Let’s start with two Native American related titles:

The Sea-Ringed World: sacred stories of the Americas by María García Esperón, Amanda Mijangos, David Bowles.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged.

The answers lay in their sacred stories.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, and Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults.

Every single person seems to be reading this book right now. Are you? No? Well, that is easily fixed: Lessons in Chemistry b Bonnie Garmus.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Speaking of novels, and this is especially for all you Minnesotans since it is set in the famous town of Lillydale (doesn’t really exist): Bloodline by Jess Lourey.

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting.

Her fiancé tells her she’s being paranoid. He might be right. Then again, she might have moved to the deadliest small town on earth.

Best science fiction of the year (except it was published a few years ago), from an author who mostly does not write science fiction: Saturn Run by John Sandford.

For fans of THE MARTIAN, an extraordinary new thriller of the future from #1 New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Sandford and internationally known photo-artist and science fiction aficionado Ctein.

The race is on, and an remarkable adventure begins—an epic tale of courage, treachery, resourcefulness, secrets, surprises, and astonishing human and technological discovery, as the members of a hastily thrown-together crew find their strength and wits tested against adversaries both of this earth and beyond. What happens is nothing like you expect—and everything you could want from one of the world’s greatest masters of suspense.

The Bitter End: the 2020 presidential campaign and the challenge to American Democracy is the best analsyis of the American Electorate, using amazing techniques and an unbelievable sample size:

John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck demonstrate that Trump’s presidency intensified the partisan politics of the previous decades and the identity politics of the 2016 election. Presidential elections have become calcified, with less chance of big swings in either party’s favor. Republicans remained loyal to Trump and kept the election close, despite Trump’s many scandals, a recession, and the pandemic. But in a narrowly divided electorate even small changes can have big consequences. The pandemic was a case in point: when Trump pushed to reopen the country even as infections mounted, support for Biden increased. The authors explain that, paradoxically, even as Biden’s win came at a time of heightened party loyalty, there remained room for shifts that shaped the election’s outcome. Ultimately, the events of 2020 showed that instead of the country coming together to face national challenges?the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, and the Capitol riot?these challenges only reinforced divisions.
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

The Unpersuadables : Adventures ith the enemies of Science by Will Stoor:

Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world—from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides—meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. Storr tours Holocaust sites with famed denier David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis, experiences his own murder during “past life regression” hypnosis, discusses the looming One World Government with an iconic climate skeptic, and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult.

Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological “hero maker” inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship and science denial.

Tangerine by Edward Bloor is often assigned to middle school kids. If you have a kid heading for middle school, get them to read this NOW so they can enjoy it, you read it so you can talk to them about it. Many messages, some subtle, very important commentary on modern American culture.

Three titles on evolution all three of which you should read. The history of life on earth is wonderfully summarized by my old buddy Henry Gee’s A very short history of life on earth. Best book of its kind ever, no kidding. Then, read my old buddy Don Prothero’s Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters (2nd edition). Then, a new title from a new author, my frien Steven Therough’s A most improbable story. So you get the whole history of life, then a more narrowed down view that focuses more on verts, then the human story. A great sequence. I have designs to get one or more author on our podcast, Ikonokast. I’ll let you know if that happens!

Also check out Reality Check: How science deniers threaten our future, by Don Prothero.

I have a sense of how Deplorables think, since I have walked among them. The Deplorable culture is enigmatic to most educated and genteel people. Some of this will be new to you. I’m here to tell you, as an anthropologist, that it is much worse than you probably think.

I remember once having my stroller-age son with me while hanging out with a garage full of Deplorables celebrating one of their 60th birthdays. The conversation was almost entirely about wife swapping and similar themes. I had to put the kid outside on the driveway so he would not become polluted, and stayed around only long enough to verify that this was really happening. The Access Hollywood tape was a replay of a constant ongoing conversation among Deplorables (both sexes). If you were surprised by it, you are living in a bubble. A nice bubble, do stay there, you’ll be happier. But still, a bubble. This is how Deplorables talk. And think.

I’ve had enough conversations with deplorables to know that they are often (but not always) driven by racism. It is not difficult to understand Deplorable policy thinking (to the extent that it is thinking, which it mostly is not) if you know that all of the Democratic Party policy objectives of the 8 years prior to the electoral college mistake known as the “Trump Presidency” were objectives that existed under a black president. Therefore they are dirty, tainted, smudged by the blackness of his monkey skin, all kootied-up by the N*gger, not to mention all wrong. The only good policy is the opposite of his black policy no matter what that is. White is right. That is something you probably knew. You probably hate hearing the thoughts, and I sort of apologize for jamming them into your face. But while what you were already thinking, already knew, is correct, it is not sharp or true enough. The truth is disgusting.

A less known, but critical, aspect of Deplorable culture is how strength works. It is sometimes earned, sometimes given by external forces, and it defines legitimacy. It is OK to claim ownership of one’s own strengths, or to attribute them to Mother or to God, or in some cases Dog (especially a good hunting dog). But it is not OK to attribute any but one causality to lack of strength, or to weakness. That, in Deplorable culture, is entirely the fault of the individual. That is probably something you didn’t know.

So there’s this guy and his girlfriend, probably fiance, climbing a mountain. They are using ropes and other technical gear, and it is a challenging climb. They are both experts. She is above him, by tens of feet. Suddenly, she loses her hold, and falls. Her body strikes the rock face at several locations, bouncing off like an out of control rag doll, finally to rest some 15 feet below him, unconscious. Rescue squads including helicopters are required to bring her out and to the hospital. She survives, but he can never look at her again without seeing weakness. Their relationship ends because of that.

That is a horrible story, but a true one, and one that demonstrates a human frailty: Sometimes we see failure in another person where all they did was obey the rules of gravity, or cancer, or ice on the road. This seems counter-intuitive but it really does happen. It is usually hidden by cultural trappings. The person who told me that story (the boyfriend himself) was just being brutally honest.

Deplorables do this same thing other humans do, but they codify it in their culture and they foreground it in their aggressions. Donald Trump doesn’t like people who get captured. He doesn’t like soldiers who get wounded. Or drafted. Or tricked into serving by some patriotic sense that is, to him, an emotional state of being, normally reserved for chumps and cucks.

If you get this, now you can understand the Deplorable (=Republican) flauting of logical, normal, required, science-based precautions against spreading Covid-19 infection. Getting sick is a sign of personal weakness. Doing things to not get sick is personal weakness. They complained about freedom when asked to wear a mask. It is not about freedom, or at least, freedom as you think of it. It is about freedom to not appear weak.

Well, today, right now, Trump is weak because he has Covid. Indeed, somebody is probably having their way with his wife, back home, because he must also be a cuck, because he is so weak. The guy who once owned a line of suit jackets and ties has no tie and only one suit jacket. The only way he can make friends is to drive around the block in his car waving at people like some little kid or a dog.

Trump-loving Deplorables are not going to run out and vote for Biden because their beloved demigod turns out to be a [imagine the word that must go here]. But they won’t vote for him. When Trump got Covid he lost at least two electoral state wins. That was the end of the election right there.

You might think Trump getting Covid hurts him politically because it underlies the folly of science denialism, or proves that Democrats were right all align about wearing masks, and stuff like that. Nope. That is a fabrication of logic, which rules your liberal mind. To a Deplorable, science is still a lie, mask wearing is still a violation of basic rights, and Covid is still a hoax. Trump is not worth voting for because he is a weak loser with only one jacket, no tie, and somebody is fucking his wife as we speak.

source

Also, Republicans are racists. Like this:

“As long as I’m president” Hmm… we can fix that.

Darwin’s most important unsung contribution to science (even more important than his monograph on earthworms) was to figure out how to most effectively put together multiple sources into a single argument — combining description, explanation, and theory — of a complex phenomenon in nature. His first major work, on coral reefs, brought together historical and anecdotal information, prior observation and theory from earlier researchers, his own direct observations of many kinds of reefs, quasi experimental work in the field, and a good measure of deductive thinking. It took a while for this standard to emerge, but eventually it did, and this approach was to become the normal way to write a PhD thesis or major monograph in science.

Take any major modern news theme. Deutsche Bank. Trump-Nato-Putin. Election tampering. Go to the standard news sources and you’ll find Chuck Todd following the path of “both sides have a point.” Fox News will be mixing conspiracy theory and right wing talking points. The most respected mainstream news anchors, Lester Holt, Christiane Amanpour, or Brian Williams perhaps, will be giving a fair airing of the facts but moving quickly from story to story. Dig deeper, and find Chris Hayes with sharp analysis, Joy Reid contextualizing stories with social justice, and Lawrence O’Donnell applying his well earned in the trenches biker wisdom.

But if you really want to Darwin the news, and sink your natural teeth and claws into a story, go to Maddow.

I’ve heard Rachel does not like being called “Doctor” (most of us PhD’s don’t) but she is an Oxford trained Doctor of politics. She also has a degree in public policy from Stanford, and is a Rhodes Scholar, having turned down the Marshall to accept it. In other words, she is both very well educated, and very smart.

In the Early Oughties, Maddow’s career evolved through a series of radio shows, panelist roles, substitute-roles, to eventually become the Rachel Maddow Show, in 2008. RMS (which also stands for root-mean-square, a mathematical concept that is not about roots and is more about curves than squares) almost instantly moved into state of great success, almost single handily pulling MSNBC materially upward as a high ratings cable network.

The point being this: If you want to really get a story, find out if the story is covered by Rachel Maddow where it got the RMS treatment, and sit down and absorb that. It might take several episodes, or there might be that one RMS segment that nails it once and for all. Depends on the story.

I consider Maddow to be the number one modern historian of modern news. If she had gotten her graduate training in history rather than politics and policy, the major living historians would have had a brilliant addition to their ranks. But everyone else, or at least, the thinking liberal left side of the spectrum of people, would have lost a regular supply of information and inspiration that, frankly, keeps a lot of us going these days.

You know that an elixir works magic when certain forces ban it. About a year and a half ago, I decided to alter my exercise routine at the gym so I could be on the tread mill during the Rachel Maddow Show, which I do not get at home since I don’t have that kind of cable (I watch the show next day on line, streaming). I was shocked to find out that MSNBC had been replaced with some dumb thing up on the monitor. I went to the “help desk” at the gym and asked about it.

“We took off all the news sites because it was driving people crazy, they were getting less rather than more healthy,” they said.

“Ok, but I see ABC and some business version of CBS is showing. You seem to have only gotten rid of MSNBC, is this some kind of right wing conspiracy?” I accused.

“Ah, well, we got rid of both MSNBC and FOX. It was a corporate decision. I know nothing about it. Would you like to sign up to have a trainer, we have a special this week…”

Anyway, I conjecture, and what I’m about to say is either deeply insightful or terribly offensive, but I’ll revise it as needed on receipt of further information, that Darwin and Maddow are also similar in another way.

Darwin first developed his amazing craft of explanation out of fear. See, it went like this. While out on the Voyage of the Beagle, and generally out of contact, he had corresponded about an early version of his theory of coral reef formation, growth, and maintenance. An outline of this theory had been read to the Royal Society without his knowing it. It is said that when he heard about this in a letter from his sister, he became very worried that his hero, Charles Lyell, would now lose respect for him and abandon him as a colleague. Or worse, whatever worse might be in Victorian England among the nerds of the day. You see, Lyell’s version of how reefs work was the standing science at the time, and Darwin’s view was heretically different. The fear this struck in the young, and in his own mind unqualified, researcher led, I think, to the nearly obsessive care he took in constructing his final arguments about reefs,and everything else he did after that, including taking decades to publish the Origin.

So, to be blunt, I’m suggesting that Charles Darwin suffered from a sort of impostor syndrome that led him to become excellent, as a means of protecting himself and his science. And maybe something happened along these lines with the young, up and coming, Rachel Maddow who was almost certainly, as a female, a young scholar, a Liberal, and a lesbian, required to dance backward and in high heeled Birkenstocks in the early phases of her career, and likely, through much of her graduate education before that.

The result: The frequent generation of richly evolved narratives of current news, embedded in history, linked to parallel stories, details well sorted out and beautifully integrated. And that is what we get from, and love about, Rachel.

But then, every now and then, instead of a 25 minute segment about something on the Rachel Maddow Show, we get a book! Earlier, Drift. Now, Blowout.

Blowout is the Rachel Maddow treatment of the petroleum industry. That sentence right there should make you want to read this book. In ways I will not here enumerate, Blowout is both prescient and uncannily relevant to this week’s news (and by this week I mean last week, and probably next week.) Russia, the Ukraine, Rex Tillerson, Exxon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, nuclear bombs in civilian hands, freakin’ fracking, Putin, power, crude, crude politicians, corruption, regulation syphilatic African dictator, technology, power, Texas, Siberia, corruption, brilliant business people and, did I mention power? These are the things that make every chapter sing.

This is a book about how Big Petrol was subsidized into a state of power great enough to eat the very democracies (and other forms of government) that created it. This is the Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein story of our times.

In modern geopolitical terms, Blowout seems to explain everything. But it doesn’t, that will require two or three more books by Rachel Maddow. But for now, Blowout is the treatise that gives rich detail and extreme documentation to a theme with which you are already familiar, and already know is important. You will not be shocked to find that Big Oil is up to something. But every chapter, at several points in each said chapter, will shock you nonetheless, because the story is so rich that you can not possibly have grasped it before. Blowout, the book, will bury you.

Get it. Read it. Report back: Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth

Also by Rachel Maddow: Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

If you are interested in following up on Darwin and coral reefs: Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral by David Dobbs.

And, of course, now in paperback, unrelated to the rest of this post but a must read: In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden

The list includes these words:

fetus
trangender
vulnerable
entitlement
diversity
evidence-based
science-based

The response from people at the CDC is, pretty much, WTF, this has never happened before, how can this be happening?

Das machen Diktatoren.

Source

…during an expedition … in December 2013, I spotted a small green frog … Atelopus balios… no populations had been found since 1995, and it was thought to be extinct. But here it was, raised from the dead like Lazarus. My colleagues and I found several more that night, males and females, and shipped them to an amphibian ark in Quito, where they are now breeding safely in captivity. But they will go extinct one day, and the world will be none the poorer for it. Eventually, they will be replaced by a dozen or a hundred new species that evolve later.

Mass extinctions periodically wipe out up to 95 percent of all species in one fell swoop; these come every 50 million to 100 million years, and scientists agree that we are now in the middle of the sixth such extinction…

But the impulse to conserve for conservation’s sake has taken on an unthinking, unsupported, unnecessary urgency. Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection prunes the poorly adapted and allows the hardiest to flourish. …

Climate scientists worry about how we’ve altered our planet, and they have good reasons for apprehension: Will we be able to feed ourselves? Will our water supplies dry up? Will our homes wash away? But unlike those concerns, extinction does not carry moral significance, even when we have caused it….

Yet we are obsessed with reviving the status quo ante. The Paris Accords aim to hold the temperature to under two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, even though the temperature has been at least eight degrees Celsius warmer within the past 65 million years. Twenty-one thousand years ago, Boston was under an ice sheet a kilometer thick. We are near all-time lows for temperature and sea level …

This is how evolution proceeds: through extinction….

Conserving biodiversity should not be an end in itself; diversity can even be hazardous to human health. Infectious diseases are most prevalent and virulent in the most diverse tropical areas. …

And if biodiversity is the goal of extinction fearmongers, how do they regard South Florida, where about 140 new reptile species accidentally introduced by the wildlife trade are now breeding successfully? No extinctions of native species have been recorded, and, at least anecdotally, most natives are still thriving….

If climate change and extinction present problems, the problems stem from the drastic effects they will have on us. A billion climate refugees, widespread famines, collapsed global industries, and the pain and suffering of our kin demand attention to ecology and imbue conservation with a moral imperative. A global temperature increase of two degrees Celsius will supposedly raise seas by 0.2 to 0.4 meters, with no effect on vast segments of the continents and most terrestrial biodiversity. …

First, we don’t practice a general, thoughtless, conservation policy. The author is apparently unaware that our species had developed, in most nations and internationally, a system of identifying conservation problems and addressing them. It is not perfect, but when compared to other systems, such as identifying major health risks, emergent diseases, regional episodes of starvation, or outbreaks of armed conflict, it does as well as other systems, and is probably better than average.

Second, despite the aforementioned attempt to be smart, we are also ignorant. For example, there is a theory that the removal of keystone species has a disproportionately large effect other life forms. Key seed disperses, for example, might be essential for maintenance of important biodiversity in a forest. But, what if there are a dozen species that account for 80% of the dispersal, with one of those accounting for 70%? If that one keystone disperser were to go extinct, would that cause problems for all the other dispersers, since most dispersers also rely on the plant producing the seeds they are dispersing? Or, would one or two of the other dispersers simply and quickly take over the role of the newly extinct keystone species? Answer: We don’t know and neither does R. Alexander Pyron.

For the first of these two reasons, we should not assume we are ignorant and that R. Pyron can teach us something we don’t know. Conservation is clearly not his area of expertise. (I’ve read his resume; It isn’t.) For the second of these two issues, while we can and do make efforts to be specifically smart about our decisions with respect conservation, we also need to have a general principle of opting in favor of conservation-enhancing measures where possible, because we really, honestly, don’t know the ways in which we can screw up. A good principle is to leave stuff alone when we can.

Third, mass extinctions certainly are part of life. They happen now and then. Big giant ones have happened a half dozen times or so, and there have been a larger number of medium sized ones. Mass extinctions have two interesting characteristics. One, when the most severe ones happen, we see that life comes close to getting entirely wiped out. Here is where a form of the Anthropocentric Effect comes into play. We live in the world where mass extinctions of the past have almost, but not actually, ended life on the planet (or, perhaps better stated and more relevant, ended multi-cellular life on the planet). Why do we live on a planet where life almost, but not quite, ends now and then? Because it didn’t. Had it, we would not be living here to revel in how amazing it is that life always survives. In myriad hypotheical alternative universes, the Earth is at present inhabited by slime and nothing else, because the worst mass extinctions were slightly worse than the ones that actually happened here, which is why we are here to tell about it.

The truth is that one of these days we are going to have a mass extinction that does either wipe out all life, or all but perhaps bacteria and one kind of fungus, or something close to that. R. Pyron is fine with that. I am not. He is wrong.

The second characteristic of mass extinctions is that everything gets rearranged and nothing is the same thereafter. My favorite is the pair of events that occurred very close in time at the end of the Permian. Prior to those back to back events, most, or at least a very large percentage, of animals that we were sessile — attached to things — while many, if not most, photo-synthesizers were not. After the Permian, things changed, and most plants were planted and most animals were perambulating by some means. Alexander Pyron wants us to focus on saving humans, and never mind extinctions in general. He lacks understanding of what he writes.

R is wrong about all of the climate change related things he says. He is abysmally wrong, and is clearly repeating standard long disproved, themes of the climate denial, anti science community. Yes, folks, we found another to add to the dozen or so nearly extinct ones we knew about. Like those frogs. A tenured scientist who is a climate science denier!

The current and likely future with respect to sea levee rise is meters, not tenths of meters. The current sea levels are already on the high end for the Pleistocene, not low. Lower sea levels during the last glacial were much lower. The fact that it was warmer 65 million years ago is irrelevant, since our entire ecology, including all of the plants and animals we rely on, are categorically distinct from anything that lived then. R demonstrates in this part of his essay a Middle School level understanding of all things paleo, not what one would expect from a tenured professor of biology who supposedly studies evolution.

His comments about Florida demonstrate a dangerous ignorance. The introduction of what become invasive species is nearly universally bad, and this one kind of event is responsible for more extinction in this world than any other thing. When R. tells us that invasive species are not a problem because of Florida, he is conveying a pernicious and dangerous falsehood. If he understand that he has this wrong then he has carried out a nefarious act in writing this essay, and we need to wonder why. If he does not understand that he has this wrong, then he had demonstrated deep and disturbing ignorance. Maybe there is a third reason, but I don’t see it.

By the way, the pattern he claims for Florida, specifically, might be partly true, but there are reasons for this having to to with the region’s unique bio-geography as a peninsula jutting down into a tropical region, as well as its history as part of an earlier mass extinction event across the Caribbean. This is all interesting stuff that R is apparently ignorant of.

He does seem to be concerned with climate refugees, and he does admit that we might want to avoid some of the effects of climate change. But these ameliorating comments are buried in a larger Lomborgian style argument that we should not be concerned about extinctions, climate change, all of that.

There is an editor at the Washington Post that totally stepped in it.

For context, I provide below links to selected posts of my own about Junior.

This most recent event involves an Op Ed published by the largely anti-science-even-if-it-is-bad-for-the-economy The Wall Street Journal, by Pielke Jr. In it he attacks Michael Mann, and does so in a ham-handed and factually incorrect way. In other words, just another day in the life of Junior.

Since I let my subscription to the Wall Street Journal expire in 1971, and they hold their cards close to their golden chest, I provide the response, by defender of science Peter Fontaine, as graphic:

The reason this all comes up now is because of THIS dustup, in combination with Junior’s very sensitive skin which stings and develops hives even when people are giving each other stern looks.

Why does Roger Pielke Junior do so well at annoying the community of climate change experts? Among professionals in this area, there is something of a running joke. If you see a number that seems to large, a number that you for some reason don’t like the largeness of, just divide it by the GDP (gross domestic product). Now, there are times when you need to divide a thing by GDP to make sens of it, some measure across time and all that. But dividing the costs of major disasters, or the overall disaster costs for an especially costly year, is crazy because, for one, GDP is forced upward when we spend a gazillion dollars rebuilding all the stuff that was destroyed by a bunch of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and what have you. Junior shares a philosophical bed with Bjorn Lomborg: Climate change is real, sure, but it isn’t so bad and maybe we should take a decade or two and do other stuff before dealing with it.

I’m sure I’m oversimplifying Junior’s position there a little. Mostly, though, I just divided what he says by the GDP and it got a lot smaller.

Roger Pielke Junior, I forgive you for this one thing
Roger Pielke Jr no longer with FiveThirtyEight?
A Letter From John Holdren Regarding Roger Pielke Jr’s Statements
Mann, did Judith Curry ever get Rogered!
The Inconceivably Bogus Republican Science Committee Hearings
Today’s Climate Change Congressional Hearings

Hi Mike-

I hope this finds you well. I see you quoted in the media characterizing my work, and in light of your ongoing lawsuit related to libel, I want to make sure that you have been quoted correctly.

*At Salon you characterized my work as “misinformation when it comes to the issue of human-caused climate change.”

*You also say there that my work: “completely ignores technological innovations (sturdier buildings, hurricane-resistant structures, etc)”

*At Climate Progress you say I am an “an individual who has displayed a pattern of sloppiness when it comes to the analysis of climate data”

Just to be clear, do you stand by the public claims as accurate representations of my scholarly work?

For the record I believe all three of these claims to be false and potentially libelous smears. Perhaps you were misquoted? I do request a response.

Many thanks,

Roger

Compared to academics, the Mafia is relatively benign. Why? Because the latter mainly kill their own. Or so it is said by the unquotable WA.

But most of the academic fighting happens within academia, which is, after all, set up as a fight club. And, the number one rule of Academic Fight Club is this: Never stop talking about Academic Fight Club. Or, it stops working. So, let’s talk.

If two sets of researchers disagree on something, there are mechanisms for them to work out their differences. Sometimes those mechanisms work, and sometimes they don’t.

The best mechanism is what I call, perhaps uninspiringly, the “honest conversation.” I’ve written about this before. I’ll give you an actual example of an honest conversation I had the pleasure of witnessing. A young scientist, an advanced level graduate student, had taken multiple core samples in fresh water bodies, and analyzed the samples using a range of techniques that each used a different high tech method. The results were confusing and contradictory. The lakes did not correlate with each other as expected, and within some of the lakes, the results from the different techniques did not correlated as expected either. So, for example, the amount of iron in the soil changed up and down in a certain pattern, indicating wetter vs. dryer periods, while the amount of sediment also varied, but in the opposite way (the more wet, the more sediment, usually). That sort of thing.

The young scientist had been invited to a major research center to discuss his previous project. This talk was being given at a federally funded center at a major land grant university. It was a good talk, and everyone learned, but during the talk he mentioned that he had this problem with these lake core data. So, the scientists who had invited him to give the talk suggested we meet the next day at the geology department and have a conversation.

The young man brought along his data, conveniently set up in slides (most of it) and showed us what he had. In the room was an expert on magnetics, a couple of isotope experts, an expert on sedimentation, an expert on pollen, a couple of climate change experts, and every one of these experts was an expert on fresh water lake coring and analysis. The person who invented the whole idea of fresh water lake coring was not present but most of the senior scientists in the room had been his students.

A conversation happened. The conversation had these goals:

1) Help the student understand what might have gone right or wrong with each of the multiple methods he was using.

2) Help the student understand how the lakes he was investigating may be working in a way different than expected.

3) Help the student understand how to improve his analysis of the existing data.

4) Help the student design, if appropriate, another phase of analyzing the existing cores, or if needed, getting some more cores, to address these questions.

Every one of those questions was advanced significantly, some of the open questions were just plain answered and put to rest, other questions were raised. The student’s work was advanced significantly, and several of the scientists in the room also advanced their own thinking, mainly about methods, by seeing an example of a set of problems and how they came about.

The conversation lacked these goals:

1) Proving that an idea some person had 23 years ago is correct regardless of what we have learned since then.

2) Making an ally or student look better than they deserved by denigrating someone else’s work.

3) Advancing a political agenda by playing fast and lose with the data.

4) Developing bogus evidence, or making a foundation-less accusation, that a scientist was acting dishonestly or in a fraudulent manner.

The first two of this second set of goals is what many academics do much of the time because they are assholes. There are a lot of assholes in the world of academia, mainly because there are few mechanisms to sort them out or re-focus them. But even the assholes know better than to do these things, so while List 2:1 and 2:2 happen often, depending on the sub-field and other factors, they can usually be controlled.

Items 3 and 4 on List 2 are more often done by marginal scientists who for some reason decide the mainstream is flowing in the wrong direction, or who are paid off or otherwise courted by an industry that is negatively affected by a growing scientific consensus (like, that smoking kills, etc.), or by non scientists who are working for politically motivated “think tanks” or “journalistic” outlets.

The term “honest” in “honest conversation” does not mean people are not telling lies, though that is certainly an expectation. Rather, it refers to intent. In an honest scientific conversation, everyone is honestly striving for the goal of advancing the understanding of a natural system. This means that other goals (self aggrandizement, political gain, etc.) are not part of the process.

So, let’s look at three examples of “conversations” that lack the characteristics of the so-called “Honest Conversation.” These are exemplified by: The circumstances leading to Mike Mann‘s law suit against various parties (it is complicated) including the National Review and Canadian shock-jock Mark Steyn; Roger Pielke, Jr’s threat against Mike Mann (see above); and the Jacobson-Clack action.

Mann vs. Steyn, National Review, etc.

In this case, various entities, mainly using the National Review, a politically motivated right wing outlet, including anti-environmental shock-jock Mark Steyn, attacked Mike Mann. That attack included clear statements that Mann had doctored his data and committed acts of fraud. As a result, Mann sued the parties for libel, and while this law suit is taking forever, Mann has won at each stage as the NR, Steyn, etc have tried to put the suit off, stop it, invalidate it, whatever. It really looks like Mann has a clear case and will win. He is not suing for financial gain, but rather, to make it less likely that politically motivated entities such as radio jocks and biased media outlets act in a nefarious manner in relation to important scientific issues in the future.

But, Mann’s suit is constantly misrepresented by the same forces that oppose the research, mainly climate change deniers. This misrepresentation happens mainly in two ways. One is to say that Mann did cook the data and won’t let anyone see the data on which is research is based. This accusation has probably been made 200 or more times just on my blog, in the comments sections of various posts. It is simply false. The data were not cooked and the data are available.

The second misrepresentation is that Mann is suing people who do not agree with his scientific conclusions. This is, however not what the suit is about. To know what the suit is about all you have to do is re-read the last few paragraphs because I already told you. But I’ll say it again because Dale Carnegie was right. The suit is about libel, about statements that Mann committed a fraudulent, illegal act.

Did I mention that Mann’s suit is about libel, that the suit is regarded as very likely winnable, and that every decision made so far along the long and complicated legal process has favored the suit — the libel suit — the suit that is not about the science, but rather, about incorrect and inappropriate, potentially damaging accusations of illegal activity? Oh, I did mention that? Great! Now you know!

Roger Pielke, Jr. Versus the World

Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Earlier in his career he carried out what could have been an interesting analysis of the effects of hurricanes in the Atlantic, not looking at the climatology, but rather, the economic impacts. One might ask how a political scientists is qualified to do research that combines climate change and economics, but the analysis was more of a statistical one than anything else, and we all know how to use spreadsheets.

However, one could argue that RPJr’s analysis was flawed, possibly in a couple of ways. Here is my opinion on what is potentially wrong with this work.

Say we are interested in understanding the negative effects of hurricanes and how they may change over time with change in other things, including but not limited to global warming. Hurricanes occur in all the tropical ocean basins around the world, but each basin is distinctively different from the others. For example, Eastern Pacific hurricanes almost never hit land, while western Pacific ones very often do. The Atlantic basin is very quirky owing to its small size, odd shape (getting smaller as one goes north), strange continental or quasi-continental features such as the Rocky Mountains (yes, that affects the basin), the Gulf of Mexico (big factor), and the islands, mainly the Greater Antilles (which is a thing I can never mention without thinking about my dear departed Great Aunt Tillie … but I digress).

Roger wanted to study the effects of hurricanes hitting land.

So, here’s the problem. Globally, we have all these hurricanes. The Atlantic is a quirky subset of hurricanes which, statistically speaking, are poorly behaved. Whether or not a hurricane makes landfall is itself a quirky thing, and whether or not even a landfalling hurricane actually hits something it can seriously damage is quirky. We have had a number of famous historic hurricanes that were much worse than average because they happen to hit a very vulnerable and densely populated area. A few miles one way or another, and that same hurricane would have joined the set of similar sized storms that we don’t remember as universally because they were not quite as disastrous.

So let me give you an analogy. Say I want to study the gambling behavior of people at a certain casino. I could just go to the casino, randomly chose gamblers, making sure to cover different days and times of day, etc., and interview them systematically.

Or, I could do this: Go to the parking lot, and watch the gamblers leaving. I want to have a reason to approach them, so I wait until I see gamblers who are clearly demonstrative of something related to winning. Like, walking along with their friends and giving each other fist bumps, and saying things like, “all right, that was great” and so on. I’ll approach them, and say, “you seem really happy, can I ask you a few questions, and for your time, I’ll give you this free casino poker chip?”

That would be a pretty bad methodology, because of the myriad known and unknown biases that such a sampling technique produces.

Now, with that analogy in mind, go back to Roger’s research. If you want to know if hurricane like storms are getting worse over time, study the hurricanes. All of them. We track all of them, and have plenty of data on them. But what Roger has done is to take a quirky subset of them (the Atlantic storms) and of those, took a quirky subset of them (those that made landfall) and, if I’m not mistaken, he has also excluded one major hurricane, Sandy, from the sample for very bad reasons (but I may be confusing that with a different researcher, not sure).

I say above that Roger’s research topic is interesting and the research could be interesting, but something went wrong. This seems to be, at least in my opinion but I think this is a widely held opinion, that he has taken his interpretation of the quirky data he deals with and broadened it to make general statements about hurricanes, claiming that a result of global warming is NOT to see in increase in hurricane damage over time. He attributes most of this to the fact that we are adapting to hurricanes, but he uses what many see as an inappropriate measure of that, which is percentage of GDP that a particular year’s worth of hurricane disasters represents. This has at least two problems. One is that major damage to natural areas or major damage to poor settled areas are under represented. The other is that a year with several major disasters will have an increase in GDP because, the way GDP is counted, our response to major disasters inflates that number. This means that the cost of disasters adjusted for GDP is an inappropriate measure because the magnitude of costs of disasters is correlated with GDP.

These considerations of Roger’s work are widely held in the climate science community. Roger has never, seemingly, changed his mind about this work. I would have expected him to engage in what could have been an honest conversation, and reorient his research questions and adapt his methodological approach to do some really interesting research at the intersection of climate science, global economics, and political policy. But instead, he’s mostly doubled down on his work, and has gotten terribly defensive. I can no longer follow his work using Twitter because my own comments to him, which weren’t particularly bad or anything, but showed a disagreement, caused him to block me. In fact, almost everybody I know is blocked by Roger. He doesn’t want to hear criticisms.

But, he does like to threaten. See the email above.

Professor Mann has a tweeted response to Roger’s missive:

Roger Pielke Jr., darling of climate denialists, has no sense of shame. Smears me (& others) on the @WSJ editorial pages by misrepresenting my lawsuit (which is about defamation not scientific dispute: https://t.co/Za6j7kWZxF) after he has done THIS: https://t.co/N3PYAcENe0

— Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) November 16, 2017

Jacobson vs. Clack

I’m not going to say a lot about this particular issue but I want to make a point or two. I’ll try to give a fair summary of events thus far.

One team of researchers, led by Mark Jacobson, wrote a paper claiming that we could transition our economy to 100% renewables over a certain point of time if certain things happened. This research involved running a model that made certain assumptions.

A different team led by Christopher Clack wrote a paper saying that the Jacobson team was all wet, and making some specific claims about the model and assumptions.

This was all carried out in the peer reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Jacobson, as per normal, saw the Clack response and made comments on it, providing clarification and information. However, according to Jacobson, Clack ignored some of those data. Furthermore, PNAS, according to Jacobson, failed to act in a correct and professional manner in their handling of the matter.

When word of the suit broke, via a very biased and non-journalistic web site (apparently), almost everybody in the field responded by saying that this was a terrible idea, that academics should not settle things by law suit, that there are mechanisms to work out differences, etc. etc.

Amid these comments flying around the Internet, there was one comment that was different. I won’t say who made it because it was made in private, but it said, roughly, “don’t assume this law suit is bogus. Look at the details. There might be something here.”

Since the person who made the comment is a trusted friend who often sees the forest through the trees, and I had learned to pay attention to his contradictions, always made as part of the longer, on going, honest conversation, I got a copy of the law suit and read it. He was right.

There are two parts of this controversy. One is in the scientific interpretation of the problem, the use of methods, the outcome of those methods, and the interpretation thereof. The other is in the handling of the process and the ensuing meaning, which does in fact include a part that can be interpreted as one scientific team making the public accusation that another team acted fraudulently. Not just stupidly, not just wrongly as in getting it wrong, but feloniously, or something close to that.

And, the same can be said, potentially of the journal PNSAS, also named in the suit.

The following two things can be true at once: 1) When academics sue over reaction to their work, there will be all sorts of trouble, perhaps unrelated to the suit, and it really is generally not a good way of settling differences; and 2) after you try to settle all the differences the usual way, it may sometimes be appropriate to sue.

I have exactly two opinions about the Jacobson vs. Clack dust up. 1) Almost everyone who has expressed an opinion about it is embarrassingly full of it. The first round of opinions were clearly made by folks who never read the suit. The second round of comments is mostly being made by people chagrined into doing their homework, but are stuck in List 2:1 mode. They said things before they seem to want to defend even with new information that they might want to change their minds.

My second opinion about the suit is this: I have no idea if this suit is appropriate. It is not, to me, a clear case like the Mann vs. NR/Steyn suit is. that may be in part because it is between teams of researchers and a real journal, while the Mann suit is an entity within academics defending science generally from outside politically motivated nefarious forces funded by big petroleum. But even that may not be so simple if, for example, the Clack team had something going on along these lines (I do not know this to be the case but some have suggested it, that they are somewhat anti-energy-transition for some reason).

Science vs. the Barbarians at the Gate

And, of course, these things are all tied together.

It all comes down to Arminius and his duplicitous betrayal of Publius Quinctilius Varus. I’m sure you know what I mean, but I’ll expand just in case.

Arminius, also known these days as Herman the German, was a subaltern to Varus, the Roman general who controlled much of what is now known as Germany and environs. Arminius used his inside status and knowledge to turn the Germans successfully against Varus in one of the most stunningly unexpected and thorough defeats in known military history. The Romans were driven out of the region never to return.

It is easy to see the enemies of science, across the trenches, lobbing mortars, sniping, being a general nuisance but, since science is powerful, only making the occasional gain during their long slogging retreat.

The real danger is when one’s own betray. Not a scientific difference, or a difference in approach, or a difference, well meaning, in interpretation between researchers. Rather, someone or some group who could be regarded as part of the scientific community, using that credibility to advance an anti scientific agenda. Those are the people who get called to testify before Republican-run “science” committees in the US Congress, tossing their false pearls before real swine, giving credibility to manufactured dissent bought and paid for by a small number of wealthy individuals who’s hands rest firmly on the levers of economic power.

The the war on science is waged on these two fronts, the overt and the internal, and it is the latter that is the most dangerous. The Mann vs. NR/Steyn case is an example of the former. These other two situations could, but hopefully will not, develop into examples of the latter.

Those waging the open and conventional war are now using the Jacobson vs. Clack case as an example of a frivolous or improper action, and using that, in turn, to try to devalue the very appropriate Mann vs NR/Steyn suit. And, in an awful twist, Roger is piling on that bandwagon. Part of me wants to see Jacobson vs. Clack validated and developed and fully legitimized, or alternately, quickly settled so it goes away fast, not because of the merits of the suit one way or the other, but because we don’t need to give Steyn and his accolades, or the hapless Roger, this mound of mud to sling about, like they do.

Documents related to Jacobson vs. Clack:
Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes, by Jacobson et al

Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar, by Clack et al.

Line-by-Line Response by M.Z. Jacobson, M.A. Delucchi to Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar

The law suit itself was formerly available as a PDF file but permission to access that file has been withdrawn. But that’s OK, I have a copy of it: LARGE FILE: Download Jacobson vs Clack Law Suit Here (32 MB PDF file)

“Climate change is real,” Murkowski told the audience firmly. “Climate change is real.”

…

“While healthcare has been the issue that has been dominating our days, it isn’t the issue that is defining our time,” Murkowski said. “Our world is changing. The world around us is changing: socially, economically, and ecologically. And we all know that climate change is at the heart of this change.”

Murkoswki said effects are being felt across the state: “Newtok, Kivalina, Shishmaref: these are the names that seem to most make the news,” she said. “But it’s also our Interior communities as well. Almost every village faces similar impact. ”

And, Murkowski said it’s time to take action. …

“Confronting climate change and adapting to it will take leadership, it will take partnership and attention to social justice if we are to find the strength to tackle the issue together,” Murkowski said.

Now, before you get all weepy-eyed about how we can form a coalition across party lines to address climate change, forget that right now. The majority of Republicans are in the pocket of the energy companies, and will continue to oppose action on climate change. The very large, vast majority of them. As long as the Republicans are in charge in either house of the US Congress, or in any legislative chamber in state, action will be opposed in those states because that is how the caucus system works.

Murkowski’s talk about climate change is impotent and irrelevant. Unless….

Unless one thing happens. One decision she can make to change the world, in a huge way. One thing.

Any guesses as to what that might be? If you think of it, let us know in the comments, but also, seriously consider sending her a letter encouraging her to take this action.