Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Forbes’ rich list of nonsense .. Maria56, JimLur and Larry Bell are proud (guessing) members of the Gish Gallop Club

— group @ 6 January 2011

Guest commentary from Michael Tobis and Scott Mandia with input from Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Kevin Trenberth

While it is no longer surprising, it remains disheartening to see a blistering attack on climate science in the business press where thoughtful reviews of climate policy ought to be appearing. Of course, the underlying strategy is to pretend that no evidence that the climate is changing exists, so any effort to address climate change is a waste of resources.

A recent piece by Larry Bell in Forbes, entitled “Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts” .. http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/media-climate-change-warming-opinions-contributors-larry-bell_print.html , is a classic example.

Bell uses the key technique that denialists use in debates, dubbed by Eugenie Scott the “Gish gallop .. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/plimer_does_the_gish_gallop.php ”, named after a master of the style, anti-evolutionist Duane Gish. The Gish gallop raises a barrage of obscure and marginal facts and fabrications that appear at first glance to cast doubt on the entire edifice under attack, but which on closer examination do no such thing. In real-time debates the number of particularities raised is sure to catch the opponent off guard; this is why challenges to such debates are often raised by enemies of science. Little or no knowledge of a holistic view of any given science is needed to construct such scattershot attacks.

The approach also works somewhat in print, if the references are sufficiently obscure and numerous. Ideally, someone will take the time to answer such an attack, but there is a fundamental asymmetry of forces at work. It is, in fact, easier to form an allegation than to track down a reasonable explanation of what it means and how it really fits in to the balance of evidence. Also, the skills required to reflect the science are deeper than the ones required to attack it; hence the defenders are outnumbered and outgunned. Still, sometimes an article is prominent enough that it merits a detailed response.

The slightly out of the ordinary thing about Bell’s piece is that he casts his attack not as an attack on science (his usual method .. http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/03/climate-change-hoax-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html ) but on the media:

.. it's very long .. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/forbes-rich-list-of-nonsense/

See also:

JimLur -- someone should tell the poor sap Galileo stopped having movements centuries ago
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