One of the only non-science dead-tree publications I read is The Economist. It is somewhat right-leaning, but is generally reasonable about most things. A couple of days ago, (I’m a few issues behind) I read an article (“Apocalypse perhaps a little later,” The Economist, March 30th – April 5th 2013 issue) claiming that “some scientists are arguing that man-made climate change is not quite so bad a threat as it appeared a few years ago.” While the article was hardly sounding the bells confirming that the right wing nuts were right, it will nevertheless have that effect.

Two issues later, I found exactly what I expected. In the interest of “balance,” the editors included four responses. As luck would have it, these perfectly reflected a cross section of opinion as presented by the mass market media:

  1. The Reasonable Crank: If one takes the advice of the Concern Troll, his efforts are rewarded with a “bravo” and golf-clap from the Reasonable Crank. In this case, the author writes:

    Your change of tone on climate change is welcome … You now have common ground with people who have long been dismissed as sceptics (actually something for any scientist to be proud of) or vilified as deniers

    What has become more and more obvious is that current climate-change policy is an expensive waste of time …

    This is the sort of person who writes in complete sentences, carefully toning down any would-be mouth frothing to maintain the facade. The reasonable crank often claims a sort of credential via membership to one or more organizations that, on closer inspection, are crank institutions. In this case, the writer, Mr. Martin Livermore, claims membership to something called the “Scientific Alliance.” That sounds innocuous. Unless, of course, we actually look any further (from the Scientific Alliance “About Us” page):

    The Alliance brings together both scientists and non-scientists committed to rational discussion and debate on the challenges facing the environment today.

    Members of the Scientific Alliance are concerned about the many ways in which science is often misinterpreted, and at times misrepresented, within both policy circles and in the media.

    Whenever a person incorporates “non-scientists” in analyzing “misinterpretation” of science, you can rest assured he is a crank.

    So this guy is given the first word.

  2. The Actual Expert: This person is generally actively involved in research in the object in question. While such a person readily dismiss crank arguments:


    … As long as we do not find modern physics to be fundamentally wrong, we will have to plan for a climate sensitivity of 3°C.
    Since CO2 emissions are consistently at the upper end of the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]’s scenarios both our solid understanding of climate change on a global level and our lack of understanding of hurricanes and other climate extremes demand more, not less, caution.

    While the author of this letter, Professor Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, is an actual climate scientist, he gets second billing to the crank.

  3. The Who Knows? Guy: The fence-sitter only sits the fence in that, since doing something requires effort, “We should do nothing and see what happens.” While claiming neutrality between science and anti-science, he is a de facto enemy of science.
  4. The Pithy Idiot: This person’s entire contribution to an debate is to provide a single quote from a (probably long dead) individual. To wit:


    Your article brought to mind Mark Twain’s adage:

    There is something fascinating about science. Once gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

    The contributor here apparently doesn’t realize that more data have been collected on any facet of climate science now than the entire collected knowledge of man at the time Mr. Clemens penned that (obviously satirical) remark in Life on the Mississippi.

The ineptitude of our media is the real tragedy of our age.