Guest Blogger Amy Baker:

The Liberal Party has alleged recent climate science censorship by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party. “This is a government in denial about climate change,” says Mr. Godfrey. “They don’t like the science, and now they want to censor it. This is Orwellian.” Source.

The party cites the elimination of climate change references on government web sites, punctuated by the complete shut down of the government’s website on global warming on June 30th. The website had provided tools for educating students about climate change, but now only displays this limp, bilingual message:

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is tied closely to leading climate change skeptics in the United States and the petroleum industry,” said according to MP Mark Holland. “This government has a track record of listening to people with dubious views on the environment and climate change.”

Prime Minister Harper has been making friends with notorious Republican advisor Frank Luntz (for some background on Luntz, and “Luntz-speak” read his infamous memo). Numerous high profile Republicans use Luntz’s tactics extensively.

Canada.com recently reported that the Prime Minister has been under attack lately for his relationship with Luntz.

“The government’s strategy of pretending to be concerned about the environment while both dismantling programs to address climate change and scrubbing government websites clean of any information proving that global warming exists has Frank Luntz written all over it,” said Mr. Holland.

This is proof positive that you need to pay attention to where your children (and national leaders) are playing, and who they’re playing with. The United States has set a bad example for scientific integrity, and Prime Minister Harper has picked up some terrible behaviours.

E&E TV has had a couple interesting interviews of late discussing the tricky balance between balanced journalism and scientific integrity. Today they interviewed Andrew Revkin, New York Times environment writer, children’s book author, and recent target of Senator Inhofe’s swift-boating. They touched on the subject of scientific integrity a few times. Toward the end of the interview, they directly address Inhofe’s attack.

Darren Samuelsohn: Your book has caught the attention of Senator Jim Inhofe’s staff, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It was listed among several journalism outlets, I guess you could call them, Tom Brokaw’s Discovery Channel documentary and the Associated Press’s coverage of Al Gore’s movie. Saying that there’s questions about objectivity in the press and that there’s a love fest in the media about global warming. How do you respond to Senator Inhofe questioning your objectivity?

Andrew Revkin: Well, the book is very much science driven. It lets the scientists speak and show what it’s all about. It’s, by far, the least inflammatory book out there on this issue and there’s no spin, it’s a no-spin zone. I don’t believe in spin. In fact, I’ve worked hard to kind of cut that away, parse that away and see what we really know and don’t know and need to know. And the book really lays that out. It’s a portrait of the once and future Arctic.

Darren Samuelsohn: Senator Inhofe is one of the most outspoken critics of the science, a skeptic or denier, what have you. How do you deal with skeptics when you’re doing your reporting? Do they get any say whatsoever in your stories?

Andrew Revkin: Yeah, well it depends on the story. If I’m writing about science I talk to scientists who are publishing peer-reviewed work in the field I’m writing about. If it’s about what’s happening with Greenland’s ice, I talk to people who understand the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets in that part of the world. And that if I’m talking about policy questions in a story, what do we do about it? How dangerous is climate change? How much is too much? Then I reach farther out, and I would be more apt to quote someone from, let’s say, World Wildlife Fund and someone from the Cato Institute or one of the groups that shapes the industry position. Because they are, that’s where that discourse broadens. The science stories, if I’m writing about an assessment of a new research project, then I talk to scientists alone.

In word and deed, Revkin is both knowledgeable and balanced. He does not deserve to have his credibility attacked for a book, a children’s book no less, that his attackers haven’t even read. You can watch the full interview here (subscription required).

A couple days ago they interviewed Jim Detjen, professor and director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. Detjen discussed the state of environmental journalism, and near the end of the interview discusses the tricky balance between balanced coverage and scientific consensus.

You can view the program here (subscription required). Below is an excerpt from the transcript:

Darren Samuelsohn: How do you teach students in terms of initially, like global warming, where there are many points of view? What do you teach them in terms of the skeptic’s point of view? Do they belong in their coverage?

Jim Detjen: I think I try to teach the students that it’s important to figure out where the consensus of knowledge is on an issue. And so, like in the area of climate change and global warming, the overwhelming, the majority of science, scientists, are in very similar camps. I mean I think it’s important to tell your readers and viewers that that’s the case. I think you can tell if there’s a knowledgeable minority. You can express that point of view. I think sometimes there are people that are throwing up smoke screens and I think journalists need to be authoritative. They need to be knowledgeable enough and authoritative enough so that they can say, “This is what science is telling us.”

Darren Samuelsohn: Vice President Gore, in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he actually criticizes the press for quoting skeptics too much in terms of how much majority or consensus opinion there is compared with the coverage. Is this really a no-win situation for reporters, where they’re going to be criticized from the left and from the right?

Jim Detjen: I mean it’s very difficult. I guess I like to say that if you’re a journalist, criticism comes with the territory. And if you’re going to be a journalist, you know, you’re going to be criticized and there will be some very strong attacks you will face. I think, as a journalist, the best thing to do is try to become as knowledgeable as you can, try to look at the best science as you can, try to report it as fairly as you can and do the best you can. And try not to be intimidated, because I think there are powerful special interests that are, in fact, trying to intimidate journalists from covering one story or the other or shaping the way you cover a story. And I mean this goes back for, in all beats. I mean I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for many years and we had our Middle East correspondents. You name it, on any given day there were people from the Palestinians protesting or the Israelis protesting in front of the building. And we used to think, well gee, he’s probably doing a good job because he’s getting a lot of people angry and upset.

Darren Samuelsohn: As long as you can get both sides angry.

Jim Detjen: Well, I think you try to be fair, OK? And you realize that there’s going to be special interests that are mobilized, who will try to shape your coverage. My hope is that you have strong enough editors and strong enough publishers who will let the journalists do their jobs and do it well if they have good reporters. And not be intimidated by people who are trying to shape the coverage.

It’s fairly obvious that as climate skeptics lose both the science and the public opinion, they are pushing to discredit those who challenge their world views. While some do it respectfully, others are unscrupulous in their personal and professional attacks.

If that was your answer in Jeopardy!, you’d probably be hard pressed to guess the question. However, this week’s This Modern World attempts to connect the dots.

You can read Tom Tomorrow’s chronicle of Gloomy Gus and Perky Pete at Working for Change.

Speculation that the Senate is “swift-boating” scientist James Hansen suddenly seems less speculative (hat-tip: SciAm). Marc Morano, new communications director for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.), has a colorful history. Greenwire reported recently:

Morano, who worked as a producer in the mid-90s for radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, was also among the first reporters to write about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign scrutinizing Kerry’s Vietnam War record. And earlier this year, Morano penned an article questioning the Purple Heart medals of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a leading critic of Bush’s Iraq policy.

Morano penned the recent attack on Tom Brokaw and three scientists including Hansen. Greenwire is reporting that Morano also recently attacked the credibility of New York Times environmental reporter and children’s book author Andy Revkin. Morano listed Revkin “among journalists who have tied their personal and professional reputations to the catastrophic effects of global warming.”

At issue: Revkin’s new children’s book, “The North Pole Was Here.” From Friday’s Greenwire (subscription required):

“The title alone implies climate alarmism,” said Morano, who added that he has not read Revkin’s book. […]

“I doubt there’s another current account of Arctic climate change out there as true to the science and as spin-free and scare-free as ‘The North Pole Was Here,’” Revkin said. “It is, in every way, an extension of the journalism I’ve been doing on climate for 20 years, journalism that has been consistently lauded by people on all sides of the climate debate for its accuracy and fairness.”

Morano insisted in an interview today he was not criticizing all aspects of Revkin’s reporting, and he commended the journalist for challenging Time magazine over a recent cover story on global warming headlined “Be Afraid…Be Very Afraid.”

But Morano said he did have questions about how the New York Times should present Revkin’s future articles on climate change. From time to time, Morano said the newspaper should include a disclaimer explaining Revkin has published a book on the subject.

When searching for an analogy to this climate, we always come back to Jaws. If Senator Inhofe was the mayor of Amity Island, and Morano was his spokesman, we fear that Chief Brody would be stripped of his dignity and scientist Matt Hooper would be on the next boat for the mainland. As body parts and shark fins became an increasingly regular sight at the beach, Mayor Inhofe would be urging calm among the rash of “boating accidents.”

Unfortunately, this drama is taking place outside of the cineplex. The swift-boating of scientists, science, and journalists is no accident, and it has no place in public or scientific debate.

The Society of Environmental Journalists has posted an interesting discussion on the difference in mainstream coverage of climate change in Europe and the United States (hat tip: RealClimate). The main difference: balanced journalism in Europe (and elsewhere) doesn’t mean giving space to crackpots. Quoting Fiona Harvey, environmental correspondent for the UK’s Financial Times:

… it’s quite rare to get pieces questioning the science of global warming. The science is so overwhelming. So these fringe voices who still manage to get themselves heard in the U.S. press are not quoted in the mainstream stories in Europe. You will see them occasionally, but usually they just write angry letters saying, “You’re all wrong.”

They are regarded here as what they are: fringe voices without a great deal of substantial scientific backing.

Read the full discussion here.

Last week we were one of the first blogs to pick up on the Senate’s “fatwa on Brokaw.” The Senators’ press release was striking in its paranoia, conjecture, and lack of science as it made a scientific attack on a then yet-unaired Discovery Channel special (yes, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is attacking the network that brings you Shark Week and American Chopper).

In attacking the integrity of former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, the Senate also sought to diminish the integrity of noted climate expert James Hansen. Throwing several mud pies to see if one might hit, they tossed this into the debate:

Hansen also conceded in a 2003 issue of Natural Science (http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html ) that the use of “extreme scenarios” to dramatize climate change “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public’s attention to the issue — a disturbing admission by a prominent scientist.

Enter into the fray Scientific American. In yesterday’s blog entry “Half-Baked Smears against Climatologists,” John Rennie absolutely shreds this attack, showing both a lack of fact-checking and honesty. He then draws parallels to attacks on climatologist Stephen Schneider, who skeptics have smeared with an out-of-context quote for nearly two decades.

The Senate Committee is trying to suggest scientists play by the rules of politicians (God help us were that the case). These elected officials would like the public to believe that a $250,000 gift from an ethically-challenged lobbyist is the same as a $250,000 grant from a foundation headed by a politician’s wife. It’s simply not the case, but as Rennie points out, they’ll bend the truth over backwards to fit their world view.

We’ll close on a related quote from Hansen that Rennie highlighted in his post.

Science and politics don’t mix. I believe that active researchers should offer objective assessment of the science problem and leave it to others to extract policy implications. The complication is that the scenarios for climate forcings and climate change are a function of people’s actions. Unless we make clear the relation between those actions and climate change, policy makers will not have the information they need.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is sponsoring a scientific integrity editorial cartoon contest they are calling “Science Idol.”

On issues from air quality to global warming, government science is being censored, manipulated, and distorted on an unprecedented scale. Scientists and citizens alike have helped UCS put the issue of political interference in science squarely on the public agenda. Now here’s your chance to show off your artistic and comedic talents in support of independent science—it’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about an editorial cartoon?

The deadline is July 31, so get cracking. You can learn more about the “Science Idol” contest and UCS’s scientific integrity work here.

On another note, we’re moving. The Pacific Institute’s Integrity of Science Blog will soon be setting up residence at ScienceBlogs. More about that soon, but suffice to say we are excited to be joining the numerous excellent blogs that the Seed Magazine venture hosts.

Segueing from the last post (on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works’ attack on An Inconvenient Truth) the Committee has struck again. Today it attacked former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw on, of all things, a Discovery Channel program he’ll be hosting on Sunday. The Committee Majority’s release is thin on science but is alarmingly rich with reactionary paranoia.

The Senators embarrass themselves and their committee with this attack on Brokaw (and Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, and “Hollywood activist Leonardo DiCaprio”). The 860-word assault haphazardly tosses assertion and conjecture at Brokaw and his sources, hoping something will stick:

For example, Brokaw presents NASA’s James Hansen as an authority on climate change without revealing to viewers the extensive political and financial ties that Hansen has to Democratic Party partisans. Hansen, the director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, received a $250,000 grant from the charitable foundation headed by former Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz.

There’s a lot more like that, as the Senators attempt to write off the findings of three well-respected scientists as being purely partisan motivated. Their main thesis is that the show fails to include a wide-enough range of opinions. Curiously, in the attack’s one scientific nugget, the Senators rely on only one scientist, and one factoid, in their attempt to discredit Brokaw and the broadcast.

To paraphrase New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this attack is not science, it’s political science.

“Climate Change: What You Need to Know” airs on the Discovery Channel Sunday, July 16 and will be repeated Saturday, July 22.

In a guest column for the Toronto Star, a Canadian chemist makes some nice outside-the-border observations about the venom being spat at An Inconvenient Truth.

The U.S. right wing has reacted venomously to this movie made by the former Democratic contender for president. On June 27, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a statement that included quotes such as, Gore’s “arguments are so weak they are pathetic,” “a propaganda crusade … mostly based on junk science” and “this man is an embarrassment to U.S. science … ”

Step back a moment. First of all, in Canada, can you imagine Environment Canada issuing an official denunciation of a movie? Since when do government members review films? Second, bear in mind the substance of the film. If Gore had declared the end of gravity, or claimed DNA to be optional, he couldn’t have been condemned any more baldly — his critics have exhausted the dictionary of abuse.

This last observation is especially well-noticed. Rather than discuss the substance of what scientists and their champions are saying, skeptics like the Senate Committee continue to prefer smoke and handwaving. In their effort to make their argument sound strong, they are painting themselves into a reactionary rhetorical corner. And it’s getting more bizarre and paranoid each day.