{"id":6007,"date":"2017-12-13T13:34:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T20:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=6007"},"modified":"2024-11-19T11:23:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T18:23:35","slug":"the-big-erik-conway-problem-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=6007","title":{"rendered":"The Big Erik Conway Problem, Pt 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s particularly maddening about this problem is the simplicity of its flip side, a crystal-clear snapshot of the way Naomi Oreskes, with her Merchants of Doubt<\/a> co-author Erik Conway, supposedly exposed how public confusion over climate science results from organized campaigns designed to create confusion and delay political action, a tactic previously employed in efforts to deny the reality of acid rain, ozone depletion, and the link between tobacco and cancer, tactics now used in some cases by the same people who deny the reality of global warming<\/em>. But in my November 18, 2017 blog post<\/a>, I used Conway’s own words to show how the timeline of Oreskes’ so-called discovery of her ‘tobacco industry-connected’ critics fell apart, and the problems don’t stop there. Conway’s account of his collaboration with Oreskes on this ‘tobacco industry-connected climate scientists’ matter doesn’t offer a clearer picture of why atmospheric physicist Dr S Fred Singer<\/a> was seemingly “the most dangerous man on the planet”, it begs for deeper investigation of why and how this portrayal of him coalesced in the first place.<\/p>\n

What makes this such a maddening exercise is the tediousness of assembling the actual picture from parts of that simplistic snapshot. It’s comprised of 5 large areas:<\/p>\n

1. Oreskes’ narrative and Conway’s<\/strong><\/p>\n

These details are not in dispute: Oreskes’ paper was published in Science<\/em> on December 3, 2004<\/a>; it was met with criticism; on October 5, 2005, her book review<\/a> of Chris Mooney’s “Republican War on Science” was published in Science<\/em>, and within it she suggested<\/a> that particular climate scientists who were skeptical of man-caused global warming had ties to the tobacco industry; Oreskes met Erik Conway at some point in time<\/em><\/strong>; and he alerted her to the way at least one of her Science<\/em> paper critics had also questioned the work of an ozone layer depletion scientist.<\/p>\n

Conway’s 2015 interview details here are accurate, except for the hazy last one:<\/p>\n

1:25 point<\/a>:<\/em> Naomi and I met at a meeting in Germany \u2026 in 2004, during the summer\u2026.
\n1:54 point<\/a>:<\/em> \u2026later that summer, she started doing the work, unknown to me, that became her 2004, her December 2004 paper in Science\u2026 then she came under kind of a vicious attack from an organized lobby and I called her up one day and said, “How could you not know that would happen?” \u2026 and kind of started a long conversation about that organized effort that I had discovered in my atmospheric science history research\u2026
\n2:40 point<\/a>:<\/em> \u2026 then, probably 2006 \u2026 she discovered the same folks who had been involved in kind of organizing climate change denial in the Unites States had also been involved in the tobacco lobby \u2026 and then we knew we had a story to tell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, according to Conway, at some point after December 2004, potentially into 2005, he contacted Oreskes to describe how he knew of Dr S Fred Singer’s criticism<\/a> of atmospheric chemistry scientist Dr F Sherwood Rowland, and she subsequently discovered the ‘tobacco industry connection’ of Dr Singer and others …<\/p>\n

\u2026probably 2006, I forget the times now \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Conway mentions her ‘discovery’ in his own 2008 “Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History” this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Naomi Oreskes inadvertent initiation of a conflict with climate change disinformation specialists in 2004 unearthed some unique resources, which she graciously shared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. Oreskes claims about being criticized for the content of her December 2004 Science<\/em> paper:<\/strong><\/p>\n

6:47 point<\/a>:<\/em> I wrote something for Science magazine in which I sort of, just kind of hinted at the early results that we-<\/strong><\/span> some of the things I<\/strong><\/span> was finding, that some of the people who were attacking me had previously worked for the tobacco industry \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notice the boldfaced “we” and her immediate change to “I” there. She was speaking about her October 7 2005 Science<\/em> review of Chris Mooney’s book containing those tobacco connection references<\/a>, thus her ‘connection discovery’ could not have occurred in 2006, it had to have happened by the latest in September 2005 if not earlier. Oreskes also went on to say that it was this book review which prompted the Science<\/em> editor to request \u2026<\/p>\n

7:47 point<\/a>:<\/em> “We need more documentation of what you’re talking about”, so I wrote a memo that turned into a 17 page memo with chapter and verse references, citations, all the evidence on where this information was coming from, and when I had finished writing that memo, two things happened: I got a phone call from Don Kennedy thanking me, and wanting to talk more about what I had learned, and I had also realized that what I had written was the seeds of what ultimately became a book chapter, so I realized there was a story in this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. How it’s proven that Oreskes ‘discovery’ took place prior to October 2005, via one particular presentation’s text:<\/strong><\/p>\n