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July 27, 2006
The War on Science: Researcher Tells Right Wing to Stop Misusing Study
"I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming," writes Peter Doran in today's New York Times. The associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago has an Op Ed piece telling right-wing, anti-science nuts to stop misusing his research and is name to support their incorrect assertion that the evidence of global warming is "bad science."
Doran's words are a welcome defensive salvo against the War on Science.
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"...[M]any news and opinion writers linked our study with another bit of polar research published that month... and erroneously concluded that the earth was not warming at all. 'Scientific findings run counter to theory of global warming,' said a headline on an editorial in The San Diego Union-Tribune...
...Our results have been misused as 'evidence' against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel 'State of Fear' and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism.' ...One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have never said that 'the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.' I have never thought such a thing either."
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I have but one criticism. Doran waits until paragraph four to get to the point -- that his studies DO NOT refute global warming -- and instead opens with the background of his research. Personally, I would have led with the “stop misusing my research” angle and then given the background on the facts, if only because many readers skimming the paper might never make it to paragraph four before moving on and might come away with some vague notion about Antarctica being “warmer or cooler than it used to be” or something. But kudos, nonetheless.
Posted by MJuhre at July 27, 2006 01:42 PM