-
Farewell to the Spectator
December 16, 2011 | 8 comments
-
Tentative Praise for Ryan’s New Bipartisan Medicare Plan
December 15, 2011 | 3 comments
-
The Day Ahead: Thursday, December 15
December 15, 2011 | 0 comments
-
Examiner for Romney, National Review Against Gingrich
December 14, 2011 | 39 comments
-
Paul Ryan to Introduce New Medicare Plan with Democrat Ron Wyden
December 14, 2011 | 4 comments
The Spectacle Blog
Everything is in its right place once again, with Jim Manzi, recently signed up to be The New Republic’s “in-house critic” drawing fire from liberals. This situation is an improvement over the recent intramural dust-up at National Review, in which conservatives were after Manzi for attacking Mark Levin’s climate change chapter in Liberty and Tyranny.
Manzi’s crime this time is the same as it was in his run-in with Levin: criticizing faulty logic on climate change. He challenged, in his role as in-house critic, Al Gore’s recent TNR article on climate change. His basic argument is that if you accept that anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon, it does not follow that proposed emission reduction policies such as cap and trade are advisable.
For his troubles, Manzi earned the labels of “right-wing misinformer” and “serial misinformer” from Joseph Romm, a brilliant and prolific environmental blogger, probably the most prominent one. Romm also accuses TNR of having “proudly hired Manzi to un-fact-check their articles” and in doing so “given a vote of no confidence to the articles that they do publish - and to the editorial team they assign to ensure the accuracy of that piece.”
Now of course neither Romm nor any of the left-wing bloggers who have seconded his accusations can provide a single example of Manzi making a factual error or spreading misinformation, because he hasn’t. In fact, if anything, Manzi’s sin was precisely the opposite: challenging Romm’s preconceptions about climate change policy without engaging in any distortions of the underlying science or even challenging the prevailing scientific findings, thereby denying Romm the easy out of writing Manzi off as a “denier” or crackpot. Romm’s post contains a number of plausible objections to Manzi’s thesis, but Manzi anticipated each of them in his post or addressed them previously. None are evidence that Manzi made any factual error.
If you have the time, look through Manzi’s National Review archives or his American Scene posts to get a sense of his writing style. It’s defined by transparency (he always links to sources for cited facts), straightforwardness (he shows every step and justifies every assumption), and deference. The last characteristic is perhaps the most notable, as Manzi will maintain cordiality with his interlocutors even after they accuse him of malfeasance. The one exception that I’m aware of is his infamous post on Levin’s book — which is actually the exception that proves the rule, because he later apologized for his tone and gave Levin the last word.
It seems as if it is because of Manzi’s track record of being honest, open, and accommodating that Romm is unable to stand his arguments in a liberal publication without trying to undermine his credibility. It was for that same reason that many conservatives found Manzi’s criticism of Levin so grating — it’s in a way easier to deny global warming altogether than to argue on Manzi’s level. At the time, a number of liberals cast the reaction to Manzi-Levin as a sign that conservatives are close-minded, despite the fact that National Review did publish the piece, after all. But now that the tables have turned and Manzi is writing for TNR, some of the same liberal observers are questioning his motives and accusing him of “lowering the standard of discourse.”
It is to National Review’s credit that they published Manzi then, it is to TNR’s credit that they publish him now despite the left-wing outcry, and it is to Manzi’s credit that his soldiers on producing impeccably factual articles only to be derided as dishonest by both the right and left. If only the same could be said of Romm about his willingness to consider reasoned challenges to his assumptions.
(By the way, Romm’s post originally contained a clear factual error: he cited someone who incorrectly claimed that Manzi was the CEO of Lotus (I can’t find a cached version, but it’s noted in a comment left in the morning). Since then Romm has fixed the error, but there is nothing in the post indicating that it has been changed. A meaningless mistake, but suffice it to say that the “misinformer” Manzi would not make a factual error and then fail to acknowledge it in the post.)
View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/07/09/in-defense-of-jim-manzi-and-tn
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Grant Jones| 7.9.10 @ 5:51PM
Well said Joseph. Jim Manzi is one of the best out there. The idiots that rushed to Levin's defense by trashing Jim clearly don't know Jim's track record.
MikeN| 7.10.10 @ 12:14AM
Joe Romm is a prolific blogger, but his ranting style and attempts at blacklisting aren't very useful.
It was Romm himself who complained about 'rip-offsets' but now says the climate bill is great.
Truth to Power| 7.10.10 @ 9:41AM
Jim Manzi is a smart guy no doubt but his writing on global warming is not helpful. He takes shots at Mark Levin and misses the real story, the painful story, the corruption of science by men like Phil Jones and Michael Mann. All that government funding has an effect and it is not for the benefit of truth.
Matt X| 7.10.10 @ 4:54PM
Jim Manzi is a crony capitalist who is given the "smart guy" label by people who have no clue if he knows what he's talking about or not. He provides all the links to make himself seem like he knows what he's talking about, but we could all use that trick, right? It seems to me if he truly understood issues like global warming, he wouldn't have to link us to death.
He failed to respond to James M. Taylor's column , which destroys everyone of Manzi's silly points. The right does not not need to rally around Jim Manzi...he's looking out for Manzi and basically uses his columns to "show off" his awesome ability to analyze data.
Matt X| 7.10.10 @ 4:56PM
NRO’s Manzi Mischaracterizes Global Warming Written By: James M. Taylor
National Review Online contributing editor Jim Manzi, in an April 21 post, uses Mark Levin’s book Liberty and Tyranny as an example of conservative writers (quoting Ross Douthat) “offering bromides instead of substance, and … pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.” I think he’s wide of the mark.
Although I believe the science clearly supports “skeptics” in the global warming debate, conservatives and libertarians can believe in alarmist global warming claims without giving up their conservative and libertarian credentials, just as liberals can be “skeptics” without giving up their liberal credentials. The fact that a conservative might believe we are facing a global warming crisis should not necessarily come as a surprise, but the specific arguments made by Manzi are disingenuous.
The global warming debate should be decided on the basis of science and economics rather than politics. If there were plausible arguments for each side of the scientific issue, and if people based their opinions on science rather than political convenience, one would expect each side of the debate to have adherents from all ideological persuasions.
This has proven true of global warming “skeptics.” As the organizer of four international conferences on climate change, I have had the pleasure of meeting scientists and concerned citizens from a wide range of ideological backgrounds who share my own view that humans are not creating a global warming crisis. Two of the most passionate skeptics at these conferences have been Richard Courtney, a socialist from the United Kingdom who is an expert reviewer for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Lawrence Solomon, an author and lifelong environmental activist from Canada.
I have also had the pleasure of meeting and discussing global warming with legislators – both Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal – who also believe humans are not causing a global warming crisis.
In contrast to the diversity of thought among skeptics, true believers in global warming alarmism tend to be overwhelmingly liberal. This isn’t because conservatives and libertarians are stupid or refuse to think seriously about the issue. It’s because if manmade global warming were indeed a crisis, its cause would be capitalism and its solution would be an all-powerful central government. Liberals happily skip over all the missing links in the argument – the dubious science, whether government action would stop or delay climate change, and whether it would be worth the expense – and jump to this conclusion.
Conservatives and libertarians, having seen this skit before, are more likely to pause and demand evidence and explanations. They quickly find evidence that the “attribution” issue is still unresolved, that reducing emissions is unlikely to have any effect on climate, and that cap and trade programs are vehicles for massive fraud. Only a few conservatives “don’t get it,” which brings us back to Mr. Manzi.
At first, Manzi says his chief complaint about Liberty and Tyranny is:
“Levin does not attempt to answer this question [whether carbon dioxide affects temperature levels] by making a fundamental argument that proceeds from evidence available for common inspection through a defined line of logic to a scientific view. Instead, he argues from authority by citing experts who believe that the answer to this question is pretty much no. Who are they? An associate professor of astrophysics, a geologist, and an astronaut.”
This is unfair to Levin and, by extension, to others in the global warming debate who sometimes choose to write about the issue without delving into the science. The science is there for anyone who wants to read it, from Anthony Watts’ excellent Web site at www.wattsupwiththat.com to the 880-page Climate Change Reconsidered, a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal of the latest IPCC reports with more than 4,000 footnotes. Not every book by a conservative or libertarian that comments on global warming needs to provide a summary of this scientific research. And it’s pretty fair to guess that if Levin had done so, Manzi would have nit-picked him apart anyway.
Manzi doesn’t bother to identify who the professor, geologist, and astronaut who Levin cites are, so allow me. The associate professor of astrophysics is Nir Shaviv, one of the most accomplished solar physicists in the world. He has already been published many times in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and has forever made his mark in the world of solar physics by redefining landmark principles of stellar gravitation and radiation known as Eddington luminosity. Shaviv used to believe carbon dioxide was the primary driver of global warming, but in recent years has published groundbreaking research showing solar activity and cosmic rays may be more important factors.
Dudley J. Hughes, the geologist, is a recipient of the Texas A&M Distinguished Alumni Award, which according to Texas A&M University, “is the highest honor bestowed upon a former student of Texas A&M University.” He is a recipient of the Texas A&M Geosciences and Earth Resources Distinguished Achievement Award. He is a recognized expert regarding earth sciences and carbon dioxide, and authored the 1998 book, A Geologic Reinterpretation of the Earth’s Atmospheric History, Inferring a Major Role by CO2.
Phil Chapman, the astronaut, is a scientist with a degree in physics and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked as a science researcher in Antarctica, a staff physicist at MIT, and a propulsion scientist at the Avco Everett Research Laboratory. He worked closely with the inventor of the solar power satellite, and contributed to NASA research on power in space. Oh, and amidst all these scientific accomplishments, he also found time to be an astronaut.
Manzi is either ignorant of the scientific accomplishments of these three scientists, or sought to score a cheap point by taking advantage of uninformed readers.
Manzi then criticizes Levin for citing the Oregon Petition, signed by more than 31,000 scientists. He says its phrasing is “dodgy,” but it’s hard to imagine a more explicit denunciation of global warming alarmism than the petition, whose signers say they “reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposal” and state “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.” I’ll return to the “dodgy” claim in a moment.
Manzi says “more than 20,000 of these ‘scientists’ lack PhDs in any field.” This is an odd if not misleading way to admit that more than 9,000 signatories have PhDs, and another 7,000 have Masters in Science degrees. That is more than 16,000 scientists with advanced degrees in science. The remainder are mere “scientists” with standard degrees in science. This seems quite impressive to me.
Manzi claims “there was very little quality control” exercised during the collection of signatures for the petition, and “at least one person signed it as Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.” A call or email to Arthur Robinson and his colleagues would have laid this myth to rest, as well as shown some gratitude to the volunteers who invested thousands of hours in the Petition Project. They have long insisted and documented the fact that they vigorously follow up on and verify the identity and credentials of all signatories.
Robinson is quick to admit that global warming alarmists sometimes submit forged signatures in an attempt to discredit the Petition. This is similar to the documented efforts of Tea Party opponents to slip moles into Tea Party rallies with misspelled signs and racist rhetoric in an effort to discredit the Tea Party. On one occasion global warming activists were briefly successful in submitting a petition “signed” by a Geri Halliwell before it was discovered and removed.
Manzi claims “Scientific American did the hard work of actually contacting a sample of individual signatories, and estimated that there are about 200 climate scientists who agree with the statement in the petition among the signatories.” What actually happened is a global warming advocate with Scientific American claimed to have tried to contact 30 of the 1,400 signatories holding a PhD directly related to climate science, but was successful in contacting barely half of them. Of course, he could have contacted the Oregon Petition staff, who could have given him contact information for the sample of names he was pursuing. Instead, he made the unsupportable determination that anybody he could not personally hunt down without the assistance of Oregon Petition staff was not a credible signer.
The Scientific American writer asked the few signers he reached if they would “sign the Petition today” with yet-to-be-updated information. Roughly one-third of the scientists, predictably, said they would not sign the petition “today” with data that had yet to be updated. The Scientific American hack deceitfully claimed this meant the scientist now disagreed with the core message of the Petition.
Manzi musters a final attack on Levin with his own appeal to authority. He lists several scientific organizations that allegedly “didn’t reject the notion of man-made global warming.” This evidence of professional opinion, Manzi says, means skeptics must believe in some kind of “conspiracy” to conceal the true science of climate change, which he dismisses as “wingnuttery.”
But how meaningful are the resolutions and statements that Manzi cites? Such statements invariably express the opinions of members of small and politically motivated committees or individual leaders of organizations rather than the views of the organizations’ members. They are often thinly veiled calls for more government funding. Their authors are often transparent in their motivation to use their positions in scientific organizations for political ends.
For example, Manzi lists the American Chemical Society as an organization that “didn’t reject the notion of man-made global warming,” but the ACS position was reached with little or no input from the ACS scientists themselves. The ACS membership is currently in open revolt regarding the ACS position statement, but Manzi forgot to mention that.
It is interesting, moreover, how Manzi states his proposition. By saying these organizations “don’t reject the notion of man-made global warming,” he glosses over the very ambiguity he accuses skeptics of indulging in when they say “global warming is not a crisis.” Both statements are broad enough to embrace the idea that there is a small human influence on climate but that it is not enough to merit efforts to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions. By Manzi’s own logic and words, the scientific organizations he cites do not contradict the position of most skeptics.
Here’s another way to think about it. Attempting to discredit skeptics by producing a list of organizations that “didn’t reject the notion of man-made global warming” is like attempting to discredit the notion of organized crime by producing a list of experts who don’t believe the nation is beset by a La Cosa Nostra crisis.
In conclusion, Levin does a fine job conveying the real doubts in the scientific community about the causes, extent, and consequences of climate change. It’s because of his efforts and those of many other conservatives and libertarians that barely a third of the American public still believes in man-made global warming.
James M. Taylor (jtaylor@heartland.org) is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute.
Matt X| 7.10.10 @ 5:10PM
From a Dan Reihl blog post:
The Jim Manzi in question is a numbers and a marketing guy out of MIT, not the one some of us may recall from LOTUS. But the confusion didn't bother NRO's Manzi on principle, as it helped him to cash in on his business. I point that out to inform a distinction made below.
Another man, also named Jim Manzi, is using his name and -- Lotus's Jim Manzi claims -- the fame of the Manzi name in tech to gain added attention to his software company, Applied Predictive Technologies.
"My mom is calling. I'm getting two to three notes a month from people, asking me about papers I didn't write, stories written by the other Jim Manzi," says a chagrined Lotus Manzi, who approached his doppelganger to suggest he use his middle initial to differentiate the two Manzis. He claims Applied Predictive Technologies Manzi refused, admitting that co-opting Jim Manzi’s fame has been financially beneficial.
Matt X| 7.10.10 @ 5:20PM
Joseph Lawler,
I expect to see you refute Mr. James M. Taylor's piece responding to Manzi. You've propped Manzi up....now you got to own it. He threw 4 respected scientists under the bus so he could take a cheap shot at Levin. And you want to tell us he's a "smart guy" and a "good guy". That's nonsense. He's an alarmist hack.... he just wisely wants to disassociate global warming alarmism from Al Gore.
Jim Manzi| 7.10.10 @ 5:57PM
Global warming is going to kill us all, but cap and trade costs too darn much.
Yeah, my opinion on global warming seems a bit schizophrenic, but anybody who doesn't agree with me is a wingnut.
Dave Weigel| 7.10.10 @ 6:02PM
Jim,
I've always found that I'm more persausive when I refer to conservatives that I ostensibly want to persaude as "wingnuts" and "teabaggers".
If the last two winters along with ClimateGate didn't disabuse winguts of their global warming denial, there's no hope for these bigots.
Jim Manzi| 7.11.10 @ 11:26AM
I talk about global warming at a higher level.
Jealous wingnuts just jealous I have Family Dollar as a client and a math degree from MIT, which makes me source authority on global warming. Certainly more so than the 4 scientists that I threw under the bus in my hit piece on Levin. Who cares if they actually researched global warming? I link to liberal websites that all cite the same flawed research.
Matt X| 7.11.10 @ 11:47AM
At Joseph Lawler's twitter account, he stated this:
"Kagan and Palin represent the two extremes on the spectrum of obnoxious American accents"
I think this guy's crediblity has been shot when he talks Palin in the future. He also defends Dave Weigel....obligatory among conservatives these days. Can't American Spectator do better than this guy? I dream big dreams.
Nick| 7.11.10 @ 1:12PM
Matt X,
Thanks for the posts. Keep up the good work!
jcp370| 7.11.10 @ 3:40PM
The love-fest between the cool kids at the National Review and The New Republic has become insufferable. If the kids at the American Spectator are going to start hanging at the malt shop with them after school in order to be cool, I'm going to join the A-V club.
Matt X| 7.11.10 @ 4:31PM
Joseph Lawler has attacked Jeffrey Lord here at American Spectator for daring to suggest David Frum isn't all that conservative.
All Frum does is whine about Rush and conservative talk radio. He supports tax hikes. He wants to throw social conservatives under the bus. He thought Republicans should have compromised on the Obamacare. He's a big global warming alarmist, and he supports a carbon tax or some other big government fix for that bogus problem.
I would suggest Lawler go write for Frumforum. He's a better fit over there. Of course, he has to eat, so he stays at a conservative publication that gets some traffic.