This online story highlighted at Foreign Policy magazine's website has a rushed feel to it. It also has a deck that doesn't deliver:
How global warming deniers are running circles around the U.N.'s top climate body
I eagerly read the piece to see how that was happening. All I came away with is the reporter's observation that the IPCC is not adept at damage control when controversy strikes. Yeah, anyone who's been following their recent saga has already figured that out. Now if you really want to read about how those pesky "deniers" are running circles around the climate science establishment, hop on over to this gleeful, celebratory, and ultimately credulous piece in the UK's Spectator, by well-known science writer Matt Ridley. The Foreign Policy article has an obligatory feel to it, as if an editor said, the IPCC is taking a lot of hits lately, let's do something on that. Ridley's piece for the Spectator reads like a mocking, triumphalist indictment of the mainstream media. But he overreaches wildly if thinks that a bunch of "amateur bloggers" have "cracked the consensus" on the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change. Taken together, though, both articles add to the flurry of body blows that climate science is absorbing. At this point, if you're a climate scientist, you have to wonder when the beating is going to end. UPDATE: Of the Spectator article, Charlie Petit over at Science Journalism Tracker writes:
this piece reflects only preening, self-congratulation in the on line world of the mad. Ridley, a prize winning journalist and chronicler of evolutionary biology, in this instance and on the climate front mistakes a bloggy victory in the political and public opinion battlefield for a strike for truth, justice, and the advancement of humanity.
Well said.
