Bombshell exclusive: Leading expert withdraws name from Climate Shift report

[bananas]

http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/18/climate-shift-matthew-nisbet/

Bombshell exclusive: Leading expert withdraws name from Climate Shift report, explains how key conclusion that environmentalists weren’t outspent by opponents of climate bill “is contradicted by Nisbet’s own data”

Nisbet's data actually shows enviros were far outspent, especially where it mattered most: Lobbying, advertising, and election spending

April 18, 2011

Brulle’s letter of withdrawal is reposted with permission at the end.

UPDATE: The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard just reposted my entire piece with this headline and lede:

Killing a false narrative before it takes hold

COMMENTARY | April 18, 2011 Busting an embargo, ClimateProgress.com’s Joe Romm blisteringly dismantles an upcoming academic report on climate change advocacy in hopes no reporters will be taken in.

Prof. Matthew Nisbet of American University has written an error-riddled, self-contradictory, demonstrable false report, Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate (big PDF here). The 99-page report’s two central, but ridiculous, claims are:

1. The environmental movement outspent opponents during the climate bill debate.
2. Media coverage of climate change has become balanced and was not a factor in the defeat of the cap-and-trade bill.

The report makes these untenable claims in order to shift the blame for the bill’s failure to climate scientists, environmentalists, foundations, and most especially Al Gore.

None of the report’s major conclusions can stand the light of day, particularly those two. Climate Shift is not a revisionist history. It is a counterfactual history.

Now I don’t think progressives have tried hard enough to explain why the climate bill failed — including what we and our allies did wrong — leaving the door open for bogus analysis. So in a series of posts, I will not merely refute every aspect of Nisbet’s paper, I will try to explain what in fact did go wrong (and right) — and why. This post will serve as an overview of the paper’s myriad flaws.

The bombshell is that Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University had his name pulled off the report’s list of expert paid reviewers late last week when he finally saw the whole finished report — and he returned Nisbet’s check. In an exclusive series of interviews, Brulle, whom the NYT called “an expert on environmental communications, explained to me that “I think it is really bad and I don’t want to be associated with it.”

Brulle told me the study has “many flaws,” and “selectively used the literature.” Indeed, Brulle, who is past chair of the Environment and Technology section of the American Sociological Association, says “I gave him refereed articles that countered his thesis and he ignored them.”

UPDATE: Nisbet has replied to this post and Brulle responds at the end.

<snip>

[kristopher]

1. Kick and recommend

[certainot]

2. idiotic that prog groups do not challenge unis that support RW radio stations that do GW denial 24/7

this is a story that will get little attention while our major unis broadcast sports and give community credibility the main sources of obstruction and global warming denial, the limbaugh hannity stations that do global warming denial all day for the RW think tanks, and reach 50 mil people every week.

fucking idiotic

[Overseas]

3. I agree with Brulle that climate change denier spending has shifted.

The deniers spent several years creating doubt and supporting the few scientists willing to pretend human activity has not been the primary influence on climate destabilization.

But then Exxon Mobil and others drew a lot of attention for the millions spent in doing that.

Now those who wish to continue polluting freely, like the Koch Brothers, have shifted their spending to indirect methods-- supporting the politicians who were willing to pretend our climatic systems have not been disrupted by industrial activity and that there's no need to reduce our carbon emissions.

[kristopher]

4. reanalysis makes clear opponents of climate bill far outspent environmentalists

Climate Shift data reanalysis makes clear opponents of climate bill far outspent environmentalists
Another expert slams Nisbet's "illegitimate assumptions"
April 19, 2011

The data suggest opponents of the bill far outspent environmentalists during the climate bill debate of 2009 and 2010:
8-to-1 on lobbying in 2009
4-to 1 (or more) on advertising in 2009
8-to-1 in donations to candidates and Congress members in 2010 cycle
10-to-1 on independent election expenditures in 2010

I am basing those numbers on a reanalysis of data in Dr. Matthew Nisbet’s discredited Climate Shift report .

This reanalysis, which I’ll present below, was done with the help of Dr. Robert Brulle. Brulle is a leading social scientist whom Nisbet had specifically asked to review his financial analysis — and who ultimately withdrew his name from the study in large part because Nisbet’s claims that enviros held the spending edge were “contradicted by Nisbet’s own data.” Brulle’s withdrawal letter is here.

Yesterday, yet another expert, Thomas Webler, came forward to debunk Nisbet’s analysis. His email to me focused on Nisbet’s claim that enviro overall spending resources exceed that of bill opponents and concludes:...

http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/19/climate-shift-data-reanalysis/