Climategate 2.0

[DarrinS]

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/#more-12598

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15840562

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/

http://climateaudit.org/

[MannyIsGod]

Yes! More out of context emails! The science is so easily proven wrong that we're going to just go ahead and resort to out of context emails instead.

[boutons_deux]

Why would the carbon-energy and other industries continue to pay whore "scientists" and stink tanks to foment against and deny (anthropomorphic) global warming?

[DarrinS]

I'll reserve judgement until I read more. Manny and boutons have already made up their minds.

Isnt transparency a good thing?

[MannyIsGod]

I definitely made up my mind on reading out of context emails a long time ago. :lol You act as if this is somehow a bad thing.

Transparency is a great thing. Taking bits and pieces instead of the entire history isn't a good thing. Let me know when you read all the emails and not the ones the blogs tell you to read.

[MannyIsGod]

Furthermore, I couldn't care two shits about the emails between scientists when I can simply review their work instead. If the work is bad, its bad. If its good, its good. I don't need to know what the fuck Mann emailed on Thursday to know if that is the case.

I can see the appeal to those who just want to be told what to believe though. For them out of context emails are great fodder.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I'll reserve judgement until I read more. Manny and boutons have already made up their minds.

Isnt transparency a good thing?

No, you're not, and the only time you have an open mind is when you are shamed by your stupidity and forced to give up on a position. An example of this is from going, "there is no warming look at the glacier thats where its all hiding' to 'who gives a fuck its only polar bears.'

Then there is the fact that you lie and misrepresent as a matter of course. You have no integrity whatsoever you sophist piece of shit.

[TeyshaBlue]

Cherry-picked context thread 2.0

[Wild Cobra]

Yes! More out of context emails! The science is so easily proven wrong that we're going to just go ahead and resort to out of context emails instead.
You can't handle the truth, huh (http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=gog&media=M4RS&type=Movies&movie=Few_Good_Men&quote=truth.txt&file=truth.m4r)?

[Wild Cobra]

I'll reserve judgement until I read more. Manny and boutons have already made up their minds.

Isnt transparency a good thing?
You have to remember. They worship the God of Anthropogenic Global Warming. You know how people can be about their faith.

[ElNono]

You have to remember. They worship the God of Anthropogenic Global Warming. You know how people can be about their faith.

:rolleyes

[ElNono]

Cliff notes on the 5000 emails, anyone?

[ElNono]

Isnt transparency a good thing?

Wait, were you one of the guys up in arms when Wikileaks released their leaked docs?

[DarrinS]

Wait, were you one of the guys up in arms when Wikileaks released their leaked docs?

Are temperature readings a matter of national security?

[baseline bum]

Are temperature readings a matter of national security?

Neither was video of a reporter and his driver getting turned into swiss cheese by an Apache.

[Wild Cobra]

Neither was video of a reporter and his driver getting turned into swiss cheese by an Apache.
Reporters often put themselves in harms way for the story. His death was because of his own carelessness. He should have never pointed, what looked like a rocket launcher from a distance, at a military helicopter.

Did his camera shots survive him?

[baseline bum]

LOL the Iraq clusterfuck having anything to do with national security.

[ElNono]

Are temperature readings a matter of national security?

So transparency isn't always good?

[boutons_deux]

The Real Climategate Scandals Are Piling Up

An ambulance pulls up behind you. You know it’s an ambulance because you can read AMBULANCE in your rear view mirror. But you can also read it when you look at the vehicle directly; because the human visual system has the ability to quickly correct complete inversions or left-right reversals of letters. In fact, a complete inversion is easier to read than letters that are rotated only partially.

This human ability to process complete inversions more quickly than just partial distortions, alas, lends itself to exploitation by ruthless propagandists who seek to create a chimerical world in which up is down, left is right, and good is smeared as evil.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the netherworld of attacks on climate scientists.

Remember “climategate”? The illegal hack of personal emails released just before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 that some columnists pronounced to be the (approximately 132nd) “final nail in the coffin” of global warming?

Remember the “errors” in the IPCC’s 2007 report? “Amazongate”, “Himalayagate”, and so on?
What has happened to “climategate”?

What’s happened is this.

First, the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee exonerated the scientist at the centre of the tempest, Professor Phil Jones, finding he has “no case to answer” and that his reputation “remains intact.”

Then Lord Oxburgh (former chairman of Shell-UK) and his panel likewise exonerated the researchers, finding their “work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation” are “not valid.”
Another enquiry, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, found the scientists’ “rigour and honesty” to be beyond doubt.

Two enquiries by his university also cleared Professor Michael Mann – who presented the first of now innumerable “hockey stick” graphs – of all allegations.

Ultimately the (conservative) UK Government concluded “the information contained in the illegally-disclosed emails does not provide any evidence to discredit … anthropogenic climate change.”
Not one, not two, but by now nine vindications.

This comes as no surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the distinction between private chat and public actions.

And what has happened to the IPCC “Whatevergates”?

What’s happened is this.

First, the Sunday Times apologised and retracted its “Amazongate” story. There is no “Amazongate”; there is only the Amazon rainforest threatened by climate change.
Then the Dutch government accepted responsibility for erroneously informing the IPCC that 55% of the Netherlands are below sea level. In fact only 26% are at risk of flooding because they are below sea level, whereas the other 29% are, err, at risk of flooding from rivers.

And about a year after “climategate” broke, the BBC finally apologised to the University of East Anglia for its misleading coverage of the “climategate” pseudo-scandal.

All that’s left of the “Whatevergates”, therefore, is red-faced apologies and one indubitable IPCC error: the incorrect projection of the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers to 2035, as opposed to the more likely 2350. This error was drawn to the public’s attention by, wait for it, an IPCC author.
Can we now forget about “gate” in connection with “climate”?

No.

Because there are too many real climategates that must not escape attention.

First, there was another batch of private emails posted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a “think” tank notorious even by American standards. Those emails — yes, a second hack — revealed the real climategate by being truthful, with one scientist stating: “Those who deny the biophysical facts of the world would deny … gravity” and “we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against … merciless enemies. Colleagues … are getting threatened with prosecution by … [US Senator James M.] Inhofe.”
That is the second real climategate: the McCarthyite attempts by Senator Inhofe to criminalise climate scientists — attempts to criminalise those who, 35 years ago, predicted the temperature rise by century’s end to within 1/10th of a degree.

This is no isolated incident: Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has launched several frivolous lawsuits — despite losing an earlier one — against the University of Virginia in what the Washington Post called a “war on the freedom of academic inquiry”“. And Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman evoked Pastor Niemoeller’s cry against the erosion of humanity under the Nazis: “First, they came for the climate scientists…”.

The real climategate involves active censorship within NASA by Bush appointees, which the agency’s Inspector General later found to have “reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science”.
The real climategate involves Bush White House staff replacing assessments of the National Academy of Sciences with a discredited paper by two individuals with no expertise in climatology. This paper, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, was so flawed its appearance in a peer-reviewed journal led to the resignation in protest by three editors and the publisher’s unprecedented acknowledgement of mishandling.

Those are not merely historical episodes because the real climategate encompasses the ongoing complicity of some media organs.

In Canada, the real media climategate involves the ongoing list of defamatory articles by the “National Post.” The tabloid is finally being sued by Professor Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria.

In Australia, the real media climategate involves the national daily newspaper, whose misrepresentations of science are legendary and, sadly ongoing.
Those real climategates are the tip of an iceberg of venality enveloping anti-science interests and their enablers.

And just a few hours ago, another illegal release of personal emails among scientists was dumped on to the world in the lead-up to the next climate conference in Durban. First Copenhagen, now Durban. When the science is so rock solid that it can no longer be reasonably doubted, all that is left is to steal private correspondence in a desperate attempt to disparage those who are trying to protect the world from the risks it is facing.

Joseph Welch famously brought down Joe McCarthy with a simple question: “Have you no sense of decency?”

This year has already witnessed multiple events that break climate records: the drought in East Africa, the worst drought in Texas’ recorded history, and record breaking storms and floods in the US south. Those events, anticipated by climatologists decades ago, should remind us that those who persecute and harass scientists, or mendaciously misrepresent their actions and findings, have no sense of decency.

That is the real climategate.

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/23/375268/the-real-climategate-scandals-are-piling-up/

[spursncowboys]

Furthermore, I couldn't care two shits about the emails between scientists when I can simply review their work instead. If the work is bad, its bad. If its good, its good. I don't need to know what the fuck Mann emailed on Thursday to know if that is the case.

I can see the appeal to those who just want to be told what to believe though. For them out of context emails are great fodder.

[DarrinS]

A searchable database: http://foia2011.org


Here's an interesting one:

http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=1606





2007 11:05:20 +0100
from: "Douglas Maraun" <REDACTED>
subject: Informal Seminar TODAY
to: REDACTED

Dear colleagues,

I'd like to invite all of you to todays discussion seminar, 4pm in the
coffee room:

"Climate science and the media"

After the publication of the latest IPCC, the media wrote a vast
number of articles about possible and likely impacts, many of them
greatly exaggerated. The issue seemed to dominate news for a long time
and every company had to consider global warming in its advertisement.
However, much of this sympathy turned out to be either white washing
or political correctness. Furthermore, recently and maybe especially
after the "inconvenient truth" case and the Nobel peace prize going to
Al Gore, many irritated and sceptical comments about so-called
"climatism" appeared also in respectable newspapers.

Against the background of these recent developments, we could discuss
the relation of climate science to the media, the way it is, and the
way it should be.

In my opinion, the question is not so much whether we should at all
deal with the media. Our research is of potential relevance to the
public, so we have to deal with the public. The question is rather how
this should be done. Points I would like to discuss are:

-Is it true that only climate sceptics have political interests and
are potentially biased? If not, how can we deal with this?

-How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think,
that "our" reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann's work were not
especially honest.

-How should we deal with popular science like the Al Gore movie?

-What is the difference between a "climate sceptic" and a "climate denier"?

-What should we do with/against exaggerations of the media?

-How do we avoid sounding religious or arrogant?

-Should we comment on the work/ideas of climate scepitics?

If you have got any further suggestions or do think, my points are not
interesting, please let me know in advance.

See you later,
Douglas

Dr. Douglas Maraun
Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~douglas

[ElNono]

What's interesting about it?

[boutons_deux]

Fuck this, the duped deniers use a few emails to derail the dialogue, to say that the entire body of decades of climate science and antrhropogenic pollution are a lies.

[Wild Cobra]

What's interesting about it?
LOL....

Really now. Isn't it obvious?

[Wild Cobra]

Fuck this, the duped deniers use a few emails to derail the dialogue, to say that the entire body of decades of climate science and antrhropogenic pollution are a lies.
A few...

There are so many that point to problems with your "climatism" community.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

LOL....

Really now. Isn't it obvious?

Only to those that watch Fox News. Innuendo is taken to be fact there as you are doing here. Its the whole reason why the context issue was brought up and I am guessing this was all hashed out long ago yet the same two fuckheads are doing it again.

[scott]

LOL....

Really now. Isn't it obvious?

No, it isn't. The email reads like a litany of ones I've encountered in the public, private and academic sectors dealing with a variety of issues. I realize you're just a parts changer and you aren't involved in high-level strategic decision making, but this is all pretty typical.

For example, when I worked in the oil industry, I recall writing to a colleague at one point "How do we combat the notion that we are profiteering from natural disasters?" That didn't mean we were actually profiteering from natural disasters, it means we acknowledged that some people thought we were and we wanted to combat that notion for obvious reasons.

So, what's interesting about it?

[DarrinS]

Lol, petty insults.

[Wild Cobra]

So, what's interesting about it?
This one should be obvious:

-How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think,
that "our" reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann's work were not
especially honest.
"Not especially honest." That's being dishonest as well. It was outright dishonest. At least he admits to their flaws, somewhat.

It's not an outright agreement to what the skeptics say about Mann's work, but it should add skepticism to your climatism.

[Wild Cobra]

Should I add that Mann's Hockey stick is one of their foundational arguments, and they are agreeing there are flaws?

Do they have any foundation to AGW left?

[ElNono]

LOL....

Really now. Isn't it obvious?

Nope. What's interesting about it?

[ElNono]

"Not especially honest." That's being dishonest as well. It was outright dishonest.

So what's interesting is that you have a differing opinion?

Thanks

[ElNono]

Lol, petty insults.


What's interesting about it?

[ElNono]

Should I add that Mann's Hockey stick is one of their foundational arguments, and they are agreeing there are flaws?

Do they have any foundation to AGW left?

admitting alleged flaws to a theory equals no foundation? How dumb are you?

[Wild Cobra]

admitting alleged flaws to a theory equals no foundation? How dumb are you?
Spin spin spin.

Do you purposely not understand what I say?

The hockey stick is one of the foundational arguments. Idiot... just because it has been shown to be wrong does not mean all other foundational arguments are wrong. Some of the other foundational arguments have also fallen. I don't know if they all have, so I ask if any remain.

[ElNono]

The hockey stick is one of the foundational arguments.

Where does that email mentions "The hockey stick"? Quote please.


Do you purposely not understand what I say?

Apparently, what you say has no relevance to the email we're discussing.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Spin spin spin.

Do you purposely not understand what I say?

The hockey stick is one of the foundational arguments. Idiot... just because it has been shown to be wrong does not mean all other foundational arguments are wrong. Some of the other foundational arguments have also fallen. I don't know if they all have, so I ask if any remain.

Now its 'shown' to be wrong?

This is why people make fun of you and really you should not call anyone else dumb.

[DarrinS]

Now its 'shown' to be wrong?


Well, it was shown that random noise input to his model would produce "hockey stick"-shaped output. Good science.

[DarrinS]

Nope. What's interesting about it?

It suggests that they were dishonest and that they know their claims about AGW are exaggerated.

[ElNono]

It suggests that they were dishonest and that they know their claims about AGW are exaggerated.

Really? Calling up a meeting to address communication topics one way or another suggests dishonesty?

I don't think anybody denies that claims for and against AGW have been exaggerated... that's the smoking gun?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Really? Calling up a meeting to address communication topics one way or another suggests dishonesty?

I don't think anybody denies that claims for and against AGW have been exaggerated... that's the smoking gun?

Exactly, if anything it demonstrates that they were conscious of the possibility of bias and were trying to be proactive about it. That is just ethical behavior which is something Darrin has no idea about.

[DarrinS]

lol @ this one

I guess Michael Mann dislikes any research showing a Medieval Warming Period.




4101.txt

cc: [email protected]
date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 23:56:46 -0500
from: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>
subject: RE: CCDD
to: [email protected]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the added info. If Mike said that my calibration procedure is
“flawed”, I will be extremely pissed off. His grad student just submitted a
paper to The Holocene, with Mike and I as co-authors, that compares my
point-by-point method with his RegEM method (Keith should have received the
paper by now). There are “modest” improvements in some areas using RegEM,
but overall the two methods produce statistically identical results on a
regional basis.
Indeed, it is mentioned in the paper that the P-B-P method
could be improved by adding a dynamic search radius for each grid point,
thus making it even closer to RegEM and maybe even better. Indeed, the
P-B-P method produces classical calibration period information and
estimates that are very useful in understanding the fitted models. In
contrast, RegEM does not produce any such useful information and thus
operates much more as a “black box”.

Re standardization and low-frequency stuff, the vast majority of the
tree-ring chronologies have been standardized to preserve variance at least
up to 100 years (and generally more). I also agree with you that PDSI ought
not to have a great deal of multi-centennial variability because it is
dominated by precipitation, which is dominated by high-frequency, nearly
white, variance. I am surprised that Tom Karl does not seem to understand
that.

In all candor now, I think that Mike is becoming a serious enemy
in the way that he bends the ears of people like Tom with words like “flawed” when
describing my work and probably your and Keith’s as well. This is in part a
vindictive response to the Esper et al. paper. He also went crazy over my
recent NZ paper describing evidence for a MWP there because he sees it as
another attack on him. Maybe I am over-reacting to this, but I don’t think
so.

Cheers,

Ed

[MannyIsGod]

You really wonder why everyone here considers you a hack?

[boutons_deux]

New Study Shows Once Again How "Climategate" Emails Were Distorted

At the height of the manufactured "Climategate" controversy, distortions of an email from a top climate scientist made it all the way to one of the leading Sunday shows. But a recent study re-confirms what that scientist was actually saying -- that much of recent heat has been trapped deep in the ocean.

In 2009, a batch of emails (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/12/01/climategate-exposed-conservative-media-distort/157590) was stolen from the University (http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/12/new-study-shows-once-again-how-climategate-emai/193611#) of East Anglia. In one of the emails, which skeptics quickly took out of context (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/11/24/quick-fact-varney-claims-apparently-hacked-cru/157469), Kevin Trenberth,
a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, lamented the "travesty" that "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment."

Trenberth was actually (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/11/21/204991/hacked-emails-ncar-kevin-trenberth/) referring (http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-account-for-the-lack-of-warming.htm) to gaps in our "observing system" that make it difficult to say where short-term energy -- or heat -- is going, not copping to a lack of long-term climate change, as some claimed (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/11/24/quick-fact-varney-claims-apparently-hacked-cru/157469). In the email (http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/12/new-study-shows-once-again-how-climategate-emai/193611#), Trenberth alluded to research suggesting that the "missing" heat might be sequestered deep in the ocean.

For some media, none of this mattered. In a November 2009 appearance on ABC's This Week, conservative columnist George Will suggested (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/11/30/will-distorted-stolen-cru-emails-to-argue-again/157549) Trenberth's email showed that "global warming has stopped," and that since climate science is "a complicated business," we "shouldn't wager these trillions" on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

But a recent study (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1863.html) published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the ocean has in fact played a "key role" in absorbing recent heat, which "strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models." The findings echo the conclusions of a paper (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract) co-authored by Trenberth himself as well as findings (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960112010389) published in the journal Physics Letters A in late 2012, all indicating that climate change continues apace (http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/04/12/3735095.htm).

Recent analyses by Media Matters show that the "Climategate" episode was typical of the way the influential Sunday shows favor political spin over scientific fact. On the rare occasion Sunday shows covered climate change between 2009 and 2012, not a single scientist (http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/01/08/study-warmest-year-on-record-received-cool-clim/192079) or climate expert was part of the discussion. In addition, every politician who discussed climate change on the Sunday shows in 2012 was a Republican:

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/chart4.png

Examining trends more broadly (http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/04/05/report-partisanship-and-diversity-on-the-sunday/193482), the Sunday shows have hosted more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives. In this environment, honest appraisals of science are rare, and commentators like George Will fit right in.


http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/12/new-study-shows-once-again-how-climategate-emai/193611

ClimateGate was nothing but BigCarbon propaganda and LIES, suckering you bubbas, as 1% propaganda always does on every issue.

[RandomGuy]

New Study Shows Once Again How "Climategate" Emails Were Distorted

At the height of the manufactured "Climategate" controversy, distortions of an email from a top climate scientist made it all the way to one of the leading Sunday shows. But a recent study re-confirms what that scientist was actually saying -- that much of recent heat has been trapped deep in the ocean.

In 2009, a batch of emails (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/12/01/climategate-exposed-conservative-media-distort/157590) was stolen from the University (http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/12/new-study-shows-once-again-how-climategate-emai/193611#) of East Anglia. In one of the emails, which skeptics quickly took out of context (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/11/24/quick-fact-varney-claims-apparently-hacked-cru/157469), Kevin Trenberth,
a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, lamented the "travesty" that "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment."

Trenberth was actually (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/11/21/204991/hacked-emails-ncar-kevin-trenberth/) referring (http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-account-for-the-lack-of-warming.htm) to gaps in our "observing system" that make it difficult to say where short-term energy -- or heat -- is going, not copping to a lack of long-term climate change, as some claimed (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/11/24/quick-fact-varney-claims-apparently-hacked-cru/157469). In the email (http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/12/new-study-shows-once-again-how-climategate-emai/193611#), Trenberth alluded to research suggesting that the "missing" heat might be sequestered deep in the ocean.

For some media, none of this mattered. In a November 2009 appearance on ABC's This Week, conservative columnist George Will suggested (http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/11/30/will-distorted-stolen-cru-emails-to-argue-again/157549) Trenberth's email showed that "global warming has stopped," and that since climate science is "a complicated business," we "shouldn't wager these trillions" on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

But a recent study (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1863.html) published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the ocean has in fact played a "key role" in absorbing recent heat, which "strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models." The findings echo the conclusions of a paper (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract) co-authored by Trenberth himself as well as findings (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960112010389) published in the journal Physics Letters A in late 2012, all indicating that climate change continues apace (http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/04/12/3735095.htm).

Recent analyses by Media Matters show that the "Climategate" episode was typical of the way the influential Sunday shows favor political spin over scientific fact. On the rare occasion Sunday shows covered climate change between 2009 and 2012, not a single scientist (http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/01/08/study-warmest-year-on-record-received-cool-clim/192079) or climate expert was part of the discussion. In addition, every politician who discussed climate change on the Sunday shows in 2012 was a Republican:

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/chart4.png

Examining trends more broadly (http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/04/05/report-partisanship-and-diversity-on-the-sunday/193482), the Sunday shows have hosted more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives. In this environment, honest appraisals of science are rare, and commentators like George Will fit right in.


http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/12/new-study-shows-once-again-how-climategate-emai/193611

ClimateGate was nothing but BigCarbon propaganda and LIES, suckering you bubbas, as 1% propaganda always does on every issue.

More true than many would admit to.

If anyone cares to disagree with this analysis, let's start with a simple question:
Which makes more ratings:

Dispassionate discussions of scientific topics and detailed, nuanced explanations of same?

or

Emotional hot-button stories that fuel outrage and increase buy-in by people who have already made up their minds by presenting them with something that appeals to what they already think they know, i.e. appeals to confirmation bias?

[RandomGuy]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/

Interesting blog that asks some rather important questions and analysis concerning recent studies on the biology of ideologies.

Yes, it is a blog. Take that for what it is worth. Gal appears more than qualified to evaluate the science from what I could gather:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Andrea+Kuszewski

She cites a group of papers, honestly acknowledges and links the valid criticisms of the 9 or so relevant scientific papers in the the subject.



Like Chris had mentioned, some of these correlations between brain function/anatomy and specific political party are consistent across multiple studies, of varying design and methodology, over years of research. That tells me something. The exact analysis or interpretation of the individual studies might not be 100% correct as stated in those papers, but there is obviously a pattern, and that’s what I’m most interested in. In cases like these I tend to look more at the data and pay less attention to the analyses, drawing my own conclusions from the data across all the studies. One paper may not have all the answers, but I think there is enough mounting evidence in the stack of literature that we can start (carefully) drawing some conclusions.


the Amodio study found that liberalism correlated with greater activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, or the ACC, while the Kanai study found that liberalism correlated with increased gray matter volume or a larger ACC, as shown in MRI scans. Additionally, the Kanai study found that conservatism was correlated with increased volume of the right amygdala.



The ACC has a variety of functions in the brain, including error detection, conflict monitoring1, and evaluating or weighing different competing choices. It’s also very important for both emotion regulation and cognitive control (often referred to as ‘executive functioning’)—controlling the level of emotional arousal or response to an emotional event (keeping it in check), as to allow your cognitive processes to work most effectively.

When there is a flow of ambiguous information, the ACC helps to discern whether the bits of info are relevant or not, and assigns them value. People with some forms of schizophrenia, Paranoid Type, for instance, typically have a poorly functioning ACC, so they have trouble discerning relevant patterns from irrelevant ones, giving equal weight to all of them. Someone can notice lots of bizarre patterns—that alone isn’t pathological—but you need to know which ones are meaningful. The ACC helps to decide which patterns are worth investigating and which ones are just noise. If your brain assigned relevance to every detectable pattern, it would be pretty problematic. We sometimes refer to this as having paranoid delusions. You need that weeding out process to think rationally.



The amygdala is part of the limbic system, the area of the brain associated with emotions. The amygdala is important for formation of emotional memories and learning, such as fear conditioning, as well as memory consolidation. Emotions significantly impact how we process events; when we encounter something and have a strong emotional reaction—either positive or negative—that memory is strengthened.

Persons with a larger or more active amygdala tend to have stronger emotional reactions to objects and events, and process information initially through that pathway. They would be more likely swayed towards a belief if it touched them on an emotional level.

Those with a larger amygdala are also thought to experience and express more empathy, perhaps explaining why one of the features of psychopathy is a smaller amygdala. This is not to say that someone with a smaller amygdala is a psychopath, just that they are probably less emotionally reactive or receptive.

On the other hand, while emotional sensitivity can be a good thing, too much emotionality can have negative consequences. For example, Borderline Personality Disorder, characterized by poor and uncontrollable emotion regulation, features a hyperactive amygdala.


Let’s assume, for sake of discussion, that all of the data in these studies hold. What would that imply?

Past studies, as well as the ones mentioned here, have shown that liberals are more likely to respond to “informational complexity, ambiguity, and novelty”. Considering the role of the ACC in conflict monitoring, error detection, and pattern recognition/ evaluation, this would make perfect sense. Liberals, according to this model, would be likely to engage in more flexible thinking, working through alternate possibilities before committing to a choice. Even after committing, if alternate contradicting data comes along, they would be more likely to consider it. Sound familiar? This is how science works, and why there might be so many correlations between scientific beliefs (and lesser belief in religion) and tendency to be liberal. Is this a hard and fast rule? Of course not. But you can see the group differences overall.

Now let’s look at the other side. Conservatives, more likely to have an enlarged amygdala, would tend to process information initially using emotion. According to Kanai,

Conservatives respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions. This heightened sensitivity to emotional faces suggests that individuals with conservative orientation might exhibit differences in brain structures associated with emotional processing such as the amygdala.

So, when faced with an ambiguous situation, conservatives would tend to process the information initially with a strong emotional response. This would make them less likely to lean towards change, and more likely to prefer stability. Stability means more predictability, which means more expected outcomes, and less of a trigger for anxiety.

Liberals, though, tend toward unpredictability. They don’t mind change, and in fact, they prefer it. They seek it out. This personality type would likely choose “change” over “stability” just because they tend to be more novelty-seeking by nature. The fact that they have a more prominent ACC helps them to deal with radically changing situations, still find the salient points, all without the emotion getting in the way. These individuals are the compartmentalizers, the logic-driven ones, while the conservatives are the ones driven by emotion and empathy.


The author does also strongly caution against over-generalizations, and notes that groups tend to have wide variability.

This does explain to me, though, why conservative media focuses so much on the emotional side of an issue by drumming up outrage, and less on dispassionate analysis.

[DarrinS]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/

Interesting blog that asks some rather important questions and analysis concerning recent studies on the biology of ideologies.

Yes, it is a blog. Take that for what it is worth. Gal appears more than qualified to evaluate the science from what I could gather:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Andrea+Kuszewski

She cites a group of papers, honestly acknowledges and links the valid criticisms of the 9 or so relevant scientific papers in the the subject.




The author does also strongly caution against generalizations, and notes that groups tend to have wide variability.




Lol. Rich in irony.

[RandomGuy]

Lol. Rich in irony.

An elaboration then:

One cannot assume ALL members of a group are the same way, merely that they tend to exhibit certain patterns.

Perhaps a better phrasing:

"over-generalizing"

Thanks for pointing that out. I will go back and fix it.