The Little Hyperbole that Could

 

The 2018 Paradise, California fire that 

 destroyed more than 13,000 homes

It is becoming Republican doctrine that either the signs of climate change are (a) nothing more than nature’s longstanding pattern of recurring and very normal cycles – despite record-breaking disasters and heat waves that defy normality – and/or (b) the left is exaggerating the problem and using it as an excuse to rein in large and successful business interests that provide jobs and generate huge economic values for the nation. According to the GOP, we are spending too much to displace American businesses with fossil fuel footprints, costing jobs in those sectors, at a time where inflation and government spending must be controlled. To some in the GOP, the climate change agenda is and remains a “hoax.”

But the signs that we cannot go back are everywhere. Even the Autoworkers’ strike reflected the Big Three carmakers’ acknowledgement that “Detroit” is shifting its current and future output away from diesel/gasoline vehicles into all-electric models. Since electric motors apply torque without the need for an expensive transmission that is required for traditional vehicles, the labor required to build an electric car is about 30% less than what is needed for a gasoline-powered vehicle. While alternative energy is creating vastly more jobs than it is displacing, there is certainly some discomfort for many traditional workers in that transition.

Since we live in an era where political beliefs are often outsourced to mendacious leaders (the cult phenomenon) or determined by heavy filtering of any facts that may contradict underlying assumptions, conspiracy theories often have more pull than any presentation of empirical realities. But woe to any perceived liberal presenter of “facts” than can be legitimately challenged, marginalized or discredited. Despite the tsunami of hard evidence that climate change, accelerated by human beings burning fossil fuels to excess for over a century, is indeed responsible for a litany of intensifying, unprecedented and increasing number of major horrific “natural” disasters across the planet, any crack in that scientific wall is fodder for the right.

And so, when Patrick Brown, co-director of the climate and energy team at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, California, published a team-prepared academic paper (Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California) in the August 30th weekly Nature journal, reported simplified metrics that apparently selectively over-emphasized the linkage between climate change and recent wildfire mega-disasters, even though his conclusions were correct, climate change deniers and marginalizers were delighted. Writing for the September 12th Los Angeles Times, staff writer Alex Wigglesworth, explains what happened: “For climate change deniers, it was confirmation of a long-held suspicion: Scientists cannot be trusted.

“Days after publishing research that found global warming had boosted the risk of fast-growing California wildfires by 25%, scientist and lead author Patrick T. Brown announced that he’d withheld the full truth to maximize the article’s chances of being published in the journal Nature.

“‘The paper I just published — ‘Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California’ — focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell, wrote Brown… Brown also wrote that he’d selected a metric and timeframe to study that weren’t the most useful, but generated the largest numbers quantifying the impact of climate change.

“While intended mostly for the insular world of academia, Brown’s comments have ignited a firestorm of controversy that has spread far beyond the confines of science journals and has exposed the researcher to both praise and condemnation. They also come at a time when public confidence in science research is declining, particularly among Republican voters.

“Conservative media outlets seized on Brown’s statements as evidence that scientists lie about climate change in order to advance liberal political orthodoxy. Some fellow researchers said his comments speak to a larger problem in the scientific community, in which a handful of high-profile journals can play outsize roles in advancing researchers’ careers and communicating their findings to journalists, policymakers and the general public…

“Others, including at least one of Brown’s co-authors, say they were surprised or even baffled by his comments. The paper was entirely clear about which factors were considered and which were excluded, they said, and there was no sleight of hand involved.

“For its part, Nature said it was ‘carefully considering the implications’ of Brown’s stated actions, which its editor said reflect poor research practices. ‘The only thing in Patrick Brown’s statements about the editorial processes in scholarly journals that we agree on is that science should not work through the efforts by which he published this article,’ read a statement from Magdalena Skipper, the journal’s editor in chief…

“To a number of observers, Brown’s comments were disturbing not because they suggested that he distorted evidence, but because they call into question whether the process of scientific debate and organized skepticism is compromised more broadly.” The question centered on the relevant standards of scientific reporting, how data from differing reports can withstand comparison and criticism if the underlying metrics are different.

“Brown emphasized that he didn’t manipulate data or stage a hoax, and that he stands by the research. He simply used it as an example to point out issues with the publication process and the field of climate science, which he fears has become less about understanding the world and more about warning people of the dangers of climate change, he said… ‘I’m calling out our paper but it’s a completely normal paper,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the paper itself. All of the facts and the caveats that we don’t look at things other than climate — it’s all right there in broad daylight.’

“Still, Brown said, since he spoke out, conservative outlets have been lining up to platform him. He’s turned down interviews with ‘basically every Fox News show,’ as well as Newsmax and One America Network, he said… ‘That’s really unfortunate because that’s not the audience I’m trying to reach here,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to reach my own research community. I’m trying to reform science from within.’” LA Times.

Given that the House of Representatives, under speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agreement with about 20 ultra-rightwing Congresspeople he courted to win the speakership after 15 rounds of voting, is doing everything it can to undo legislation that is aimed at countering climate change and encouraging the development alternative energy, the scientific community needs to shore up its reporting standards to withstand such criticism.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the real hoax against the American people is the misaligned support of the MAGA right to any challenge, whatever the justification, to formal recognition that man-accelerate climate change is massive and must be prioritized as an existential threat to us all.