IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 13

illustrations for this joint venture.
My favorite shows a melting sundial.
The image is captioned "The Persistence of Procrastination" - and
we realize this is a riff on Salvador
Dali's famous painting "The Persistence of Memory" which features
three watches melting in the sun.
Mann's name may be familiar to
readers, especially if they live in Virginia. Before moving to Penn State
University, he was a professor at the
University of Virginia.
In 2010 the Attorney General of
Virginia, Ken Cucinelli, a "Tea Party
Republican," filed a suit under the
Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act claiming that Mann likely
violated state laws in five research
grants he had received while at
the school. He suggested that the
professor could have manipulated
data and demanded to see University records of his work. The case
was seen by Mann and fellow scientists as "blatantly political" and
he withheld the documents. In its
final form Cucinelli's suit reached
the Virginia Supreme Court where
Mann and the University (which had
defended him) were victorious. In
2013, Cucinelli ran as the Republican nominee for the governor of Virginia and was defeated.
Mann's name has also been associated with a climate change graph
showing the mean earth temperature over the past 1000 years. This
has become known as the "hockey
stick graph"; if you imagine a horizontal hockey stick with the bent end
facing upward, it roughly describes
the curve, with a steep rise beginning at circa 1900 and continuing
linearly upward to the end of the
data, which go nearly to the year
2000. Although the graph stirred up
controversy at the time of its publication in 1998, where Mann was just
one of the authors, it has steadily
gained adherents - if not in every
detail - in the climate community.

SEPTEMBER 2019

"God did not simply create the
Mann would probably fault me
universe in one act, but havfor suggesting that climate change
ing brought the universe into
caused the summer of 2018 Caliexistence, intervened several
fornia wild fire. He is careful in his
times to bring about changes.
language, asserting, "We of course
The "missing link," then, does
can't say that climate change
not refer to the past, but to
'caused' a particular heat wave,
the present. There is nothing
flood or storm. There is always the
like us on the planet. While
chance that the heat wave, flood or
there are variations among
storm would have happened anyway. But climate change
is almost certainly making
these events more frequent.
There is an increased ocMann and Toles crystallize climate
currence of these events
because of climate change,
change denialism over the
just as there is an increased
incidence of lung cancer
last generation.
among smokers..."
Mann and Toles crystallize for us climate change denialism,
us, we are truly awesome. We
principally in the United States, over
are wonderfully made. The
the last generation. The core of this
Bible tells us, you can't love
denial results from the confluence
God if you don't love people.
of several trends deeply embedded
How does somebody who
in the American culture: anti-inteldenies the creation confirm
lectualism which makes a signifito us that he believes we have
cant portion of the American public
rights that the government
contemptuous of any expert whose
must respect?"
knowledge and education exceeds
their own, the propaganda of busiIn 2007 Heartland was denying the
nesses whose profits depends on
harmful effects of cigarette smoke,
consumption of carbon based fuels,
e.g., in an article entitled "Smoke,
and a small but visible minority
Lies and the Nanny State." And in
of scientists who are in the pay of
2008 we find "The Emperor Has No
these companies. Denialism comes
Clothes: The Truth about Secondquickly to those who seek it: seeing
hand Smoke" by one Jerome Arnett,
a legitimate earth scientist debatMD, who insists that the connection
ing a company shill on a television
between cigarette smoke and lung
show they falsely assume that the
disease is bad science. Of late, the
scientific community is almost
Institute, sensing their battle here is
evenly divided on this issue - but
lost, has been quiet on this issue.
it isn't.
But the Institute has moved into high
A quick sampling of denialist
gear in condemning U.S. government
propaganda can be found in the
reports on the connection between
website of the Heartland Institute a
CO2 emissions and climate change.
From their web site they damn "...
conservative organization with a
the false narrative that human carblatant history of anti-science argubon dioxide emissions are causing
ments. Perhaps the reader should
an increase in extreme weather such
take a break and go to their homepage where you will find, for example,
(continued on page 20)
this piece on evolution:
∕

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

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