'Climate Science Parasites' announced for first time!

12/19/10, from The Resilient Earth: A group has written a letter to the journal "Science."

• "Parasite:

1. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.
2. One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return.

"Consider the list of authors of the letter, entitled “Time to Take Action on Climate Communication,”:

• Thomas E. Bowman,
  
• Edward Maibach,
• Michael E. Mann,
• Richard C. J. Somerville,
• Barry J. Seltser,
• Baruch Fischhoff,
• Stephen M. Gardiner,
• Robert J. Gould,
• Anthony Leiserowitz and
• Gary Yohe.
  

Naturally, the name of Michael “hockey stick” Mann jumps out, immediately making the letter suspect. The inventor of “hiding the decline” continues to turn up where ever the climate change faithful congregate. But it is the strange collection of

• lesser known signatories that reveals a more nuanced approach

to lying about climate change. Take Thomas Bowman, for instance.

Bowman's online CV lists his education as consisting of a BA and a Master of Arts in “Religion: Social Ethics,” from the School of Religion, UCLA. Ib 1988 he founded the Bowman Design Group and since then has been associated with a number of organizations with names like Bowman Global Change and , most recently, The Climate Solutions Project. According to its website, Bowman Global Change

• “has been established to help organizations make sustainable transformations.”

The stated goal of the Climate Solutions Project to develop public intervention strategies with a blue-ribbon team of experts in climate science, social science, economics, ethics and social marketing.

The Climate Solutions Project's website only shows a “under construction” page, but that not withstanding the CSP was named as a finalist for the “prestigious” Buckminster Fuller Challenge. “The Bowman-led initiative is a touring festival and exhibition that explores the risks and potential solutions to the climate crisis,” explains one account. The same source declares Bowman

• “one of the premier interpreters of climate and energy science.”
  

In other words, Bowman is a non-scientist cheerleader for the climate change lobby,

• a man who makes his living frightening people with climate disaster
  

• and offering moral absolution for a price.

Examine some of the other organizational associations listed with the letter:

• Center for Climate Change Communication, Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

• Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.


• Department of Philosophy and Program on Values in Society, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.


• Partnership for Prevention, Washington, DC.


• Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT.


• Department of Economics and College of the Environment, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.

These are not institutions or organizations involved in the science of climate, but rather groups that are in the business of convincing others what to think about climate change. Much like a military installation quickly spawns a surrounding collection of

• sleazy bars, pawn shops and hookers, climate science has attracted its own supporting sub-culture of questionable individuals.
  

That is not to say that such individuals are useless or that the fields they claim to represent are worthless. Case in point: Social and Decision Sciences (SDS).

According to Baruch Fischhoff, director of the SDS program at CMU and one of the Science letter's authors, “the interdisciplinary field of Decision Science seeks to understand and improve judgment and decision making of individuals, groups, and organizations.”

• Fischoff, one of the founders of the field of decision science,
  

holds a BS in mathematics and psychology from Wayne State University and an MA and PhD in psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Here is how he describes the SDS program on the department website:

Course content in the Decision Science major will foster understanding of: (a) the cognitive, emotional, social, and institutional factors that influence judgment and choice, (b) normative (economic) models of rational choice, and (c) how judgment and decision making can be predicted and/or improved.

Applications of Decision Science research abound. For example, research insights are being used to improve medical decision making (e.g., conveying costs and benefits of alternative treatment options to patients), legal decision making (e.g., understanding the effects of anger on attributions of responsibility), large-scale risk assessments (e.g., assessing risks of nuclear power), marketing (e.g., understanding the effects of emotion) and managerial decision making (e.g., correcting common errors and biases in the assessment of risk).

A strange blend of psychology, sociology, economics and ethics. While this is no doubt an interesting field of study, it

• in no way provides an understanding of fundamental physical science.
  

A practitioner of this field is no more qualified to be guiding the public's decisions regarding climate change

• than any other non-scientist."...

.

via Tom Nelson