It was absolutely hypocritical for deniers to call the Expert credibility in climate change paper published in PNAS a blacklist. Deniers have been making lists of scientists who reject the consensus for a long time. It is one of their main debating tricks. But when someone takes the trouble to analyse the expertise and prominence of the names on the list cries of blacklist can be heard from all corners of the denialosphere .
This is pure hypocrisy.
And the absolutely hilarious blog Denial Depot has noticed:
Several Eminent Physicists Skeptical Of AGW fear for their academic lives tonight as WhatsUpWithit irresponsibly publishes their names on a public blog: Seven Eminent Physicists Skeptical of AGW
Questions are being asked as to why WhatsUpWithIt, previously a reliable campaigner against blacklisting skeptical scientists, has today published a blacklist of our secret eminent physicists.
Concerns mount that WhatsUpWithIt has been infiltrated by enemies of our Nation. Has WhatsUpWithIt fallen to Red Communism?
Related Climate News Items:
- Bafflement as 31,487 American scientists skeptical of manmade global warming inexplicably add themselves to a blacklist.
Anthony Watts (who runs the notoriously inaccurate Watts up with that blog) was one of those decrying the PNAS paper as a blacklist. Not only that but he invoked Godwin’s Law, and made disgusting references to the holocaust. But now he willingly publishes a ‘blacklist’ of his own?
He will probably use the same absurd logic used by both Morano, and Luboš Motl, who claim that the lists compiled by deniers are positive because… well they don’t really give a reason, at least not one that amounts to anything other than ‘they are positive because they were created by deniers’.
So according to denialism logic, taking names from these positive white-lists (remember the data from the PNAS study all comes from these lists), not naming names and doing aggregate analysis on their publication record somehow turns the list black.
Hypocrisy indeed!
Dan, you’re judging these fellows by the standard of intellectual honesty; this isn’t the right standard.
They’re defense attorneys, using the best cards they can come up with.
I told my grandmother once that, “Sometimes the cruelest thing on can do is name what another is doing.” Well, at least they find it cruel because it requires them to look at what they are doing and it tears away their pretenses so that people can actually see them for what they are. But in my view this is justice.
That is a large part of what the paper is about: pointing that while the denialists are making up lists of their own in order to create the appearance that the scientific community is divided, in fact those lists help to demonstrate just how united the scientific community is. And when those lists are used to create the appearance that the experts are divided the paper uses the lists to demonstrate the reality that virtually all of the actual experts are greatly united behind the consensus.
It takes the illusion that they have created and uses it to illuminate the reality they seek to hide and thereby shows both the illusion and those who worked to create it for what they are.
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At a certain level this is exactly what I see your post as doing in highlighting the hypocrisy of their use of the term “black list.” That the use of lists, even if they were identical lists would be OK only so long as they are the ones that are doing it. And further, that the paper itself did not make any of the names public. That was something done by the themselves — seemingly to themselves.
Now of course part of what what would appear to motivate them in calling it a blacklist is that with such spin that they might turn the paper to their advantage. Once again they can claim that they are being persecuted. They can claim that given such extreme persecution many scientists simply don’t speak out because of the potential consequences — whatever those might be.
And instead of letting the conversation regarding the paper revolve around what it actually says about how united the scientific community and what that suggests about the evidence they can distract audiences with their allusions to presumed persecution. But I think there is a deeper reason.
Essentially, they don’t what serious studies done of how united or divided the community is. They want to make that a kind of third rail for those who wish to demonstrate just how united the scientific community is behind the mainstream consensus view. They want to make this sort of thing taboo so that they can continue to claim without serious challenge that great division exists.