Tim Lambert, who does excellent work on his Deltoid blog, offers a devastating critique of the Shulte attack on Naomi Oreskes, demonstrating, for example, that Shulte has cribbed parts of his paper from the already discredited Benny Peiser (photo).
Very, very shabby, you bumbling deniers.
Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.
There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.
Re: Tim's devastating
Re: Tim's devastating critique
I summarize what Tim's nice sleuthing showed:
A) Mr. Schulte copied, word-for-word, including formatting (using Wingding arrows) the 5 citations claimed to reject consensus that Oreskes should have seen. Lord Monckton got those 5, including identical errors in the cites, from Peiser's letter to Science, which of course Tim had done great work analyzing earlier.
Monckton mentions them in a section that discusses Peiser's (discredited) work, although the references are several paragraphs away from mention of Peiser, so attribution is slightly ambiguous.
Schulte's letter has no mention of Monckton or Peiser. One might speculate why.
B) Then, Tim did side-by-side comparisons of other paragraphs, between Schulte and Monckton, and the reader should look at Tim's blog and form their own opinion.
On occasion, academe takes plagiarism seriously...