Oreskes

Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand

by Bryan Walker April 28, 2011

John Cook’s website Skeptical Science is held in high regard for its patient examination of the arguments put up by climate change deniers and its marshalling of the answers mainstream climate science provides. The result is quietly devastating as the scientific inadequacy of the deniers’ arguments becomes apparent. Cook has now collaborated with environmental scientist [...]

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Te Papa (got a brand new climate bag)

by Gareth March 24, 2011

I’m off to Wellington next week to take part in the NZ Climate Change Research Institute‘s Climate Futures Forum being held in Te Papa on Thursday and Friday. The forum’s organised around four themes: Climate change and society’s challenge Communication between the science community and society Human behaviour and the capacity to change Towards durable [...]

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The Climate Show #2: Oreskes and the Merchants of Doubt

by Gareth November 19, 2010

Cracking episode of The Climate Show this week, featuring a must-listen interview with Naomi Oreskes discussing the background to her book Merchants of Doubt. The people who attacked her 2004 paper on the scientific consensus about global warming didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for. Also in the show: excellent infographics, Arctic warming [...]

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Crime of the century

by Gareth November 2, 2010

Dealing with global warming is difficult, but it shouldn’t be impossible. What we need to do is well understood. Yet a campaign to prevent and delay emissions reductions, which began in the 1980s almost as soon as science began warning there might be a problem, has been so successful that two decades later it seems [...]

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The bad news, and the good

by Bryan Walker June 12, 2010

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have an interesting article in Yale Environment developing ideas from their book Merchants of Doubt. Some of it summarises the findings of the book concerning the organised campaigns of denial of science, but there are some new expressions of anxiety which are deserving of notice. They draw attention to the [...]

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Gluckman: climate denial undermines all science

by Gareth June 10, 2010

NZ PM John Key’s Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, tackled denialism head on in a lecture at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute of Policy Studies last night. Titled Integrity in Science: Implications from and for the Climate Change Debate [pdfof full text], it’s an interesting and worthwhile overview of the issue from someone [...]

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Merchants of Doubt

by Bryan Walker June 5, 2010

Why should four distinguished American physicists ally themselves in their later years with movements to fight the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time?  That’s a question Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway address in their admirable new book Merchants of Doubt. Three of the physicists were Fred [...]

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A walk on the supply side

by Bryan Walker April 8, 2010

 “…we tend to assume that the public are confused because they have a deficit of scientific knowledge, education and cognitive skills. That is to say that they’re scientifically illiterate.” In these words science historian Naomi Oreskes, speaking with others at a symposium at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, depicts [...]

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Esquire on Morano: inside the denial machine

by Gareth April 1, 2010

US mens magazine Esquire has published an excellent profile of of Marc Morano — formerly James Inhofe’s chief of staff, the man who started the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry, now running the climate denial news hub Climate Depot (funded by Richard Mellon Scaife). Author John H Richardson runs through Morano’s role in promoting the [...]

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Merchants of doubt: Oreskes on the history of climate denial

by Gareth March 9, 2010

Science historian Naomi Oreskes, well known for her work on consensus in science (and climate science in particular) has a new book, Merchants of Doubt, due out in a couple of months. Helpfully sub-titled How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, it digs deep into the [...]

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