Reasoning your way out of moral panic

[lisab]

i gotcha moral panic, righ' chere:

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalc...eated-exchange-al-gore-confronts-his-critics/

Arg! The link has crashed twice for me...!

 

[Loren Booda]

Would "moral panic" be more akin to "moralistic panic" or "panic over morals"?

 

[Andre]

http://www.infowars.com/a-heated-exchange-al-gore-confronts-his-critics/ works for me but did I hear 3000 scientists? What was the http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20081007-17643.html again?

The numbers of scientist reviewers involved in WG I is actually less than a quarter of the whole, a little more than 600 in total. The other 1900 reviewers assessed the other working group reports. They had nothing to say about the causes of climate change or its future trajectory.
(...)
A total of 308 reviewers commented on the SOR, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report.
(...)
Compounding this is the fact that IPCC editors could, and often did, ignore reviewers’ comments. Some editor responses were banal and others showed inconsistencies with other comments.
(...)
An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that “hundreds of IPCC scientists” are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years”.

In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60 per cent of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.
(...)
Determining the level of support expressed by reviewers’ comments is subjective but a slightly generous evaluation indicates that just five reviewers endorsed the crucial ninth chapter. Four had vested interests and the other made only a single comment for the entire 11-chapter report. The claim that 2500 independent scientist reviewers agreed with this, the most important statement of the UN climate reports released this year, or any other statement in the UN climate reports, is nonsense.

Cohen argues that the exaggeration and distortion of truth by the mass media is a significant characteristic of a moral panic.

 

[Phrak]

Ethical Panic.