Bishop Hill Insurance, or does he know something?
May 31, 2011 Climate: Mann FOI Chris Mooney has posted up a article about the forthcoming release of Michael Mann's emails - it now appears likely that these will be disclosed to the public at the end of the day. Mooney looks to me as if he is trying to get his retaliation in first, spinning a story that a scandal will be found in the emails no matter what.
Those who went seeking went in with a theory--that wrongdoing has been done. They all believe "ClimateGate," shown by multiple investigations to be a fake scandal, was actually a real one. So that is their premise.
They will therefore read whatever emails they receive and find wrongdoing in them. They will find politics. They will find closed-mindedness and bias. And who knows what else they will find--but it will all be made to look bad.
Will any of the charges be valid? I don't know, although I seriously doubt it. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that things will be taken out of context and used selectively. That's what happened in "ClimateGate" and that's what will happen again.
Interesting stuff. Do you think he knows something or is he just writing this stuff "in case"?
Reader Comments (56)
It's worrying that Mooney is so eager to define his interlocutors as mentally defective. It is redolent of Frankfurt School inspired attempts to associate any authoritarian political beliefs with a psychopathology, Authoritarian Personality. Why bother coming up with convincing arguments when one can dismiss all dissent as the result of mental deficiency, of an all-encompassing confirmation bias? Never mind that confirmation bias applies to those on either side of any debate, just assert that those unsophisticated and uncaring conservatives are so hopelessly dogmatic that they're unable to think anything but what their biases tell them to think. Biases and conflicts of interest are for the rigid bad guys, not the paragons of dispassionate inquiry and responsibility at DeSmogBlog and Penn State.
If Mann has any brains (or maybe an advisor with some) he has or will provide some off the record background to sympathetic journalists. When he has so many cheerleaders ready and willing to pitch whatever message he wants to go with, he would be foolish not to coordinate the effort. Whether or not he still judges Mooney or Revkin to be loyal cheerleaders, I don't have any idea. But certainly he knows that there are some out there and he will make sure they are all working from the same page of the playbook. The choir should be pretty well organized.
Until recently in the USA, journalists on the left had a private forum ("Journolist") that they used to coordinate stories, agree on what news to cover, what to boycott, and the talking points to stress in order to help Democrats and harm the GOP. I would imagine something informal has sprung up to replace it and the members will be ready and eager to play ball in helping Mann "save the planet."
Donna,
It wouldn't be a surprise. I assume there will be a lot of communication with Andy Revkin.
I agree with nullius in verba that Mooney's 'I don't know' is an anticipatory tremor. Scientists understand from the email 'miracle' how climate science became corrupted. Politicians are hearing from the huddled masses yearning to be warm. True believing journalists are becoming isolated; eventually they'll have to report the real world. And the Piltdown Mann is corrupt.
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'The Mann Who Corrupted Hadleyburg'.
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