Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the My original post on Laurie David's WaPo op-ed is here. A reader just added a comment that links to the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers' blog (not a daily read for me, but hey, I have to pick the 2 blogs I can read everyday very carefully....). A post up on the WSST blog is far nicer to David than she deserves, considering what they uncovered.
One key point is distribution (the item I hit on in yesterday's post):
The problem with David's offer is that it was a donation with strings attached. John Whitsett, WSST member and NSTA President elect, explained that NSTA didn't reject the donation but did reject doing the distribution. (John Whitsett will be on WPR as Joy Cardin's guest tomorrow at 6 a.m. to discuss NSTA's decision for the hour.) On yesterday's Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast, Whitsett called in and stated that distribution would be "approximately a quarter of a million dollar expense for NSTA." This kind of offer would provide "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" because of the extreme cost attached to the 'donation.'
Which, as I said in yesterday's post, is a fully reasonable position for NSTA to take. The other key point is the nature of NSTA's "unnecessary risk" lines that David highlighted in her op-ed. Turns out David didn't get that line directly written to her by somebody at NSTA, she got it out of an internal NSTA email thread that was accidentally forwarded to her. The line came from a NSTA staffer advising NSTA higher-ups:
In an email, John Whitsett explained that the quote came from "an internal e-mail that was an opinion offered by one of the NSTA staff members" and it was not the official response to Ms. David. NSTA has every right to kick around ideas before making a decision. They made the mistake of letting their internal discussion out in a forwarded email.
Nice work, Laurie. But I guess you couldn't have made the WaPo op-ed page without some salacious slander, right?
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Comments
# 1 | Steve Bloom | November 30, 2006 11:42 PM
Kevin, I deal with bulk mail from time to time, and based on that I think the $250K figure quoted for the cost is three to four times in excess of what it would really be.
# 2 | Steve Bloom | December 1, 2006 12:11 AM
Following the link to Sandra Porter's blog, I see that she mentions $30K. That may be just postage, so figure a similar amount for mail house processing and it puts us in the range of what I mentioned above. Now, why would somebody in Whitsett's position just make up a non-credible number?
Given the currency of the issue,, the success of the movie, the target audience, etc., etc., is there any chance a foundation couldn't be easily found to fund such a mailing even if David wasn't willing to pay for it herself? I would say not. The upshot is that I'm starting to be pretty sure that the money couldn't possibly have been the issue here.
# 3 | Brian S. | December 1, 2006 11:10 AM
I'm not following this too closely yet, but the second point about revealing an internal email might have been a mistake by NSTA, but it's still helpful in revealing what might be the true motivation.
# 4 | kevin v | December 1, 2006 12:27 PM
Steve - I coughed a bit at that too, but I'm still willing to give NSTA the benefit of the doubt that they're not exactly rolling in excess dough. For them to find an extra -- let's say $30K - $100K, whatever it is -- probably means they need to go to a corporate donor. Just because they get some cash from corporate donors (16% according to Wheerler and 4% from energy companies) probably doesn't mean the corporates are just giving them slush-fund cash to hold on hand and spend as NSTA wishes....
Brian -- true enough, but at the worst it means that's exactly what they were thinking and at the best means that's only what one staffer was thinking to cover his/her own ass on some little piece of the pie he/she was involved in. Without knowing the full dealio I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this too. Innocent until proven guilty, which is what bugs me so much about David's op-ed....
# 5 | Brian S. | December 1, 2006 7:08 PM
Somewhat OT, but I don't believe in "innocent until proven guilty" except as something a judge and jury has to follow in criminal cases. The rest of us can start out neutral and let the facts take us where they will.
You're right though that "unnecessary risk" only conveys what one staffer said, but it still can be revealing.
# 6 | Steve Bloom | December 2, 2006 10:23 PM
Kevin, I had a listen to the 40 minute Joy Cardin interview, and the upshot seems to be that it wasn't about the money at all but rather about the appearance of an "endorsement" of the film by the NSTA. That e-mail comment (was that by any chance from the development director?) begins to look rather closer to the truth.
Even taking the concern about endorsement at face value, the NSTA could have done the mailing (with foundation funding arranged by David) and stuck in whatever disclaimer was appropriate (e.g. noting that climate scientists have broadly endorsed the science content, but stating that NSTA does not "endorse" the film as a whole or Gore in particular).
# 7 | Steve Hemphill | December 30, 2006 10:28 PM
I just watched the film. It was so full of half-truths I'm not surprised the NSTA doesn't want anything to do with it.
Here's the coup de gras. Al Gore goes on about the correlation between temperature and CO2. Then, he says that the increase in CO2 *will* cause a big increase in temperature. He apparently never took logic, as a cause cannot lag an effect. There is no historical evidence of CO2 causing warming.
Here is a rather inane attempt at an explanation:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13
Another logical fallacy. What they are in fact saying is that it is possible that something else caused the first 800 years of change, then that cause and any other could have just gone away and CO2 caused the rest. I don't think so...
It even showed dirty arctic ice at the start and never even mentioned the possibility the albedo was decreased from the Chinese coal plant particulate pollution settling up there.
At what angle of incidence does water have an albedo of 0.1? Not at the poles, I don't believe.
That's just the start of the movie. It was actually rather sickening.
One thing I agreed with had to do with a saying about it's difficult to get a man to understand something if his job depends on him not understanding it. That applies to climate science alarmism as well.
The big lesson here is that the end includes the means. If we go with lies to develop policy for this, where does it end? It doesn't. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned - we definitely should. But we should find the actual solutions, rather than maybe just line the pockets of some carbon traders.
# 8 | Organic Chemistry | February 28, 2007 11:37 PM
The thing to remember here is that the film is not a documentary, it is a persuasive thesis. It leaves out facts that do not support the thesis and distorts those that do. and everyone does it.