governments, your children’s schools, our major universities, our minor universities.” Not very exclusionary, in cabalist terms.

James Delingpole, “‘Climate Change’: There Just Aren’t Enough Bullets,” Daily Telegraph Blogs, December 22, 2010. 
https://web.archive.org/web/20101227003415/http:/blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069327/climate-change-there-just-arent-enough-bullets/

Accessed 8-8-22.

 

Last thing here. (I almost added, as Delingpole might’ve, “this is a good note.” Which is why you have to be careful who you read: preparing these notes, I’ve often felt the intonations and particular insinuations of James’ voice fizzing—“fizzing” is his wife’s word—inside my head.)

Below is apparently how the evolution works. From hating the recycling laws and the streetlight-mounted speed-limit cameras to thinking that the big threats—climate change, epidemic—are alibis. Cover stories: Really just a way of consolidating power over the pinpricks like speeding tickets and recyclables.

Delingpole is discussing a book by American Jonah Goldberg. James Delingpole, “Liberals are the true heirs of the Nazi spirit,” The Spectator (London), February 28, 2009.

 

But hang on a second: isn’t fascism all about war when liberals are all about peace and love? Not quite, says Goldberg, though this is indeed the most common misconception about the ‘f’ word. It’s not the war part of fascism’s inherent militarism that liberals find so attractive but the way it gives the state the chance to take control and put the whole of society on a war footing. In order to effect this sweeping social mobilisation, liberals need grand and apparently urgent causes to justify the bossiness and repression that this inevitably entails. ‘Climate change’ provided them with a perfect excuse for this kind of statist bullying; the new Great Depression has given them an even better one.

 

And the large rejection—climate change and vaccines are fake—can then travel backwards. Operate as a quiet means of verifying one’s tiny personal decisions and inclinations. Proof that one’s rejection of recycling and speed limit is in fact morally justified. Another way of seeing this is as the social version of Philip Morris: if the EPA is wrong about global warming and small particles, it’s OK and proper to smoke Marlboros. The Marlboros are in fact a tiny revolt.

Far more skilled opinion consolidators than James Delingpole are familiar with the concept.

 

431      osteopaths: In “If Homeopathy Is Just Water And Sugar Pills, Why Do Doctors Get So Upset About It?” (The Spectator, February 19, 2011), Delingpole notes the “long list of osteopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists and other alternative practitioners I spend fortunes on every year.”

James Delingpole, “Dr. Raymond Perrin,” The Delingpod: The James Delingpole Podcast, January 31, 2021. (Opening theme is the Joan Jett cover of “I Love Rock ‘n Roll”; futzed with so the lyric comes out, “I love Del-ing-pole.”) “Dr. Raymond Perrin, osteopath and neuroscientist, talks to James about ‘long Covid’, Lyme disease, ME [Chronic Fatigue Syndrome] and how his amazing Perrin Technique—which James highly recommends—could be the answer to all of them.”

https://delingpole.podbean.com/e/dr-raymond-perrin/

Accessed 8-8-22.

In the event visuals are wanted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRP1D1j1jgs

Accessed 8-8-22.

 

Episode opener: “This week’s special guest is very special to me . . . His name is Dr. Ray Perrin. And Ray is one of the people who has genuinely, genuinely improved my life,” explains Delingpole. “Ray and his Perrin technique — you’ve really helped sort me out, Ray. I mean, thank you. Thank you.”

“You look in a much better state of health,” Dr. Perrin replies. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as we call it,” thereby letting in the lay viewer on some medical jargon.

 

431      homeopathy: James Delingpole, “No More Tears of the Sun,” The Evening Standard (London), April 26, 2004.

“Then, last year, I chanced upon the Holy Grail — a bizarre alternative remedy that has been the only thing that’s worked for me in the long term,” he writes. “A wonderful north London clinical homeopath, Fiona Gross, has convinced me . . . Now, my summer relies upon a special hay fever allergy pack made by a homeopathic laboratory in Wales, Ffynnonwen Homeopathic Remedies.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/no-more-tears-of-the-sun-6956560.html

Accessed 8-8-22.

 

431      cured his hay fever: James Delingpole, “If Homeopathy Is Just Water And Sugar Pills, Why Do Doctors Get So Upset About It?”, The Spectator (London), February 19, 2011. “Right up until my mid-thirties, my summers were ruined by hayfever. Now, thanks to Fiona . . .”

So much what the alternative doctor ordered, the column is reprinted in full at the U.S. site homeopathy.org.

https://homeopathy.org/if-homeopathy-is-just-water-and-sugar-pills-why-do-doctors-get-so-upset-about-it/

Accessed 8-8-22.

Quotes raise hands and nominate themselves. “Fiona got into the business quite by accident. She was a middle-class north London housewife who suddenly acquired a mission in life when her young daughter broke out in eczema that conventional medicine couldn’t cure. After much reading, research and experimentation, Fiona did cure it, and decided thereafter to make a career of her new-found expertise — which now extends from allergies to anti-ageing . . .

“And I haven’t told you about the even weirder diagnostic machine she has yet. The one that picked up my Lyme disease and my thyroid problems.”

 

431      hypnosis: James Delingpole, “The Diary Of An Insomniac,” The Times (London UK), March 20, 2004. “I’ve been hypnotised before but never so spectacularly as by the Harley Street MD-turned-alternative-therapist Dr Michael Seear.”

 

A few days ago, we had a preliminary talk about all the unresolved emotional problems—paranoia, excessive ambition, debilitating money worries, obsessive compulsive disorder, step- parenting issues, fear of change, depression, anxiety, rage, mood swings, etc—which may have led to my sleeping crisis.

 

431      Neurolinguistic Programming: James Delingpole, “Don’t Fret! It’s Good To Be A Worrier; As A Survey Reveals We Waste 6 1 2 Years Of Our Lives Feeling Anxious, One Self-Confessed Neurotic Says ...”, The Daily Mail (London), January 1, 2009.

 

431      fad diets: Tiffany Daneff, “A Crisis For Carnivores: Family Circles,” The Daily Mail (London), March 10, 2001. “James was fizzing. It was no toast and fresh orange juice for breakfast, no vinegar or wine or soy. No fun either.”

 

Of course, big James’s first reaction [was] panic. “What are we going to do about our meat?” he asked, clearly quite shaken. Given that James is a confirmed carnivore, it would have been bad news at any time, but this happened to be the worst possible moment.

James has just discovered a new health fad. He’s always been most particular about what he eats as an extension of his general hypochondria. But the other day, scanning through a glossy magazine lying in the bathroom, he had chanced upon a feature quizzing readers about their dietary habits. “Look,” he said, jabbing the page. “It says here, ‘If you’ve got dry, itchy skin and scalp, cut out yeast and acids’.” I tried pointing out that it was only a stupid magazine, but it was too late. James was fizzing. It was no toast and fresh orange juice for breakfast, no vinegar or wine or soy. No fun either.

 

431      acupuncture: James Delingpole, “Spare A Thought For the Have-It-All HUSBANDS: The recent focus on depression and the have-it-all woman has implied that modern-day mental health is primarily a female issue. Not so, says James Delingpole, who has struggled with manic depression for years . . .”, Mail On Sunday (London), July 25, 2010.

 

431      t’ai chi: Mary Keen, “The Day I Almost Lost The Plot,” The Daily Telegraph (London), September 7, 2002.

Mary Keen is a celebrity gardener—her daughter played the lead character on HBO-BBC’s His Dark Materials and also Hugh Jackman’s wolverine daughter in Logan. We live on a planet of, apparently, limited celebrity resources.

 

James and Tiffany Delingpole looked like the kind of clients that designers try to duck. Two jobs, three children, no time, no gardener and not a lot of money is usually a formula for failure …

James [talked] of the rural idyll, Vaughan Williams and the English lyric tradition, followed by the facts that he did t’ai chi every day (which needs lots of space), wanted a lawn for private sunbathing . . . He could not bear pests and diseases and did not want anything that needs to be sprayed.

 

James Delingpole, “The Diary Of An Insomniac,” The Times (London UK), March 20, 2004. “Not only am I sleeping almost normally most nights but I’m getting to watch more TV, read more books and listen to more music in the evening, and have more time to do my t’ai chi exercises in the morning. And I don’t feel all that tired either.”

 

432      “Vast amounts of scientific research”: James Delingpole, “Come On Lads, Put On A Happy Face: These Days There’s Absolutely Nothing Unmanly About Having A Facial, Argues James Delingpole . . . ”, The Times (London), January 3, 2005.

 

And you start doing the thing that beauty therapists insist is a bare minimum, namely washing and moisturising every morning and night, and using an exfoliating scrub about twice a week.

 

432      To drive fast: James Delingpole, “Why Don’t We Stand Up For Our Freedom To Drive?”, The Spectator (London), March 19, 2011.

 

Yet still the camera got me because car hatred has reached such a pitch that greens and safety Nazis can now get away with passing laws where drivers can be punished for exceeding speed limits so slow you might just as well leave the car at home and go by zimmer frame instead.

 

432      never recycle: James Delingpole, “My Real Focus Group Scorned Climate Change; James Delingpole Asks Second World War Re-Enactors What They Think Of The Green Agenda,” The Spectator (London), October 17, 2008.

 

We’ve had enough of its ghastly wind turbines, its fascistic recycling inspectors and its swingeing eco-taxes. We want lightbulbs you can see by, not horrid flickery yellow ones; we want weekly rubbish collections; we want countryside unblighted by vast Teletubby windmills.

And we want Al Gore’s head on a plate.

 

432      speak freely: James Delingpole, “Why Do I Call Them Eco Nazis? Because They ARE Eco Nazis,” Daily Telegraph Blogs (London), February 16, 2011.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110219012455/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100076404/why-do-i-call-them-eco-nazis-because-they-are-eco-nazis

Accessed 8-8-22.

 

432      “In an increasingly feminized world”: James Delingpole, “At Last I’m Allowed To Be A Man: James Delingpole Makes His Last Stand For Masculinity In A World Increasingly Tailored To Women,” The Sunday Times (London), September 3, 2006.

The last stand must’ve come on all at once. Two years earlier, he had offered Times readers somewhat gentler counsel. James Delingpole, “How Gay Are You Really? Bring Out Your Feminine Side To Attract the Girls, Says James Delingpole,” The Sunday Times (London), June 8, 2004.

 

432      “While I cowered in the corner”: James Delingpole, “E-Shopping: How To Buy The Best On The Net. This Week: Pets,” The Daily Telegraph (London), February 15, 2003.

“When I think of rats, I think of the scurrying noises inside the wall when I first moved in with Tiffany; and of the time when a huge one emerged squealing in Jim’s bedroom and, while I cowered in a corner . . .”

 

432      “Tiffany squashed it”: This further complication.

 

Another advantage of having an older wife is that you’re freed from the burden of having to play the mature, decision-making, hunter-gathering male all the time.

 

Additional inducement: “Sometimes, you get to be mothered.”

“What’s the Ideal Age G-A-P For Love? James Delingpole,” The Daily Mail (London), February 5, 2001.

 

432      “It’s hardly ever the really good”: James Delingpole, “Beware Celebrities; Arts: Television,” The Spectator (London), July 21, 2001.

 

432      “My resolution this year”: James Delingpole, “First Among Equals; Arts: Television,” The Spectator (London), January 4, 2003.

 

That low self-esteem material could run pretty bleak. This is from 2000.

 

Walking through Covent Garden in London one sunny morning last week—hating myself and wishing I were dead, as usual—I tried forcing myself to forget my receding hairline, my terrible haircut, the curry stains on my unfashionable shirt and my general air of repellent loserdom . . . My book [is] bound to bomb because life sucks and there is no justice.”

 

James Delingpole, “Young, Successful, Prosperous — I Could Just Kill Myself,” Sunday Times (London), June 4, 2000.

Two years later. (James Delingpole, “Sinister Cabals,” The Spectator (London), April 6, 2002.)

 

Quite simply, it is an absolute fucking outrage that my books aren’t on the bestseller lists and that every editor in Fleet Street isn’t crawling on his or her knees across broken glass to beg me to write columns for them. One day people will realise this; but until they do I’m bound to be dissatisfied, aren’t I?

 

A season later, the need wasn’t for success as success. Instead, as the recouping of time spent, as aggression, as the only completely satisfying end to the argument.

 

This is another reason why I want a bestseller: to prove my family wrong.

 

James Delingpole, “All About Me; Arts: Television,” The Spectator (London), July 27, 2002.

 

432      “I just so do not deserve this”: James Delingpole, “Give Me a Break,” The Spectator (London), March 15, 2003.

 

I do wish I hadn’t written that happy-sounding column a few weeks ago . . . In fact, I’m feeling quite unspeakably miserable at the moment. It seems that no matter how hard I work or how much money I earn it’s never quite enough to cover my massive outgoings. And they’re not fun outgoings we’re talking about like, maybe, whores and crack cocaine. I just mean boring but essential family stuff like insurance, mortgage payments and school fees. And hanging over me is the awful knowledge that it can only get worse . . . And I just so do not deserve this.

 

Ironic Addendum. Six years earlier, when more looked possible, Delingpole had in a TV review mocked people who have some questions about the social contract. “There are few things more pathetic than chippy proles whingeing about the iniquities of the class system. It’s there to be exploited, not to make your life miserable, and anyone who doesn’t realise this deserves all the low self-esteem problems they get.” James Delingpole, “Tabloid Crudity,” The Spectator (London), June 14, 1997.

 

432      “With each new day”: James Delingpole, “Bitter and Twisted,” The Spectator (London), May 1, 2004. “I used to think that being a hugely witty and original writer would be enough to see me through, but I’ve begun to realise, possibly too late, that talent just isn’t enough these days and probably never was. What you really need in order to get on,” Delingpole now appreciated, is ambition “and consuming shamelessness . . . ”

 

433      “2007 is my last chance”: James Delingpole, “My Last Chance,” The Spectator (London), December 30, 2006

433      “Not quite suicidal”: James Delingpole, “Good Intentions; Arts–Television,” The Spectator (London), January 3, 2009. “Then there was the month I was absolutely convinced I had some kind of terrible wasting disease and that my life was over. I hope that now I’m through this bout of ultra-hypochondria I will have the good grace to appreciate how blessed I in fact am, and also, to remember when I become incredibly successful [not] to turn into a complete tosser.”

 

433      Blog hits soared: James Delingpole, “Climategate and the War Against Man, Bear, Pig,” Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, The Heartland Institute, May 2010.

 

433      Luke Skywalker: James Delingpole, “London Calling | Episode 29: Stupid Liberal Things,” Delingpole World.Com, February 8, 2013.

https://delingpoleworld.com/london-calling-ep-29/

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

433      rock star: James Delingpole, “My Moment of Rock-Star Glory At A Climate Change Sceptics’ Conference In America,” The Spectator (U.K.), May 25, 2010.

James Delingpole, “Watching the Climategate Scandal Explode Makes Me Feel Like A Proud Parent,” The Spectator (U.K.), December 12, 2009. The rock star baby being Madonna, for what it’s worth.

 

433      increased feminization: James Delingpole, “What’s the Ideal Age G-A-P For Love?”, The Daily Mail (London), February 5, 2001. “Another advantage of having an older wife is that you’re freed from the burden of having to play the mature, decision-making, hunter-gathering male all the time.” (This surprising—from Delingpole—bonus is also cited a few notes back.)

 

433      “I think you have to accept it”: Time Flies, “James Delingpole on Watermelons,” Biteback Publishing, July 24, 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCwljNY0qaM

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

434      “Don’t let anyone fool you”: Will Heaven, “Climategate: global warming denial and the terrifying case of Mr Strangelove (BA),” The Daily Telegraph (London) Blogs, December 3, 2009.

 

434      ninety-six other climate researchers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, “Climate Change Denial: with Bill Nye, the Science Guy,” HBO, May 11, 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg

Accessed 8-10-22.

 

434      “I’m at least ten times more famous”: James Delingpole, “Blogging’s Not A Job — It’s An Expensive Addiction,” The Spectator (London), April 16, 2011.

Apparently, the alternative medications had run cold:

 

The reason I’m going cold turkey — i.e. giving up blogging for a while — is that I’ve been quite ill for rather too long. It started over a year ago with a bout of swine flu, then degenerated into a debilitating condition I could never quite shake off: dry cough, headaches, bouts of nausea, shortness of breath, you name it. I knew things were bad when recently I had to give up exercise and no longer had the strength to wrestle my children when they came home from school.

 

434      “He’s always number one”: Private Eye, “Street of Shame (Column),” Issue 1295, August 19, 2011. “So it’s reasoned argument out, provocative headlines and attention-catching barminess in,” reports the columnist.

“And on that basis, which blogger holds the top position, month in, month out? James Delingpole. ‘He’s always number one, because he really is batshit mad,’ mutters a lower-performing colleague.”

Toby Young, “The Last Post,” The Daily Telegraph (London) Blogs, February 23, 2012. “I soon learned one of the perennial facts about Telegraph Blogs: no matter how prolific or fascinating you are, you will never be as popular as James Delingpole. He always comes first.”

 

434      encountering one of those marchers: “It’s a simultaneously delightful and disturbing thing,” Delingpole had written in 2005, “meeting your fan base.” James Delingpole, “A Construct, Of Course; ARTS – Television,” The Spectator (London), February 26, 2005.

 

434      The Vinny Eastwood Show: Channel since banned from YouTube. Eastwood called Covid-19 a “scamdemic.”

“Conspiracy Theorist Vinny Eastwood Banned From YouTube,” ThisQuality.com, February 14, 2021.
https://thisquality.com/conspiracy-theorist-vinny-eastwood-banned-from-youtube/

Accessed 8-11-22.

The Eastwood website explains its content has migrated: to Twitch and someplace dodgy-sounding called OWGN (One Great Work Network).

https://www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/

Accessed 8-10-22.

 

434      “The Lighter Side of Genocide”: Alistair Bone, “It’s A Conspiracy,” Waikoto Times, November 3, 2012.

Another Eastwood detail: he suffers from a workplace condition. (The upcoming six thousand dollar settlement terms are pretty good, too.)

 

[Eastwood] became a salesman, where he learned to talk and manipulate and sway people. He was pretty good at it, but there was a problem. “I realised I was the only one with a conscience. I was sabotaged.” In 2008, the company offered him $6000 if he would leave within the next five minutes.

When the money ran out, the financial pressure came on and he got depressed. He developed what he describes as “employer phobia”—a fear of being employed.

 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/life-style/people/7902722/Its-a-conspiracy

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

434      “very scary implications”: The Vinny Eastwood Show, “Philip Quay, Murdoch Empire; Jamie Hanshaw, FreemanTV,” February 7, 2012.

With the YouTube ban, not the easiest to find.

Vinny Eastwood Show, Ad-Free Radio Archives.

https://www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/ad-free-radio-archives.html

Accessed 8-11-22.

Audio:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130313091455/http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/archive/Vinny-Eastwood-32k-020712.mp3

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

434      Another week: Another of the week’s guests conducted a lively discussion on the vexed topic: does “being Jewish connote a race or a religion?” Some “literally insane” beliefs held by “the elite” were also examined. And the broadcast provided a scoop: the “ongoing massacre of upwards of 40 million people along the Gulf Coast.”

Vinny Eastwood Show, Ad-Free Radio Archives.

https://www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/ad-free-radio-archives.html

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

Patreon banned Eastwood too.

This Quality, “Conspiracy Theorist Vinny Eastwood Gains Two YouTube Strikes, Banned From Patreon,” This Quality.Com, February 24, 2021.

https://thisquality.com/conspiracy-theorist-vinny-eastwood-gains-two-youtube-strikes-banned-from-patreon/

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

434      “torture, sex and pedophilia with cloned people”: The Vinny Eastwood Show, “The Obama Youth? Susanne Posel & Donald Marshall, the Illuminati Have a Celebrity Cloning & Reptilian Program,” February 26, 2013.

 

https://www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/2013.html

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

Audio:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130725042725/http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/archive/Vinny-Eastwood-32k-022613.mp3

Accessed 8-11-22.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170928143211/www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/show-archives/category/human-cloning

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

435      house-to-house talk show: The Vinny Eastwood Show, “Watermelons, The Climate Cultist Agenda Exposed, Vinny Eastwood & James Delingpole,” Feb 10, 2012.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120610012553/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30GRw1ZisAA

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

436      “dubbed the affair ‘Climategate’”: Spencer Weart, “Global Warming: How Skepticism Became Denial,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1, 2011.

 

436      destined to go the distance: A sort of reporting axiom, from Joan Didion’s Political Fictions, Knopf 2001. Chapter Six, “Clinton Agonistes,” 222. “Since the campaign, as ‘story,’ requires that the chosen candidates be seen as contenders who will go the distance . . . ”

 

436      “Climategate: the Final Nail”: James Delingpole, “Climategate: The Final Nail In The Coffin Of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?”, The Telegraph (U.K.) Blogs, November 20, 2009.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100224025149/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

436      “Tree it, bag it”: An even sharper axiom. From Didion’s Political Fictions, Knopf 2001. Chapter Six, “Clinton Agonistes,” 219.

 

436      “My teeny, tiny spear-carrying role”: James Delingpole, “Watching the Climategate Scandal Explode Makes Me Feel Like A Proud Parent,” The Spectator (U.K.), December 12, 2009.

 

436      “Your World with Neil Cavuto”: Neil Cavuto, “Patrick Michaels, Climategate,” Your World With Neil Cavuto, Fox News, December 2, 2009.

 

436      James Delingpole out-polls a science: The BBC, in one of its ten-years-after specials, called Climategate “a global media storm.” BBC Newsnight, “How Climate Skeptics Tricked the Public,” July 10, 2019.

 

436      “If the process becomes suspect”: Philip Morris, “ETS: Science Action Plan,” 1989, Bates Number: 2021159478-2021159480.

 

437      “The battles fought by McIntyre”: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, Guardian Books 2010. Chapter One, “Two Tribes Go to War,” 18.

 

437      “Defined”: Auciello, “How Extreme Was the Winter of 2009-2010?”, Accuweather.com, March 19, 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190925150139/http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-extreme-was-the-winter-of/26257

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

437      “a powerful political card”: Bryan Walsh, “Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown?”, Time, December 07, 2009.

 

438      “a melancholy mood”: John H. Richardson, “When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job: Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it,” Esquire, August 2015.

 

438      “there is no relationship whatsoever”: Richard Black, “Climate E-Mail Hack ‘Will Impact On Copenhagen Summit,’” BBC, December 3, 2009.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8392611.stm

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

438      the scientists had made: As the BBC put it—in their tenth anniversary of Climategate documentary—the scandal “plunged climate science into global crisis.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b8p2

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

438      memory and trust: Spencer Weart told the Washington Post that Climategate represented the unprecedented. “The theft and use of the emails does reveal something interesting about the social context,” Weart began.

 

It’s a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance.

Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers. In blogs, talk radio and other new media, we are told that the warnings about future global warming issued by the national science academies, scientific societies, and governments of all the leading nations are not only mistaken, but based on a hoax, indeed a conspiracy that must involve thousands of respected researchers. Extraordinary and, frankly, weird. Climate scientists are naturally upset, exasperated, and sometimes goaded into intemperate responses... but that was already easy to see in their blogs and other writings.

 

Andrew Freedman, “Science Historian Reacts to Hacked Climate Emails,” The Washington Post, November 23, 2009.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2009/11/perspective_on_a_climate_scien.html

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

438      “as if someone had scrimped and saved”: Bill McKibben, The End of Nature: Humanity, Climate Change and the Natural World, Random House 1989. Chapter One, “A New Atmosphere,” 10.

 

438      “The stink of intellectual corruption”: Clive Crook, “More On Climategate,” November 30, 2009.

You hear the susceptibility to national mood—a voice being carried away by the momentum of the moment. It is unsettling to read (knowing how much time Climategate stole) even now.

 

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson’s study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick [a shoddy piece of business this reader is surprised to see referenced; the journal Nature described the report as “infamous”], and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre’s campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

The people whose instinct is to respect and admire science should be the ones most disturbed by these revelations. The scientists have let them down, and made the anti-science crowd look wise. That is outrageous.

 

For “infamous” (“two of the paper’s authors, Yasmin Said and Edward Wegman, both of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, are also authors of an infamous 2006 report to Congress”) see:

Editorial, “Copy and Paste,” Nature, May 26, 2011.

https://www.nature.com/articles/473419b

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

For rabbit-hole fans, the Wegman Report is an amusing five minutes.

Dan Vergano, “Experts Claim 2006 Climate Report Plagiarized,” USA Today, November 22, 2010. Dan Vergano, “Climate Study Gets Pulled After Charges of Plagiarism,” USA Today, May 16, 2011.

 

Computer scientist Ted Kirkpatrick of Canada’s Simon Fraser University, filed a complaint with the journal after reading the climate science website Deep Climate, which first noted plagiarism in the Wegman Report in 2009. “There is something beyond ironic about a study of the conduct of science having ethics problems,” Kirkpatrick says.

 

Dan Vergano, “Retracted Climate Critics’ Study Panned by Expert,” USA Today Online, May 16, 2011.

There’s John Mashey’s expert work at Desmog.com. Mashey is the authority on Wegman and denial interrelations in general; a great web untangler.
https://www.desmog.com/2011/05/23/mashey-report-reveals-wegman-manipulations/

Accessed 8-11-22.

 

438      “Can I read these emails”: Next year, the Atlantic editor was a sort of Climategate convert. The large national stories share this quality, of an opinion-reconfiguring excitement.

 

The scandal attracted enormous attention in the US, and support for a new energy policy has fallen. In sum, the scientists concerned brought their own discipline into disrepute, and set back the prospects for a better energy policy . . .

The economic burdens of mitigating climate change will not be shouldered until a sufficient number of voters believe the problem is real, serious, and pressing. Restoring confidence in climate science has to come first.

 

Clive Crook, “Climategate and the Big Green Lie,” The Atlantic, July 14, 2010.

 

438      “Climategate has tarnished the image”: Sharon Begley, “The Truth About ‘Climategate,’” Newsweek, December 14, 2009.

 

438      “A blow against the relationship”: The Times (London), “Science Fictions; Scientists must resist the urge to become partisan in their work. Whatever one thinks of climate change, the leaked University of East Anglia e-mails are a scandal,” December 3, 2009.

Kicking off with a monitory quote from the philosopher Karl Popper. “‘If we are uncritical,’ wrote Karl Popper, ‘we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.’”

 

438      “a crisis of public confidence”: John M. Broder, “Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate,” The New York Times, March 2, 2010.

 

438      “It’s no use pretending”: Lorne Gunter, “Cooking the Climate Books,” National Post, November 25, 2009.

The piece is a good early look at the shape Climategate would eventually take:

 

The emails seem to suggest that much of what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims is “settled science” is based on data manipulated to confirm assertions that man is dangerously altering our climate. Recent decades may not have been exceptionally warm. The planet may not be warming as fast as these scientists have claimed publicly — and it looks as though they may have known it and tried to hide it.

 

438      “could scarcely be more damaging”: George Monbiot, “Global Warming Rigged? Here’s The Email I’d Need To See,” The Guardian (U.K.), November 23, 2009.

Two days later, Monbiot’s mood had lowered and his position solidified. Everybody is susceptible. “Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That’s why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science.” George Monbiot, “Pretending the Climate Email Leak Isn’t A Crisis Won’t Make It Go Away,” The Guardian (U.K.), November 23, 2009.

When the smoke had cleared, ten years later, you could see the contours again. The old landscape after all. George Monbiot told BBC in 2019 that Climategate, the email hack, had been an overall denier attack.

 

What you had was just a festival of destruction. As the newspapers, the bloggers, the climate science deniers, the fossil fuel companies ran roughshod over the reputation of those scientists.

. . . And so climate science — this obscure, innocuous profession — became the battleground for vast economic and political interests.

 

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b8p2

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

439      “This is a mushroom cloud”: Andrew Revkin, “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute,” The New York Times, November 20, 2009.

 

439      “This is going to come up”: Stuart Varney, “Patrick Michaels, Climategate,” Your World With Neil Cavuto, Fox News, November 23, 2009.

Varney was guest host—with a kind of narrative tightness, a Brit.

“What are you going to do about it?” he asked Michaels.

Michaels, with relish: “I’m just gonna sit here and read, agog.” Michael was most TV-friendly of the deniers; best salesperson, best straight man. He has the natural ups and pauses in his voice of someone who has excelled in many guest spots.

 

439      “scientific fascism”: Richard Harris, “Stolen Climate E-Mails Cause A Ruckus In Congress,” NPR, December 2, 2009.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121026851?storyId=121026851

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

439      “They’ve been cooking science”: Frederic Mayer, “Stories of Climate Change: Competing Narratives, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion 2001–2010,” Joan Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, 2012.

https://shorensteincenter.org/stories-of-climate-change/

Accessed 7-22-22.

Stuart Varney, “Sen. James Inhofe, Climategate,” Your World With Neil Cavuto, Fox News, November 24, 2009.

Senator Inhofe posted the clip on his official Senate website.

Office of Sen. James Inhofe, “Inhofe Launches ‘Climategate’ Investigation: Warns participants to retain documents,” U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, November 24, 2009.

https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2009/11/post-27fe9184-802a-23ad-45e5-8feb948b7bb3

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

439      Shelby Amendment and Data Quality investigations: David Asman, “Sen. James Inhofe, Climategate,” America’s Nightly Scoreboard, Fox News, December 1, 2009.

And this, too, Inhofe posted on his website. I learned, from researching this book, that to be a senator is to love yourself. Or, that politicians are required to love themselves, professionally.

Office of Sen. James Inhofe, “FoxNews — Climategate Provides Vindication for Inhofe on Global Warming,” December 1, 2009.

 

439      for good measure: Mike Riggs, “Inhofe calls for investigation of researcher Michael Mann,” Daily Caller, February 23, 2010. And here Inhofe makes the largest claim. And it gives a sense of the power of Climategate: one of those noisy events that let you shout out everything, and especially the exact thing, that you’ve been holding back and dying to express. “When asked if he expects to see more push-back against the EPA and climatologists, Inhofe said, ‘I think we might . . . We’ve won on the science.’”

https://dailycaller.com/2010/02/23/inhofe-calls-for-investigation-of-researcher-michael-mann/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

Suzanne Goldenberg, “US Senate’s Top Climate Sceptic Accused Of Waging ‘McCarthyite Witch-Hunt’: James Inhofe calls for criminal investigation of climate scientists as senators prepare proposal that would ditch cap and trade,” The Guardian (U.K.), March 1, 2010.

 

439      across the conservative spectrum: As George Monbiot told the BBC much later, “It was—or so, it appeared [to be]—the climate science denier’s holy grail.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

 

439      “This is a giant, giant, giant scam”: Apparently taking elocution lessons from skeptic Patrick Michaels.

Rush Limbaugh, “ClimateGate Hoax: The Universe of Lies Versus the Universe of Reality,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, November 24, 2009.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2009/11/24/climategate_hoax_the_universe_of_lies_versus_the_universe_of_reality/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

439      “The global warming hoax continues”: Glenn Beck, “What Separates Climate-Gate From Other Conspiracies?”, Glenn Beck, Fox News, December 3, 2009.

Glenn Beck, “ClimateGate,” Glenn Beck, Fox News, February 16, 2010.

 

439      “So it’s safe to say”: Sean Hannity, “Climategate,” Hannity’s America, Fox News, December 4, 2009.

First part quoted in Mayer, “Stories of Climate Change: Competing Narratives, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion 2001–2010,” Joan Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, 2012.

 

The story lasted months. Beck even hosted James Delingpole. Who exclaimed, “What this scandal shows is that the science underpinning all of this is a crock. It’s a shambles. It’s dishonest.” Glenn Beck, “James Delingpole on ClimateGate,” Glenn Beck, Fox News, December 1, 2010.

Ten years later, with that same cleared-smoke clarity, Delingpole would sound a somewhat different note:

 

True, Climategate did not offer definitive proof that the man-made climate scare is fabricated.

 

The sale had failed; no reason to make yourself foolish with continued advertisement of the product. But like Fred Singer, whom James Delingpole considered a hero, he hadn't been this truthful when the issue counted, when it was being contested. James Delingpole, “My Finest Hour,” The Spectator (London), November 9, 2019.

 

439      mainstream: The British climate scientist Trevor Davies, former director of the Climatic Research Unit, told BBC in 2019, “The media narrative didn’t really develop. It just happened. A great deluge: a tsunami.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

 

439      “As the world seems finally poised”: Charles Gibson, “A Closer Look: Hot Topic,” World News With Charles Gibson, ABC News, December 9, 2009.

 

440      “We’ll show you some of the emails”: Anderson Cooper, “Climate Conspiracy,” Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, December 7, 2009.

And check that title. It would have made Arthur Robinson and James Delingpole rosy-cheeked.

Also in: Julie Hollar, “‘Climategate’ Overshadows Copenhagen; Media regress to the bad old days of false balance,” Extra!, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, February 2010.

 

The name “Climategate,” which has been repeated endlessly across the corporate media as a catchy shorthand for the story, implies some sort of sinister actions and politicization on the part of climate scientists.

 

https://fair.org/extra/climategate-overshadows-copenhagen/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

440      “you make up your own mind”: Anderson Cooper, “Climate Conspiracy,” Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, December 7, 2009.

On his show, The Situation Room, veteran anchor Wolf Blitzer left it to the viewer: “So is global warming fact or fiction?”

Wolf Blitzer, The Situation Room, CNN, December 9, 2009.

 

440      “Climategate is the biggest scandal”: CBS Evening News, “‘Climate-gate’ a Hot Debate,” December 9, 2009.

 

As the climate conference continues in Copenhagen, the “Climate-Gate” scandal is causing controversy. As Wyatt Andrews reports, critics question whether the earth is really getting warmer.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20100109134300/https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5955742n

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

440      CNN called their Climategate special: So gate it extended over two days.

Campbell Brown, “Global Warming: Trick or Truth Part 1,” December 7, 2009.

Campbell Brown, “Global Warming: Trick or Truth Part 2,” December 8, 2009.

 

440      introduced him as a “scientist”: Maybe he’d just always wanted to hear it.

Campbell Brown, “Global Warming: Trick or Truth Part 1,” December 7, 2009.

 

campbell brown: Stephen, as our skeptical scientist here in the mix, tell me if you see areas of common ground here. Or are you guys so polar opposites on this stuff?

 

stephen mcintyre: In terms of practical policies, I think there are a lot of practical policies that people who are concerned about energy future and climate can agree on. I haven’t personally advocated that any policies be changed.

 

And then he gets in one more villain-slapping-palm-with-glove locution: “The standard of professionalism that is shown in the Climategate letters is really very unsatisfactory.”

 

440      “emails reveal coordinated campaign”: Andrew Napolitano, “Climategate,” The Glenn Beck Show, Fox News, December 3, 2009.

The guest host, Andrew Napolitano, eventually parted ways with Fox News after charges of sex harassment:

 

andrew napolitano: The latest on what’s being called climate-gate. Have you heard about these e-mails? You won’t believe them, but you’ll hear about them, next.

It’s been dubbed climate-gate: the controversy over hundreds of e-mails leaked from a top global warming data hub. Critics say the e-mails exposed fraud behind the alarmist global warming data and raised serious questions about the integrity of the scientists involved in the research.

Our next guest says these e-mails are just the tip of the fraud iceberg. Here is Steve Milloy, he’s the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com, and author of — look at that title — Green Hell.

 

Steve Milloy: last director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.

Other lower thirds, same broadcast:

 

climate change opponents say emails expose researchers falsified data

emails suggest researchers wanted to shut out global warming critics

climategate scandal unearths inconvenient truths  

440      “climate conspiracy?”: Campbell Brown, “Global Warming: Trick or Truth Part 1,” December 7, 2009.

This viewer also enjoyed one of the Anderson Coopers: “climate change cover-up?”

 

440      “is the science behind climate change legit?”: Dylan Ratigan, “Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan,” MSNBC, December 7, 2009.

Over at big NBC, you had correspondent Anne Thompson telling Today Show viewers, “Overshadowing all of this is a scandal involving some stolen emails that has skeptics once again questioning the whole idea of global warming.”

Anne Thompson, “Climategate: Stolen Emails and the Science of Global Warming,” Today, December 7, 2009.

There’s a lovely image in the video. The Nepalese cabinet convening at the foot of Mount Everest.

https://archive.org/details/WRC_20091207_120000_Today/start/720/end/780

Accessed 8-12-22.

Just search any phrase from the Anne Thompson text above and it’ll locate the broadcast segment. Or—what was I thinking?—just search “Everest” or “Nepal.”

The lovely, craggy image can also be found here: a legislative stunt highlighting the need for climate action. 

“The earth is our common abode,” explained Nepal’s Prime Minister. “To save the earth the biggest sacrifice is needed from nations producing large amounts of carbon.”

Manesh Shrestha, “Everest Hosts Nepal Cabinet Meeting,” CNN, December 4, 2009.

https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/04/everest.cabinet.meeting/index.html

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

440      “running the scroll across the bottom of the screen”: Campbell Brown, “Global Warming: Trick or Truth Part 2,” December 8, 2009.

 

440      One poll found: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 15, “A Public Disaster.”

The epigraph Pearce picked for this chapter came from science historian Spencer Weart, in November 2009. “We’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception.”

Pearce, reflecting ten years later, told BBC, “What was presented to the world was that these emails showed a conspiracy among climate scientists.” Pearce called the result a “media storm.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

 

441      “84% of Americans”: Bryan Walsh, “Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown?” Time, December 7, 2009.

 

441      “Now it turns out that global warming”: S. Fred Singer, “Climate Skeptic: We Are Winning the Science Battle,” Reuters, December 14, 2009.

 

441      “These emails promote us from”: Andrew Napolitano, “Climategate,” The Glenn Beck Show, Fox News, December 3, 2009.

 

andrew napolitano: Did the government know about this fraud?

steve milloy: Well, the Obama administration is closely intertwined in the fraud. Yes.

 

441      “There’s really only about 25 of us”: Tom Clynes, “The Battle Over Climate Science,” Popular Science, June 21, 2012.

 

441      “Next time I see Patrick Michaels”: Ben Santer, To: Phil Jones, “Subject: Re: CEI Formal Petition To Derail EPA GHG Endangerment Finding With Charge That Destruction Of CRU Raw Data Undermines Integrity Of Global Temperature Record,” October 9, 2009.

 

441      “Yeah, this is all gonna come out”: Stuart Varney, “Patrick Michaels, Climategate,” Your World With Neil Cavuto, Fox News, November 23, 2009.

 

441      “Those scientists have been fabricating”: Wolf Blitzer, “Greenhouse Gases a Threat; Controversial Climate Change E- mails; Carbon Footprint in Copenhagen,” The Situation Room, CNN, December 7, 2009.

 

441–442      “quite breathtaking”: Andrew Revkin, “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute,” The New York Times, November 20, 2009.

 

442      “He has become the granddaddy”: Fred Guterl, “Why Climate Scientists Are Hurting Their Cause,” Newsweek, February 18, 2010.

 

442      advanced on the scientists: Gavin Schmidt—who replaced Jim Hansen as Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute—gave BBC a redolent and percussive description.

 

It’s like a firehose of shit. They will train their firehose on somebody for a little while. And you have no idea what’s going on, where all this shit is coming from. And then as soon as they’re done with you they will move to somebody else and you will be, you’ll just be left in a pile. That kind of thing can hit people very hard.

 

It sort of goes, of course, for the internet as well; many engine companies there.

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019

 

442      “Capital punishment for Dr. James Hansen”: Still up at Twitter.

Andrew Breitbart, “Capital punishment for Dr James Hansen. Climategate is high treason,” Twitter, November 29, 2009.

https://twitter.com/AndrewBreitbart/status/6173170765

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

The tweet also preserved by Media Matters.

https://web.archive.org/web/20091202052221/https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/200911290004

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

442      “Making sure that every scientist”: Rush Limbaugh, “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” November 24, 2009.

 

442      “Someday, some madman will draw a pistol”: Clive Hamilton, “Australia’s Overheated Climate Debate,” New Scientist, August 9, 2011. The German climate scientist is Dr. Hans Schellnhuber.

 

The YouTube: John Cook, “Climate Denier Brandishes Noose To Scientist At Climate Conference,” YouTube, July 15, 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWVFHJUYVcE

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

442      “just to be sure of the right result”: Among others. James Delingpole, “We Have Lost The Climate War!’ Admits Monbiot, Surrendering His Ceremonial Luger,” The Daily Telegraph Blogs (London), September 21, 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100925184232/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100054559/we-have-lost-the-climate-war-admits-monbiot-surrendering-his-ceremonial-luger/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

442      “Now the foes of limits”: Andrew Revkin, “The Distracting Debate Over Climate Certainty,” Dot Earth, The New York Times, February 10, 2010.

https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/the-distracting-debate-over-climate-certainty/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

443      “How dare the world’s media”: Fred Pearce, “Climate Wars: The Story Of The Hacked Emails | ‘Climategate’ Was PR Disaster That Could Bring Healthy Reform Of Peer Review,” The Guardian (U.K.), February 9, 2010.

 

443      “give a picture of thoroughly decent scientists”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 15, “A Public Disaster,” 187.

 

443      passionately waited things out: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 15, “A Public Disaster,” 187. “They kept their heads down . . . They simply did not want to be associated with it.”

 

443      “nothing less than catastrophic”: Fred Pearce, “Climate Wars: The Story Of The Hacked Emails | ‘Climategate’ Was PR Disaster That Could Bring Healthy Reform Of Peer Review,” The Guardian (U.K.), February 9, 2010.

 

443      “Don’t any of you three tell anybody”: Phil Jones, To: Michael E. Mann, “Subject: Fwd: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA,” February 21, 2005.

 

443      “I think I’ll delete the file”: Phil Jones, To: Michael E. Mann, “Subject: Re: For Your Eyes Only,” February 3, 2005.

 

443      “lack of openness”: David Sexton, “Climategate: The Chilling Tale Of A Failed, Harmful Bid To Discredit Our Scientists,” Evening Standard (London), November 14, 2019.

 

444      “They said they knew where I lived”: Richard Girling, “I Thought of Killing Myself, Says Climate Scandal Professor,” The Sunday Times (London), February 7, 2010.

 

444      “They talk of using a ‘trick’”: Kimberly Dozier, “‘Climategate’ Casts Cloud On Change Meet,” CBS Evening News with Jeff Glor, December 5, 2009.

With lots of fist-clenchers — like this assessment, the connection between Climategate and the climate summit:

 

Hundreds of world leaders and climate change experts are descending on Copenhagen to try to come up with a new pact to slow global warming.

At the same time, thousands of protestors across Europe Saturday: time to stop talking and make a deal.

Reaching that deal has now been complicated by what’s being called “Climate Gate,” a string of hacked private e-mails between global climate change scientists in the U.S. and Europe, casting doubts on the very science of which this summit is based, reports CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier.

 

And, among other lowlights, this hideous bit:

 

The e-mails show some of the world’s top experts decided to exclude or manipulate some research that didn’t help prove global warming exists.

 

444      “in world temperatures”: Sen. James Inhofe posted the CBS News video on YouTube. As a figure on his side of the divide, he is energetic and dedicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKf1iLwak7o

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

444      “one of the most damning”: David Wright, “Climategate,” ABC News with Charles Gibson, December 9, 2009.

 

Media Matters has coverage and the ABC News clip.

Tom Alison, “ABC’s Wright Latest To Mislead On Stolen Climate Emails,” Media Matters, December 9, 2009.

https://www.mediamatters.org/abc/abcs-wright-latest-mislead-stolen-climate-emails

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

444      “In a 1999 email exchange”: Andrew Revkin, “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute,” The New York Times, November 20, 2009.

 

444      Phil Jones was “finished”: Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf, Gerald Traufetter, “Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research | Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?”, Der Spiegel, April 1, 2010.

 

He sits on his chair at the hearings, looking miserable, sometimes even trembling. The Internet is full of derisive remarks about him, as well as insults and death threats. “We know where you live,” his detractors taunt . . .

Those who have always viewed global warming as a global conspiracy now feel a sense of satisfaction.

 

444      “and so has that of his profession”: It’s the most powerful moment in the BBC’s Climategate documentary. Phil Jones is talking with the director. About Steve McIntyre. But keeps calling McIntyre—who brought all this onto climate science—“him.”

 

phil jones: First FOI request from him was about 2007.

director: Could you use his name in the sentence as well? Use his name as opposed to ‘him’?

phil jones: Em . . . I’d rather not.

 

It’s incredibly powerful. About eighteen minutes in. One of those tiny rebellions that can make you feel uplifted. If you track down the documentary—there’s a tatty copy on YouTube—it’s worth it just for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgva6jbydRo&t=1577s

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

444      became the scandal’s slogan: As per BBC, “With Climategate now a global story, the world’s media focused on the ‘hide the decline’ email.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

 

444      called the phrase “infamous”: James Delingpole, “‘Lying, Cheating, Defrauding Taxpayer Are All OK’ Announces Panel Of MPs,” Daily Telegraph Blogs (London), March 31, 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100402104359/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/jamesdelingpole/100032293/lying-cheating-defrauding-taxpayer-are-all-ok-announces-panel-of-mps/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

444      “One email Phil Jones”: Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story,” 209.

Mann’s epigraph is great. From Cardinal Richelieu—the Jesuit who sort of iron-fisted France for the benefit of Louis XIII, and is the traditional heavy in Dumas novels. “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”

 

444      “manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’”: Sarah Palin, “Sarah Palin On The Politicization Of The Copenhagen Climate Conference,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2009.

 

444      a chart for the World Meteorological Organization: Current Climatic Research Unit director Tim Osborn noted to BBC, “It was cover art.”

Mike Mann made this a little more plaintive. “It was an entirely innocent and appropriate conversation between three scientists talking about the most honest way to depict what we know on the cover of a government report to policy makers who might want to know something about climate change.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

 

444      “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick”: Phil Jones, To: Mike Mann, Ray Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, “Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement,” November 16, 1999.

 

445      A colossal El Niño event: One of those data points that gets noted by many once the storm has passed, the firehose turned elsewhere. Fred Pearce expresses it definitively, with uncharacteristic contempt (note the double “nonsense”), in The Climate Files. Chapter 14, “Tricks and Lies,” 174.

 

This is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot have been anything other than nonsense. At that time, there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest year in the warmest decade on record.

 

So that’s 1999. (And that decade.) And 2009? (And its decade?) Here’s Mann in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

 

In fact, the WMO had—just a day before Palin’s op-ed appeared—reported that 2009 would end up as one of the ten warmest years on record globally, and that the first decade of the new millennium (2000–2009) would go down as the warmest decade on record. Some decline to hide!

 

One reason it made sort of sense, to the newspaper and news show audience (that is, all of us) was the U.S. winter of 2009. Snowmaggedon. This was a local—a natural, an automatic—as opposed to scientific response.

“The climategate claim was being tied to the climate change denial fascinations of the moment,” Mann explains. The idea of a cooling globe.

 

A myth fueled by a winter (late 2009) that had thus far seen cold temperatures and unusual snowfalls in the eastern United States, though other regions, such as the Arctic and Southern Hemisphere, had been unusually warm.

 

Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story,” 210.

 

445      Still, Senator James Inhofe could explain: Sen. Inhofe, nicely, maintains a repository of his big moments.

Senator James Inhofe, “Remarks,” Fifteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 17, 2009.

https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2009/12/post-9cac1e35-802a-23ad-4540-3e4706eab1bd

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

445      cease to yield reliable information: Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science, Chapter 14, “Climategate: Much Ado About Nothing,” 161. (And the third book—after Pearce and Mann—with its Climategate-Delingpole material in Chapter 14.)

 

Recall that to measure temperatures before people recorded them with thermometers and satellites—before about 1880—scientists have to use proxies: temperatures determined from tree rings, coral reefs, cave deposits, ice cores, and the like. Obviously, these proxies are not as precise as a thermometer, hence the wide error bars on the original hockey stick; but if you have enough proxy measurements, they verify each other and give reliable results. Scientists had found and discussed in the literature that, after 1960, temperatures estimated from tree-rings from certain far northern trees show a decline, even though thermometer measurements show temperatures were rising. Mann’s “trick” was to use in his reconstruction the actual temperatures since the 1960s, not the inexplicable tree-ring proxy data. Thus the “decline” was not in global temperatures, but in a set of obviously incorrect tree-ring data. Mann’s “trick” made the result more reliable, not less.

 

445      he’d noted doing so in Nature: “The separate curves for the proxy reconstruction and instrumental temperature data were clearly labeled,” Mann explains in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, “and the data for both curves were available in the public domain at the time of publication for anyone who wanted to download them.”

This is from Chapter 14. Mann goes on:

 

That, in short, was the “trick” that Jones had chosen to use to bring the proxy temperature series in his comparison up to the present . . . After its own inquiry, Nature editorialized on the flap over “trick”: “One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’—slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.” (Mann, 212)

 

445      nothing gate about it: Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 14, “Tricks and Lies,” 174.

 

The decline being referred to was an apparent decline in temperatures shown in analysis of tree rings. Tree rings have previously correlated well with changes in temperature. But that relationship has broken down in the past half-century. The reasons are still debated. The “trick” was a graphic technique used by Mann in his famous 1998 “hockey stick” paper in Nature, to merge tree ring data from earlier times with thermometer data for recent decades. He explained what he had done in the paper. Jones was repeating it in another paper. “This is a trick only in the sense of being a good way to deal with a vexing problem,” Mann told the Guardian.

 

445      “a clever approach”: Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Columbia University Press 2012. Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story,” 211.

 

445      “It is manifestly not clandestine”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 14, “Tricks and Lies,” 175.

 

445      the many Climategate investigations: Nature—through the editorial equivalent of clenched teeth—re-made the science case. Everything the climate researchers had studied and established in the decades before denial.

 

Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

First, Earth’s cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.

 

Nature did see one boon:

 

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.

 

Editorial, “Climatologists Under Pressure,” Nature, 462, December 3, 2009.

https://www.nature.com/articles/462545a

Accessed 8-13-22.

 

445      exonerated scientists: For example, David Adam, “Climategate Scientists Cleared Of Manipulating Data On Global Warming,” The Guardian (U.K.), July 10, 2010.

 

445      “A colloquialism for a ‘neat’ method”: James Randerson, “Climate Researchers ‘Secrecy’ Criticised – But MPs Say Science Remains Intact,” The Guardian (U.K.), March 30, 2010.

 

The balance of evidence “patently” failed to support the view that the phrases “trick” and “hide the decline” used by Jones in one email were part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not support his view. The report reads, “[Trick] appears to be a colloquialism for a “neat” method of handling data,” while “[hide the decline] was a shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous”.

 

445      “Scientists don’t do that”: BBC 2, “Sir Paul Nurse Presents: Science Under Attack,” Horizon, January 24, 2011.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql

Accessed 8-13-22.

 

445      “now infamous”: James Delingpole, “‘Lying, Cheating, Defrauding Taxpayer Are All OK’ Announces Panel Of MPs,” Daily Telegraph Blogs (London), March 31, 2010.

 

445      “This ‘trick’ was a bad, naughty and very wrong thing”: James Delingpole, “‘Lying, Cheating, Defrauding Taxpayer Are All OK’ Announces Panel Of MPs,” Daily Telegraph Blogs (London), March 31, 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100402104359/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/jamesdelingpole/100032293/lying-cheating-defrauding-taxpayer-are-all-ok-announces-panel-of-mps/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

446      “Norton watches me”: James Delingpole, Thinly Veiled Autobiography, Picador 2003. Chapter 31, “Flashback,” 462.

 

446      “I take a long drag”: Delingpole, Thinly Veiled Autobiography, 463.

 

446      Including investigations by: The useful Skeptical Science—the site tracks and rebuts climate denial material—gives the list of all nine.

John Cook, “What Do The ‘Climategate’ Hacked CRU Emails Tell Us?”, Skeptical Science, July 2015.

https://skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm

Accessed 8-13-22.

The site is maintained by John Cook, a research fellow with Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub, in Melbourne, Australia.

 

446      the National Science Foundation: Joseph Romm, “‘Hockey Stick’ Climate Scientist Quietly Vindicated For the Umpteenth Time: Despite countless investigations confirming his research methods and conclusions, the climatologist continues to be a target of climate-denier vitriol,” Grist, August 22, 2011.

 

National Science Foundation (NSF) inspector general: “Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”

 

https://grist.org/climate-skeptics/2011-08-22-climate-scientist-michael-mann-quietly-vindicated-for-the-umptee/

Accessed 8-13-22.

 

Richard Littlemore, “National Science Foundation Vindicates Michael Mann,” Desmog, August 22, 2011.

https://www.desmog.com/2011/08/22/national-science-foundation-vindicates-michael-mann/

Accessed 8-13-22.

 

446      All clear: U.S. Federal News Service, “Inspector General’s Review Of Stolen Emails Confirms No Evidence Of Wrong-Doing By NOAA Climate Scientists,” February 24, 2011.

 

For example:

 

We found no evidence in the CRU emails to suggest that NOAA violated its obligations under the Shelby Amendment . . . We found no evidence in the CRU emails to suggest that NOAA violated its obligations under the Information Quality Act.

 

Office of Inspector General, “Response to Sen. James Inhofe’s Request to OIG to Examine Issues Related to Internet Posting of Email Exchanges Taken from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, UK,” February 18, 2011.

https://www.oig.doc.gov/Pages/Response-to-Sen.-James-Inhofe’s-Request-to-OIG-to-Examine-Issues-Related-to-Internet-Posting-of-Email-Exchanges.aspx

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

446      “simply a candid discussion”: Lawrence Hammack, “EPA Reaffirms Position On Global Warming: Officials Said Questions Raised By ‘Climate-Gate’ Have Strengthened the Scientific Consensus,” McClatchy-Tribune Business News, July 30, 2010.

 

Environmental Protection Agency, “EPA Rejects Claims of Flawed Climate Science,” July 29, 2010.

 

Claim: Petitioners say that emails disclosed from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate global temperature data.

 

Response: EPA reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets. Four other independent reviews came to similar conclusions. 

 

https://archive.epa.gov/epapages/newsroom_archive/newsreleases/56eb0d86757cb7568525776f0063d82f.html

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

446      “robust”: The Inspector General additionally quotes Dr. John Holdren, White House Science Advisor to President Obama.

 

The emails are mainly about a controversy over a particular dataset and the ways a particular, small group of scientists have interpreted and displayed that data set. ... In this particular case, the data set in question and the way it was interpreted and presented by these particular scientists constitutes a very small part of the immense body of data and analysis on which our understanding of the issue of climate change rests.

 

Holdren points out, “It’s important to understand that these kinds of controversies and even accusations of bias and improper manipulation are not all that uncommon in science.”

Office of Inspector General, “Response to Sen. James Inhofe’s Request to OIG to Examine Issues Related to Internet Posting of Email Exchanges Taken from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, UK,” February 18, 2011.

 

446      famous along with James Delingpole: This is what George Monbiot meant when it told BBC that Climategate was “a festival of destruction.”

Its ultimate effect was “the newspapers, the bloggers, the climate science deniers, the fossil fuel companies ran roughshod over the reputation of those scientists. . . And so climate science — this obscure, innocuous profession — became the battleground.”

BBC, “Climategate: The Science of A Scandal,” BBC Four, November 14, 2019.

 

446      not in his pleasant way: Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science, Chapter 14, 160. “Scientists named in the e-mails began to receive threats, including death threats, prompting the British police and the FBI to investigate.”

 

446–447      a Neo-Nazi death list: Leo Hickman, “US Climate Scientists Receive Hate Mail Barrage In Wake Of UEA Scandal,” The Guardian (U.K.) July 5, 2010.

Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story.”

Kate Sheppard, “Climategate: What Really Happened? How climate science became the target of the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known,” Mother Jones, April 21, 2011. “Images of Mann and other scientists were posted on neo-Nazi sites.”

 

ABC News, Dan Harris and Christine Brouwer, “Climate Scientists Claim ‘McCarthy-Like Threats,’ Say They Face Intimidation, Ominous E-Mails,” ABC Evening News, May 23, 2010.

https://abcnews.go.com/WN/Media/climate-scientists-threat-global-warming-proponents-face-intimidation/story?id=10723932

Accessed 8-15-22.

Diane Sawyer video here: ABC News, “Climate Scientists Receive Death Threats,” May 23, 2010.

https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/climate-scientists-receive-death-threats-10729457

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

447      suspicious white powder through the mail: Oliver Milman, “Climate Scientists Face Harassment, Threats And Fears Of McCarthyist Attacks,’” The Guardian (U.K.), February 22, 2017.

 

A little less than seven years ago, the climate scientist Michael Mann ambled into his office at Penn State University with a wedge of mail tucked under his arm. As he tore into one of the envelopes, which was hand-addressed to him, white powder tumbled from the folds of the letter. Mann recoiled from the grainy plume and rushed to the bathroom to scrub his hands.

Fortunately for Mann, the FBI confirmed the powder was cornstarch rather than anthrax. It was perhaps the nadir of the vituperation hurled at Mann by often anonymous critics who accuse him and others of fabricating or exaggerating the dangers of climate change.

 

Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Chapter 14, 227. “On August 18, 2010,” Mann writes, “I had to explain to colleagues in the Penn State University meteorology department, located in the ‘happy valley’ of Central Pennsylvania, why there was police tape over the door to my office. The immediate answer was that the FBI had quarantined the room.”

Neela Banerjee, “The Most Hated Climate Scientist In The US Fights Back: Michael Mann Is Taking a Stand For Science,” Yale Alumni Monthly, March April 2013.

Tom Clynes, “The Battle,” Popular Science, July 2012.

 

447      a dead thing left on the doorstep: Left by the frustrated operatorfsev of a gas guzzler.

 

“Weird” is perhaps the mildest way to describe the growing number of threats and acts of intimidation that climate scientists face. A climate modeler at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory answered a late-night knock to find a dead rat on his doorstep and a yellow Hummer speeding away. An MIT hurricane researcher found his inbox flooded daily for two weeks last January with hate mail and threats directed at him and his wife. And in Australia last year, officials relocated several climatologists to a secure facility after climate-change skeptics unleashed a barrage of vandalism, noose brandishing and threats of sexual attacks on the scientists’ children.

 

Tom Clynes, “The Battle,” Popular Science, July 2012.

 

Also in Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story,” 226.

 

Clive Hamilton, “Guest Blog: McCarthyism and Climate Change,” June 14, 2010. The animal, Hamilton adds, had been shredded.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/giles-slade/mccarthyism-and-climate-c_b_535460.html

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

447      hiring private security: Leo Hickman, “US Climate Scientists Receive Hate Mail Barrage In Wake Of UEA Scandal,” The Guardian (U.K.) July 5, 2010 “Another climate scientist, who wished to remain anonymous, said he [now] travels with bodyguards.”

ABC News, Dan Harris and Christine Brouwer, “Climate Scientists Claim ‘McCarthy-Like Threats,’ Say They Face Intimidation, Ominous E-Mails,” ABC Evening News, May 23, 2010.

 

Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story,” 226.

 

Several scientists were at the receiving end of death threats so credible they were provided security detail.

Was this harassment orchestrated? A number of pundits believed so. “The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate,” in the view of Australian journalist Clive Hamilton.

 

It lasted years. This is from the Washington Post’s climate blog.

 

Ever since the so-called “climategate” emails in 2009, the intensity of the climate debate has reached new levels, with climate scientists receiving not only insulting emails, but even threats of bodily harm, with some threats referred to the FBI.

 

Andrew Freedman, “Cooling Off The Heated Climate Change Rhetoric,” Washington Post, February 2, 2011.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2011/02/cooling_off_the_heated_climate.html

Accessed 8-16-22.

 

447      “fed to the pigs”: Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Chapter 14.

 

447      “You, sir, are a nazi”: Environment Editor, “The Hate Emails Sent To Climate Scientists,” The Guardian (U.K.), July 6, 2010.

 

447      “As a US taxpayer I want”: Environment Editor, “The Hate Emails Sent To Climate Scientists,” The Guardian (U.K.), July 6, 2010.

 

447      “Subject: YOU FUCKING FRAUD!”: Environment Editor, “The Hate Emails Sent To Climate Scientists,” The Guardian (U.K.), July 6, 2010.

 

447      “the Reality TV Grand Jury”: Texas Climate News, “Texas Tech Scientist Sees Intimidation Effort Behind Barrage Of Hate Mail,” January 30, 2012.

https://texasclimatenews.org/texas-tech-scientist-sees-intimidation-effort-behind-barrage-of-hate-mail/

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

447      “I would like to see”: Some runners-up. James Delingpole could run your name in a column, and the warm emails would pour in:

 

you fucken derelict and fraud; may I personally kick the shit out of you? Please send your address . . . so I may act on my impusles.

 

Phil, just a quick note to encourage you to do the right thing and shoot yourself in the head. Don’t waste any more time, do it today.

 

And this internal monologue. Third sentence so long as to be almost Joycean hate-mail, with a grim power-politics epigram (“you have no army and nobody likes you”) in the middle.

 

Hello Phil, I just want to let you know that you are in the wrong field trying to cram Global warming down peoples throats everyone knows about you and your cronies pimp game and guess what there is a knew sherriff in town so if you know what is good for you, you will crawl back under the rock that you came from. Know judging from the emails I don’t think you are entirely corrupted so I would like to urge you to come and join with the rest of free humanity in the fight against the new world order be a good guy and stop trying to hurt people. but if you and your cronies try and keep on pulling this shit I will come down there and do something about it so don’t push me nobody cares about your stupid little UN and climate change you have no army and nobody likes you besides the bottom line is we have all the guns and military training so at the end of the day we are going to see just how much you believe in you global warming and whether your wiling to die for your so called “research” because I am definitely willing to doe to make sure you and your cronies dont get away with this and am not an Iraqi im a fuckin Canadian and the reason why people think we are so nice is because when we aren’t nice nobody lives to fucking talk about it so just remember your going up against 340 million heavily armed pissed of North Americans and I don’t think you want that kind of heat on you because I know you aint tough enough I will smack the living shit out of you bitch so back the FUck off I am a one man swat team You do not want to fuck with me OK do you get the picture friend?

 

Philip Bump, “Here Are Some Of The Death Threats Sent To A Climate Scientist,” Grist, July 13, 2012.

https://grist.org/news-2/here-are-some-of-the-death-threats-sent-to-a-climate-scientist/

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

447      “What a fckn load”: Graham Readfearn, “‘You Overpaid, Overeducated Parasite’: ANU Climate Scientist Emails,” Crikey (Australia), May 10, 2012.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/10/you-overpaid-overeducated-parasite-anu-climate-scientist-emails/

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

448      “so demoralized by the accusations”: John H. Richardson, “When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job: Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it,” Esquire, August 2015. “After the climate summit failed in 2009,” writes Richardson, “media coverage of climate issues plunged by two thirds—the subject wasn’t mentioned once in the 2012 presidential debates.”

It’s a disturbingly interesting piece. One of the more unsettling stories belongs to the biologist Camille Parmesan. She left the University of Texas at Austin for Europe.

 

The politics took its toll. Her [study] got her a spot on the UN climate panel, where she got “a quick and hard lesson on the politics” when policy makers killed the words “high confidence” in the crucial passage that said scientists had high confidence species were responding to climate change. Then the personal attacks started on right-wing Web sites and blogs. “They just flat-out lie. It’s one reason I live in the UK now. It’s not just been climate change, there’s a growing, ever-stronger anti-science sentiment in the U. S. A. People get really angry and really nasty. It was a huge relief simply not to have to deal with it.” She now advises her graduate students to look for jobs outside the U. S.

 

448      “If the process becomes suspect”: Philip Morris, “ETS: Science Action Plan,” 1989, Bates Number: 2021159478.

 

448      “these pure, gifted, wonderful scientists”: Glenn Beck, “Jonah Goldberg on Climategate,” Glenn Beck, Fox News, December 3, 2009.

Goldberg took a philosophical view. “Well, you know, the news that so many people are scamming and conniving behind the scenes to exploit global warming hysteria is not shocking,” he explained. “It’s the evidence. Very rarely do you have a conspiracy where there’s actual evidence like this.”

 

448      “the greatest victory”: James Delingpole, “Apologise To Michael Mann, Anthony? I’d Rather Eat Worms,” The Daily Telegraph Blogs (U.K.), April 11, 2013.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130416030457/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100211704/apologise-to-michael-mann-anthony-id-rather-eat-worms/

Accessed 8-12-22.

 

448      “Whatever possible upside”: Daniel Hornstein, Chapter Five, “The Data Wars, Adaptive Management, and the Irony of ‘Sound Science,’” in Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor, Eds, Rescuing Science from Politics Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, Cambridge University Press 2006.

 

448      “Scientists,” he said, “have been labeled”: David Matthews, “Science Editor-In-Chief Sounds Alarm Over Falling Public Trust,” Times Higher Education (U.K.), August 18, 2016.

The MacArthur Fellow and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande is quoted in the same piece: he warned the California Institute of Technology graduating class, “We are experiencing a significant decline in trust in scientific authorities.”

Dr. Gawande was citing a 2012 American Sociological Review piece. “Science,” the study explained, was “increasingly seen as being politicized and not disinterested.” And then the researcher shared an astonishing number. The study compared attitudes towards science from 1974 to 2010, among conservatives, liberals and moderates. “Conservatives’ trust in science clearly declined over the period: They begin the period with the highest levels of trust and end with the lowest.”

Gordon Gauchat, “Politicization of Science In the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust In the United States, 1974 to 2010,” American Sociological Review, April 2012.

http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Apr12ASRFeature.pdf

Accessed 8-14-22.

 

449      “popular and respectable”: Kurt Anderson, “How America Lost Its Mind,” The Atlantic, September 2017.

And here’s a blast of depression. What the U.S. believed as of autumn 2017:

 

By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world.” More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God—not a vague force or universal spirit or higher power, but some guy. A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it’s a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists. A third believe that our earliest ancestors were humans just like us; that the government has, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, hidden evidence of natural cancer cures; that extraterrestrials have visited or are visiting Earth. Almost a quarter believe that vaccines cause autism, and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2016. A quarter believe that our previous president maybe or definitely was (or is?) the anti-Christ. According to a survey by Public Policy Polling, 15 percent believe that the “media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals,” and another 15 percent think that’s possible. A quarter of Americans believe in witches. Remarkably, the same fraction, or maybe less, believes that the Bible consists mainly of legends and fables—the same proportion that believes U.S. officials were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

 

And here are two shot glasses of the stuff: “The word mainstream has recently become a pejorative, shorthand for bias, lies, oppression by the elites.” And “The old fringes have been folded into the new center. The irrational has become respectable and often unstoppable.”

 

449      had become “permanently embedded”: Spencer Weart, “Global Warming: How Skepticism Became Denial,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1, 2011.

 

449      “taken a battering”: Pearce, The Climate Files, Chapter 16, “Avalanche at the IPCC.”

 

449      it snowed and snowed: Still the snowiest on record for the District: 56.1 inches.

James Samenow, “Remembering 2010’s Snowmageddon in 10 Images and Scenes,” Washington Post, February 5, 2019.

 

449      Each blizzard a light satire: John M. Broder, “Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze,” The New York Times, February 11, 2010.

 

As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments.

Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change; this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.

 

449      the Inhofe family: James Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science, Chapter 15, “Anatomy of Denial,” 171.

 

A blizzard befalls Washington, D.C., and Sen. James Inhofe and family build an igloo and invite Al Gore to take up residence therein.

 

Eric Bolling, “New Home For Former Vice President?”, Your World With Neil Cavuto, February 11, 2010.

“It’s been a rough week for Al Gore and global warming alarmists everywhere, Washington dealing with the snowiest winter ever,” says guest host Eric Bolling. “But here’s some good news for the former vice president. If he visits D.C., he will have a free place to stay — Republican Senator James Inhofe and his family building this new home for him. It’s an igloo. The senator joins me now.

“So, you built an igloo,” Bolling continues. “I thought it was global warming. I thought temperatures were going to rise and we were never going to be able to build an igloo.” And since conditions were unnaturally cool even in the Southwest: “Maybe — by the way, you probably could build an igloo in Dallas, Texas, today.”

Some accounts have Inhofe not engaged in the construction—desk photo in lieu of memory—but in his Fox appearance he doesn’t dispute the igloo work.

 

Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Chapter 14, “Climategate: The Real Story,” 210.

 

Nonetheless, following one particularly heavy snowstorm that winter, James Inhofe built an igloo on the National Mall with signs reading “Al Gore’s New Home” and “Honk if you ♥ Global Warming” to mock concern over climate change. Funny how silent he and other deniers went the following summer when D.C., like many cities around the United States and the world, were experiencing record-setting heat.

 

449      five hours rolling together: Chris Casteel, “Family’s Igloo Draws Debate Over Warming,” The Oklahoman, February 13, 2010.

 

449      “honk if you”: Emily Heil, Elizabeth Brotherton, “Heard on the Hill: Global Warming Snow Job,” Roll Call, February 9, 2010.

 

449      “really humorous”: Emily Heil, Elizabeth Brotherton, “Heard on the Hill: Global Warming Snow Job,” Roll Call, February 9, 2010.

 

449      Tourists posed with the ice house: Emily Heil, Elizabeth Brotherton, “Heard on the Hill: Global Warming Snow Job,” Roll Call, February 9, 2010.

 

449      a photo of the lumpy finished product: You can see the Getty photo online.

Getty Images, “Snow: An igloo made by family of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., [two] days after a winter storm dumped over two feet of snow throughout the area,” February 8, 2010.

https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/news-photo/an-igloo-made-by-family-of-sen-james-inhofe-r-okla-stands-news-photo/99624289

Accessed 8-15-22.

 

449      near his desk: Amy Harder, “GOP’s ‘New Normal,’” National Journal, June 13, 2012. “. . . helping his family build an igloo during a record snowfall in Washington in 2010 to taunt former Vice President Al Gore’s efforts on climate change. (A photo of the igloo hangs by Inhofe’s desk.)”

 

450      competing exaggerations: That lawyer from the 1987 Philip Morris Hilton Head conference had understood. (This was the same able cultural navigator who informed cigarette executives they were “in deep shit.”) America was, he said, the land of the fight. “In the U.S., everything becomes adversarial.” Not so Japan, Germany. “The U.S,” the attorney went on, offered “the most extreme form of adversarial culture.”

Philip Morris, “Project Down Under Conference Notes,” June 24, 1987. Bates Number: 2021502102. U.S. Exhibit 20,346.