Talk:Michael Shellenberger

Disruptive editing, edit warring, and 3 revert rule

The latest round of editing when the subject just announced his candidacy is not "strange" as the announcement would obviously attract more, newer editors. The reversion of page edits in the last 24 hours is against Wikipedia community guidelines and, more importantly, removed factually correct information. It is difficult to see these edits as being done in good faith. I ask the main reverter to reconsider these changes or explain how the changes meet the "three revert rule" exception policy. Furthermore, the gatekeeping on this page fits squarely within community guidelines for Disruptive Editing.

Despite any previous attempts by the subject to directly engage the editors, we need to be able to trust the good faith of the editors on this page. The editors must be allowed to progress the content. To avoid escalating this issue through the dispute resolution system, let's talk here.

I suggest that: 1. any reversions over the last 24 hours be reviewed and justification added 2. large reversions should be re-reverted and specific lines should be removed manually that do not meet standards 3. future revisions should follow the same pattern 4. revisors should be more than one person (not username) to avoid the look of gatekeeping and avoid the 3 revert rule

--Arty706 (talk) 14:57, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

While I agree that a rise in editing on this page is not necessarily unusual, and share the concern that promotion-detectors should not be excessively hair trigger, I see no need for particular restrictions in the other direction. And I am sure you will understand that questions could be raised about such a proposal being made by a newly created account which has only edited in this topic area and which was created shortly after another account was blocked for socking. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:31, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I understand the concern about a new account, but the previously blocked account wasn't me. I am a Californian and am interested in this topic, and just because my account is new doesn't mean I don't have the same rights as anyone else on here. We do need some balance in the other direction, especially when the account(s) gatekeeping this page are violating community rules. I'm open to suggestions before this blows up into a real editing war. --Arty706 (talk) 16:23, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

"Edit warring" and possible lack of "good faith" are conduct matters. What are the content matters, for example, can you identify a specific edit containing "factually correct information" that you think should not be reverted? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:37, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

1. Removing NPP

2. Adding random qualifying statements that aren't necessary and aren't present in other candidate pages

3. Originally removing the Gubernatorial candidate section

4. Reverting any changes away from inflammatory opinions ( e.g. "bad science" and "controversial and polarizing")

5. Gate keeping what is considered notable

These are just a few examples over the past 72-ish hours. The editor in question forces everyone to the talk page and then fights until everyone gives up in frustration. There is very clearly a hangover from the subject reaching directly into the Wikipedia process that has guided the recent history of the page. That needs to stop. -Arty706 (talk) 17:54, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to say a few things here and then wash my hands of whatever this is, because whatever's happening in this corner of the talk page is not productive, is not constructive, and doesn't take into account previous discussions and consensus reached in above sections:

1. The gubernatorial candidate section was re-added quickly, by me, while other major additions/structural changes to the page and removal of previously agreed upon content through consensus were reverted, per Wikipedia:BRD. These changes have been discussed on the talk page, again, per Wikipedia:BRD.
2. Language such as "bad science" and "controversial and polarizing" have been: 1. Discussed here and agreed upon at talk by at least four separate editors, and 2. Were not even added by me--they were added by another user you engage with above, through the proper channels and discussion/consensus. Since they were discussed at talk and consensus was reached previously, a user cannot just come in and remove such language because they personally have an issue with it.
3. In terms of 3RR, you'll see that two reversions involved a sock account, which does not apply to the 3RR rule.
4. The original addition of NPP was reverted because the anonymous ip that added it also removed language in the lead that was added (by a different user) after consensus was reached here at talk.
5. Finally, I don't appreciate speculation about why I'm editing Wikipedia. I'd appreciate it if we stayed far and away from any sort of personal attacks here.

That said, since, again, none of this seems to be constructive or based in productivity, I'm out.--Hobomok (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

A recent change deleted the reference to Michael Shellenberger being a journalist in the very first line. This is a crazy take. Shellenberger is a columnist for The Free Press and has written opinion pieces for every major publication, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Coverage of Shellenberger and his views from all sources consistently continues to refer to him as a journalist. This kind of editing is not biased; it's factually wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrWikiDetective (talk • contribs) 17:51, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

See Journalist. Having a column or writing opinion pieces makes you a person with an opinion, not a journalist. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:00, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

• all sources consistently continues to refer to him as a journalist. That is complete BS. He is most frequently cited as the author of Apocalypse Never and San Fransicko. He founded Environmental Progress and the Breakthrough Institute. For years, the media explicitly referred to him as a pro-nuclear environmental activist. Because he frequently wades into cultural and political culture-war issues, many mainstream outlets refer to him as a commentator or pundit. (For example, The Washington Post recently referred to him as a "right-wing guru"). In the earlier stages of his career, he ran a public relations firm. Because his career spans public relations, environmental activism, political campaigns (running for California governor), authoring books, and writing opinion columns, the media's framing of him is highly fractured. -- GreenC 18:02, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

By your definition, then, basically every "journalist" on Wikipedia is not, therefore, a journalist. Should we open the page by stating "Michael Shellenberger is an American with an opinion." Complete nonsense take. MrWikiDetective (talk) 22:21, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Really? Then we should change the descriptions. Who are those false journalists? Can you name one? --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:07, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Fraser Nelson is a columnist and opinion writer, he's described as a journalist on Wikipedia. Michael Walker is an activist who fronts a YouTube channel, he's also described as a journalist on Wikipedia. Emily Maitlis no longer works for the BBC and now hosts a podcast, but she's still described as a journalist on Wikipedia. Lewis Goodall hosts a podcast and a radio show, he's described as a journalist on Wikipedia. Alastair Campbell is a former spin doctor who writes the occasional opinion piece and fronts a podcast, Wikipedia describes him as a journalist. You asked for one, I named five.

My point is that these people, like Shellenberger, are not "false journalists". My point is that having a column or writing opinion pieces or hosting political radio or podcast shows, by Wikipedia's standards, absolutely qualifies you as a journalist.

Your position is nonsense and evidence of blatant bias, it's against the spirit of this site. MrWikiDetective (talk) 11:39, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Those articles should be corrected then, unless reliable sources call those people journalists. RS are the ruler here.

she's still described as a journalist on Wikipedia Correctly, because she worked as one. Isaac Newton is a heap of dust now, but he was a physicist once and is therefore described as one.

by Wikipedia's standards, absolutely qualifies you as a journalist. Source needed. Examples do not count, only real standards do, a.k.a. rules. Wikipedia does not use the precedent system. And you do not get to decide what "spirit" Wikipedia has, rookie. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:00, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Those articles should be corrected then I was wrong when I said that. My statement was based on the assumption that you honestly picked articles about people who are just Having a column or writing opinion pieces, but that assumption was false. I just checked Fraser Nelson. The article says, Nelson began his journalistic career as a business reporter with The Times in 1997, followed by a short spell as Scottish political corresponden. So he is not just Having a column or writing opinion pieces. If you want to stay a Wikipedia editor, you need to have higher standards of honesty than the one you displayed here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:06, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I gave five examples and you cherry-picked what you thought gave you a "gotcha" moment, but unfortunately it reaffirmed your ignorance.

You said and I quote, "Having a column... makes you a person with an opinion, not a journalist". That's why I highlighted Fraser Nelson, because he is a columnist. And I know this because his byline for The Times, his current employer, literally states "Fraser Nelson is a columnist". That's what makes him a working journalist.

And this is the point you don't understand, writing columns makes you a journalist. Literally everyone in media knows this. Don't believe me? Go read the Wikipedia page for "Columnist" and look at the other names for columnist in the sidebar, you'll notice that one of them is "journalist". MrWikiDetective (talk) 16:09, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I did not "cherry-pick". I started with the first example, found it was bullshit, and concluded that it did not make sense to look at any others. Maybe you should choose your examples more carefully. I did not read your last contribution beyond that obviously flimsy accusation, and I don't think it is useful to have any more discussions with you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:05, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Are you even listening to what you're saying? I'm literally quoting your words to help you understand.

This is what you said - "Having a column... makes you a person with an opinion, not a journalist". I then highlighted Fraser Nelson because he is literally described by his employer as a columnist, and that's precisely what qualifies him as a journalist. I then pointed you to the Wikipedia page for "Columnist", which states that the word is essentially a synonym for "journalist". By every definition, your statement was false, and Michael Shellenberger writing columns absolutely qualifies him a a journalist.

You are making things up and it's worrying for the integrity and accuracy of this site that you're vandalising so many pages. Your contributions should all be reviewed. MrWikiDetective (talk) 08:38, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

The most recent edit by PerpetualPomegranate is fair. It removes the praise and simply states Shellenberger's job titles. Shellenberger only has a Wikipedia page in the first place because of his work as a journalist, author, and professor. MrWikiDetective (talk) 22:26, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

"CBR Chair"

@Mike Schwartz contributed an interesting edit addressing what I think is a problem with this article: what the heck is CBR Chair? Introducing Shellenberger as "CBR Chair" of blather and "first endowed professor" is meaningless grandiose-sounding puffery. Shellenberger teaches a class at an unaccredited university start-up. We have no sourcing showing this title has any significance. I propose we drop it from the lede.

I deleted the edit, as it was a (well-documented!) quote from a Gemini AI-search. That quote contained an interesting post by Prof. Renée DiResta of the former Stanford Internet Observatory in which she recounts how Shellenberger has been quite duplicitous. DiResta is one of the world's experts on disinformation, and she has had a number of experiences with the Chair of Free Speech. There might be some useful references here.

I think Mike Schwartz has opened up a good question and pointed us at some potentially valuable sourcing. -- M.boli (talk) 14:45, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

(( Reply [from "Mike Schwartz (talk)"] )):

I had just 'stumbled onto' this -- (that is, the fact that it seems that little is known about the provenance of the acronym "CBR" at the beginning of that title,

• "CBR chair of [...] and free speech"),

and I was curious.

I did not know anything about Prof. Renée DiResta, and in fact M.boli (talk) might well have clicked on more (perhaps way more!) of the links [than I did] ... from that erstwhile new "ref" tag (which has since been deleted ... or "reverted") from the article.

I realize that

• the use of a "save as PDF" copy of an SERP (search engine results page) as [a way to create a web page for] the value of an "archive-url" field in a "{{cite web}}" instance, and
• the use of an SERP from an "AI" robot such as Google Gemini as a ("pseudo-") [reliable?] source,

are both kinda "un-orthodox".

Hence, I am certainly not 'objecting', [in this reply / 'comment'], to the deletion [reverting] of that footnote with a link to a SERP with some "AI mode" answers ... including some links that may have "turned out to be" (sorta serendipitously?) useful.

However, IMHO it would be better for that "ref" tag to be preserved here [on a "Talk:" page], instead of being lost to most readers, rendered almost completely invisible ... due to being extant only in a non-latest (reverted) version or "revision" of the article-space page.

I hope that will be OK.

Mike Schwartz (talk) 18:04, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

PS: (In case you missed it), the web page you can arrive at, by clicking on the underlined word "Archived" in the first [or maybe only] footnote of this section, is a PDF file that was created by choosing "Save as PDF" [during a "Ctrl-P" or "Print" command] of an SERP that itself contains several links, and at least one of those links -- (one which might be easy to miss, ... at least if you did not have this "PS" ... it is way down near the end ... I think it's about the second-to-last link) -- is a link to:

• https://reneediresta.substack.com/p/applause-seeking-fantasies-behind

Mike Schwartz (talk) 18:31, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Update (about 2 weeks later): Google search AI summary now says: In the context of the University of Austin (UATX), CBR refers to the Cicero Business Resources, a firm founded by Joe Lonsdale, who is also a founding trustee of the university. Which sounds quite plausible, until a search for "Cicero Business Resources" reveals it is hallucinated. Remove the quotes, you see that Lonsdale did fund another organization named Cicero-something. All of which tends to reinforce my belief this sentence in the lede should be deleted. -- M.boli (talk) 19:22, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Thee months later: I will remove the sentence about first endowed professor and "CBR Chair" (whatever that is).

• This second sentence in the lede is most decidedly not part of Shellenberger's notability. The UTAX connection is only barely mentioned in this article. It is but a small tidbit in this article covering Shellenberger's lengthy, varied, and very consequential career.
• We don't know what it means. As I described above, it is puffy-sounding verbiage but it might simply mean that he teaches one class. At an unaccredited start-up college.

Nobody has come up with any rationale for keeping this since I opened the question in January. I would be amenable to relocating the sentence to the end of the lede, since it describes a current activity. -- M.boli (talk) 19:19, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

M.boli In higher education, when an endowed chair is named with initials rather than a full name, it typically represents the initials of an anonymous donor. -- GreenC 05:33, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

When I went looking, it seemed to be initials thrown into Shellenberger's title on the university web page. No evidence there is an endowed chair, no former people with that title, no press releases describing a special position with special responsibilities. Not even an academic department. I was trying to flesh out the description for encyclopedia purposes and found nothing. It ain't notable. That S. has a faculty appointment in the area of free speech and censorship is a factual description which conveys meaning to the Wikipedia reader. I find it bewildering that this has gotten to be a sticking point. -- M.boli (talk) 12:23, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Chair basically means someone anonymously donated money to the university to pay the salary of a professor for the purpose of teaching free speech. This chair is currently held by MS. It's a brand new university so there couldn't be anyone before. They likely didn't make a press release because it is anonymous. Holding a chair can carry a lot of prestige at established credited universities. For the purpose of this article, the main thing is that someone "C.B.R." wanted Shellenberger to teach there on a specific topic and anonymously paid his way. Personally I think that connection to Joe Lonsdale is pretty strong, they are collaborators, and share the same beliefs on free speech, and both connected to the university, and Joe is wealthy. But there is no direct evidence or what CBR means. I don't think it is prestigious title at this point, it looks a bit manufactured and PRish. For that reason it should not be in the lead, but if mentioned in the body it could clarify the donor is anonymous and the chair is brand new with no public information. -- GreenC 17:39, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Absent documentation from UATX, "CBR chair" is utterly meaningless puffy-sounding words. It clearly is supposed to sound endowed, prestigious, special-purpose, etc. But if somebody started a research group studying phrenology, palmistry, and physiognomy, the administration might give the professor a few workload credits and call it the "PPP Chair of Morphoanthropology". The evidence that Shellenberger proffered for use of the appellation was that he identified himself thusly in testimony to Congress. Speculation over whether a buddy of his donated part of his salary doesn't change any of that. -- M.boli (talk) 19:48, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

References

Where to begin?

One sided opinions and character assasination don't belong on wikipedia. If you have a specific probem with a figure than please, substatiate it. "He has faced critcisism for many things." Who hasn't. Has Shellenbeger actually tussled with climate scientists on twitter? I am certainly not aware of this. Brahman12 (talk) 02:44, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Argument from personal ignorance is not valid. You deleted a para supported by refs. If you think the refs don't actually support the text, please explain that William M. Connolley (talk) 08:26, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I would like to call for more neutral Wikipedia editors to step in and intervene to make this biographical page fair and balanced. The edit that has been done is not a normal. It reads like a hit piece, not a fair and balanced Wikipedia biographical page. It does not aim to be neutral. It aims to present information out of context and remove or bury relevant information relating to Shellenberger's primary status as a public figure. That includes: saving nuclear plants; publishing bestselling and widely-debated books on the environment and homeless; testifying more than a dozen times before Congress on issues from free speech to energy to UAPs; revealing through the Twitter Files how Twitter broke its own terms of service in deplatforming Trump; how FBI, Twitter, and Aspen ran a disinformation and censorship operation relating to the Hunter Biden laptop; breaking the story of the first people to get Covid; breaking the story of San Francisco’s supervised open air drug site and helping to shut it down. Whoever did the edit did it to highly things out of context and aimed at creating a negative perception. I would like to call for more neutral Wikipedia editors to take action immediately. This has happened at least a half dozen times. Brahman12 (talk) 14:40, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

As an editor you have the power to make changes that follow policy. And you have the power to remove or change text that violates policy. My advice is to look for reputable sources that praise him or describe him as having been unfairly characterized by the press. And you can put that in as a counterpoint. But there are a lot of reliable sources that describe him as fringe etc. And in my opinion they are correct. DolyaIskrina (talk) 15:25, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

This paragraph is obviously not a reliable source and violates Wikipedia's policy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

Dolyalskrina makes clear he is biased against subject and should not be an editor here. Brahman12 (talk) 02:00, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Brahman12, editors are not supposed to pretend not to have opinions. IF so, you are doing a bad job of that yourself. What matters is WP:RS and WP:NPOV. WP:BIAS: "Wikipedia content reflects the biases in the sources it uses. The neutral point of view (NPOV) policy requires articles to fairly and proportionately represent the views published in reliable sources. It does not permit editors to "correct" or remove biases they see in sources, or to allow their own beliefs and opinions to "get between" the sources and the content. Editors should put their own opinions aside and "stay out of the way" by neutrally documenting what a source says, including its opinions and biases. That means that when editors edit neutrally, Wikipedia content will reflect the biases found in reliable sources." DolyaIskrina (talk) 03:20, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Editors have flagged this problem on the Shellenberger talk page repeatedly, and the answer has not changed. Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy bars self-published sources, blogs included, from being used to support claims about a living person, and it draws that line even harder when the material is negative or contentious. None of this is obscure or contested. It has been raised on this article before, more than once, by editors pointing to the exact same policies. Continuing to cite a blog attack after the rule has been explained, and explained again, is not a sourcing dispute. It is a refusal to apply Wikipedia's own standards to a subject some editors plainly dislike. Brahman12 (talk) 02:42, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Neutrality Issue

I do not edit Wikipedia frequently and I have no personal investment in the internal procedures of this site, but I have followed Michael Shellenberger's work in energy, environment, urban policy, and journalism for the better part of two decades, and the article that currently sits under his name on this site does not describe the person whose work I have read. It describes a caricature drawn by people who appear to disagree with him politically.

Anyone who has worked in the energy field knows what Shellenberger did to keep nuclear plants operating in California, in South Korea, in Taiwan, and in several other jurisdictions where the political winds were running the other way. That work is documented in the mainstream press and in the policy literature and is the central reason most readers have heard of him. It is treated in the current article as a footnote.

Anyone who covers urban policy knows that San Fransicko changed the public conversation about homelessness, addiction, and harm reduction in ways that even the book's critics conceded mattered. Anyone who follows the press freedom debates of the past three years knows that he was one of the lead reporters on the Twitter Files, including the specific reporting on Twitter's deplatforming of Donald Trump in violation of its own published terms, and on the coordination among federal agencies, the Aspen Institute, and the platform around the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Anyone who paid attention to the early COVID period remembers the reporting on the first identified cases. Anyone who follows San Francisco politics knows about the open air drug site he reported on and the policy reversal that followed.

The Wikipedia article currently buries all of this and leads instead with a series of contested characterizations drawn disproportionately from outlets that have a public quarrel with the subject. That is not a neutral biography. It is what a journalist would call a hit piece dressed up in the formatting of an encyclopedia. The pattern of edits that produced it has now occurred at least half a dozen times, with each correction toward balance reverted by the same small set of editors.

I am not in a position to mediate this internally. I am asking the experienced uninvolved editors who run this site to step in and apply the standards Wikipedia uses for its other biographies of public figures. The subject is one of the most consequential heterodox journalists working today, and the article should at minimum tell a reader why. PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 23:56, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Search for articles that describe him in the manner you think is appropriate. Provide those links here or just put the text into the article. If there are good sources it should stick. DolyaIskrina (talk) 03:23, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The issue is the same user keeps using a source explicitly defined as unreliable in Wikipedia's own description of reliable sources, Wikipedia explicitly states eventualism is not an excuse for unbalanced, the burden of proof is on the editor adding the information and sources which is also explicitly outlined by wikipedia. Calling out bias isn't edit-waring. this is a major issue on this page PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 02:04, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Citing a hostile blog post to disparage Shellenberger runs headlong into the bright-line rules Wikipedia sets for writing about living people. The biographies of living persons policy treats self-published sources, blogs included, as off-limits when the claim concerns a real person, and it tightens that prohibition further when the material is critical or contentious. The reliable sources guideline asks a simple question: does the publication have an editor, a fact-checking process, and a record of accuracy? A blogger venting about Shellenberger fails every part of that test. A polemical post offers opinion, not vetted reporting, and Wikipedia's own rules instruct editors to remove such material on sight rather than debate it.

Specifically the quote at the top of the bio I've suggested to delete violates living persons bios, as outlined by wikipedia, in the following ways:

Living persons violation: “Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of small minorities should not be included at all.”

Living persons violation: “Pages that are unsourced and negative in tone, especially when they appear to have been created primarily to disparage the subject”

Living persons violation: “If you cannot find multiple reliable third-party sources documenting the allegation or incident, leave it out.”

The burden of proof is on the person adding the information to justify it is a reliable source and aligns with the rules for bios of living persons. PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 02:09, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

What "hostile blog post" are you talking about? Please try to talk less and focus on the essentials. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:17, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

This section, which I am going to delete again, because the same user keeps adding it back without providing proof, which is on the burden of the editor to do. I am using this talk page as outlined by Wikipedia since this keeps happening.

"In February 2016, Shellenberger left Breakthrough over personal and professional differences with Nordhaus, who, in 2024, detailed why, stating that "Shellenberger is far better known today as a right-wing political influencer than he ever was during the period we worked together. He left Breakthrough almost a decade ago, over significant differences in political strategy, policy priorities, and personal style. I, like many others who were once close to Michael, have been increasingly troubled by his trajectory. Michael has gone through a MAGA-tinted looking glass and now trafficks in deep state conspiracies about UFOs, January 6th, and social media censorship far nuttier and more extreme than anything that his former progressive allies could ever have conjured up."

This source is from one blog post from a former coworker, which is in direct violation of Wikipedia's own rules on living persons biographies:

Living persons violation: “Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of small minorities should not be included at all.”

Living persons violation: “Pages that are unsourced and negative in tone, especially when they appear to have been created primarily to disparage the subject”

Living persons violation: “If you cannot find multiple reliable third-party sources documenting the allegation or incident, leave it out.”

PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 16:35, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Ah, ok. Thank you. But giving the link to the blog would be enough. That would have been the answer to my question What "hostile blog post" are you talking about. We know the rules, you don't have to copy them here. (Special case of Please try to talk less). --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:39, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

It's all this:

• Removal https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Shellenberger&diff=1352677712&oldid=1352471748
• Blog https://thebreakthrough.org/jou*rnal/no-20-spring-2024/michael-and-me
• Author Ted Nordhaus

— Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 04:27, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

My question was already answered, and I acknowledged it and complained the answer was too wordy. You answered it again, which was not needed. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:35, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

...the article that currently sits under his name on this site does not describe the person whose work I have read. It describes a caricature drawn by people who appear to disagree with him politically. 100% disagree. This is the most charitable image of the subject I have ever seen. If anything, the exact opposite of what you say is true. It is a caricature, but one that is overly-positive and glamorous, and makes use of euphemisms and whitewashing to make him look better than he really is. Viriditas (talk) 01:48, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I want to respond to more of the right wing talking points up above that I never got a chance to address:

Anyone who has worked in the energy field knows what Shellenberger did to keep nuclear plants operating in California

Is this some kind of joke? Shellenberger has nothing to do with this.

Anyone who covers urban policy knows that San Fransicko changed the public conversation about homelessness, addiction, and harm reduction in ways that even the book's critics conceded mattered.

And there it is: "San Fransicko". Yeah, you have no dog in this fight, right? I'm sure you are right at home on Y Combinator, which is where this propaganda campaign originally began.

Anyone who follows the press freedom debates of the past three years knows that he was one of the lead reporters on the Twitter Files

Which has been completely debunked.

..the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story

And there it is. Viriditas (talk) 22:16, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Small correction: San Fransicko is a book by Shellenberger. It's not PerpetualPomegranate's fault that Shellenberger called it that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:04, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

• At the very least we clearly cannot cite Genspect, which is a fringe anti-trans org and certainly not a WP:RS; the rest of the paragraph turned it into an WP:OR / coatrack by dumping what looked like a lot of talking points unrelated to Shellenberger into it. I've reverted most of the other changes; the lead addition seems undue. I think that it's reasonable to mention Nordhaus' position on the break with Breakthrough, removed here, but at the very least we have to cover the fact that his leaving Breakthrough was acrimonious and that it was because Nordhaus, in particular, disagreed with Shellenberger's shift to the right; the way his politics shifted is vital context to his biography and we currently leave it out entirely. --Aquillion (talk) 18:02, 12 May 2026 (UTC)
• Also, while we are on the topic, another issue with the current version - heterodox thinker in the lead seems like unduly promotional language. We can just say that his views are fringe or outside the mainstream, though it would be best to go over all the sources and see what exact language they use. --Aquillion (talk) 18:46, 12 May 2026 (UTC)
• Regarding the Diablo Canyon thing, we were misrepresenting the sources in the body (and none of them give it enough weight to put it in the lead even before we get to the fact that once we reflect what they actually say it's trivial.) Politico and NPR just say he advocated for it; they do not say, or imply, that his advocacy had any actual impact on the outcome. The NPR piece unambiguously and directly attributes its success to Kristin Zaitz and Heather Hoff, mentioning Shellenberger only in passing as someone who had advocated to keep it in the past. And the Politico piece is an interview; in fact, reading it, they say What do you think changed? Was it the basic reality of needing to keep the lights on and the recognition that we risk more blackouts? Or that you stopped talking about it so much? - it's unclear if this is in jest, but it makes it clear they don't consider his advocacy to have helped. Even Shellenberger himself only vaguely says that he feels he "contributed" (and, again, that's just his own wording in an interview; NPR directly and specifically was skeptical.) The WSJ is an opinion piece that just quotes Shellenberger. Honestly just based on these sentences even the one sentence in the body is borderline WP:UNDUE. --Aquillion (talk) 19:50, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I opened a topic on this page regarding WP:BLP/WP:NPOV issues, and users initially responded to provide mainstream, reliable evidence to replace the evidence that was biased. While this response still disregards WP:BLPRS (since the same group of editors keep reverting the deletions I make due to this issue, and the burden of proof is on the editor to show why the evidence is reliable), I still provided various points of evidence, sourced from reliable mainstream outlets. WP:FRINGE is being abused to hide the true issue these editors are having, which is WP:I JUST DON’T LIKE IT. Multiple mainstream outlets frequently cite and discuss Shellenberger’s work, just because it does not align with your particular ideology does not make it fringe. The edits I made neutrally reflect the conclusions explicitly outlined and cited by mainstream secondary sources affirming the validity of Shellenberger’s work. The tag of Fringe is only for views that completely depart from scientific support, which there is a plethora of as added by the citations I’ve been including which are deleted over and over again.  The neutrality of this page is still in debate and the editors making these revisions can’t hide behind WP:FRINGE when really they WP:I just don’t like it. PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 00:26, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Mainstream publications often repeat global warming denialism, it is still FRINGE. A large percentage of the US population believe in UFOs visiting earth. It is still fringe. Aquillion made careful edit by edit explanations for everything they did, and you reverted it all in a single mass revert with no explanation other than a bad faith accusation that Aquillion is some kind of partisan. I don't see that. -- GreenC 05:43, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

• I explained my edits above and below, but I want to specifically underline that the Diablo Canyon stuff completely fails verification - nothing in any of the sources supports the assertion that any sources credited Shellenberger with playing a significant part in preventing the closure of Diablo Canyon. Not one of the three sources provided gives him any credit for it whatsoever. This one, at least, is completely clear-cut. Look at the actual sources! What line from them do you feel reflects any of those sources giving him credit? I read them carefully and I can't find it at all. I definitely don't think that we can weigh non-expert sources on climate change equal to academics; if you think that Shellenberger's views represent mainstream science, you should be able to find mainstream scientists saying as much. The honest fact is that the main POV issues with this article is that it is unduly promotional; several things were worded in ways that went wildly beyond the sources (especially the Diablo Canyon part), and several other parts rely on primary sources or marginal reviews by non-experts in a promotional manner. Given the heavy editing by WP:SPIs now and in the past, I think it's reasonable to be concerned about potential conflict-of-interest editing, so perhaps we should raise the article at WP:COIN. --Aquillion (talk) 21:37, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

  "It seemed quixotic, even hopeless, in 2016, when Shellenberger along with the pioneering climate scientist James Hansen and Stewart Brand, founder of the crunchy Whole Earth Catalog, began advocating to save Diablo Canyon."

  "We were basically excluded from polite conversation for even talking about keeping the plant open," recalled Shellenberger. Promoting nuclear as an important tool in fighting climate change would get him dismissed by fellow environmentalists as a conspiracy theorist or, falsely, as a corporate shill, he added."

  "At the same time, Kristin Zaitz and Heather Hoff were forming an advocacy group called Mothers for Nuclear, a local grassroots effort to keep Diablo Canyon operating. To say their views were not widely embraced would be a serious understatement."

  This is in the first NPR source, and the other sources citing and interviewing him all work to support the idea that his advocacy helped keep Diablo Canyon open. I feel like the fact that these interviews in themselves are a way to advocate for Diablo Canyon to remain open. The politico source literally asks him about his experience doing this- https://www.npr.org/2022/08/30/1119904819/nuclear-power-environmentalists-california-germany-japan; https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-long-game/2022/06/08/the-environmental-apostate-who-backed-nuclear-before-it-was-cool-00038048

  If that apparently isn't enough, here is another credible source directly crediting him with keeping Diablo Canyon open: https://www.city-journal.org/article/diablo-lives

  If anything, this is not NPOV because there is a negative POV rather than neutral, numerous sources convey this case, I don't see how you can ignore the direct evidence. To suggest there must be a conflict of interest when someone calls out bias is concerning that despite the sources and citations frequently provided, a small group of users elects to hide behind tags like fringe or conflict of interest when they don't like pretty benign neutral edits. PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 23:41, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

None of the parts you quoted actually say they had an impact. They just note them as one of the people who weighed in. Read more carefully. All it says is that it seemed hopeless back when he started advocating for it, and that nobody wanted to listen to him. You're trying to get us to infer a meaning of "and then everyone listened to him and changed their mind", but that isn't actually what it says - it mentions him briefly as an early person who opposed the plant's closure, then goes on to focus on a bunch of other people instead, and pointedly never mentions Shellenberger again. Even beyond that they mostly just quote quote Shellenberger, which could be used, at best, for his attributed opinion, not for facts in the article voice; and even then, they very specifically do not quote him as saying that he had an impact, just that it's a position he took. Even if he did make that argument, his opinion in that regard certainly wouldn't be leadworthy. And City Journal is the in-house publication of the Manhattan Institute; as part of a think-tank created to push a particular perspective, it isn't inherently a reliable source. --Aquillion (talk) 01:35, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Non-expert perspectives in the reviews section

Most of Shellenberger's books advance an extremely WP:FRINGE perspective on climate change; however, we're currently citing a bunch of non-experts (broadly, people whose only credential is that they agree with him politically) in the reception sections on these. Many of them are not only non-experts, they share Shellenberger's fringe theories themselves, which falls afoul of WP:FRIND. Since this is a topic with a clear academic consensus, we ought to cite only people with relevant expertise to avoid WP:PROFRINGE issues; for that reason, I suggest going through and removing all reviews from anyone who lacks expertise as a climatologist or similar. --Aquillion (talk) 18:25, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

That's a completely normal default position for any article. No opinion of any physicist no matter what matters for ornithology and no ornithologist matters for plasma physics. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 18:51, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Where is the evidence that the book is Fringe? He is named Time hero of the environment (an edit which keeps getting reverted for some reason) so I don't see why neutral language can't be used to describe the topics of his books-- most of the few critiques seem to rebuke his commentary regarding the culture of environmentalists, not the scientific content in the book itself. PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 23:07, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Time magazine is popular culture media that carries little weight in determining fringe science theory. That was also in 2008, nearly 20 years ago, a lot has changed since then. I agree with Aquillion we need to cite relevant experts and focus on academic consensus. -- GreenC 05:48, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I am not just talking about Time I am talking about the other sources I have cited including Politico, Washington Post, etc. to show consensus and they continue to be removed. it is a mainstream source, just because you dont like it doesnt make it not true PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 17:14, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

You don't get it. Popular press loses to scientific sources. The scientific consensus disagrees with Shellenberger, and no amount of journalism will change that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:55, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

Where is the evidence of this scientific consensus that his entire book is wrong? The same user keeps deleting the various sources that showcase positive reviews from Shellenberger is an author journalist and mainstream credible sources discuss his reporting and books. In reference to apocalypse never, scientists affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences, Yale, MIT etc. have supported the book including Bud Ward, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and climate scientists Tom Wigley and Kerry Emanuel, which even sources critical of Shellenberger admit. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it Fringe. This also ignores that any "controversy" surrounding the book was cultural activism in environmentalism rather than the explicit scientific material discussed

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/mit-climate-scientist-kerry-emanuel-on-energy-and-shellenbergs-apocalypse/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-optimism-on-climate-change-make-you-pro-trump/ PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 23:31, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

• This is a normal approach to areas with a clear academic consensus, especially climate change; when there are clear experts weighing in, we follow their lead per WP:BESTSOURCES. It's also incorrect to say that he was "awarded" with anything (it's not a prize). And even then, it predated most of his more controversial stances - even people who were previously respected experts (which he was not) can take fringe positions. If you think that his positions aren't fringe, just find other experts in climate change who support him; that wouldn't be hard. Regardless, it's clear from the discussions here and above that this is a WP:1AM situation and that my edits have support, so I'll reinstate them. --Aquillion (talk) 21:32, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

"Fringe" fails MOS:LABEL, misapplies WP:FRINGE, and breaks WP:NPOV

The characterization of the subject's climate views as "fringe," whether stated in wikivoice or carried over from critical reviews, does not survive our own policies. Three problems, then a fix.

1. "Fringe" is a value-laden label and is being used without attribution. Per MOS:LABEL, value-laden labels "are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject," and even then require in-text attribution. "Fringe" is not in wide RS use as a neutral descriptor of this subject. It appears in opinion reviews and advocacy fact-checks. That means it belongs in quotation marks attributed to whoever said it, not in Wikipedia's voice.

2. WP:FRINGE does not apply here, and citing it is the abuse the guideline's own supplement warns about.WP:FRINGE governs ideas that "depart significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in [their] particular field" and have little or no scientific support. The subject accepts mainstream physical climate science: warming is real and human-caused. His disputes are about severity framing and policy, which are opinions, not scientific claims. The explanatory supplement WP:What FRINGE is not states it plainly: the guideline "has nothing to do with politics or opinions," and it notes that editors cite FRINGE "to demonize viewpoints which contradict their own." The correct framework is WP:NPOV and WP:DUE, not WP:FRINGE.

3. Several of the specific claims now carry top-tier RS support, so calling them fringe contradicts WP:V. The argument that RCP8.5 was implausible was published in Nature by Hausfather and Peters in 2020. The finding that Pacific atolls gained land area despite sea-level rise was published in Nature Communications in 2018. The finding that today's North American forests run a fire deficit was published in Nature Communications in 2025. A claim a Nature-family journal printed cannot honestly be described as having "little or no scientific support."

Steelman, because WP:GEVAL cuts both ways. I am not arguing every claim he makes is correct. Reliable sources, including the reviewers Climate Feedback assembled, rated some of his statements low-credibility, and that criticism belongs in the article. WP:GEVAL means we do not grant a contrarian parity with consensus. But that argues for attribution, not for a wikivoice label. Per WP:BIASED, opinion and advocacy sources may be used, but their characterizations must be attributed, not stated as fact.

The current weighting is itself a WP:DUE failure. The treatment foregrounds hostile opinion reviews while minimizing the pre-publication endorsements from Tom Wigley (former senior scientist, NCAR), Kerry Emanuel (MIT), Peter Kareiva (former chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy), and Steve McCormick (former head, The Nature Conservancy). Selecting the negative and burying the positive is the textbook WP:DUE problem. And under WP:BLP, contentious descriptors of a living person require high-quality sourcing and a disinterested tone. A bare "fringe" sourced to opinion pieces does not clear that bar.

Proposed fix: remove "fringe" from wikivoice; where critics use it, attribute it in-text ("X described his argument as..."); and balance the criticism with the documented scientist endorsements per WP:DUE. ~~~~ Brahman12 (talk) 02:48, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

The recurring claim on this page that the subject "is not a journalist" rests on a category error and should be disregarded for the purpose of the lead descriptor. Per WP:V and WP:RS, the relevant question is not whether an editor approves of the subject's politics but whether reliable, independent sources describe and treat his work as journalism. They do, and they do so repeatedly.

First, the premise is false on its own terms. Journalism in the United States is not a licensed or accredited profession. No state board confers the title, no credentialing body governs entry, and the First Amendment tradition treats journalism as an activity, the gathering and dissemination of information to the public, rather than as a guild membership. The Supreme Court has consistently declined to define "the press" by occupational status, and federal reporter-shield proposals have foundered precisely because Congress could not draw a credential-based line that excluded independent and online reporters without absurd results. An editor who asserts that the subject "is not a journalist" therefore asserts something that no reliable source can confirm, because the predicate itself does not exist. By the same logic, the subject is no less a journalist than the staff reporters at the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle who credited his outlet with breaking stories ahead of them.

Second, those credits are the dispositive evidence. The San Francisco Chronicle, in Moench and Fagan's January 26, 2022 reporting, attributed the first account of drug consumption at the Tenderloin Linkage Center to the subject's Substack; the facility later closed. The Wall Street Journal credited the subject's outlet, Public, with first reporting the identities of the earliest known COVID-19 patients in 2023. When the two newspapers that some editors here treat as gold-standard reliable sources publicly credit a reporter with a scoop, an editor cannot coherently cite those same newspapers as authorities while denying that the person they credited performed journalism. That position is internally contradictory and fails WP:NPOV's requirement that we follow the sources rather than curate them.

Third, the institutional recognition is independent of any single outlet. Public shared the 2023 Dao Journalism Prize with Racket and The Free Press for the Twitter Files, an award conferred by a journalism body, not a partisan one. Public currently ranks fourth among all news publications on Substack's own leaderboard, a platform-published metric that is verifiable and not self-asserted. These facts belong in the article under WP:DUE because they are central to why the subject is notable, and the present treatment of them as a footnote understates their weight in the source record.

On the Twitter Files specifically, NPOV governs and editors should resist the temptation to litigate the merits in the article's voice. The verifiable facts are that the subject was one of the journalists who reported the Twitter Files in December 2022, and that the reporting generated sustained mainstream coverage and congressional testimony. The interpretation of what those documents prove, whether they show ordinary content moderation or, as the subject and others have argued, coordinated government pressure on platforms, is contested and unresolved; the closest litigation, Murthy v. Missouri, was decided on standing in 2024 rather than on the merits. The article should attribute the competing characterizations to their proponents and should not assert either as settled fact. By the same standard of fidelity to sources, the article should also record that investigative journalists, including Demori in IJNet, identified errors in the 2024 "Twitter Files Brazil" reporting. Including the criticism strengthens the article's neutrality; it does not undermine the journalist designation, because reporters who make errors remain reporters, as the corrections columns of every paper cited on this page demonstrate.

In sum: "author and journalist" is the descriptor the reliable sources support, the descriptor an internally consistent reading of WP:V and WP:RS requires, and the descriptor that survives NPOV review. Disputes over the subject's conclusions are properly handled through attributed criticism in the body, not by stripping a sourced occupational label from the lead. Brahman12 (talk) 02:53, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

A documented pattern of agenda-driven editing on this page

I am Michael Shellenberger, the subject of this article. I am writing under my declared account (ShellenbergerM) and in full conformity with the conflict-of-interest disclosure already on this Talk page. I am posting here because, after reviewing the article and the entire Talk page archive, the pattern of editing on this biography no longer warrants polite circumlocution. A small group of editors has, over years, used the procedural machinery of this site to bury verifiable accomplishments, to manufacture a critical consensus that does not exist in the underlying sources, and to insert and protect characterizations that violate the Biographies of Living Persons policy. The evidence sits on this very Talk page in their own words.

The most striking example is Hobomok, who acknowledged on this Talk page that he had a phone call with me during which I called him a "coward," and who then continued, for years afterward, to function as the de facto gatekeeper of this biography. Boundarylayer flagged this at the time, writing that Hobomok "did not disclose their conflict of interest, nor is there any acclaimed 'consensus' but the very opposite." That objection was never substantively answered. An editor who has had a direct, hostile, off-wiki encounter with the subject of a biography has an obvious personal stake in the article and should not be acting as the consensus-setter for the article's lead. He still is.

The cite-stuffing problem documented by Peter Gulutzan in July 2022 has never been corrected. Hobomok inserted citations to Gelobter et al., Adamson and Slovic, Kallis and Bliss, and others in support of the lead sentence claiming environmental scientists and academics had called my work "bad science" and "inaccurate." As Peter Gulutzan demonstrated by quoting the sources, the Gelobter et al. article does not call my work "bad science" or "inaccurate." It contains an Acknowledgments section thanking me. The Bliss and Kallis-Bliss articles do not use those words either. When this was raised, Hobomok refused to defend the citations and instead invoked an unspecified prior "consensus." That is cite-stuffing in service of a predetermined conclusion. It remains in the article.

The article systematically omits or minimizes the verifiable record. It does not mention that I worked publicly and at length with James Hansen, the climate scientist who originally raised the alarm about global warming before Congress in 1988, to keep nuclear plants operating. It does not mention the documented role of Environmental Progress in keeping plants open in Illinois, New York, South Korea, and elsewhere. It does not mention that my Public reporting on the first people sickened by COVID in Wuhan was independently confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. It does not mention the Tenderloin Linkage Center reporting that the San Francisco Chronicle credited Public with breaking, and which the city later shut down. It does not mention the Twitter Files reporting on the FBI and Aspen Institute role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, or the deplatforming of a sitting U.S. president in apparent violation of Twitter's own published terms of service. It mentions the Brazil testimony only in passing and omits that the reporting triggered a formal Congressional inquiry there. These are not contested. They are matters of public record in mainstream outlets. They are absent because the editors in control of this page have deemed them absent.

The treatment of the 2008 Time "Hero of the Environment" recognition shows the same pattern in miniature. Time named Ted Nordhaus and me Heroes of the Environment in 2008. Academic critics of mine, including in peer-reviewed journals, have referred to my "winning" the prize. MysticMagpie documented the dictionary definition of "award." Editors here continue to insist this is not an award and have removed it from the awards section because Time did not use the word "award" in the article itself. The same editors who insist on this hair-splitting precision elsewhere wave through unsourced or thinly sourced negative characterizations in the lead.

The use of Ted Nordhaus's 2024 Breakthrough Journal essay as a primary-source attack quote in the body of a living-person biography is a clear violation of the BLP self-published-source rule. PerpetualPomegranate raised this with the policy text in hand. The response from Hob Gadling was "Please try to talk less and focus on the essentials." The Nordhaus quote calling me a "right-wing political influencer" who trafficks in "deep state conspiracies" is precisely the kind of contentious, self-published attack material that BLP requires editors to remove on sight.

The "fringe" framing now being introduced by Aquillion is the latest iteration of the same problem. Aquillion has proposed removing reviews from any source not credentialed as a climatologist, while the article currently relies on the views of an art historian, T.J. Demos, and a literary-studies scholar, Julie Sze, to characterize the scientific merit of my arguments. James Hansen's documented public collaboration with me on nuclear policy does not appear in the lead. Aquillion has also moved to delete the documented Diablo Canyon advocacy on the grounds that NPR's profile of Mothers for Nuclear did not give me primary credit, while ignoring the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Politico, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal coverage that does discuss the role. The standard for inclusion shifts depending on whether the material is favorable or unfavorable to the subject.

The deletion of my University of Austin appointment is the clearest recent example. M.boli announced on this Talk page on May 5, 2026 that he would remove the reference to my role as the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech and first endowed professor at the University of Austin, on the stated grounds that he personally does not know what "CBR" stands for, that the university is unaccredited, and that the appointment is "puffy-sounding verbiage" possibly meaning "he teaches one class." He acted on that announcement.

The University of Austin is a real institution that has received sustained coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Free Press, and elsewhere since its launch. The endowed chair has been used in my official U.S. Congressional witness materials, including the testimony PDFs hosted on congress.gov and hsgac.senate.gov that this article itself cites in footnotes 46 and 47. Brahman12 raised the obvious point on this Talk page in February 2024: an endowed professorship in censorship and free speech at a covered, named institution, used in official Congressional documents, is not a fact an encyclopedia gets to delete because an individual editor finds the acronym unfamiliar or the institution insufficiently traditional. The same editors who insist that a Time magazine designation cannot be called an "award" because Time did not literally use that word are happy to delete a documented academic appointment because they do not personally recognize the donor acronym. That is not a consistent application of any sourcing standard. It is an outcome chosen first and a rule selected afterward.

Acone made the basic structural point in March 2023 and was talked in circles until he left. He wrote that the article "reads more as a journalistic smear piece than an encyclopedia article," that it uses "valorizing words for his critics" and "dismissive words ('popular press') for those who agree with him," and that "the point of this section seems to be to tell the reader what to think about Shellenberger's work, not to inform them about who he is or why he is notable." That assessment was correct in 2023. It is correct now. Multiple uninvolved editors arriving at this Talk page, from LdyChatrley to Arty706 to Brahman12 to PerpetualPomegranate to MysticMagpie to CRConrad on the other side, have raised the same concern. The pattern of response is consistent: accusations of sockpuppetry, invocations of a "consensus" that on inspection turns out to be the same three or four editors talking to each other, and reversion.

I am asking uninvolved administrators and experienced editors who have no prior history with this page to audit it against three specific standards. First, BLP, with particular attention to the use of self-published sources, including the Nordhaus blog post, for contentious claims about a living person. Second, WP:V, with particular attention to whether the citations stacked behind the "bad science" and "inaccurate" sentence in the lead actually contain those characterizations of my work. Third, WP:LEAD and WP:NPOV, with particular attention to whether the lead currently summarizes the body or instead front-loads a thesis the body does not support. I am not asking for praise. I am asking that the article describe what I have actually done and what reliable secondary sources have actually said, in proportion, with the same standards Wikipedia applies to other public figures whose work is contested. The current article does not meet that bar, and the Talk page archive shows it has not met it for years. ShellenbergerM (talk) 23:38, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

After reading the first two paragraphs of the WP:WALLOFTEXT: An editor who has had a direct, hostile, off-wiki encounter with the subject of a biography has an obvious personal stake in the article You called him a coward, so he had a hostile encounter with you, so he has a conflict of interest and should not edit the article? By this logic, you can call everybody names who disagrees with you, and voila: only people who agree with you can edit the article. That is not how this works.

After reading a bit more: I worked publicly and at length with James Hansen The article has to omit lots of stuff that is not relevant.

It does not mention that my Public reporting on the first people sickened by COVID Same response. Why would this be relevant for the article?

The response from Hob Gadling was "Please try to talk less and focus on the essentials." Like you, Pomegranate left a mostly uninteresting wall of text for people to pick the few relevant bits out of. My response was appropriate. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:27, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

These complaints about my editing are hooey.

• CBR Chair. The deletion of my University of Austin appointment is the clearest recent example. I did not delete his appointment, I moved it from the 2nd sentence of the lede to the end of the lede, and deleted the "CBR Chair" reference. There was little about his professor position or holding an endowed chair in the article. It seems to barely figure in his notability. I figured to add the missing description of "CBR Chair" to this article, but I found bupkis beyond those words and initials in the UATX bio. I posted to the talk page in January (not May as Shellenberger says) and let it sit for 3-1/2 months before making the change, which I signaled a day or so ahead of time. I moved his faculty appointment to the end of the lede and deleted the puffy language, viz: As of 2026 Shellenberger is on the faculty of the University of Austin in the area of "Politics, Censorship and Free Speech."[cite]

In the absence of any documentation on the web about "CBR Chair", Google search AI hallucinated an answer. That Shellenberger ID-ed himself with this when testifying to Congress doesn't add any knowledge. If this is the "clearest recent example" of biased editing then the problem is Shellenberger's clarity of vision.

• Award. Time Magazine published a laudatory description of Shellenberger as one of many "Heroes of the Environment." There was nothing in the Time special issue which describes anything like an "award". I removed the "award" language from this article and in the "Awards and accolades" section I described more fully the accolade, the nice things Time had written about Shellenberger and his environmental work. This was thoroughly discussed on the talk pages (I didn't know ahead of time it would be controversial). Other experienced editors noticed the same things I did. Some of Shellenberger's SPAs insisted without evidence that the "award" language was correct. Replacing the word "award" with Time's laudatory description of his accomplishments hardly seemed biased against him. But it clearly irritates him.

I don't know what else to say. I do see that the UATX professor position has since been removed from the lede. I think that since Shellenberger is still listed on the university web site we should put that part back, but I'm basically keeping my hands off while the lede is being fought over. If anybody has any RS information about what "CBR Chair" means that could be inserted also, but there was nothing available at that time. I don't think anything happened in the last two decades that retroactively turned a laudatory magazine article into an "award". -- M.boli (talk) 17:18, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

• I would be sympathetic to Shellenberger's concerns stated, and would like to try and address some of the issues in good faith, except the article has been absolutely hammered by a couple red-link SPAs for years, shamelessly promoting Shellenberger. The latest example is Special:Diff/1355236057/1355237908 where Amazon.com commercial book seller links were added right at the top of the lead section. Not only commercial spam, but POV language like calling him "famous", and other blatant promotion. At least one editor involved is a semi-public figure with a video blog where they took favorable positions towards Shellenberger, and even mentioned partisan activity on this Wikipedia article. This all started around the same time Shellenberger gained his position at the University, coincidentally or not. Given the evidence, it would not be difficult to open a case at ANI where sanctions are almost guaranteed to result. It as not been possible to write a neutral article given the current mix of editors. If the problem continues, the pain of doing nothing is going to outweigh the pain of lighting this article up to the wider Wikipedia community. It then is out of our control what happens, but like I said, there is enough evidence built up over the past few years, there will almost surely be sanctions. -- GreenC 18:14, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Given the large numbers of SPIs here editing from the same perspective, it might be worth going to WP:COIN or even WP:SPI. Some of their edits (as I indicated above) are promotional to the point where it goes beyond what the sources can support and strains the presumption of good faith. In particular there's a fixation on promoting a few specific points (especially regarding Diablo Canyon and the substack) that I find suspicious. --Aquillion (talk) 19:36, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Did you mean WP:SPA? Or are there WP:SPI? Yes continuing to assume good faith with those accounts is becoming degrading. -- GreenC 02:00, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Amazon.com commercial book seller links were added right at the top of the lead section. Not only commercial spam, but POV language like calling him "famous", and other blatant promotion. I saw that and reverted. What's going on? I just looked in and noticed a couple of red-link SPA's actively edit warring in promotional stuff, but apparently this has been going on for some time. Is there a page protection solution, or does it need help from AN/I? - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:16, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

SPI

An WP:SPI is open at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brahman12 -- GreenC 03:46, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Page protected

Due to ongoing edit warring, the article has been fully protected for 72 hours. Please continue to discuss and get consensus for the disputed changes in the discussion(s) above.-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 23:06, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. However, the edit warring will inevitably resume once the page can be edited again. If you read the discussions below and above, you'll see that the majority agree that the current wording of the lead is awkward and strange. I've suggested a fair lead at the bottom of this talk page and outlined my reasoning. MrWikiDetective (talk) 09:29, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Wording of the lead.

I see no issue with ..."is an American author, professor and journalist". That's perfectly concise and avoids some of the more flowery language that has been added before. Although perhaps the term professor can be changed to academic, as it looks like the status of this professorship is up in the air. Lostsandwich (talk) 00:44, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I know people are arguing over whether or not he qualifies as a journalist. I don't have a strong feeling about that, but I have stylistic problems with "whose career spans...." This is not the normal Wikipedia voice. It reads like PR copy, smacking of filigrees like "award winning" "best selling" "multi-talented". DolyaIskrina (talk) 19:21, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes I agree with this. It's odd for a Wikipedia page to open with "is an American whose career spans". I challenged another contributor on why Shellenberger doesn't qualify as a journalist and frankly got a lot of nonsense in return. I've outlined my suggestion for the wording of the lead below. MrWikiDetective (talk) 12:22, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Actually M. Shellenberger is on record here for the past 6 years pounding the table to remove that he was a PR person, despite the lengthy paragraph in the body of the article that clearly shows just that. He has actually had a long a varied career doing many different things, which the lead is now ignoring. Shellenberger only wants to most recent stuff, not the old stuff he has done, and he wants to puff up op/ed writing as "journalist". So I guess if the consensus is to go along with what Shellenberger wants, and we ignore his long and varied career, and only focus on what Shellenberger wants us to communicate, is what what we want to do. -- GreenC 20:45, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

"American author, professor and journalist" aligns with NPOV standards and every other living persons biography on wikipedia. As you mentioned, PR work is detailed in the career section, and given he is not actively working in a PR capacity and hasn't in decades, I don't see why this should be detailed in the lead. I agree with @DolyaIskrina that the "career spanning" language is at odds with wikipedia standards and @Lostsandwich 's point regarding being concise, especially given this is the lead. These issues still stand regardless of Shellenberger's personal opinion. You seemingly want to infuse your personal opinions of Shellenberger in this biography by reducing his career as a journalist to "op-eds and PR." This is significant because Shellenberger has testified in national congress in this capacity and has published stories that significantly impacted public discourse and have been covered by numerous mainstream outlets, all of which aren't exclusively recent. Overall, "whose career spans public relations, environmental activism, political campaigns" is extremely vague, wordy, confusing, and doesn't align with his accurate career, regardless of your or his personal opinions. PerpetualPomegranate (talk) 00:04, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Firstly, he has one of the most successful pages on Substack. Secondly, he's a columnist for the Free Press. And thirdly, those "puff up op/ed writing" you refer to include articles for the New York Times and other major publications. His journalistic work has been extensively reported on by major outlets. You may not like what he has to say, but it counts as journalist and this vendetta to declare otherwise has left the wording of the lead feeling clunky, awkward, and completely unlike similar Wikipedia pages. MrWikiDetective (talk) 12:26, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I propose replacing the current first sentence with:

“Michael D. Shellenberger (born June 16, 1971) is an American author, journalist, and environmental policy commentator. He is the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin.”

This is closer to standard biographical lead style than the current wording, which lists career activities rather than using concise occupational descriptors. “Author” is supported by his published books and publisher profiles, which are referenced on his page already. “Journalist” is supported by his current work at Public/The Free Press and by multiple outlets describing him that way, including for his Twitter Files work, which is listed on his page already. The UATX role can be stated using the exact title from the university’s own page.

If editors object to “journalist,” I’d ask what alternative occupational noun they propose, because “writing opinion columns” is not standard first-sentence biographical wording. I don’t think the distinction between “journalist” and “opinion writer” can be resolved by saying that columns are categorically not journalism. Opinion journalism is a recognised form of journalism, and columnists are commonly treated as part of the journalistic profession. The question for this article should be whether reliable sources commonly describe Shellenberger as a journalist and whether that descriptor is due in the lead. I’m not arguing that every opinion columnist is automatically a journalist. But I am arguing that “journalist” is a source-supported descriptor for this subject, and the current first sentence is an unusual, activity-list formulation rather than a standard biographical lead.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by MrWikiDetective (talk • contribs) 09:39, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I completely disagree, that would be a distortion of how WP:LEAD works, neglects what is contained in the body of the article, and distorts the meaning of journalist. It might be a "form" of journalism, but if there is a precise descriptor we use that rather than hiding behind a general term that clearly is meant to promote MS with a more prestigious job descriptor. I'm only waiting for the SPI to conclude, then we can have a fair and balanced discussion with uninvolved editors from the broader community. -- GreenC 19:14, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I don’t think the proposed wording distorts WP:LEAD; my understanding is that the lead should summarise the body, while the first sentence of a biography should normally give concise, source-supported occupational descriptors rather than a list of career activities.

I agree that the lead should not omit significant aspects of Shellenberger’s career, including public relations, environmental activism, political campaigns, books, and opinion writing. My concern is only with the construction of the first sentence, which reads very clunky and unusual for a Wikipedia opening sentence. Those details can still be summarised in the rest of the lead in proportion to the article body.

On “journalist,” I don’t think the objection can rest simply on the fact that some of his work is opinion writing. Opinion journalism and columns are recognised journalistic forms. The relevant question for this article seems to be whether reliable sources commonly describe Shellenberger as a journalist, and whether that descriptor is due for the first sentence. If editors think “journalist” is inaccurate or undue, could they please identify the policy basis and the reliable sources that support excluding it? There are countless examples of peers to Shellenberger with Wikipedia pages who are described, I think fairly, as journalists.

I’m also open to compromise wording, for example:

“Michael D. Shellenberger (born June 16, 1971) is an American author, journalist, and environmental policy commentator. He is the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin.”

I agree that it would be useful to get uninvolved editors’ views once the SPI issue is resolved. MrWikiDetective (talk) 10:16, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't see in anyway how it "distorts" how WP:LEAD works, nor how it "distorts" what a journalist is. He wasn't writing angry opinion pieces in some local newspaper about ugly front lawns or the strange noises over on 3rd street. The kind of journalism which, despite being *technically* journalism, actually stretches the meaning of the term. He does however, meet the real standard of "journalism" employed everywhere else, including across wikipedia, even if he's not exactly vying for a Pulitzer. Lostsandwich (talk) 12:45, 15 June 2026 (UTC)