Here's an informative post worth passing along, it's a good description of one of my pal Mr. Steele's main strategies, right up there with misrepresenting what scientists have actually written and said. I tip my hat to SkepticalScience.com for making me aware of this article
Posted on 9 January 2015 by Guest Author Deirbre Fulton
Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
by Deirdre Fulton
was originally posted on Common Dreams on Jan 6, 2015.
by Deirdre Fulton
was originally posted on Common Dreams on Jan 6, 2015.
Michael Mann writes that the strategy 'is similar to what happens when a group of lions on the Serengeti seek out a vulnerable individual zebra at the edge of a herd.'
"The 'Serengeti strategy' is often employed wherever there is a strong and widespread consensus among the world’s scientists about the underlying cold, hard facts of a field, whether the subject be evolution, ozone depletion, the environmental impacts of DDT, the health effects of smoking, or human-caused climate change," Mann writes. (Photo: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists/Brocken Inaglory)
Like lions targeting lone zebras in the Serengeti grasslands, industry-backed climate change deniers prefer to target individual scientists rather than take on an entire scientific field at once, climatologist Michael Mann writes in a paper published this month in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
In "The Serengeti Strategy: How Special Interests Try to Intimidate Scientists, and How Best to Fight Back," Mann describes a concerted effort on the part of fossil fuel interests who find themselves facing overwhelming scientific consensus about the threat of human-caused climate change—and, by implication, the necessity to reduce global carbon emissions.
"By singling out a sole scientist, it is possible for the forces of 'anti-science' to bring many more resources to bear on one individual, exerting enormous pressure from multiple directions at once, making defense difficult," writes Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. "It is similar to what happens when a group of lions on the Serengeti seek out a vulnerable individual zebra at the edge of a herd."
