More about dark siders and their intellectual errors. As Gintis said: "many untrue beliefs have proliferated in even the most advanced societies." [via Prometheus]

"Honestly, I don't think anyone's changed their mind," said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. "To me, this looks like the same people saying the same thing over and over again."

Earlier this year, Klotzbach published a paper suggesting that, despite a rise in ocean temperatures during the last 20 years, hurricane activity worldwide has decreased.

When Klotzbach published his paper, however, he did not issue a press release or organize a teleconference.

This week's PNAS article was accompanied by a teleconference with Correll, Wigley and two other prominent hurricane scientists, Kerry Emanuel and Greg Holland.

"What concerns me," Klotzbach said, "is the politicization of this issue."

Pielke unpacks this a bit.

The teleconference being referred to was organized by a group called Resource Media which describes itself as "dedicated to making the environment matter. We provide media strategy and services to non-profits, foundations and other partners who are working on the front lines of environmental protection." Resource Media’s "partners" are a long list of environmental advocacy groups. . .

Aligning with powerful interests can certainly help a scientist to amplify their message in the media and elevate their prominence in political debates. This sort of amplification has long been a tactic of the political right, and it seems that the left is rapidly catching up. But the battle over perceptions of science in the media is not the same as scientific debate.

Resource Media’s campaign is disingenuous because it presents the scientific debate over hurricanes-climate change as if it has been settled, and the climate scientists they are promoting have contributed to this misinterpretation.

Whenever I hear some pundit or advocate talk about partners or allies I know that I'm dealing with dark siders, a “confederacy of dunces” as Scruton terms it, and that no good will come of their efforts. It's petty politics with socially destructive consequences. Pielke is mistaken that the left is catching up in this game, they invented it. The right seized the method, turned it against the left, and has had great success for a couple of decades, but it is well to remember that in 1962 Gaylord Nelson in effect created the environmental movement to bolster the meager strength of John Kennedy. It turns out that assasination was more effective for this narrow objective, but we have suffered the predations of politicized environmentalism and the associated sciences since then.

Politics is stupid. It is at best ineffective and more usually destructive for the very issues being exploited. It would be well for us to develop an aversion to this behavior - to confederacies of dunces, partners, allies or whatever euphemism is in vogue for fellow travelers on the dark path. We should point and laugh at them because they are fools who degrade society in pursuit of personal agendas by exploiting public concern about important threats and issues.