Why the hell does anyone waste ink/oxygen on John McLaughry?

As most of you know, one of the best things about Vermont is that it's not exactly an ideal place to live if one is a conservative. And often, as in other places, outspoken conservatives in their slavish devotion to free-market fundamentalism (and in VT, sometimes-but-thankfully-rarely Bible-based social conservatism), they tend to play a bit loose with the facts. Outspoken conservatives up here are so rare that it's not hard to get attention by opening one's mouth and letting the drivel fly - there's not a lot of competition. Hence, the John McLaughry experience.

McLaughry heads the VT-based think tank called the Ethan Allen Institute:

The Ethan Allen Institute is Vermont's independent, nonpartisan, free-market-oriented public policy think tank. The Institute offers "Ideas for Vermont's Future" built upon a libertarian, decentralist, community-based philosophy. It is one of some 48 similar but independent state organizations associated with the State Policy Network.

Mission Statement:

The Mission of the Ethan Allen Institute is to influence public policy in Vermont by helping its people to better understand and put into practice the fundamentals of a free society: individual liberty, private property, competitive free enterprise, limited and frugal government, strong local communities, personal responsibility, and expanded opportunity for human endeavor.

It's your typical 'let the markets decide the fate of the human race; it knows what's best' organization. McClaughry's got that William-Buckley-wannabe vibe going on, and is the public face of the E.A. Institute. Come to think of it, he's pretty much the only face I ever seem to see from the institute. The board of directors includes such heavyweights(snicker) as Jack McMullen, the guy who ran against Senator Leahy a few years back and lost the primary to farmer Fred Tuttle.

McLaughry himself has a rather impressive resume, having worked in the Reagan administration, served on four presidential commissions, held office in the Vermont House and Senate, as well as has an unsuccessful run for governor under his belt. You can hear his commentaries on Vermont's contribution to the right-wing noise machine, True North Radio. And to his credit, McLaughry hasn't ever framed his positions from the theocratic angle (he is an intellectual, after all). So, all in all, he's a pretty smart guy, and I say that sincerely. So you could imagine the cognitive dissonance I was having after reading his's op-ed piece on global warming in the Times Argus a few weeks back entitled 'Warming Hysteria is Out of Whack' (subscription or payment required to view), that stated:

Virtually unnoticed by the news media, over 17,000 scientists and engineers - nearly 2,000 of them with degrees in meteorology and climatology - signed the 1997 Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Kyoto Petition. Its punch line read: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

...The post-1979 lower troposphere satellite microwave data corroborated by radiosonde balloons shows no alarming global warming trend.

See, there's a problem here, folks. McLaughry, in his fetish-like obsession with free-market fundamentalism, knows that Americans, and particularly right-wingers, are kind of lazy with checking the facts. Many see something that confirms their preconceptions, see it coming from some blowhard the represents an 'institute' (giving it an air of credibility), and then accept the premises, case closed. Too bad he's wrong, not to mention that quoting 30 year old studies on a modern, quickly-evolving problem is pretty friggin' lazy. Might as well use the Bible for a reference.

In this last Sunday's Times Argus, Dr. Alan K. Betts, a real scientist (unlike McLaughry, the political scientist) who is the president of Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering in Pittsford, contributed an article that completely demolished McLaughry's wishful thinking piece. Here are the major points:

1. McClaughry quotes "evidence" that the lower tropospheric satellite microwave data do not show an "alarming global warming trend." This is a dishonest fudge of the real scientific evidence. The data in question from Spencer and Christie (Science, 1990, and other papers that followed) were for many years inconsistent with the surface warming record, and this was widely repeated as "evidence" that warming was not occurring. A U.S. Climate Change Science Program panel was specifically set up and funded by the (skeptical) U.S. government to resolve the issue. They found the errors in the Spencer and Christie analyses, and now the data agree; and all show the warming that has occurred in the last 30 years (during which we have had satellite as well as surface data). Read their 2006 report at http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf. Sadly, this definitive report is deliberately ignored by McClaughry, because of course the scientific evidence inconveniently disagrees with his political agenda. The repetition of false information is a well-known tool of propaganda, not science.

2. The argument that only a few percent of the greenhouse gases are from our industrial society is totally misleading. Water vapor is the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect. Together all of the greenhouse gases warm the Earth to an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which means the oceans don't freeze Fahrenheit, making life as we know it on this planet possible. It is what we are doing to this balance that matters. Although carbon dioxide contributes a smaller amount than water vapor to the greenhouse warming, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising very rapidly (about 100 parts per million over the last century; and now rising at about 2 parts per million per year) driven by fossil fuel burning. The growth of other industrial gases in the atmosphere is also contributing to the greenhouse effect. The presence of water vapor, coupled with the earth's temperature, amplifies the effects of these additional greenhouse gases. McClaughry is implying that a few more degrees of warming isn't much to worry about (because he does not want carbon dioxide emissions to be regulated).

3. McClaughry points out that in 1997 thousands of scientists signed an anti-Kyoto petition (starting "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto") as part of a successful campaign by business-funded interests to stop the United States from agreeing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Ten years have passed and it is now clear that we need reductions in greenhouse gases far greater than those of the Kyoto agreement, if we are to avoid huge economic costs, as recently outlined in the Stern Review by the British government.

Ouch. Perhaps McLaughry really believes those words of his anointed savior, Ronald Reagan: 'Facts are stupid things.' But it doesn't even take a scientist to see how McLaughry is piling on the bull, it just takes a little fact-checking, as evidenced by these letters to the editor in response to McLaughry's diatribe. R.D. Eno from Cabot:

Snarling and foaming, McClaughry as much as calls any climatologist who contends that manmade emissions are tilting the climate toward rapid and unnatural warming a liar. But the only evidence McClaughry cites in his surly little scree is a "petition" circulated in 1998 by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicin that disputes the evidence for global warming, signed, says McClaughry, by 17,000 scientists, of whom 2,000 were meteriologists or climatologists. This "petition" is a hoary old hoax.

OISM is a one-man operation, much like the Ethan Allen Institute, run by Arthur Robinson, a biochemist with a sideline in books about how to survive a nuclear war. The study that the "petition" supposedly supports was written by Robinson, his son and a couple of astrophysicists, none of them climatologists. (One of the authors, Sallie L. Baliunas, is affiliated with nine ExxonMobil-funded groups, according to New Scientist.) Robinson formatted the study to mimic a National Academy of Science article and then flooded university mailboxes with copies and a card to be signed as an endorsement. But the study was never peer reviewed and has been discredited by the academy. The number of legitimate endorsements of Robinson's "petition" cannot be determined because credentials were not listed, but Scientific American, randomly sampling the signatories, estimated that "petition" supporters included only about 200 climate researchers. The OISM paper and "petition" represent flat-earth science at its worst. Trying to pass off this baloney as filet mignon might be called, to paraphrase McClaughry's bluster, ethically repellent dishonesty, but that would dignify it.

Ya' know, it takes more than the word 'institute' to have some credibility, John. How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when your cherry-picked sources are about as reliable as Dick Cheney's were for Iraq? If McLaughry's sloppily researched op-eds are the best the conservatives of Vermont have to offer, it's no wonder they're an endangered species in Vermont. But I'm not complaining.