Via Tim Lambert and Matt Nisbet a study in the journal Environmental Politics (here, but unfortunately paywalled) shows that at least 90 per cent of the books that have been published disputing mainstream environmental science have been produced by rightwing thinktanks or authors affiliated with such thinktanks. Symmetrically, at least 90 per cent of the rightwing thinktanks in the study contributed to this literature.

This study is an important contribution to our understanding of the emerging parallel universe which has almost completely absorbed the formerly Earth-based Republican party[1] and its networking of supporting thinktanks, media outlets and blogs. It helps to explain the otherwise surprising fact that higher levels of education make Republicans more, not less, ignorant and deluded. With their beliefs on scientific, economic and political issues derived from the Great Library of Tlön, every book they read, talk show they listen to and blog they browse actively reduces their knowledge of the real world. [2].

fn1. Represented most notably on Earth by Abraham Lincoln, but on Tlön by Jefferson Davis.
fn2. If any Tlön based readers have access to this blog, please apply your polarity reverser. Educated Tlön Democrats are more likely to hold the deluded notions that their planet is roughly spherical, billions of years old and subject to significant climatic effects from human action. Tlön social democrats are even likely to believe that income inequality is increasing and that the market-based health system of Uqbar is less then perfect.

I’m putting up part 1 of the talk I gave in Adelaide last week, on prerecorded DVD. I’ve posted it on YouTube for the moment.

I tried posting directly within WordPress, but that didn’t work well and I thought that even if I used FTP to put the file up, the effect on server load would be pretty bad. So, I’d appreciate any alternative suggestions.

Parts 2-4 are over the fold

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In discussing Roger Bate’s response to my article with Tim Lambert in Prospect defending Rachel Carson against the slurs of the DDT lobby, I thought it would be best to leave aside the question of Bate’s links to the tobacco lobby (already discussed in comments to an earlier post) and focus on Bate’s substantive concessions that the supposed ban on antimalarial use of DDT was mythical and that the Carson-inspired ban on agricultural use of DDT was beneficial.

Unfortunately, a number of our more gullible local delusionists took this as an admission that Bate had never really been a tobacco lobbyist and that they hadn’t really been suckered by a particularly nasty piece of tobacco industry PR, in this case a diversionary attack against the World Health Organization. (Here, for example is Currency Lad at Club Troppo). If they had taken a moment to think, they would have realised that picking a fight with Tim Lambert over a question of fact is a very silly thing to do, especially now that he has access to that gift that keeps on giving, the tobacco archives.

This post from Tim (promised as the first in a series) lays out chapter and verse on Bate’s dealings with the tobacco lobby (and even finds a mention of his offsider, Richard Tren).

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