I wrote a post about Roger Pielke Jr’s recent Wall Street Journal article about his [u]nhappy life as a climate heretic, but it was rather long and rambling, so I can’t actually bring myself to post it. Instead, I’ll just try to make a few, brief points. Academic freedom is, in my view, extremely important and we should defend anyone whose freedom is threatened. I’m struggling, however, to see how Roger’s situation has anything to do with academic freedom. He wrote things publicly, and was publicly criticised. I realise that there are some emails in which someone takes some credit for Roger losing his position at 538, but even that doesn’t indicate anything under-handed; as far as I’m aware all that they did was publicly criticise what Roger wrote. If I’ve missed something, feel free to point it out, but academic freedom does not refer to the freedom to not be criticised.
If you do read Roger’s Wall Street Journal article, you should probably also read this response to his original 538 article, and you should probably read this article about 538 apologising when two climate scientists said Roger “sent emails threatening possible legal action in response to their criticism of his findings…”.
My own view is that much of what Roger says is worthy of criticism. In my experience, he often says things that are technically true, but that are easily mis-interpreted. For example, highlighting that there are no trends in Tropical Cyclone (TCs) damages in the US whenever TCs are discussed in general. Damage trends in one country probably tell us little about TCs in general, especially globally. He also has a habit of over-interpreting what is presented. A lack of a statistically significant trend, becomes no trend. A low confidence in whether or not something is happening, becomes it’s not happening. John Abraham’s article discusses this in more detail.
Maybe the most irritating thing about Roger’s Wall Street Journal article, is that he has been a willing participant in the online climate debate for a long time, and seemed quite happy to play the game when it suited. He was implicated in Michael Tobis becoming famous, which is discussed more here and here. He promoted a rather questionable interpretation of the Marcott temperature reconstruction, which Stoat discusses, rather impolitely, here. James Annan also has a post discussing how Roger Pielke has been saying some truly bizarre and nonsensical things recently (Edit: as WMC points out, this “recently” was written in 2008). James and Roger also exchanged posts that involved explaining probability to an undergraduate, but I can’t seem to find it.
Anyway, there are many more examples, if you’re willing to look; Eli has many posts, as does RealClimate, and Our Changing Climate. The point I’m trying to make is that Roger isn’t some innocent academic who ventured out into the big bad world, only to be attacked by the nasty climate alarmists. He’s been a more than willing participant for a long time, but seems to want to now complain about his treatment when he feels hard done by. I’m also not even suggesting that he deserves all that has been aimed at him (I’ve, at times, been less polite than I should have been). However, as much as we should defend those whose academic freedom is being threatened, we should also be careful of avoiding criticising those who manage to get a platform to complain about their critics. His article also gives no indication that he feels any responsibility at all for how he has been treated. This lack of self-reflection is probably best illustrated by his complaints about being blocked on Twitter, while having a reputation himself for being a rather liberal blocker (I think people should be free to block whoever they want, but complaining about being blocked, when regularly doing the same yourself, seems rather inconsistent).
Okay, that has ended up being slightly longer than intended. I realise that the online climate debate can be remarkably unpleasant, so I do have some sympathy for Roger. However, it’s hard to see how an article in the Wall Street Journal, painting all his critics as underhanded and mean, really helps; at best, it’s part of the same ol’ same ol’ and, at worst, it’s an explicit attempt to delegitimize his critics. I’ll stop there. Since I don’t want the comments to simply degenerate into Roger bashing, please try to be thoughtful and, if necessary, circumspect. Also, if anyone thinks there’s more to this than it, at first, appears, feel free to point it out.
...and Then There's Physics 
Spot on.
> James Annan also has a post discussing how Roger Pielke has been saying some truly bizarre and nonsensical things recently
That’s a touch misleading, because James wrote “recently” in 2008. Otherwise: RP is a big boy and shouldn’t be whining that everyone is being cwuel to him.
James,
Thanks. I was trying to find the series of posts that involved you and Roger explaining probability to an undergraduate called – IIRC – Megan; I found them quite instructive. Do you remember which ones those were?
WMC,
True, it was 2008; I did say “for a long time”, and I liked the post title 🙂
[Edit: I’d missed that I’d included the “recently” in my link title, so have added a parenthetic comment to clarify the year of that post.]
Well, yes, that pretty much sums it up.
Roger is exactly like his father; they like thinking they are iconoclasts. They both think AGW is happening, and also that anything anyone else says about it is wrong, even if, like with Marcott et al, they have to hunt out very far and make very questionable judgements to do it. I thought Jr’s claims about Marcott et al were way out of bounds, far worse than the 538 stuff, made simply to provide a reason for skeptics and deniers to dismiss the paper, which now many have based on what he wrote. Every day Sr makes harsh judgements on Twitter of everyone else, openly calling orgs fradulent and implying there is a cabal that refuses some science and locks some out, like him I guess he thinks. I suspect they both like being a PItA; but, like you wrote, can dish it out but not take it.
So did I, and was dismayed that he pretty much seemed to get away with it at the time.
Mind you, there was so much BS about M13 flying about from the usual suspects that I suppose it all sort of blurred together.
> Megan
Your google-fu is weak old man: http://julesandjames.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/putting-roger-out-of-his-misery.html (“site:julesandjames.blogspot.com/ megan”)
WMC,
Thanks. I tried various searches involving various combinations of “James Annan” “Roger Pielke Jr” and “Megan”.
Anders –
Your take is very similar to mine:
You say:
==> He’s been a more than willing participant for a long time, but seems to want to now complain about his treatment when he feels hard done by. ==>
But of course, he has been complaining about his treatment while not accepting accountability (and hiding behind plausible deniability) for how he treats others for quite a while now. It’s kind of a shame, because I think that Roger presents some interesting perspective and could play a more constructive role were he to be more even-handed in his approach – kind of like some other of his BTI colleagues.
Joshua,
Actually, I had intended to add something like this to the post. It is a shame, as some of what he presents is interesting and worth discussing.
Speaking of plausible deniability – from the Huffpo article (that I hadn’t seen before):
We get this:
–snip–
Pielke wrote that Trenberth had “made some pretty coarse and perhaps even libelous comments”
[…]
“I do not threaten,” Pielke told HuffPost, adding that he found “the idea offensive that they would characterize my correspondence in this way.”
–snip–
After writing this:?
–snip–
“Once again, I am formally asking you for a public correction and apology,” Pielke wrote to Trenberth and his bosses. “If that is not forthcoming I will be pursuing this further.
–snip–
I suppose that technically, he didn’t “threaten,” but rather than taking offense that it was construed as threatening when he conditionally said he would further pursue a matter he said was perhaps libelous, he might have simply clarified and accepted accountability for a reaction that could have easily been predicted?
———————-
What’s depressing about all of this is that there is no way to go forward in the discussion that isn’t just sameosameo. Judith writes a post in defense of Roger’s op-ed and in agreement about what a victim he is, and her “denizens” all agree. Anders writes a post critical of Roger and most of the folks here will agree with that.
Presumably, Roger wants to steer the discussion in a positive direction, and so I wonder what he might have been able to write that might have produced an outcome even slightly different than the identity-aggressive and identity-defensive behaviors that are so characteristic of blogospheric discussions about climate change.
Or what could Anders (or Judith) have written that would have moved the discussion in a positive direction?
Indeed.
Not sure, but hard to know what I could have said differently.
Incidentally, “heretic” was JC’s path of 6 years back: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/10/30/cant-think-of-any-more-amusing/
You forgot Junior’s ink blot, AT.
A bit taken aback at the summary phrase “implicated in making Michael Tobis famous” as if that were intrinsically a bad thing…
But Roger arguably had a hand in promoting the idea (in my opinion incorrect) that I am unreasonable and politically dogmatic, which may in turn have contributed to killing my formal scientific career. I certainly never got any federal grants after that event, and not for want of trying. Of course there’s no proof that this false controversy raised about me affected my career, but I’m pretty confident it didn’t help.
That said, though Eli among others is convinced it’s Roger’s fault for calling it to Morano’s attention, I somehow have trouble attaching more blame for my troubles to Roger than to Morano.
Roger is, in my opinion, a problematic figure, who is quick to criticize while being quick to take offense. He’s often right and often wrong, which can be a useful role in itself, but he ought to be able to take as well as he gives if he actually wants the net of his contribution to be constructive.
You’ve summed up the situation well, ATTP. Roger dishes it out, usually undeservedly, and lashes out, but can’t take criticism of where he does get it wrong. I know he bans people, presumably because they pick holes in what he writes. I’ve criticised him in the past and Roger twitter-blocked me – presumably for doing so.
This episode sticks out in my mind, where he took a swipe at John Holdren but didn’t admit that it was he, Roger, who was at fault:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/03/a-skilful-counterstrike-john-holdren.html
There is something wrong with his behaviour. Instead of acknowledging any criticism where it might be valid, he usually acts like a spoilt child that’s been caught out and who then wiggles and squirms and accuses everyone else of being at fault (similar behaviour to Anthony Watts and other cyber-bullies, who are also cowards). He gets his kicks out of playing the poor persecuted victim/hero.
MT,
I took it from the top of Coby’s post which – I now realise – I didn’t link to until later.
Indeed, that was why the implication was that it may not have been favourable.
I did not realise that the implications were potentially quite this serious.
MT,
Indeed, and this reminds me that I meant to highlight a response by WMC where he says
He also has a post called RP Jr to world: come on if you think you’re hard enough. I agree that this can be useful (and interesting) but only if you can take it as well as dish it out.
I don’t think there is any point in attempting a “positive direction” in discussion with someone who could write this:
The only question is how best to respond to it. Probably “not at all”.
One reason Roger whines, IMHO, is that there is an avid audience for whining, in media whose aim is to continue manufacturing climate science doubt on behalf of fossil fuels. I can’t remember offhand when Michael Mann last got an op-ed in the WSJ (guessing never).
As the first two paragraphs talk about academic freedom and events around 538, I’ll just note that 538 is a blog owned by a sports network, not a university 🙂
“Academic freedom is, in my view, extremely important and we should defend anyone whose freedom is threatened. I’m struggling, however, to see how Roger’s situation has anything to do with academic freedom. He wrote things publicly, and was publicly criticised.”
an investigation of me by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Grijalva explained in a letter to my university’s president that I was being investigated because Mr. Holdren had “highlighted what he believes were serious misstatements by Prof. Pielke of the scientific consensus on climate change.”
“Poor Roger!”
” Or what could Anders (or Judith) have written that would have moved the discussion in a positive direction? Not sure, but hard to know what I could have said differently.”
A question mark or a flat statement would have been less “stirring” [Australian meaning].
The question mark adds the necessary element of schadenfreude so obvious in the comments here.
“only to be attacked by the nasty climate alarmists.
they both like being a PItA; but, like you wrote, can dish it out but not take it.”
–
The double standard at work means that when Climate scientists complain of being attacked for doing their job they will have no fall back for when one does get attacked for putting an opposing view instead of supporting him and complaining about the attackers you all just tell him to toughen up and that he should accept this as part of the job.
–
Numerous posts on Academic freedom in the past have just been trashed.
Acceptance of your applications to join the skeptic diaspora are in the mail.
“quick to take offense”
I remember he got upset for being thrown off an Editorial Board, linking it to his criticism of a paper that had appeared in that journal. No apology from Roger’s side was forthcoming when the Editor explained the decision was made before he even had written that criticism, and was the result of Roger not fulfilling his promises when he accepted the Editorial Board position of submitting papers to the journal and reviewing at least x papers.
angech,
IIRC, many people spoke out against Grijalva’s investigation and he, quite rightly, droppped it.
angech,
As far as 538 is concerned, Roger was a staff writer, not an academic. If he had been personally attacked, simply for doing his job as an academic, I’d happily defend him. I’m both not really seeing where he was attacked (rather than criticised) and not really seeing how this relates to his job as an academic.
I’ve no idea what you mean.
Guess who wrote this:
“The attorney general’s “investigation” is a cheap publicity stunt hoping to uncover something of political value. It should serve as a warning to everyone in the academic community who works for state universities or receives public funding for their research (one of which most everyone in the academic community falls under)—your entire life’s work is subject to public scrutiny at any time. This is just a fact, no point in complaining about it….
What should Mann do? He should respond to the request for information as quickly as possible. Resisting or stonewalling is simply not an option and will fuel suspicion that something is being hidden. If, as I have surmised, there is nothing to be found in his files other than the occasional embarassing private correspondence and evidence of sloppy work, he should explore every opportunity to sue the state of Virginia to the extent possible by law. If he takes these actions, he’ll have my full support.”
Now, why did Pielke Jr complain when *he* was targeted?
IMO, here is the real problem with the Pielke Jr. story. A younger professor who supports AGW and emissions reductions finds some flaws with the work being done in his field. An IPCC author has slipped some of his unpublished results on rising damage from extreme weather into AR4 and Roger tries to correct the record – especially after the IPCC author later publishes the opposite conclusion from the one in AR4. Every highly publicized example of extreme weather is being linked in the popular press to climate change. Every hurricane season will soon be like 2005. The President’s science advisor even told us that two unusually cold and snowy Januarys in the Eastern US were caused by rising CO2 and that more WILL BE coming. Roger publicized what the IPCC has written on the subject: There has been no statistically significant change so far in most types of extreme weather and GCMs project that it will be decades before we will can confirm that a statistically significant change has occurred. That should have turned our attention to the real scientific issues: How much will it warm decades from now? What is the best way to deal with the changes that are coming? How can we make better climate models?
What is the take home-lesson for other young scientists who may see flaws with part of the consensus position or want to begin research that might end up challenging certain aspects of the consensus? For example, let’s say I want to try to find a GCM parameterization that doesn’t produce amplified warming in the upper tropical troposphere – the “hot-spot” that seems to be missing. Or suppose I want to establish a lower limit for ECS by refining the parameterization scheme from some ensemble members with low climate sensitivity? Or I may want to explore the reasons why projected humidity rises 7%/K while projected precipitation rises only 1-2%/K. Why doesn’t warming increase atmospheric turnover, not decrease it? (Please ignore the fact that these are probably very unrealistic projects.) Should I undertake such projects? Let’s see. Roger P still has his academic freedom, but is now working on sports economics – probably because his climate research funding dried up. (If Exxon or the Koch brothers were funding climate skeptics, he’d still be working in the field.) He’s tangled with a poorly-informed Presidential Science advisor, lost a highly visible position at 538.com, and his bloody scalp has been presented to Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff. No, too risky.
Or should I look for a climate model that says that rising CO2 doubled the chances that recent Hurricane Matthew could have hit Florida, easily causing as much or more damage than Hurricane Andrew ($25-$100 billion)? Climate models disagree with each other significantly about regional climate change, so the results I get from one model will be hard to generalize. And climate models are less accurate than climatology at hindcasting decadal climate change. And it is impossible to project future tracks of hurricanes for more than a few days even when we input current conditions. And AOGCMs don’t produce hurricanes without being “seeded”. No problem: I can arrange for peer reviewers who will ignore these issues (since they have published papers using the same techniques). And if the first model I test doesn’t show a two-fold increase in probability; a second or third or fourth model will quadruple my chances of success. It is more important to find out something scary about current climate change so restrictions on emissions will be adopted than to tackle problems that may be important for the future. Forget 538.com; this work will make the front page of the NYT. (Sorry for the sarcasm in this paragraph. I’d sincerely like to hear a defense of modeling extreme weather.)
The importance of the Pielke Jr affair is not found in the mistakes Roger did or didn’t make. He certainly drew attention to himself. The real problem is the impact his story will have on creative younger scientists. Increasing group-think and discipline is great for politics, but bad for science. Followers of consensus don’t make major breakthroughs in science.
Frank,
I don’t really follow your argument. I certainly don’t think that the manner in which Roger chooses to critique others is something that junior researchers should emulate. Also, Roger’s WSJ article is basically suggesting that if he gets criticised he will run to the MSM and write an article denouncing his critics; not exactly a good example for more junior researchers.
This, however, illustrates an issue with what Roger presents. This, I think, is not really true
I think there are statistically significant changes in a number of extreme events; what’s more difficult is determining attribution. Also, even for those that do not show a statistically significant change, one can’t conclude (as is often implied) that there has been no change.
They’re mad. Maybe they can channel that anger and write a movie script…
The Day Before Yesterday (When There Was a “Paws”!!!)
Frank,
What is the take home-lesson for other young scientists who may see flaws with part of the consensus position or want to begin research that might end up challenging certain aspects of the consensus?
Except, as far as I can tell, nothing in RPJr’s research challenged the consensus much at all. It’s all pretty mainstream. What got RPJr in trouble was the overreaching spin he put on his own and others’ research through his disproportionate access to national media outlets. For example, finding lack of statistical significance in observed trends in some areas is entirely within the mainstream consensus – often datasets are too short, data quality lacking, variance too large to establish robust trends. Strongly implying and promoting that this is positive evidence for no influence from climate change present and future, as RPJr commonly did, is overreaching spin.
For example, let’s say I want to try to find a GCM parameterization that doesn’t produce amplified warming in the upper tropical troposphere – the “hot-spot” that seems to be missing. Or suppose I want to establish a lower limit for ECS by refining the parameterization scheme from some ensemble members with low climate sensitivity? Or I may want to explore the reasons why projected humidity rises 7%/K while projected precipitation rises only 1-2%/K. Why doesn’t warming increase atmospheric turnover, not decrease it? (Please ignore the fact that these are probably very unrealistic projects.) Should I undertake such projects?
I’m pretty sure these are all active areas of research for “consensus scientists”.
If Roger had gone to a Minor English Public School he might have learned some useful life-lessons: one – sooner or later, your persecution of little kids gets found out; two – the rugby pitch, as legitimised violence, is a place well-designed for selective retribution; three – if your indiscretions are discovered and punished, under no circumstances do you whinge about it to a teacher, not if you want to retain any idea of getting others’ respect.
Best of all, if they gang up on you, fight like hell – sooner or later they’ll get the point. You learn to earn respect, and never to expect it as a right.
You’re all being much nicer to RPjr than he deserves. He is a political scientist who’s main contribution to the discussion has been the idea that scientists should keep quiet and leave the “honest brokers” like himself to handle the real world. If the election of Trump has taught us anything it should be that BS artists rely on the civility of the rest of us; and tolerating BS artists leads to exploitation. Be bold. [Chill, please. -W]
Frank –
==> Roger P still has his academic freedom, but is now working on sports economics – probably because his climate research funding dried up. ==>
On what basis do you disagree with RPJr.’s stated reasons for changing his academic focus?
Looking beyond whether or not Roger was treated fairly, it seems to me that not all scientists who publish research findings that don’t support the conclusions of the IPCC, or what is often described as the “consensus” view, wind up with the kind of personally directed antipathy that has characterized much of Roger’s situation. Would you agree?
If so, then what, do you think, explains why Roger’s situation turned out differently than others’?
It seems to me that there is more in play here than just that it is a situation where a scientist has published research that isn’t perfectly congruent with the IPCC or the “consensus.” IMO, Roger’s input is often rhetorically and politically targeted – and as such, I think that attributing the reaction that he has gotten merely to the specifics of his findings is sub-optimal from the standpoint of limiting the politicization of the science.
Related, while I think that Brandon’s input is often complicated by many of the same factor’s that complicated Roger’s input…
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/12/petty-bickering-and-checking-sources-part-four/
Brandon’s post does touch on some of the issues whereby inherent in Roger’s input, IMO, are some of the seeds why the responses he gets extend beyond merely a scientific discussion. Consider the comparisons between how Brandon frames the different ways of reconstructing the antipathy and how Roger has done so.
Indeed.
==> Indeed. ==>
The recent developments in the “Brandon situation” have been interesting to observe, as someone who is kind of addicted and compelled to watch the climate science junior high school lunchroom food fight, even though at the same time I think it’s juvenile, monotonous, and depressing.
For all of my criticisms of Brandon’s approach to these discussions, I have to give him credit for being more internally consistent, I think, than the average climate change fanatic bear (did they show Yogi on the other side of the pond)?
So that means that maybe he’s more consistent in those aspects of which I’m critical, but also that those aspects of his input of which I am approving are applied on both sides of the great climate divide. In some ways, that presents an interesting challenge to me, in that I have to work against my own tendency to want to give him a free pass on those aspects of which I’m critical even when he’s targeting RPJr., say, or Ron Graf’s conspiracy ideation. And also, on the flip side, that I have to try to be more open than I might be reflexively, to those aspects of his input which I am approving when he targets participants on the “realist” side of the divide.
Within the larger frame of it all still being sameo, sameo, there is an aspect where’s Brandon’s input falls outside the same old, sameo sameo – if you get my drift.
I’m with Gator. Also why should scientists have to be “hard”. They’re skilled and professional, this is not a gladiator show. Despite some more extreme fake skeptics and our Congressional Republicans (who are heavily financed by big fossil) saying he doesn’t go far enough, RPJr (not Sr) has lent himself to discrediting climate science and climate scientists and encouraged lukewarmism among wobbly people like Andrew Revkin (who appears to have stopped promoting his opinions lately) to the detriment of all humans.
It does take some courage to stand up to bullying from fake skeptics, but the idea that the bullies are OK and the victims not is just plain wrong.
Susan,
I suspect that Roger would argue that what you’ve said is what he’s also suggesting. His article ends with
Well, yes, we should support researchers who want to engage publicly, but this doesn’t mean avoiding criticising what they say. Claiming to be a good-faith researcher does not automatically mean that one is a good-faith researcher.
ATTP wrote: Frank, I don’t really follow your argument.
I’ll modifying the last paragraph from above summarizing my argument:
The importance of the Pielke Jr affair is not found in the mistakes Roger did or didn’t make. He certainly drew attention to himself. The real problem is the impact his story will have on creative younger scientists. Increasing group-think and discipline is great for politics, but science advances by challenging the status quo and rigorously testing the limits of what we do and don’t know. Followers of consensus don’t make major breakthroughs in science. Roger’s story warns researchers what may happen to them if they confront problems too directly.
Policy advocates had been making absurd linkages between current extreme weather and the modest (and apparently net beneficial) warming that has occurred so far. For the most part, Pielke corrected these public mis-impressions with information straight from the IPCCs own reports and his own research. Today, some are careful to say that rising CO2 hasn’t caused a particular disaster, but projections suggest that such disasters will be more common (in the distant future if the world doesn’t reduce emissions).
Susan: Those who go further, like the President’s Science Advisor talking about Washington DC winter weather, discredit themselves and their cause. Andy Revkin doesn’t need Roger Pielke to tell him that such claims are ridiculous. Is there anything wrong with Congress hearing what the IPCC has said about extreme weather in its reports in an open hearing when they have invited witnesses capable of rebutting false testimony?
ATTP: I’ll add the thought I deleted. The accepted range for ECS hasn’t narrowed in more than 35 years. Climate science desperately needs some revolutionary new approaches, but such thinking isn’t encouraged when the resources of your field are devoted to persuading politicians to act.
For example, it’s difficult to confront the limitations of GCM parameterization when GCM’s are essential to the political process and massive amounts of money have been spent on them. Attribution statements are meaningless if models have been tuned (presumably unintentionally) to assign all observed warming to man. In Figure 10-05 of AR5 WG1, anyone with an open mind must be wondering how there can be great uncertainty about warming from rising GHGs and from rising aerosols, but dramatically less uncertainty about their sum (total anthropogenic warming). I could also comment about the possibility that aerosol cooling in models is exaggerated, how ocean heat uptake controls the warming rate, and the modest uncertainty attributed to natural and unforced.
Joshua wrote: “Looking beyond whether or not Roger was treated fairly, it seems to me that not all scientists who publish research findings that don’t support the conclusions of the IPCC, or what is often described as the “consensus” view, wind up with the kind of personally directed antipathy that has characterized much of Roger’s situation. Would you agree?
I agree.
Joshua asked: If so, then what, do you think, explains why Roger’s situation turned out differently than others’?
IMO, Roger confronted the worst current deception associated with climate science – that rising CO2 has made current extreme weather substantially worse. Voters are selfish; they don’t care about what happens a half century from now or more. So we must make them think rising CO2 emissions are hurting them today. The concerns of future society – that should be much wealthier than we are if we don’t screw it up – aren’t important to voters.
> IMO, here is the real problem […]
Ze real problem, again.
Then we’re squirreled by a familiar litany of concerns, going from “Attribution statements are meaningless if models have been tuned (presumably unintentionally) to assign all observed warming to man” (with GCMs used as an “example” a few times) to “the worst current deception associated with climate science.”
As a POTUS would say, come on, man.
Yawn.
Allow me to give Frank an alternative view: those who are challenging ‘the status quo’ are the people working on attribution of extreme events. Pielke Jr has been the one most publicly fighting those people, so reality is quite opposite to your view that Pielke Jr was the creative one with new ideas. He was the one fighting it, and not uncommonly by moving the goalpost and point to “no increase in losses”.
You also might want to talk to, say, Gavin Schmidt to get an explanation about those GCMs and attribution. Who knows, maybe you’d learn something. If you don’t like Gavin, ask Isaac Held.
Frank,
You really should do better than just making these kind of assertions. For example, a group just published a paper suggesting a method for narrowing the ECS range. They certainly weren’t attacked for doing so.
I think his WSJ is an illustration of the problem. Run to the media; it’s all the fault of others; self-profess to be a “good-faith researcher”, etc.
@-Frank
“Policy advocates had been making absurd linkages between current extreme weather and the modest (and apparently net beneficial) warming that has occurred so far.”
Is it absurd to link ALL Lance Armstong’s wins to his steroid use?
On which alternate Earth is it apparent that the modest(?) warming that has occurred is a benefit compared with stable temperatures!
@-“The accepted range for ECS hasn’t narrowed in more than 35 years. Climate science desperately needs some revolutionary new approaches, but such thinking isn’t encouraged when the resources of your field are devoted to persuading politicians to act.”
ECS is a contingent metric. It is inherently impossible to narrow the range without constraining the conditions. Perhaps some of the resources devoted to persuading politicians NOT to act could have been directed towards revolutionary new approaches. But for some reason after conducting their own scientific research in the late 1970s private interests provided money to groups trying to persuade the public and politicians the science was doubtful or wrong instead of trying to persuade the scientists.
You can fiddle with the attribution amounts and confidence limits from IPPC fig10-05, but there is no way to get natural forcings to match the observed warming, or credibly reduce human influence to less than half.
When you fiddle with the attribution amounts and confidence limits from IPPC fig10-05, it is obvious why the total anthopogenic effect is well constrained while the GHG +ve forcing and the anthropogenic areosol -ve forcing have much larger confidence limits. Observations constrains both to balance their extreme 95% values, they can not both be at max or min.
To match observations the GHG and other anthropogenic forcings must either be at their most likely values; or if GHG +ve forcing is at the minimum 96% confidence value, then OA must be at the maximum +ve value within the 95% range to match reality. If GHGs are at the top of the 95%range, then OA must be at the extreme -ve end of their range to be consistant with observations.
If GHG were at the minimum and OA were at a minimum then anthopogenic effects would have been neutral – cooling. If both were at their maxima then there would be well over a degree of warming.
More visual rhetoric…
> Pielke Jr has been the one most publicly fighting those people, so reality is quite opposite to your view that Pielke Jr was the creative one with new ideas.
Sometimes, creativity may be self-defeating:
It’s not the first time we’ve been through this peddling.
In my effort to be clear and not say too much, I gave an opening to misinterpretation, but that is always the problem. WRT Revkin, he appears to have shifted from RPJr to Holthaus, which is excellent. And DotEarth is over as of yesterday, he’s moved to ProPublica. It’s worth knowing that the range of arguments are by intent and systemic (I found this copy on Reddit; it’s dated September 2014). This is slightly off topic, but people should know about the organized bad faith:
I believe engaging with these attacks is what they want: to waste your time.
Frank:
…they do?
I mean, climate scientists understand where the uncertainties are. They’re working to eliminate those uncertainties. It’d be incredibly helpful if we had much better historical data, of clouds, of aerosols, of solar radiation… but we don’t. And we can’t go back in time to get it.
So for now, the uncertainties remain, until we can work them out. Scientists don’t need “revolutionary new approaches”. They just need more data.
Paulskio wrote: “Except, as far as I can tell, nothing in RPJr’s research challenged the consensus much at all. It’s all pretty mainstream. What got RPJr in trouble was the overreaching spin he put on his own and others’ research through his disproportionate access to national media outlets. For example, finding lack of statistical significance in observed trends in some areas is entirely within the mainstream consensus – often datasets are too short, data quality lacking, variance too large to establish robust trends. Strongly implying and promoting that this is positive evidence for no influence from climate change present and future, as RPJr commonly did, is overreaching spin.”
Your comments about how we should interpret failing to find a statistically significant change in observed trends are interesting. As a scientist, should I link rising CO2 to an extreme weather event if I don’t have statistically significant evidence that the frequency of such events is increasing? You are correct in saying that there is no evidence proving an increase isn’t occurring nor that a linkage doesn’t exist. However, it is traditional in science for those making a scientific assertion implying a cause and effect relationship to provide statistically significant evidence – to reject the null hypothesis that no effect exists. “Science” is about relationships that we can demonstrate are very likely to exist – not relationships that we can’t prove don’t exist. The “precautionary principle” may suggest that policymakers should take action about things we are afraid might be true, but we can’t convincingly demonstrate. However, the precautionary principle is about policy, not science. (The precautionary principle also led Bush to invade Iraq. As CIA Director George Tenet wrote in his book, WMD was not the only reason for Iraq, but it was one reason everyone could agree upon and the CIA mischaracterized their intelligence.) IMO (and other opinions are equally valid), scientists should stick to the traditional definition of what constitutes a scientific conclusion. IPCC SPMs are littered with statements that are merely “likely” (and used to say “more likely than not”) which implies that a significant number of these statements will turn out to be wrong. Without clarity, policymakers be confuse and mistrust ALL scientists (more than they already do).
Climate models currently suggest that rising CO2 may bring us fewer but stronger hurricanes, but natural variability in hurricanes has prevented us (so far) from demonstrating that this is currently happening. Should additional evidence from climate models allow scientists to abandon traditional practice and claim that we are experiencing more major hurricanes because of global warming when we currently lack strong evidence for such an increase? IMO, no. The reasoning is circular: We say we are experiencing more major hurricanes because that is what climate models predict. The public should have faith in climate models because we are observing what they predict.
Let’s get the science right: “Climate models project hurricanes as devastating as Hurricane X will occur 1.5-2.5? fold more often by 2100? . Those models project that Hurricane X should be occurring 0.9-1.2? fold more often today than before the rise in CO2, but such hurricanes vary so much from year to year that scientists can’t establish whether a change of this size has occurred.” I don’t know the exact numbers, so I put a ? next to them. Is there any reason why climate scientists shouldn’t be making such quantitative statements extreme weather? I suspect the real problem is that the projected increase today is so modest and the future is so distant that climate scientists chose not to be quantitative for political reasons. RPJr. challenged this practice.
Frank,
Typically you reject the null, you don’t accept it. If, for example, we can’t reject that there has been no change, we don’t then accept that the has been no change.
No, but this still doesn’t mean that we should assume that there is no change. We are pretty confident that we’re adding GHGs to the atmosphere. We’re pretty confident that we are increasing the amount of evidence in the system. It would be remarkable if this didn’t change things. Not being able to detect such a change, does not mean that we should assume that there is no change; we should simply not claim that there is.
> I suspect the real problem […]
Ze real problem again, Frank.
It’s the Highlander movie all over again.
***
> The precautionary principle also led Bush to invade Iraq.
Lies helped a bit too.
Peddling the PP may be unbecoming for a scientist of your Internet stature.
No more peddling, please.
The WSJ isn’t what it used to be in the days when it had an honest to gosh Science Section.
Going to a Murdoch paper in the op-ed market for complaints about media bias to complain about partisan skulduggery bespeaks a sense of irony as challeged as John Podesta’s.
If Roger Jr. wants a political post, he should send his CV to the Trump Tower, like everybody else in the academic oil patch , witness his pals whooping it up at WUWT, about the EPA takeover by Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation lawyers Chris Horner and David Kreutzer
Kudos to Susan Anderson for reminding us the problem is bipartisan- has Karl Rove been channelling Naomis Oreskes ?
Frank –
Thanks for your response earlier.
After you agreed that other scientists other than Roger have presented findings that have a similar positioning vis as vis the IPCC, but that their findings resulted in a different kind of reaction, I think you went on to explain your view of the reason for that difference as:
==> IMO, Roger confronted the worst current deception associated with climate science – that rising CO2 has made current extreme weather substantially worse. ==>
Although you didn’t spell it out directly, I assume that you are attributing the different reaction to the uniqueness of Roger’s scientific focus – in (I assume) presenting more of a threat to the “consensus” than the work of other scientists that critically critiqued other various aspects of the “consensus” view.
Given the quality of discussion that has ensued, I will simply say that I disagree and provide some of a reason as to why – along with also saying that I fear that you didn’t really take into account the point that I made, and as such, I don’t think there’s much point in further discussion beyond what I’ll offer here.
I think that a variable that is most explanatory (or at least more explanatory than the factor that I think you were presenting) is the form of RPJr.’s rhetoric and style of engagement. Marco, above, referred to a good example, whereby Roger (under a cloak of plausible deniability) accused journal editors of discriminating against him because of the nature of his science, when in fact he had been relieved of his responsibilities at the journal for other reasons, that were clearly explained. To top it off, Roger failed to be accountable for his unjustified self-victimization.
Again, along similar lines, I suggest that read and consider Brandon’s post for a (somewhat pedantic) elaboration of a very similar dynamic.
==> If Roger Jr. wants a political post, he should send his CV to the Trump Tower, ==
Don’t think for a second that it isn’t happening. Notice the inclusion of Roger’s work in this document – a document written by people who will be empowered in the Trump administration to decide how the government will support (or actually not support) science:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/science-policy-priorities-and-reforms-for-the-45th-president
Warning: I found that to be one of the more depressing things I’ve read about the Trump administration so far.
Anyway, I would not be surprised if Roger and Judith were appointed to roles in the Trump administration.
Izen wrote: “You can fiddle with the attribution amounts and confidence limits from IPPC fig10-05, but there is no way to get natural forcings to match the observed warming, or credibly reduce human influence to less than half.”
Thank you for posting the excellent Figures. I agree that there is no way to get natural forcings to account for observed warming. Rising GHGs slow down the rate at which heat (thermal infrared) escapes to space, so the planet must warm. Some warming will increase water vapor, which is also a GHG. I don’t need a climate modesl to tell me these things. I need a climate model to tell me how MUCH it will warm, which means that it must credibly deal with clouds, precipitation, aerosols and turbulent mixing (phenomena that are parameterized). To correctly calculate and attribute observed warming (but not equilibrium warming), a model must also must correctly calculate heat transfer below the mixed layer of the ocean. Does the tight agreement between ANT and OBSERVED in this Figure mean that models and attribution are credible – for example more credible than energy balance models?
Ocean heat uptake. Rising radiative forcing tells us how much heat is being retained by the planet, because GHGs slow down its escape to space. A model’s ECS tells us what fraction of that retained heat has escaped to space because of rising radiative cooling to space associated with rising temperature. [3 K/doubling = 3 K / 3.7 W/m2 = 0.8 K/(W/m2). The reciprocal says that the planet radiates an additions 1.2 W/m2 per K of rise in surface temperature.] So a climate model with a given ECS has a set amount of heat added since the beginning of the model run to divide between the surface (atmosphere+mixed layer) and the deep ocean. Whatever heat hasn’t gone into surface warming must have gone into the deep ocean. IIRC, the parameter controlling ocean heat uptake differs between models by a factor of 2 and this value isn’t well constrained by observations. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) According to Gavin, after a climate model has been roughly tuned, subsequent refinements usually improve the performance in one area and degrade the performance in another. Stainforth’s work with ensemble of perturbed parameter models indicates that there is no reason to assume that current ad hoc tuning procedures find an optimum combination of parameters. As long as changing the ocean heat uptake parameter doesn’t degrade model performance, why not use a value that will make hindcast warming agree with observed warming? If the model is running hot, increase heat uptake by the ocean. If one does so, however, the IPCCs attribution statement would be partly a consequence of model tuning, not fundamental physics.
GHG/aerosols: Imagine a pair of six-sided green dice (GHG warming) whose faces sum to produce a warming of 0.9+/0.4 degC (like the distribution above) and a pair of yellow dice (aerosol cooling) that produce a cooling of -0.25 +/- 0.35 degC. If I roll all four of dice at once, I won’t get a distribution that looks anything like ANT, 0.7+/-0.1 degC. Models with strong warming due to GHGs must also have strong cooling due to aerosols; this didn’t happen by chance. Is there a good reason why this should be so? Possibly. Let’s express ECS in terms of degK/(W/m2). A forcing of 1 W/m2 from GHGs and -1 W/m2 from aerosols should both produce slightly more warming AND cooling in a model with a higher ECS than in a model with a lower ECS. However, model ECS is roughly 3.3 +/- 1 K, not enough range to account for the very narrow error bar for ANT. There is some reason (possibly choices made during tuning, possibly physics I don’t understand) why ANT has such a narrow error bar when its components do not.
Judith is too uncompromising for a Trump administration and is a lukewarmer, sort of. Would be surprised but happy if she got on as she is not a denier. She would surely be better than a lot of other choices?
My very first question upon reading this was why a two-year old event warrants a WSJ op-ed now. The lede paragraph answered it. WikiLeaks does apparently cause some interesting collateral damage.
Or is it “unintended consequences”?
One finds it difficult to tell with bees.
“If academics—in any subject—are to play a meaningful role in public debate, the country will have to do a better job supporting good-faith researchers, even when their results are unwelcome.”
Perfect example of the kind of BS RPjr should not be allowed to get away with. He is part of the problem. He is a part of the reason good-faith researchers have spent the last decade or more under attack from right-wing ideologues. Why should anyone be polite and nice when someone lies to your face?
Frank,
This is what izen is trying to illustrate. I also explained it here.
“Would be surprised but happy if she got on as she is not a denier. ”
This would be the Judith Curry that doesn’t accept that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is known with high certainty to be almost entirely anthropogenic? I personally avoid calling individuals “deniers” (mostly because it gives an opportunity to avoid talking about the science, which is what I find interesting and important), but I wonder about your definition of “denier” if it doesn’t include an unwillingness to accept well-established basic scientific facts such as that?
@-Frank
“a warming of 0.9+/0.4 degC (like the distribution above) and a pair of yellow dice (aerosol cooling) that produce a cooling of -0.25 +/- 0.35 degC. If I roll all four of dice at once, I won’t get a distribution that looks anything like ANT, 0.7+/-0.1 degC.”
It is nothing to do with model tuning or physics you don’t understand, it is simple logic.
Observations constrain the results of your four dice and show that they CANNOT be independent. the roll of the warming dice must be linked to the roll of the cooling dice. Max warming and min cooling, or min warming and max cooling are excluded by reality.
Trying to sort this out:
1. There is no academic, scientific, or scholary issue here. Because Pielke Jr, with respect to climate science, stopped contributing long ago. Face it: All “damage trend” stuff is re- and re- and re-heated “results” from at least 18, Fsck. 18! years ago. Back then is was already inconclusive (“no significant trend”), not a new idea ( I learned that nat. haz. damages increase because of increased exposure from textbooks in the early 90ies), based on a less then perfect method, and not terribly interesting, with regard to both, basic and applied research.
2. Pielke Jr. is a smart guy and developed a sophisticated way of publishing to the general audience text that is hard to attack scientifically, because it is written technically correct, on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and when the technical terms are read as such, but nevertheless guaranteed to communicate exactly the opposite of what is true to the non-expert. In particular, if said non-expert also has a world-view that demands global warming to be not such a big problem. There are parallels to the “dog whistle” in other politically motivated communications.
3. No academic laurels to gain this way. So Pielke Jr must be motivated by either “career through exposure” or by psychology (other ideas?). Pushing his old story at 538 backfired, because Silver has a large audience and at that time was regarded by a a lot of real scientists as the mass-media outlet that would be committed to strictly fact based output. Huge hope. Destroyed by pretty much first article. It took that sort of disappointment to create an effective backlash that not only set the story straight but screwed, collaterally, any reputation Pielke Jr. might have had with a mainstream audience outside science. So his strategy is broken and he very loudly pulls out of the climate debate and moves on to the study of baseball.
4. Suddenly, another warm-up of the story in WSJ. Why, and why now? To whom is he talking? What changed in the general environment to make im reconsider his strategy? I think it is very obvious and some commenters here are very much on target.
Frank,
You’ve got it backwards. It’s RPJr who has been making positive claims of no effect based on insignificant data. Climate scientists have been saying basically what you suggest they should.
Regarding the attribution chart, you should read up on the detection & attribution method used. The error bars are not related to the amount of warming produced by the models directly, but to statistical scaling applied based on fits to observed patterns of temperature change.
The narrow error in ANT is effectively because model warming magnitudes have been scaled to fit the observed warming. The actual range across the CMIP5 ensemble for 1951-2010 linear trend is about 0.4-1.2C/60years. Though some of that spread could be due to difference in natural forcing response.
dikranmarsupial says:
” I wonder about your definition of “denier” if it doesn’t include an unwillingness to accept well-established basic scientific facts such as that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is known with high certainty to be almost entirely anthropogenic?”
I think a standard definition of a denier is one that believes CO2 rise may not be almost entirely anthropogenic, that the rise in CO2 may not alter the temperature [low ECS] as much as predicted and that the harm in the rise will not greatly outweigh the good in such a rise.
Should really be all three to qualify.
Judith Curry is not a denier [believer], she is agnostic [lukewarmer] and merely demands greater scientific proof. She is on your side just wanting more evidence than is currently available.
angech, given that it is a chain of reasoning and any one link being false would be enough for AGW to be refuted, all three is definitely not a reasonable requirement, especially if it is the strongest link that is not accepted.
” merely demands greater scientific proof. ”
The scientific evidence that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic is rock solid, so it is denial to ask for greater evidence of what is already established beyond reasonable doubt. BTW it is not possible to prove any causal relationship regarding the real world as there is always residual epistemic doubt (even regarding Descarte’s “cogito ergo sum”), which is why “demanding greater scientific proof” is such a neat means of denial – it sounds like scientific skepticism, but it clearly isn’t. Someone said “proof is for mathematics and alcohol, not science” (sorry , can’t remember who).
Dikran,
The latter quote is Mike Mann, I think.
@-“The latter quote is Mike Mann, I think.”
It goes back further.
the first version I remember seeing said-
“proofs are for for alcohol and editors”
so dating back to print and galley proofs…
Paul,
Do you have a source for this?
ATTP,
Used Climate Explorer – RCP4.5 all models, taking slopes for 1951-2010.
ATTP/izen yes, that was it. I’ll have to remember the editors bit as well! ;o)
angech –
==> I think a standard definition of a denier is … ==>
Pretty funny – the concept that there is a “standard” definition of denier. Who establishes that ‘standard’ definition? Like pretty much all of the labels in these discussions, the definitions are completely subjective: denier, skeptic, alarmist, troll, etc., are all terms used to signal identity orientation, and are not based in any process of “standardization.’
Personally, I find discussions about who is and who isn’t a “denier” to be nothing other than petty bickering, but the fact that you slip so easily into arguing that there is a “standard” definition (one that you made on a completely subjective basis) is indicative of an important problematic nature of these discussions. People argue about “standards” and definitions in ways that blur the lines between purely subjective opinion and determinations that could possibly be agreed upon through carefully accountable analytical processes.
That all said.
==> …one that believes CO2 rise may not be almost entirely anthropogenic, that the rise in CO2 may not alter the temperature [low ECS] as much as predicted ===>
– in clu
Are you saying that Judith doesn’t argue that?
==> …and that the harm in the rise will not greatly outweigh the good in such a rise…. ==>
Are you saying that she doesn’t argue that/
==> Should really be all three to qualify. ==>
Are you saying that she “[isn’t] all three?”
(And here I will also note the peculiar construct that what she argues or what she believes define who she is or what group she belongs to. That, IMO, only reinforced the point that Kahan often makes – that these discussions of what people believe about climate change are more informative about who people are than what they believe)
==> Judith Curry is not a denier [believer], she is agnostic [lukewarmer] and merely demands greater scientific proof. She is on your side just wanting more evidence than is currently available.==>
I don’t particularly care about who she is. I care about the quality of the analysis she presents – including, very importantly, the extent to which she seems willing to hold her own beliefs to a standard of controlling for biases. While I’m not qualified to judge her technical arguments in that regard, IMO, she routinely fails rather spectacularly to hold her own arguments to account for her biases. Sure, in that sense, there could certainly be worse people, in my opinion, to appoint to administration positions – but in that sense she does not seem to me to be someone who is well qualified.
Angech, luckwarmers are not agnostics, they are gravyard whistlers.
Joshua “Personally, I find discussions about who is and who isn’t a “denier” to be nothing other than petty bickering”
I think there is some value in considering whether someones behaviour is indicative of them perhaps being in denial, i.e. having a cognitive bias that is preventing them from acknowledging what most would consider to be objective reality (i.e. most would consider the residual epistemic doubt to be negligible for practical purposes).
dikran –
==> I think there is some value in considering whether someones behaviour is indicative of them perhaps being in denial, i.e. having a cognitive bias that is preventing them from acknowledging what most would consider to be objective reality (i.e. most would consider the residual epistemic doubt to be negligible for practical purposes). ==>
I agree, in a general sense. However, within this specific context I think that the discussion has become so laden with all kinds of overtones, that I can’t see any actual value in how the discussion plays out. Maybe at one point I did, but the repetitive discussion about the term “denier” is or isn’t used has become, for me, like watching waiting for Godot, over and over in an endless loop.
I find the discussion about how to delineate the lines between objectivity and subjectivity interesting and extremely timely in the age of “post-truth” and what we’re seeing from the Trump administration w/r/t “fake news” and the like. But when that discussion gets particularized to the question of whether the term “denier” conveys meaningful information, for me, what gets conveyed is merely identity-aggressive and identity-defensive behavior. Nonetheless because, IMO, no one even knows what the fucking term means.
Sorry, not …nonetheless…, but not in the least…
Sorry, but Professor Curry has led her flock of believers to a pseudo airfield on one of my father’s WW2 Pacific islands, and they there praying for a cargo plane which will never come with its cargo of proof.
The sad thing is I think there actually are stadium waves. The cold one she is waiting for happened from 2006 to 2013… it has come and gone completely unnoticed by her and her ranting rabble… appears to be because their expectation of a nonlinear system is slavish linearity. Modes have synchronized… warming rate through the roof… could go on for several more years, but looks like for at least one more for sure.
‘Anyway, I would not be surprised if Roger and Judith were appointed to roles in the Trump administration.”
She has fans on the Transition team who read her blog daily.
Joshua,
The term “denier” is interesting, in that it seems quite powerful. David Rose seems genuinely upset about being referred to as a “denier”, and yet his article is silly, and he seems quite comfortable associating with Delingpole, Goddard, Watts, and others who are probably justifiably regarded as “deniers”. You might think that he would try harder to avoid seeming like one, if it bothers him so much. However, maybe it is just an act. Get your critics worked up so that they call you a “denier” and then complain about how they’re mean and nasty.
> She has fans on the Transition team who read her blog daily.
Indeed she does, and beyond.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has been picked by Trump to head the EPA. The OK AG is one of the lead plaintiffs to block the Clean Power Plan and Clean Water legislation. Anybody fooled by that Al Gore cameo appearance at Trump Tower?…. Didn’t think so.
This confirms my prediction that Trump will solve the world’s climate and energy problems with accountants and lawyers. Sad.
An online dictionary says:
Denier – A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence:
seems pretty straightforward (and reasonable) to me.
dikran –
You and I have been here before, I think. IMO, the problem with using a dictionary definition here is that it isn’t necessarily applicable to the context. Which was my point in contrasting the general discussion with the specific one. I am quite content to leave it here as I think we’re unlikely to cover new ground.
The dictionary definition seems to be the usage of “denier” that tends to get used in discussion of climate AFAICS. Incidentally, one of the usage examples given in the dictionary entry was climate change, which implies that it was considered valid for that particular context. Of course there are going to be some examples where the term has been used inaccurately, but that will be true of any word. I think we do know what it means, I think it is easy to over-think/analyse on-line discussions where we are unlikely to have ground truth to test our inferences.
Anders –
==> David Rose seems genuinely upset about being referred to as a “denier”,
[…]
However, maybe it is just an act. ==>
In my view, the outrage is almost always faux. Most of those who protest at the term trivialize it by claiming that it is always intended to be the equivalent of a holocaust denier. The fauxness of their outrage is no betrayed by the ease with which the stoop to using similar pejoratives to “otherize” those that they disagree with. The term becomes a useful identity marker for “skeptics” to advance their culture of victimhood at the hands of the mean “alarmists.”
Not that I think using the term makes a lot of difference either way, because if they didn’t have that term to pearl-clutch about they would just substitute something else. I find their outrage no more meaningful than the arguments that using the term is a meaningful way to advance the public’s support for policy development.
“Professor Curry has led her flock of believers to a pseudo airfield on one of my father’s WW2 Pacific islands, and they there praying for a cargo plane which will never come with its cargo of proof.”
Me askem: John Frum blong long tribe frannisman kanaka David Frum?
Bigfella Trump mekem alsaem kai kai Judy Curry blog, Climate polisi him verimas bad. Him go long redem Watts Solomonsfella kanaka Willis Eschenbach, climate polisi him buggeremup finis.
Russell wins the intertubes.
I think it is possible only 50% of the warming is caused by humans.
I don’t think humans caused all the warming since 1950.
I agree the Earth has warmed and that humans caused part of it.
What am I denying?
I hate the term denier.
I think it is name calling.
dikranmarsupial:
IMO, “denial” in the specialized vocabulary of psychology is more to-the-point: “in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.” It’s not necessary to speculate on just why the fact of AGW makes deniers uncomfortable; the insistence on rejecting it in the face of overwhelming evidence ought to be diagnostic.
RickA:
Anything’s possible, in the sense that pigs might fly. But by accounting for all known positive and negative forcing, it’s easy to show that GMST would be slowly declining if not for anthropogenic greenhouse emissions and land use changes. IOW, humans have caused more than 100% of the warming since 1950. RickA is denying that he lacks sufficient expertise to judge for himself how much warming is caused by humans. He’s denying that the peer community of working climate scientists represents genuine expertise, in aggregate far superior to his own or that of the pseudo-skeptical claque. He therefore evinces the Dunning-Kruger effect, commonly co-morbid with AGW-denial.
RickA:
It’s not name calling, it’s a straightforward statement of facts in evidence. Of course, no one likes to be told they’re fooling themselves because they lack the strength to face reality. That can’t really be considered respectable, after all, even if it’s permissible. Thus, ‘denier’ may be perceived as pejorative.
RickA is well aware that the expert consensus for AGW is overwhelming, even if he doesn’t acknowledge that the evidence itself is. He knows he can avoid being called a denier simply by keeping his rejection of the facts to himself in public. OTOH, that would mean he’d be invisible, which might be more painful to him than the fact of AGW is. But that’s not really anyone’s problem but his.
Mal Adapted:
You say I am “denying that he [RickA] lacks sufficient expertise to judge for himself how much warming is caused by humans.”
Everybody is entitled to an opinion – and I have mine.
The weight my opinion is given by other readers could certainly be less than the weight they give to a climate scientist’s opinion.
But everybody has the right to form their own opinions on every issue they choose to think about.
I suspect even you have your own opinion on how much warming is caused by humans.
Or do you literally cede all your own thoughts to the experts?
In any event – I am happy to wait and see how accurate my opinion versus the “consensus” is.
I expect we will have much more solid evidence by the time we hit 560 ppm, and maybe even sooner than that.
But just because I have formed my own opinion doesn’t mean I am right – I certainly don’t insist others agree to that.
I could well be wrong.
But I could well be right.
We will have to wait to see.
A while back, I posted a bit from Karl Rove while indicating it was OT (short version: Entangle, Demoralize, Attack, Confuse, Contain, Intimidate, Insult, Deceive, Demean).
Actually it is not at all off topic in climate science argumentation. It is particularly relevant to the fake argument about denial. Insistence that it is not defined by the dictionary but by association with holocaust denial is just the kind of victim bullying which all too commonly takes up unnecessary time and energy and diverts from the subject at hand. It exhausts you, gains them time and column inches, and deceives lurkers.
Judith Curry is particularly good at the victim bully shtick. RPJr is in it for himself, and his fake “hard” act works for his punters. Some have noted that those punters are about to take power. Remember, he’s a political scientist, not a climate scientist.
RickA: You need to open your eyes and start following world weather. It began a while ago and is currently gathering strength and accelerating. In ten or twenty years you will no longer be able to pretend it is not happening here and now. You don’t have up to 560 ppm.
We’re fighting for you and your family and friends as well as for ourselves.
One of my favorite places to keep up is Earth Observatory, though if Trump shuts down earth science at NASA it will be deleted. Killing the messenger will not change the message, but it does increase the danger of uninformed opinion and political preference taking over from reality. There’s a range of material; I usually look at images of the day; it is easy to browse. I’d give a cookie (or something) to be able to show Trump a folio of these gorgeous images from space, and what they tell us about our amazing home planet.
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/
Garn: link:
http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
Rick A, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, just like the clown who shot up Comet Pizza. We are also entitled to point out you are an ignorant clown.
Enjoy
Joshua, we need a committee!
Can I take you up on your points about JC .
You say you do not care about her as a person, only her technical expertise.
Then you say you care about the quality of her analysis but you are not up to technically understanding it. This precludes you then from giving an opinion on how correct she is, logically speaking, if you follow what I mean?
It is no good saying all these points are proven beyond doubt, they are not.
Apart from CO2 rise causing a temperature increase itself.
How could scientists of PIelke and Currie’s status even question the three tenets if there was not some doubt?
No one here is prepared to concede even one issue that might introduce some doubt.
Every denier argument is completely denied with the same fervour that it is claimed deniers use.
When the system prevents any discussion, let alone free discussion.
When there is no room for doubt and people who raise it get trampled on, and denigrated gratis then I would humbly suggest a little soul searching might be needed.
I take part of that back. ATTP does let the voices of dissension have an airing here. Thank you.
Mal –
==> IMO, “denial” in the specialized vocabulary of psychology is more to-the-point: “in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.” ==>
So here we see that the definition that you think is operational is different than the one that dikran thinks is operational, and although different, more “to-the-point” than your defintion. But more than that, is the question in context, of what someone has to believe in order to be in “climate change denial” or to be a “climate denier.” There we will find even more variability, although people often argue that the definitions are clear and standardized.
The problem with your definition, IMO, in context, is that it requires knowledge that we don’t have; in other words, that someone realizes (even at an unconscious level perhaps) that they are faced with a “fact” that is too uncomfortable to accept, and thus rejects it. The problem there is that many “skeptics,” as far as I can tell, don’t accept the determination of “facts” that you consider to be “facts.” Thus, it doesn’t seem to me like they are in “denial” so much as have a different set of beliefs, whether or not their reasoning to get to that viewpoint is biased by “motivations.” Or at least, I think that it is almost impossible to figure out which explains their state of “denial” as you call it. In that sense, IMO, to call them a “denier” presumes to know more about them than what we can actually know. Are they “in denial?” or is it that they have a different opinion than you?
==> It’s not name calling, it’s a straightforward statement of facts in evidence. ==>
IMO, it is, in effect name-calling, and serves little purpose except to “otherize.”
You say…
==> Thus, ‘denier’ may be perceived as pejorative. ==>
So then it may be perceived as name-calling. Not only to those to whom you apply the label – but to others such as myself, also (which admittedly is probably a small set). At any rate, if it is perceived as pejorative, then what advantage to you hope to gain through it’s usage? Do you think that you will isolate that group of people such that no one else would want to identify with their beliefs about climate change, lest they also be called a “denier” also? Do you think that you will, by use of that term, convince someone of something in a way that wouldn’t occur if you simply called your “deniers” something on the order of: “A person whose view, in my opinion and in the view of the vast majority of scientists in the field, significantly underestimates the scientific evidence of risks posed by ACO2 emissions?“
angech –
==> This precludes you then from giving an opinion on how correct she is, logically speaking, if you follow what I mean? ==>
I am very reluctant to give an opinion on her technical analysis. I am not, however, reluctant to express an opinion on the weakness of her reasoning in other areas, and in particular her lack of control for her own biases. Here’s an excellent link in that regard. Follow her exchange a bit. IMO, her logic is just terrible, as her interlocutors take pains to point out (rather politely, I might add).
==> How could scientists of PIelke and Currie’s status even question the three tenets if there was not some doubt? ==>
I view it rather differently. IMO, Pielke and Curry misrepresent the level of doubt expressed by the “consensus,” as a rhetorical device to bolster their own doubt. Again, look at that link I just provided as an example. Look at the complete certainty in Judith’s initial assertion, and her refusal to meaningfully reevaluate that statement so as to account for her biases and hyperbole.
==> When the system prevents any discussion, let alone free discussion. ==>
I think you are simplifying the factors that contribute to the lack of meaningful engagement.
==> When there is no room for doubt and people who raise it get trampled on, and denigrated gratis then I would humbly suggest a little soul searching might be needed. ==>
Consider that statement again, after reading the exchange that I just linked to.
As much as I’m normally happy to avoid using terms that others dislike (I don’t always succeed) I do think that if someone hates the term, ahd hates the idea of it being applied to them, then they should try very hard to ensure that it is not justified. They don’t get to decide how others judge them.
Rick,
You appear to be denying that humans could have caused more than has been observed (i.e., that the net effect of natural influences is cooling).
“I hate the term homo sapiens. I think it is name calling.”
I do hope those that dislike the term denier have an equal dislike of “warmist”, “alarmist”, “true believer” etc. and object to that wherever they see it as well. Personally I view it a bit like sledging in cricket, if the bolwer was genuinely confident of getting me out, he would be in too much of a hurry to get back to his mark and actually do so, rather than sledging me. Similarly is the skeptic were actually confident of the science was on their side, they would avoid every opportunity for the discussion to move away from the science and on to complaints about the “tone/nature of the debate”. I don’t take the “warmist’ etc. personallly, like sledging I know it is just trying to provoke a reaction and distract me from what I am doing, so why give them what they wan’t?
angech wrote “It is no good saying all these points are proven beyond doubt, they are not.”
That the post-industrial rise in atmospheric CO2 is almost entirely anthropogenic is “proven” (it seems angech didn’t pick up on the point that this sort of thing can’t be proven, and so “established” would be a better term) beyond doubt. And yet JC (and others) do not accept it.
angech wrote “No one here is prepared to concede even one issue that might introduce some doubt.”
Rubbish, this blog very regularly discusses topics (such as ECS) where there is genuine scientific uncertainty. That doesn’t mean there is any non-negligible uncertainty in topic such as whether the post-industrial rise in atmospheric CO2 is almost entirely* anthropogenic.
* The “almost entirely” is the weakest valid form of words that is scientifically valid, and depends on how you define “caused the rise”, it would also be true to say that anthropgenic emissions caused about 200% of the rise. I used the weakest form to demonstrate that *I* have some self-skepticism and was deliberately doing this so there could be no accusation of overstating the evidence.
Pleeze.
Not the denier debate again.
Name calling is in the eye of the beholder.
Fake or not folks have been outraged by the label.
Maybe the label had good intentions. .economy of reference.
Maybe it had defensible connotations.
But it’s pretty clear folks found it as offensive as a confederate
Flag.
And they let you know
And folks like Willard offered up options.
And you continued to piss them off (I think I did too)
Now the have power. Payback’s a bitch.
No whining Pleeze.
Well, yes, but this doesn’t mean it wasn’t justified and some of it was the frustration of the moment. My own view is that it probably doesn’t make any difference, given the divisions. Maybe there are some third-party people who find it offensive and they shift towards “skepticism”, but I haven’t yet seen a convincing argument for this. My own view is that I try not to use it, and then I fail when I get sufficiently annoyed, and then I – typically – regret having used it, but what would life be without regrets 🙂
RicA writes:
There’s a very high probability that I am wrong.
But there’s a small probability I could be right.
I fixed that for ya.
Not all opinions carry the same weight.
How to derail a conversation. Insist on making it about a shibboleth of semantics. Nursing wounded feelings is a form of evasion. Whether or not those wounded feelings are original with you, the tactic is tired and invalid.
I wrote this last night but the system, as it sometimes does, refused it so I saved it for this morning. Since the interruption of on topic conversation continues: whether you know you are doing it or not, these tactics are purpose designed by Rove and his colleagues, following on from others (Schopenhauer’s How to Win an Argument is an early one).
People here in the main are unusually patient and have provided a lot of good information. For years I used fake skeptic, then in deference to the faux complaints, unskeptical “skeptic” (with, sometimes, the caveat that scientists are real skeptics). I’m quite willing to acknowledge that many who have adopted these arguments are unaware that they have been conned, but that does not validate the con. All the hedging, and the refusal to move on, are not only boring but dangerous. Here’s what another observer had to say, which is just about the strength of it:
The scientific community long ago moved on from ‘Is it real?’ to ‘How bad is it going to get?’
I am, however, mostly careful to say climate science denial rather than just denial. The idea that intelligence and polite surrender is going to make the argument go away has been proven wrong. But I don’t think calling people idiots works outside the “in-crowd” and it’s unwise. Unskeptical “skeptics” namecall us (today’s word is “hysterical”), but that’s no excuse.
Rick’s spacy cohort is in full cry today from The Heritage Foundation, as Mission Control Houston, aka Pete Dupont’s Texas Public Policy Institute , lays out the Coolist gospel according to our new alien climate masters.
OK, last comment on this:
For a change, I actually agree with Steven…
==> “I hate the term homo sapiens. I think it is name calling.” ==>
I’m not sure if this is an actual quote (can’t find the original), or a mocking hypothetical…but…
I don’t think that the comparison is apt.
There might be some folks who think that calling someone a homo sapien is “name-calling,” but I certainly don’t think there are many, and certainly I wouldn’t consider it as such if someone called someone else a homo sapien.
This is the problem with reductio ad absurdum. The context with calling someone a “denier” is quite different with calling someone a “homo sapien.”
But even if someone was offended by me calling them a homo sapien, then I might consider whether it was worth my while to convey the same information using a term they wouldn’t find offensive.
Let’s take “cheap Jew.” Now someone might call me a cheap Jew as a way of explaining why I don’t always make the best economic decisions, and claim that it is merely an accurate description, and pull out the dictionary to support that claim
Let’s assume further, for the sake of argument, that the person calling me a cheap Jew actually does know me, and based on his/her knowledge of me knows that I am both Jewish and cheap (in fact, I’m not particularly cheap, but of course I’d say that, right?) 🙂
So I might take offense or I might not. Perhaps I know that person and know that s/he happens to be particularly literal, and a bit on the autistic spectrum, and thus has a hard time anticipating when someone might take offense at something he/she says. Or maybe I know that person is a sociopath, and simply lacks empathy. In those cases, I would take no offense. (Actually, I wouldn’t take offense in any case, because I don’t base my sense of self on people who judge me in error)
But in general, I would suggest that if you care about what someone thinks, and don’t want people to think that you’re autistic and/or a sociopath, you not go around calling him/her a “cheap Jew” – even when the dictionary says that you’re right. because the dictionary definition lacks important information about context.
IMO, clearly, the term “denier” is effectively – whether intended so or not – commonly viewed as a pejorative term. Maybe some people don’t believe it is the case that it is commonly viewed as pejorative, but I can’t understand how they might reach such a conclusion. As such, if you use it, I think you should take responsibility for using a pejorative. That wouldn’t make you ia bad person, just someone who is comfortable with name-calling.
Some people defend the use of the term by saying that it is merely an accurate description. Well, IMO, that’s just sameosameo. It’s no different than when “skeptics” call people “alarmists,” explaining that they’re only being precise in their language (as I have seen happen, frequently). Because just claiming that it shouldn’t be viewed as pejorative because a decontextualized dictionary definition doesn’t categorically indicate that it is a pejorative, ignores relevant context.
I don’t think that anyone has to care about whether or not they are effectively name-calling., but I do think that people who utilize the term should consider carefully whether in using the term, they are achieving a desired result. Their determination one way or the other is up to them.
Joshua, the homo sapiens thing was making the point that using nouns to describe people is “name calling”, that is what names are for. The point is if in some context someone finds it offensive, then rather than just saying it is name calling, it is better to explain why it offends them. If you have a good explanation of why it offends, and better still why it should offend, then you stand a better chance of getting people to stop doing it.
“It’s no different than when “skeptics” call people “alarmists,” explaining that they’re only being precise in their language (as I have seen happen, frequently).”
Actually it tends not to be used accurately in those settings. If you are arguing that we should act based on a best-information cost-benefit analysis (i.e. take a mainstream scientific position) then you are not an “alarmist” (“someone who exaggerates a danger and so causes needless worry or panic.”). See, rather than complaining about name-calling, it is better to explain why the name is inappropriate and if you can’t perhaps you ought to consider why you are offended by a name that has some truth. Of course there are alarmists, but mostly I see the word “alarmist” aimed at people just promulgating the mainstream scientific position.
If on the other hand, someone refuses to accept that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is almost entirely the result of anthropogenic emissions, then they are by definition a denier as they are “someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence”.
“decontextualized dictionary definition”
Given that I have already pointed out that climate change was one of the specific examples given in the dictionary entry, this is perhaps a little disingenuous. Of course it isn’t the exact context, but no dictionary entry can be expected to cover every specific context exactly, so arguments like this are basically saying that we shouldn’t be guided by dictionary definitions when discussing the meanings of words, which is absurd.
As to pejorative, Oscar Wilde said “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”. Some times applying a pejorative term is the right thing to do, for instance if someone discriminates against others on the basis of the colour of their skin, then should we avoid calling them (or labelling their behaviour as) racist because they might find it offensive? We should be thoughtful and not offend others unintentionally, and I think we should act ethically (e.g. Golden rule) and not cause offense without reason (or intention of good resulting from our actions), but sometimes causing offence is justifiable. I read “don’t be a jerk” recently, which was about some of the teachings of a Buddhist teacher called “Dogen” (although it was rather more about the author than the subject), and ironically it was quite clear that Dogen himself was quite capable of being a jerk from time to time, presumably because it was worth it for the pedagogical value.
BTW just to be clear, I have already pointed out that I tend not to use the term “denier” because it tends to be counter productive (because of the offense or faux-offense taken). The point I am arguing against is :
” But when that discussion gets particularized to the question of whether the term “denier” conveys meaningful information, for me, what gets conveyed is merely identity-aggressive and identity-defensive behavior. Nonetheless because, IMO, no one even knows what the [expletive delete] term means.”
This is incorrect. We all know what it means, however we have differing views as to whether it is accurately applied, or whether it is offensive etc. Perhaps if you don’t think anyone knows what it means, perhaps it is because you are looking for identity-agression/defensiveness in the discussion, rather than the scientific content, whereas I have the opposite bias (and hence perhaps miss the subtext)?
Actually, it’s simpler than that. Some of us are tired of being bullied by people with double standards, or to put the same thing in a different way, people who dish it out but can’t take it.
The best response in my experience is to stick to the science and refuse to be sidetracked by the “sledging”, but it is easier said than done.
“Well, yes, but this doesn’t mean it wasn’t justified and some of it was the frustration of the moment. ”
Yes, justifying it is easy. Economy of reference ( I cant always name every individual)
It roughly fits — because the do deny… something. then again we all deny something.
For my own part I used the word when frustrated and because I knew it pissed them off
and it felt good. Yup
There is little point in mounting an intellectual defense of something that was ( in my case)
much more primal.
Likewise; it’s mostly said in frustration, than to achieve anything (which it almost always doesn’t).
> Fake or not folks have been outraged by the label.
Got to sympathize with these poor snowflakes. They have so much to lose after all by dragging everyone into these concerns.
Speaking of homo sapiens, GeoffS challenged me yesterday to prove that I’m a normal human being.
dikran –
One of these days I’ll learn NEVER to make a “last” comment on a topic.
==> This is incorrect. We all know what it means, however we have differing views as to whether it is accurately applied, or whether it is offensive etc. Perhaps if you don’t think anyone knows what it means, perhaps it is because you are looking for identity-agression/defensiveness in the discussion, rather than the scientific content, whereas I have the opposite bias (and hence perhaps miss the subtext)? ==>
I am saying that we all know what it means divorced of context, although it has multiple meanings even there (as mal pointed out).
And I am saying that are very many different interpretations of what it means in context, and simply providing a dictionary definition doesn’t change that. And since there are so many meanings in context it is effectively like no one knowing what the fuck it means. Again, the same as with “alarmist” or “troll” or “skeptic” or “realist” or “lukewarmer,” or “luckwarmer,” etc. This is why you we have all seen so many endless discussions about whether person X is a “skeptic,” as an example, and even more amusingly, why people switch positions in their beliefs about whether person X is a “skeptic” as we saw with Muller.
==> whereas I have the opposite bias (and hence perhaps miss the subtext)? ==>
Perhaps, but I am skeptical that you miss the subtext. Otherwise, why would you say that
==> I tend not to use the term “denier” because it tends to be counter productive (because of the offense or faux-offense taken). ==>
My guess (I get that I’m being obnoxiously didactic here) is that you avoid saying it not because of the dictionary definition, but because of the connotation in context (i.e., subtext)…and that connotation is (at least usually, or at least potentially) less useful, interesting, productive, more boring, more intractable, less hopeful, more hostile, more distracting, than discussing other, related matters.
dikran –
One of these days I’ll learn NEVER to make a “last” comment on a topic.
==> This is incorrect. We all know what it means, however we have differing views as to whether it is accurately applied, or whether it is offensive etc. Perhaps if you don’t think anyone knows what it means, perhaps it is because you are looking for identity-agression/defensiveness in the discussion, rather than the scientific content, whereas I have the opposite bias (and hence perhaps miss the subtext)? ==>
I am saying that we all know what it means divorced of context, although it has multiple meanings even there (as mal pointed out).
And I am saying that are very many different interpretations of what it means in context, and simply providing a dictionary definition doesn’t change that. And since there are so many meanings in context it is effectively like no one knowing what the fuck it means. Again, the same as with “alarmist” or “tr*ll” or “skeptic” or “realist” or “lukewarmer,” or “luckwarmer,” etc. This is why you we have all seen so many endless discussions about whether person X is a “skeptic,” as an example, and even more amusingly, why people switch positions in their beliefs about whether person X is a “skeptic” as we saw with Muller.
==> whereas I have the opposite bias (and hence perhaps miss the subtext)? ==>
Perhaps, but I am skeptical that you miss the subtext. Otherwise, why would you say that
==> I tend not to use the term “denier” because it tends to be counter productive (because of the offense or faux-offense taken). ==>
My guess (I get that I’m being obnoxiously didactic here) is that you avoid saying it not because of the dictionary definition, but because of the connotation in context (i.e., subtext)…and that connotation is (at least usually, or at least potentially) less useful, interesting, productive, more boring, more intractable, less hopeful, more hostile, more distracting, than discussing other, related matters.
RickA:
RickA appears to deny that science has a valid claim to epistemic authority. That’s a rhetorical stance taken by many AGW-deniers. For a culture warrior like RickA, attention to the fixed truths of physical reality is at best a distraction, because everyone’s opinion is as “true” as anyone else’s. By asserting his existential and legal right to form his own opinions on scientific issues, and dismissing science as a way of trying not to fool himself, he justifies his determination to fool himself about AGW. And by equating my willingness to defer judgment on specific scientific issues to the superior expertise of persons better trained and informed about them than I am, with a strawman willingness to “cede all my own thoughts to the experts”, he implies that for him to acknowledge the existence of scientific expertise would be to capitulate to the cultural enemy.
For AGW-deniers like RickA, an argument from superior expertise is no better than one from purely nominal authority, and can be effectively refuted by arguments from ignorance. They assign no value to the years scientists spend mastering the analytical principles and empirical methods of their chosen fields, and then becoming intimate with all the relevant data; the skull-breaking effort to identify interesting questions, then design and carry out experiments to to answer them; and the courage to subject their findings to the unsparing scrutiny of other trained and disciplined specialists who can show them how they fooled themselves.
Physicist and author David Brin portrays AGW-deniers as your crazy uncle:
I should say here that I don’t consider RickA guilty of treason, only of folly. I think he is merely a useful idiot, predisposed to be receptive to the lies of professional disinformers hired with fossil-fuel wealth. He is of course entitled to believe any pernicious nonsense that sounds good to him. He’s just not entitled to respect.
Wow, Russell Seitz, that’s quite a constellation (not nice, not nice at all, gollum …). Thanks (or not, as the case may be, ignorance being bliss these days). Lamar Smith, Inhofe, Michaels, Happer, Lindzen, and others. The vultures are gathering. RPJr and Curry are outclassed.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/12/weve-got-to-back-up-our-science-with.html
“I am saying that we all know what it means divorced of context,”
no, we still know what it means in context, although sometimes it is inaccurately used for rhetorical purposes (e.g. use of “alarmist” to refer to those holding the mainstream scientific position). Likewise we all know what “skeptic” means, but it is not always used accurately. I can use the word “leopard” to refer to a kettle, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what “leopard” or “kettle” actually mean, nor have I redefined those words, I am just using them incorrectly.
“why people switch positions in their beliefs about whether person X is a “skeptic” as we saw with Muller.”
I don’t think that is the case, Muller demonstrated that he is a skeptic without the quotes, he was and still is AFAICS.
“My guess (I get that I’m being obnoxiously didactic here) is that you avoid saying it not because of the dictionary definition, but because of the connotation in context (i.e., subtext)…and that connotation is (at least usually, or at least potentially) less useful, interesting, productive, more boring, more intractable, less hopeful, more hostile, more distracting, than discussing other, related matters.”
Given that I said quite explicitly why I don’t use it, there is no need to guess and it certainly isn’t didactic as you are not teaching anything (and if you think you are, you have not being paying enough attention to what I have actually said).
“denier” means the same thing to everybody. If someone says it to you, and you are offended by it, then there are two principal reasons for the offence:
(i) the accusation is unwarranted as there are no “concepts or propositions that are supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence the truth of which you refuse to admit”. In which case you challenge them to prove their case. In the case of Prof. Curry (though I am not calling her a denier), there is documentary proof that she does not accept that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic in nature.
(ii) the accusation is warranted and it hurts our self-esteem for it to be pointed out that our attitude to the science is not rational. The correct thing to do in that circumstance is to admit we are not being rational and do something about it.
(iii) It is about group identity. In this case if the accusation is unwarranted, the action is the same as for (i). If the accusation is warranted, then the action is the same as (ii). The idea that we should accept group identity, whether it is right or wrong is idiotic, and a recipe for disaster for society/politics.
We all know what the words mean, the difference is what it means for our view of ourselves. That is not the same thing.
Joshua “Perhaps, but I am skeptical that you miss the subtext. Otherwise, why would you say that”
because *I* am aware of my cognitive biases and know that I potentially am missing some of the subtext of the discussion. Sometimes what someone writes is actually what they mean and looking for subtext where there is little/none means that what you will find is the subtext your cognitive biases insert into the text (that isn’t actually there).
dikran –
There are a couple of things I can respond in ways that are, perhaps, if I’m willing to be extremely flexible and don rose-colored glasses, slightly less repetitive than our previous discussions on this subject, so here goes.
==> I can use the word “leopard” to refer to a kettle, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what “leopard” or “kettle” actually mean, ==>
Yes, you could use leapord to refer to a kettle, but in the real world (in context) you would be the only one to do so, and there would be no subtext in you doing so (other than for some reason you’re a complete outlier), and there would be no disagreement. Just because you can make an analogy doesn’t mean that the analogy informs the discussion at hand, in this context.
==> I don’t think that is the case, Muller demonstrated that he is a skeptic without the quotes, he was and still is AFAICS. ==>
Yet Muller described himself as a “converted” skeptic (without quotes around skeptic), IMO, because of the subtext, so it’s interesting that apparently you and he have different definitions about what skeptic means (or whether he is/was one) in context. But even more than that, there are those who think he was a “skeptic” all along, and there are those who think that he was an “alarmist” all along, and there are those who think that he switched from being a skeptic to being an “alarmist” after BEST published their results, and there are those who think he went from being a “skeptic” to being a skeptic or a “realist.” And on and on.
So you don’t think that it “was the case,” and others think it was the case, and still others have entirely different interpretations, and even though the meaning of the word skeptic hasn’t changed and even though we could say that we all know what the word means, because in context it has become a meaningless term because of the various subtexts and connotations that have been attached to the word in context but which would not be in play were we to use the word in other contexts (because they wouldn’t have the variety of subtext and connotations).
==> Given that I said quite explicitly why I don’t use it, there is no need to guess and it certainly isn’t didactic as you are not teaching anything (and if you think you are, you have not being paying enough attention to what I have actually said). ==>
So this is an interesting case in point, as we would might that we both know what the word “didactic” means but in context we had very different views (largely, I would say, because of the associated subtext(s)). I was trying to use the term to mitigate the sense that I was acting as if I were a teacher who was condescendingly teaching you something (or who thought he was teaching you something) when I didn’t actually think that I was, and you thought it didn’t apply because I wasn’t teaching you anything (or hadn’t paid enough attention if I thought that I was doing so).
==> “denier” means the same thing to everybody. If someone says it to you, and you are offended by it, then there are two principal reasons for the offence: ==>
(So this, I fear, is were we get to something that won’t be even remotely less repetitive, but what the hey…)
Perhaps if someone would say it to me, I wouldn’t be offended, but merely think that they were wrong – and part of the reason why I would think that they were wrong is because we had different intepretations of what they meant by that term.
You insist that it is so we all have the same interpretation of what the term means, despite that, in context (and actually, not only in context, as mal demonstrated above) as we have seen many times, different people interpret the word differently.. IMO, words take their meaning in context, as they are vehicles for the conveyance of meaning between people. You call someone a “denier” in a certain context, to mean (for example), someone who refused to accept facts because those facts are uncomfortable for them or conflict with their political orientation or because they don’t care about poor children starving in Africa, and the person so-labeled may well think that what you’re doing is labeling them with a pejorative because they interpret the science differently than you and you can’t accept that there is the possibility of an interpretation of the science that is different than your own (i.e., they might well say, and probably have said, that you are “in denial” or a denier), and that you do so because you don’t care about poor children starving in Africa. And on and on.
As for the rest…I fear that there would be nothing I would say in response that would be even slightly less repetitive, except I did find this worth comment.
==> In the case of Prof. Curry (though I am not calling her a denier), there is documentary proof that she does not accept that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic in nature. ==>
So why aren’t you calling her a denier, then? You think that she is refusing to accept facts because those facts are uncomfortable for her. Is it because you think it will cause a distraction? But It isn’t like you calling her a denier would have any significant measure of impact given the society-level polarization over the issue of climate change. And the clear implication is that you are calling her a “denier,” anyway, which only reinforces that there is no meaningful difference whether you do so or not.
@ Susan Anderson
IIRC that fascinating document first turned up in 2012. I don’t think it has ever been established that Rove actually wrote it, but in this case author attribution is irrelevant. It’s as complete a playbook for online misinformers as I’ve ever seen. I have a printed copy on the wall behind me here.
“Yes, you could use leapord to refer to a kettle, but in the real world (in context) you would be the only one to do so, and there would be no subtext in you doing so (other than for some reason you’re a complete outlier),”
If a group of people start to use the word “leopard” to refer to a kettle, then it still doesn’t mean “kettle”, it is just a term being incorrectly. Your concentration on subtext here is obscuring the point. The meaning of a word, such as “denier” or “leopard” is pretty much what is in the dictionary. Subtext is another matter entirely, and it isn’t about the meanings of the words (that is the text, not the subtext), subtext is the implicit meaning of what is said or written, not the meaning of the words actually used.
“Yet Muller described himself as a “converted” skeptic (without quotes around skeptic)”
Yes, human beings have common sense and are able to infer what is meant when words are used inaccurately or loosely, which is a good job as that is the way that most people communicate. Muller knows just as well as you or I what the word skeptic actually means.
Re didactic, your example just demonstrates your inability to discern subtext in electronic communication. I didn’t think you were being didactic at any point, hence my surprise at your usage. As I said, some people have very little subtext in their communication and do try to say what they mean. If you go searching for subtext in what they write, all you will achieve is reflecting your own idea of the discussion back at yourself and percieve it as evidence you were correct in your assessment (at least that is the way it appears to me, but then again I know I am not very good at identifying subtext).
“You insist that it is so we all have the same interpretation of what the term means, ”
That is not what I said. We all know what the word “denier” means, but we are all capable of construing a sentence that contains that word as having different nuances (subtexts). However it is the subtext that is different, and our judgement of the subtext isn’t always accurate (being implicit). The English are very good at that sort of thing, e.g. “With all due respect”. We know the meaning of the words and the meaning of the phrase, but depending on the way it is said, it could easily imply “the amount due is precisly zero”. However that is the subtext, not the meaning of the words.
“So why aren’t you calling her a denier, then?”
I have already said why not at least twice. Because it is counterproductive and I have no need to make this about rhetoric, or insults or group identity, because what interests me is getting the science right.
“You think that she is refusing to accept facts because those facts are uncomfortable for her.”
As most of us don’t really understand the reasons we ourselves do the things we do, it is hubris to think that we understand peoples actual motivations from just reading what they have written on blogs etc.
|”And the clear implication is that you are calling her a “denier,” anyway, which only reinforces that there is no meaningful difference whether you do so or not.”
again, it appears you are looking for “identiy aggression” in dialogs (as that apparently is your thing) and seeing it where it doesn’t exist. I am not calling her a denier, I am not recommending anybody else calling her a denier, for the reasons I have already given (now at least three times on this thread). As I have pointed out she has written things that means she does fall within the definition of a denier, as given above, but that doesn’t mean that I am calling her a denier. I questioned angech’s statement that she wasn’t a denier, as it seems to me that he is either unaware of some of the things that she has written, or that his assessment is fault. The intent was for angech to question his assessment of her position, that is all.
As I said earlier, I view it as being like sledging, when it is aimed at us, then we should treat it for what it is, an attempt to deflect us from the battleground of our choice, and we shouldn’t allow it to be successful (in cricketing terms, play every delivery on its merits). Like sledging, it is a sign of weakness in ones position if we think we need to put the opposition off their game for us to succeed, so I think it is something we ourselves should avoid and stick to pointing out the flaws in the science.
To summarise: We have dictionaries for text, but not subtext, we know what words mean, we don’t necessarily know what people mean, when we use a word to promulgate a sub-text then generally we know what we mean, but the recipient may not. Text \neq subtext.
dikran –
==> The meaning of a word, such as “denier” or “leopard” is pretty much what is in the dictionary. ==>
Assuming that there is no associated context that would complicate the distinction between those meanings, I would(more or less) agree. But as context associates connotations to the meanings with respect to each other, then I disagree. Again, IMO, words take meaning in context. The aren’t meaningful divorced of context, they are just letters on a page. That context might be simple and straightforward (as with the meanings of leapord and denier in relation to each other), or it may be complicated by important connotations (as with when one person calls another person a “denier.”) I think that the distinction between straight-forward and uncompolicated contexts, and complicated contexts, is a meaningful distinction, and so I don’t find examining the meaning of words in the one type of context very meaningfully informative for evaluating the meaning of words in the other type of context.
==> If a group of people start to use the word “leopard” to refer to a kettle,… ==>
Relatedly, (and again) this type of (strained and implausible and imaginative) hypothetical seems to me to be irrelevant given the discussion at hand, because without a related context where there might be some meaningful tension between the definitions of those words then comparing those definitions doesn’t inform the discussion where you are looking at the tension between various definitions of specific terms in a particular context.
==> The meaning of a word, such as “denier” or “leopard” is pretty much what is in the dictionary. Subtext is another matter entirely, and it isn’t about the meanings of the words ==>
I fail to understand the distinction that you are making between text and subtext. Again, as far as I’m concerned words don’t have meaning absent context, and subtext. The notion of words having meaning irrespective of context (and subtext) just doesn’t add up for me. In the real world, IMO, text and subtext are inextricable.
==> Muller knows just as well as you or I what the word skeptic actually means. ==>
We probably share a roughly similar knowledge of what it means divorced of context, but probably differ as to what it means in context. Which is why he says that he has been converted from being a skeptic and you say that he was a skeptic all along.
So, anyway, I’m going to attempt to leave that tangent were it lies (see, I didn’t say that it would be the LAST time I was going to visit that tangent). 🙂
==> I didn’t think you were being didactic at any point, hence my surprise at your usage. ==>
I used the term to protect against a potentially patronizing or condescending tone. I’m glad that you didn’t think I was being patronizing or condescending (or maybe I’m wrong that you didn’t think so?), but then again, you apparently thought that it was relevant to explain to me that I wasn’t teaching you anything or that I was wrong if I thought that I was teaching you something. Which taken together, just gets pretty confusing for me – as why would you explain to me that I wasn’t doing something that you didn’t think I was doing?
==> As I have pointed out she has written things that means she does fall within the definition of a denier, as given above, but that doesn’t mean that I am calling her a denier. ==>
I fail to see a meaningful distinction between pointing out that what she has written (as someone who isn’t ignorant or clueless) means that she falls within the definition of denier, and calling her a denier. (Maybe we don’t agree as to whether she is ignorant or clueless?)
==> I have already said why not at least twice. Because it is counterproductive and I have no need to make this about rhetoric, or insults or group identity, because what interests me is getting the science right. ==>
Right, you have said that. But it doesn’t add up to me. I don’t see how (1) it would be counterproductive in any real-world manner (meaning the impact might be discernible in any way) if you did call her a denier and (2) that notwithstanding, I don’t see how there is, in the real-world, any meaningful distinction between saying that she has written things that means she falls within the definition of a denier and calling her a denier. Effectively, l think, what you are doing is calling her a denier as in the real world, there is no meaningful distinction between what you are doing and calling her a denier – mostly because there would not be (a discernible) distinction between the implications of doing what you are doing and calling her a denier. I’m just not getting your logic. And it seems that your attempts to explain it to me are not having the intended? effect. Maybe my looking for identity aggression is what’s blocking my understanding. Distinctly a possibility. Or maybe there are other explanations other than your logic doesn’t add up. I don’t know. It’s always a problem when I disagree over the course of an extended engagement with someone who is smarter and more knowledgeable than I, but I do know that it doesn’t add up for me.
==> then we should treat it for what it is, an attempt to deflect us from the battleground of our choice, and we shouldn’t allow it to be successful (in cricketing terms, play every delivery on its merits). Like sledging, it is a sign of weakness in ones position if we think we need to put the opposition off their game for us to succeed, …. ==>
Maybe this offers some ray of hope for getting out of this morass. I don’t think that when someone calls me an “alarmist” or a religious zealot at the church of CAGW or some other nonsense, that they are trying to “deflect” me from my battleground of choice. Along the lines of what you said earlier, I don’t presume to know that their intent is, but my sense is that they are expressing an opinion of me that is in error – quite likely in error because they have allowed their biases to affect their reasoning. Along a parallel track, I know that the many times I have been told of my intent to “distract” “skeptics” from their important work to dismantle the great CAGW hoax/religious/leftist/Lysenko-McCarthy machine, those “skeptics” are quite mistaken about what it is that I am doing (although I also know that it could well be that the opinions I expressed – that they felt I was expressing in an attempt to “distract,” – may have been in error due to my own biases).
Given that the mistake has happened so often to me, I think there’s good reason to think that it would be a mistake to apply the same logic when looking at what “skeptics” do, as underneath our differences, I think that we share a lot of attributes of human cognition and psychology.
So, I don’t think that assuming intent – in the sense of them trying to put me (us) off my (our) game – works well. I don’t know their intent, but if I had to guess, I would think that their intent is more consistent with evidence (as I see it) that when people are engaged in identity-associated and polarized debates, their intent is more focused on identity than on implementing deliiberate or coherent strategy against a (perceived) opponent, as one might do in cricket match.
==> so I think it is something we ourselves should avoid and stick to pointing out the flaws in the science ==>
All else aside, I agree with you there.
oops. This should say…
==> as why would you explain to me that I wasn’t doing something that you didn’t think that I thought that I was doing?
dikran –
Perhaps for the sake of not cluttering up Anders’ blog with this repetitive discussion, it would be better for us to continue it, if we want to do so, through email? As such, I’d like to suggest that if you have a reply, you send it via my email (which you can get from Ander)?
Or perhaps better, so as not to leave it in a situation where I am getting the last word in a public discussion (not that I assume you necessarily care about that), if it’s ok with you, if you’re so inclined you reply in this public forum (get in the last word, so to speak), and I’ll follow up via email (if you OK Anders giving it to me?)
“But as context associates connotations to the meanings with respect to each other, then I disagree”
the same could be said of any word, in which case we don’t know the meaning of any [expletive deleted] word, which is of course an absurd position. text \neq subtext.
“In the real world, IMO, text and subtext are inextricable”
If your thing is to look for and analyse subtext, then you risk finding subtext in every discussion you look at, whether it is actually there or not. Some people use nuance and subtext a lot, some people use rather little, and there are also those who are essentially incapable of it (so they are obviously extricable as those incapable of subtext are still capable of effective communication).
“but then again, you apparently thought that it was relevant to explain to me that I wasn’t teaching you anything or that I was wrong if I thought that I was teaching you something. ”
no, it is just that my basic assumption is that when someone writes something it is because it is what they mean. The reason that I thought it was relevant to point out that there was no didacticism was because it seemed to be an incorrect statement indicative of a misunderstaning.
“Right, you have said that. But it doesn’t add up to me. ”
That is not a good reason for ignoring the fact that I had said it (twice already).
“I don’t see how (1) it would be counterproductive in any real-world manner (meaning the impact might be discernible in any way) if you did call her a denier ”
O.K. so you haven’t been paying attention to what I wrote. I wrote:
“I personally avoid calling individuals “deniers” (mostly because it gives an opportunity to avoid talking about the science, which is what I find interesting and important)”
The reason it is counterproductive is that it means that any discussion with someone that you call a denier (even if it is accurately used according to the dictionary definition), is liable to switch from a discussion of the science to a discussion of “the nature of the debate” when one sides starts loosing the scientific discussion. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It’s best to use a term that your interloctor can’t object to, even if it isn’t actually a correct usage of the term, simply to keep the discussion to the science.
” I don’t see how there is, in the real-world, any meaningful distinction between saying that she has written things that means she falls within the definition of a denier and calling her a denier.”
if someone has a BMI over 30 then they fall within the definition of “obese” (or “fat”). That doesn’t mean that it is necessarily advisable to call them “obese” or “fat” (c.f. Oscar Wilde quote above) even though it is true (note there is no subtext there).
“So, I don’t think that assuming intent – in the sense of them trying to put me (us) off my (our) game – works well.”
My experience is rather different. It isn’t all that unusual for scientific discussion to end up in a “nature of the debate” discussion (or indeed a partisan food-fight), leaving the scientific issue unresolved. Great way to avoid admitting the science doesn’t support your view. This happens even if you try very hard to keep the discussion on the science. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt with the slogan reminding me not to go there again ;o)
We don’t accurately know the intentions of the “opposition”, the key point is that what matters on AGW is what the science says. The climate is not on the warmist side or the skeptic side, it is us that should choose our position to match reality, not the other way round. So lets focus on that.
Joshua, my email is the obvious one at gmail.com, but I don’t check it all that regularly. Very happy for ATTP to delete any amount of my superfluous comments (as always).
Here’s a stab at turning away from one aspects of the neverending audit. (Willard, I like you the way you are, even when you call me out. We need that, and your perceptions are acute often enough to be worthwhile, imho.)
BBD, I found a copy from 2011, and saw what you saw, but I think it was Rove. There were other similar documents. Won’t heap them on here.
—
On the topic of our turn towards discrediting mainstream science, and the varieties thereof, please do look at the list from the Texas forum with Rep. Lamar Smith. If anyone thinks we are overly fearful, the panelists listed there will give them a cauld grue. Russell shared them with us, and I think it worth repeating the link (that is a double v, not a w):
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/12/weve-got-to-back-up-our-science-with.html
“We’ve Got to Back Up Our Facts with Verifiable Science” at the Heritage Foundation (a Koch ally)
Concluding address: “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy” (8 December)
It’s a who’s who of climate science denial, Rep. Smith, Sen. Inhofe and others from Congress
Drs. Happer, Idso, and Lindzen moderated by Patrick Michaels are the big feature for the afternoon.
They might get RPJr and Judith Curry in as moderates to show they are “open-minded.”
Susan, I have my doubts it was Rove … he’s generally more circumspect and subtle. I agree with BBD that it is accurate in terms of behaviours and tactics in online discussion fora, and thus useful for one’s own awareness of the techniques.
I would be hesitant to claim that *only* climate contrarians engage in that kind of behaviour, however. I can speak for myself here — I’m sure that I’ve done pretty much everything on that list at one time or another. It hardly ever ends well for me when I do. Playing it straight on this field is quite difficult enough already.
Susan A
The online push is really troubling at the moment: Graham Redfearn in The Guardian.
It will be interesting to see what “skeptics” who were outraged by Grijalva’s investigation have to say about this:
–snip–
According to Bloomberg, the Trump transition team has presented the DOE with a 74-point questionnaire that asks for the names of employees and contractors who worked on the Obama administration’s efforts to address climate change.
Politico has a copy of the questionnaire, which seeks to identify anyone who attended United Nations climate change meetings or helped develop the Obama administration’s metrics on the social cost of carbon dioxide. The document also asks for information on research activities and loan programs
–snip–
May I point out to Dikran and Joshua :
“==> I can use the word “leopard” to refer to a kettle, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what “leopard” or “kettle” actually mean, ==>
Yes, you could use leapord to refer to a kettle, but in the real world (in context) you would be the only one to do so”
That the Fogg museum begs to differ:
I stand corrected.
> It will be interesting to see what “skeptics” who were outraged by Grijalva’s investigation have to say about this:
“About time” seems one likely response, Joshua. Another one is, “Leftists weren’t outraged by Grijalva’s witch-hunt because they’re hypocrites, and they don’t have a leg to stand on.” And then there’s the Schneiderman-led posse against ExxonMobil’s Freedom Fighting.
I’m getting to the point where I’m beginning to think what we’re seeing was not only likely to happen, but rather inevitable. But … hindsight bias.
***
The “Can you …” phrasing in many of the questions tickles me pink. It’s just … comical … in a tragic sort of way.
… almost as if on cue:
[shiver]
Joshua:
Joshua, I’m aware of your dislike of the ‘denier’ label. I, however, believe “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name” (Confucius). FWIW, I apply the name only to those whose public statements offer sufficient evidence they’re in denial. I’m not talking about matters of opinion, where no verifiable facts are in dispute; and I’m not talking about people who casually repeat incorrect statements they’ve heard about AGW, but are willing to be corrected by credible arguments.
The people I call AGW-deniers are those who persist in making arguments from false facts and logical fallacies, that have been repeatedly and decisively refuted. It includes people who think any of the common pseudo-skeptical arguments listed at SkepticalScience are persuasive. Even if the pseudo-skeptic is unaware of the refutations, his use of those arguments implies he believe himself scientifically competent to judge the argument correct: that is, he is in denial of his lack of scientific competence. Failure to acknowledge his error after being exposed to the refutation is even stronger evidence of denial. If he’s been persuaded by the arguments of high-profile bloggers or other celebrity AGW-deniers, however specious, he’s in denial of his inability to tell genuine from fake expertise. If a non-climate-scientist argues that the overwhelming consensus of working climate scientists isn’t persuasive, he’s in denial of the very existence of genuine scientific expertise. This is especially telling when the AGW-denier is surrounded by the products of science.
IMO, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a manifestation of psychological denial: it’s a defense against the pain of losing the illusion of superiority. Deeper motives too may reasonably be inferred from an AGW-denier’s words and actions. For RickA, who makes no secret of his libertarian ideology, AGW-denial is presumably a defense against the pain of recognizing his cherished ideology is flawed. For Roy Spencer, AGW-denial is a defense against the spiritual pain of feeling betrayed by his deity. For politicians like James Inhofe or Lamar Smith, AGW-denial is a defense against the painful prospect of losing political power, although in their case it’s more likely the result of cynical calculation rather than denial in the psychological sense.
As for whether calling someone an AGW-denier helps or harms the ’cause’ of AGW mitigation, the truth is I don’t really care. Flagrant denial of the clear reality of AGW should be offensive to anyone who respects genuine skepticism, and I have no qualms about confronting it on public fora. And as long as RickA feels free to purvey his pernicious nonsense here, I feel free to call him an AGW-denier in response. Ain’t freedom grand?
Brandon –
Yeah. Ak’s a trip, as the kids say. I keep trying to pretend that with his endless stream of conspiracy ideation, he’s a Poe, but I fear that isn’t the case.
I think your guess about reactions are about right. Like we saw with all those “skeptics” who were concerned about the “chilling effect” on free speech of the Mann lawsuit but who had nothing to say about Trump wanting to change libel laws to make it easier to take the press to court, I’m not exactly anticipating consistency.
On the bright side, Joshua …
… at least now I know that “???” = “TRUMP”. What “???!#$%@!!!” ends up being is where it gets … interesting.
It is clear there are elements in the Trump administration that consider AGW to be the outcome of ideologically directed and funded science. It is inevitable they will act on this belief to try and direct and fund science to support their own ideologies.
It would be interesting to see how the scientists at the heritage meeting, Idso, Soon, Happer, Spencer, Lindzen, Micheals would answer the 74-point questionnaire.
I am not aware of any comparable efforts to ‘police’ the science as happened under GWB or Harper in Canada and appears to be imminent under Trump by liberal/left political governance. If anybody can suggest example it would be of interest. But I suspect it is rare or partial because of basic differences in attitudes.
Mal-Adapted quoted Brin up-thread on the anti-science attitude.
Brin has also talked about how the default historical human world-view is complete submission to nominal authority and the inherent certainty that the beliefs held are correct, absolute and unchangeable.
The post-enlightenment acceptance, even enthusiasm for change and the readiness to doubt and adapt to new information is a very recent new attitude in human societies. Much of human society still favours the certainties of religion and the fixed hierarchies of feudal politics.
The expansion of knowledge and the willingness to embrace change has vastly increased the well being of an expanding population. But at the risk of invoking economic determinism, growth, progress and change engender and require a post-enlightenment liberal political governance.
Any regression economically to the very few, very rich and the majority subsistence serfs requires a right-wing authoritarian polity that does not share the enthusiasm for doubt, change and progress. It holds that things are already for the best in the best of all possible worlds, except for the pesky dissidents, political and scientific, who dispute the certainties and therefore must be policed.
Whether you call people deniers when the conflict is between opposing world-views, enlightenment vs authoritarianism or change vs stability may be of minor importance.
I missed this when I was excerpting Russell’s program from the Texas meeting:
Dr. Soon may be familiar as having made false claims and being funded by big fossil.
Mr. Grossman turns out to be an attorney for CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Koch network member). Free Speech in Science was founded early this year. Google turned up the usual denier (sorry, I need that word) organizations promoting the idea that the poor “skeptics” were being persecuted.
https://www.desmogblog.com/free-speech-science-project
Russell – LOL!
From the WHO: “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.”
That’s (very) roughly equivalent to the Holocaust (in numbers; the Moral issue is more complex). AFAIAC, anyone who objects to being compared to a Nazi can bugger off.
RickA is denying a lot of things, but the big one is not the denial of the science of AGW… he’s denying completely the 20th century data on natural variability. Almost all skeptics are in denial of it.. in a way, so are those who dismiss it as noise.
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Susan Anderson:
As loathsome a specimen of Orwellian deception as any I’ve seen. Certainly Rivkin and Grossman, Esqs., weren’t speaking for free. Sophisticated astroturfing like the “Free Speech in Science” project is expensive, and its fossil-fuel industry backers can be counted on to spare no expense. It takes money to make money, after all.
Speaking of a “Climate Inquisition”, we are all painfully aware that AGW-deniers are now ascendant throughout the government of the USA, and are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yesterday’s Washington Post reported on the Trump transition team’s move to intimidate climate scientists who have supported the Obama administrations’ AGW mitigation efforts:
While “open inquiry and debate” ought to be free, defending honest climate scientists against deep-pocketed inquisition is not. I have previously made individual donations to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, but upon reading about the Trump team’s DOE questionnaire I set up a recurring donation of $100 monthly. I encourage every climate realist to donate too, in any amount you can afford.
Russell – that’s an aquamanile, which is a type of jug or ewer used for holding water for washing hands.
Not a kettle.
Unless you are using the wrong sort of English, which you may well be doing. Also kettle implies heated water; I can’t see my copy of the EETS book on manners and how to serve your lord at table, but I don’t recall mention of heating the water before using it.
I see Joshua scooped me, as Politico did WaPo, with the news of the Trumpish Inquisition. That’s great, the more watchers watching, the better prepared we’ll be.
Mal –
It isn’t really that I don’t like the term. But I do question that using the term is an outgrowth of wisdom. And I question arguments that it is somehow needed or productive.
A majority of Trump voters think that the stock market went down over Obama’s term and that unemployment went up. Engaging in a strategy that doesn’t take full measure of the “bubble” phenomenon that we are dealing with, seems to me, like sameosameo. I don’t see how using the term “denier” will, in any way, lessen the impact of the Trump bubble. Making people within the parallel bubble – no matter what some objective analysis determines about
the veracity of the bubbles, respectively – seems like a rather futile gesture, IMO.
Keep thy aquamanile by the fire, Guthrie– pouring cold water over thy lord’s hands inviteth a clout.
Joshua:
Ah, now here is where no facts are in dispute, as there can only be opinions about where wisdom begins. As for whether the ‘denier’ label is needed or productive: you’ve got your needs and I’ve got mine; and for me, calling a denier a denier produces a feeling of satisfaction ;^).
Posted yesterday in Teen Vogue (of all places), Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America. The central thesis:
Otter-wise known as Jedi Mind Tricks. Help us Millennials, you’re our only hope.
> As for whether the ‘denier’ label is needed or productive: you’ve got your needs and I’ve got mine; and for me, calling a denier a denier produces a feeling of satisfaction ;^).
Indeed, Mal, “productive” is in the eye of the beholder.
I choose to not use the D-word for many reasons, some of which are articulated here by one Ben Pile:
I cannot source the quote attributed to Lenin to anyone, much less Lenin. Regardless, I think it’s an excellent argument. And yet Ben writes two months later:
I couldn’t make this up.
Because I don’t use the D-word, and don’t generally appply pejorative labels of any sort to entire persons when I can help it, I get to call it out when it’s done to me, and without setting a double-standard.
***
An emerging irony of this particular episode of ClimateBall ™ is that I really do have somewhat to say about what I see as the dubious utility of Stephan Lewandowsky’s peer-reviewed polemics as a tool to win hearts and minds. But rather than take my concern trolling of Mr Pile like a boss, post author Jaime Jessop saw fit to cleverly backronym my initials to “Boring Random Gossip”.
Thereby serving as a further example of my central point.
Which *really* produces a feeling of satisfaction. 😉
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