An extended, substantive discussion of parapsychology would certainly be off-topic, not to mention that it would be futile to begin one with the 28th comment on a three-day-old discussion thread which probably no one is looking at any more.

Having said that, and with all due respect, I submit to you that both of your statements are quite incorrect and reflect a lack of knowledge of the field — not unlike similar statements about the status of climate science that are often made just as confidently by people who haven’t really studied the science but already “know” that it is bunk because that’s what they’ve been told by organized, so-called “skeptic” groups.

That’s the parallel I was suggesting between attitudes towards parapsychology and climate science: they both come under attack from ideologues who have an a priori ideological opposition to their findings, or even to their very subject matter, and are most strenuously and vociferously denounced and rejected by the very people who know least about them.

If you are genuinely interested in learning about modern parapsychology I recommend two books by Dean Radin, Ph.D — “The Conscious Universe” and “Entangled Minds” — which give a history and an overview of modern parapsychology research and the scientific evidence for so-called “psi” phenomena.

That’s why it’s fringe science – and most fringe science is denialist, unfortunately.

Not true. Parapsychologists have been routinely subjected for decades to baseless accusations of “deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance” from organized groups of obstinate denialists masquerading as “skeptics”.

Many people feel quite comfortable denouncing parapsychology as “bunk” when in fact they know less about modern parapsychological research than the Ditto-Head global warming deniers know about climate science.

[JR: Uhh, not a good analogy.]

If you will permit a revision, I would like to resubmit my statement to be:

“to actively, deliberately encourage misinformation and doubt is to encourage mass extinction.”

This is essentially saying that exhorting the world to ignore the science that reveals a danger means possible extinction.

I can accept your request for careful language but I see nothing in the climate models that say this is impossible.

[JR: Oh, the IPCC says 3.5 C warming would wipe out 40% to 70% of all species, so there is little doubt that would face mass extinction on our current emissions path.]

In this case, to actively, deliberately encourage misinformation and doubt is to [snip]. Isn’t it?

But we can’t accuse those who passively, silently ignore the issue of committing the same crime….And then there are so many of us who know the seriousness of the issue but fail to speak out.

And a few just enjoy the carbon wealth and want to keep it going as long as possible, without any concern for the future. But they may not have direct malice.

The big sin is to deliberately harbor wrong science, and then promote it too. This is a very familiar action in our culture – readily seen in the collection of old tobacco advertisements http://lane.stanford.edu/tobacco/index.html

Science historians and all of us should scrutinize this time. We have done all this before. And we should not make the same mistake again.

From Wikipedia:

In law, defamation—also called calumny, vilification, slander (for spoken words), and libel (for written or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always,[1] a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant).

In common law jurisdictions, slander refers to a malicious, false and defamatory spoken statement or report, while libel refers to any other form of communication such as written words or images. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism.

Mike, I’ve been thinking along very similar lines. All true scientists are interested in learning as much about their discipline as they can. They’re sincerely interested in reality, facts and truth.

Conversely the most widely-heard deniers are professional arguers, often attorneys or with similar training and skills. They are not interested in the truth, but only in winning their argument.

Most great scientists don’t necessarily seem like great communicators to me. It appears difficult for them to empathize with the far lesser knowledge the average member of the public has about their discipline. They have difficulty putting things into plain, accessible language, finding the best and simplest metaphors, and speaking concisely and in sound bytes.

The best science teachers at smaller private liberal arts colleges, community colleges and even high schools are often better at communicating science to the public, who are closer to the level of their students than graduate students or even undergrads in the sciences at major research universities.

Other great communicators in all types of media should also be enlisted.

Then top scientists should be paired or grouped with these best communicators who are dedicated to communicating climate change and effectively rebutting the arguments of deniers.

This is what I’m attempting to do through my infant (though hopefully not infantile) Anthropocene Foundation suggested to me by Paul Ehrlich and supported by scientists like Paul Crutzen, Kevin Trenberth and many others.

Top scientists who are also top communicators: NASA’s James Hansen, NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth, Stanford’s Stephen Schneider (I’d love to know others – please list!)

Expert scientists from other fields who are great at commuicating climate change: Joe Romm (Again, I’d love to know others!)

Expert meteorologists who are great at communicating climate change: The Weather Channel’s Stu Ostro (formerly a denier), Huntsville, Alabama’s Dan Satterfield.

Journalists: Bill McKibben, Jeff Goodell, Eric Pooley, Andrew Revkin (when focused on the science, not the controversy), Bob Henson of NCAR.

Politicians: Al Gore, Bill Bradbury (running for governor of Oregon, primary disciple of Gore’s), Jay Inslee (energy expert in Congress).

Others: Eban Goodstein (Economist at Bard College, creator of “Focus the Nation on Climate change), Toby Dittrich (my partner in our NASA-sponsored on-line class on climate change), Bud Ward (director of the Yale Climate Change Media Forum).

Those with the potential to get this and communicate it: Bill Moyers, Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, etc.

We should all be working together on this, and I hope we do. Your comment about this was very well-written Mike – thanks.

Scientists have upon occasionally turned investigative reporter, in the past, as the Union of Concerned Scientists report shows.

If scientists feel threatened by these fossil fuel funded slander campaigns, and they should feel that way, they should join the Union of Concerned Scientists or some other similar investigation, and dig to get to the bottom of the ExxonMobil support network for the deniers.

We know that some sort of denier network was being run out of Senator Inhofe’s office by Marc Morano, and that after he left that job he was picked up by a think tank funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, which is no great surprise. He got spanked, and went running home to the Scaife network of conservative foundations, IMO. Likely Morano is still running the denier network, IMO.

Scientists should not wait to have this done to them again. They should counterattack, and investigate, investigate, investigate to do so.

Scientists have money, logical and investigative skills, and communications and networking skills. They should band together, join the ACLU, join the Union of Concerned Scientists, and start putting together investigative reports, not only on the Morano/Inhofe denier network but also on the Scaife network of conservative charitable foundations that supports such far right causes.

Finally, the ExxonMobil/Rockefeller financial empire is long overdue for very, very serious investigation, IMO.

We need to stop taking this sort of thing lying down, and go after this network of fossil fuel corporations, major banks, and charitable right wing foundations that are leading the world to ruin.

Many of us older guys thought for a long time that since the New York Times was the publisher of the Pentagon Papers over 30 years ago that they deserved a little slack. It took a little while to figure out what they are now all about.

In fact, there’s a reason they’re in the same rack as USA Today at Starbucks. That’s where you go to get birdcage or catbox liner.

Mike Roddy (#15) advocates the assembly of competent spokespersons to rally the response to the apparent effect on the populace of the email exposures. A good approach. However, in mentioning the name of Dan Rather as a ’smearee’ as opposed to a ’smearer’ his bias seems clear and the selection of spokespersons would need to be well thought out. The “60 Minutes” fraud was thoroughly exposed almost before Rather was off the air with the Bush piece.

A better approach by AGW proponents, I think, would be to acknowledge wrongdoing by those who have committed it (if you can agree that such wrongdoing has occurred) and regroup. I feel that this would be a better response than trying to deal directly with the “five year-olds” who are disrupting things.

I am not a climate scientist by any means. I am, however, steeped in the scientific method by virtue of having been an engineer dealing directly with the lives of astronauts engaged in human space flight. I write here only in the cause of scientific integrity and, above all, getting things right.