Fizzle: Alarmist academics doubt impact from Muller

Even conscience-impaired alarmists can’t get excited about Richard Muller.

Environment & Energy Daily reports:

Asked earlier this week whether the buzz around the study could move beyond the circles of policy wonks and advocates who focus on climate change and make an impression on the general public, Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, said the data was not in yet.

“But I will lay dollars to donuts that it won’t,” he said.

Leiserowitz, who studies public opinion and understanding of climate change, said the Berkeley story might influence some “conversation leaders” — or the messengers who communicate climate ideas to the public. But compared with Climategate, he said, “This would be very small.“

Other comments from academics reported by E&E Daily:

• “Maxwell Boykoff of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who also studies climate communications… said it had probably reached the end of its media shelf life but would become “a reference point in the ongoing narrative of this as it’s being battled between science and policy in the public view.”
• “Aaron McCright, a Michigan State University sociologist, said the report would ultimately have little effect on public discourse, mostly because Muller and his team chose to publish its results before they underwent the review process. This undermined the report’s credibility, he said, and gave anti-climate science voices a chance to distort it.”

The only distortions, of course, were on Muller’s part. He was no skeptic and his report failed to even consider the skeptics primary argument.