Some have encouraged me to watch Roger Pielke Jr’s presentation on Climate politics as a manichean paranoia, and I have now done so (slides here, and I’ll post the video at the end of the post.). Manichean paranoia refers to the idea that both sides regard the other as evil, that the end justifies the means, and implies a lack of willingness to engage in substantive debate. Roger’s suggestion is that there are ways to break out of this pattern, and he provides 5 basic suggestions (which I’ll discuss briefly after a few general comments).
Ideally, I’m all in favour of trying to improve the climate debate, whether that’s about climate science, or about climate policy. Attempts to do so should probably be applauded. However, Roger’s basic suggestion seems rather naive; a form of deficit model thinking, essentially. The problem isn’t that people don’t know how to engage in a reasonable debate about climate, it’s more that they either don’t want to (they’re happy for it to be adversarial), or it would require accepting things that they’re unwilling to accept.
Additionally, this was a talk hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an organisation well known for promoting misinformation. There’s, of course, nothing wrong with associating with such an organisation, or being hosted by them. However, you can’t expect to not be judged in some way for doing so and if you don’t at least try to acknowledge that you understand their pedigree (or lack thereof) then that would suggest that either you endorse their misinformation, don’t have a problem with promoting misinformation, or don’t realise that they do so, which might then suggest that your understanding of the topic is somewhat lacking.
Also, if you think that the two sides of the debate are represented by James Inhofe, on one side, and Michael Mann on the other, then your sense of where the reasonable middle lies is wildly different to where most would regard it. Similarly, if you think it can be largely described as alarmists versus skeptics, then – again – you have an odd sense of where the middle should lie. Thinking we should act on climate does not make one an alarmist. Disputing mainstream climate science does not make one a sceptic. This ignores that Roger managed to use a somewhat pejorative term (alarmist) to describe one side, and quite a positive one to describe the other (skeptic).
Okay, what about Roger’s actual suggestions?
Engage with those with whom you disagree:
A reasonable suggestion, and one I’m happy to attempt, right up until the point at which it becomes abusive, which is – sadly – a common outcome. Also, Roger is known for being quite a prolific blocker on Twitter. Nothing wrong with this at all. However, if one does regularly block people on Twitter, one might be slightly circumspect about suggesting that others endeavour to engage with those with whom they disagree.
Maintain the integrity of science assessments:
Okay, I guess there is a suggestion is that we haven’t been (which I would largely dispute) but let’s at least agree that we should be willing to think about how to ensure that we do maintain their integrity.
Understand the Eff-U principle:
The suggestion here is that we should avoid saying things that are essentially interpreted as telling others to eff-off. Fair enough, makes sense. However, the key example is consensus messaging (97%). I realise that this is a controversial topic and that there may well be arguments for using it carefully, but it is essentially true (there is a very strong consensus about the basics). I simply have no problem with people highlighting truths and do have an issue with suggestions that this should be avoided.
Other examples of eff-U issues, were highlighting the so-called “pause” and claiming that climate change is a hoax. So Roger’s main examples of things we should avoid because they effectively tell another group to eff-off is something that is true (consensus), something quite nuanced (the so-called “pause”), and something completely false (hoax). Hmmmm.
Discuss policy proposals in terms of first-year benefits:
Okay, I do think we have to be careful of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; we should be trying to develop policy that is actually achievable, rather than aiming for something that will almost certainly fail. However, the idea that we can only really develop policy that has some kind of short-term (first-year) benefit, or only a very small short-term discomfort, is somewhat concerning. Putting climate to one side, there must be occasions where it would be worth enacting some policy that will have some medium, or long-term, benefit, but no obvious/clear short-term benefit, and maybe even some short-term discomfort. You would like to think that policy experts would be thinking of ways to develop such policy, rather than claiming that there is some kind of iron law that means that it is virtually impossible. In fact, Brexit currently feels like a counter-example to this supposed iron-law.
Debate policy through causal pathways:
This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable suggestion, but what it seemed to miss was that you should also be willing to discuss the outcome of your causal pathway. Saying we can do this, and then this, and then this is certainly useful, but if we do have some idea of a carbon budget, then it would also be useful to know whether or not such a pathway might stay within that budget. This has certainly been a criticism of some policy ideas, such as ecomodernism, which seems to promote all sorts of optimistic, futuristic pathways, but doesn’t seem to really provide any kind of carbon budget.
Okay, I do think that trying to improve the climate debate is commendable, so kudos to Roger for at least trying. I should also add that if I have misunderstood some of his suggestions, feel free to point that out in the comments. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that the only behaviour you can really influence is your own. So, if you have some idea of how to improve the debate, you should really start with yourself and hope that others follow suit. Telling others how they should behave in order to improve the debate is probably going to be unsuccessful, especially if you do so at an event hosted by an organisation that is regarded by many as a key player in making sensible discussion more difficult. What I will say, though, is that Roger’s talk made me think, which is always – in my view – a good thing.
Anyway, a video of Roger’s talk is below.
...and Then There's Physics 
Agreed, Mr. Piekle’s presentation seems to be another example of the false equivalency that we seen in the news media. In an effort to seem fair, many would elevate the denier as an equal to the scientist. Micheal Mann is not the polemicist and is a poor choice to contrast with Imhoff.
Exactly. Of course, Michael Mann and Roger Pielke Jr have had a number of fairly public disagreements, which is probably a reason why Roger has chosen to highlight Michael Mann. Of course, if Roger were really keen to improve the debate, he might want to consider avoiding exactly this, especially as “Manichean paranoia” suggests that you regard your opponents as “evil”.
It’s just another tactic to make stupidity seem reasonable… next up, the earth is 6000 years old.
I certainly don’t think ‘deniers’ are evil, in the same way I don’t think creationists are evil. The only people I take umbrage with are emitters, those emitting much above about 3-4t CO2e per annum who are helping cause this.
As far as I’m aware, the GWPF has never hosted a talk or seminar that didn’t in some way promote their agenda of undermining climate science. Roger Pielke Jr.’s bias to which you refer—framing the argument as ‘alarmist’ v ‘skeptic’; equivalencing ‘consensus’ v ‘hoax’—show this is just another in the same vein.
The day the GWPF invite a mainstream Climate Scientist to give a talk—there must be thousands to chose from in the UK, without having to fly a contrarian in from the USA—I’ll listen.
Indeed, and – intentionally, or not – he played into their hands. Have a bit of a go at Michael Mann. “Alarmist” vs “skeptic”. Criticise consensus messaging (97%). Where, on the other hand, was the “maybe stop promoting crap like climate change is cyclical, global cooling coming next“.
Anders –
As you say…
If only those alarmists would understand the EFF-U principle and stop doing things that are interpreted as polemical…
=
“If only those poopyheads would stop calling us poopyheads…”
This is sameol, sameol. It is interesting to me how people are endlessly interested in repackaging the same shit and selling it as a new product.
Just goes to show, I think, how people are so focused on defending themselves and how resistant they are to trying new approaches.
Joshua,
My impression (and it is just an impression) is that some people (Roger, for example) are genuine in their desire to improve the debate. However, they do sometimes seem unwillinging to acknowledge their own role in creating some of the problems that they’ve encountered. As I said, all I think individuals can do is try to engage more constructively and hope that has a positive effect.
What might Roger do if the could get past his defensiveness and self – absorbtion long enough to try something me that would produce different results? I assume he really does want to de-politicize the science and reduce the degree of scorched-earth, zero sum gain interactions. So why does he just repeat the same kind of actions that can easily be predicted to produce the same minds of results that he has been so concerned about in the past?
That has ALWAYS been my main response to Roger
He was so upset about the way he was treated that he took his climateball back and left the climate science playground and went home. So then why does he continue to lob stinkbombs over the playground fence?
I think the discussion about addiction has some relevance here. What does he get out of this? I happen to think dopamine is the likely answer.
.
Consider the analogy of a referee strictly enforcing the letter of every rule for one team and calling every close play against them, while taking a far more relaxed attitude towards their opponents and giving them the benefit of the doubt on their own close calls.
Such a referee would never be considered fair or unbiased. When contrarians such as the Pielkes parse every word and line of mainstream climate scientists for questionable assumptions and minor errors while routinely ignoring enormous mistakes, inconsistencies and the utter shambles that is the contrarian climate change collective position (hint: there is none), only a handful of reasonable assumptions come to mind:
1) They are blinded by their own biases and prejudices;
2) They are deliberately peddling misinformation;
3) They consider AGW deniers unscientific and unworthy of notice or comment.
I think that most are genuinely interested in improving the debate.
Which makes the question of why they keep repeating tactics that have proven ineffective (actually, often counterproductive) time and time again.
Magma –
I have essentially asked that question to Roger – about why that imbalance in his targeting.
His answer (paraphrasing) is that he believes it is important for him to focus his scrutiny on those who hold the dominant power position (e.g., the IPCC).
FWIW.
The issue has always been the funders. Without the funders the deniers are just run of the mill deniers like the flat anti-Vaxxers, but strangely the Pielkes and the Grundermans always never mention the funders.
As to what Pielke gets out of it, well his entire existence has been to try and control the dialog. Remember, although he has not the remotest idea of what a broker really does, he does know that brokers control the interchange between parties.
I wonder. There are some (Ben Pile, for example) who seem completely disinterested in doing so. Virtually every utterance paints those with whom he disagrees in the most negative light. However, there are others (Roger, for example) who do seem interested but actually seem incapable of moving on; regularly highlighting various past infractions.
I must be out of touch – I thought Pielke Jr. had given up commenting on climate. What changed?
Arthur,
According to the video, a number of people suggested that he continue to stay away and so he decided to start giving some talks.
More likely the sports people were either catching on to his act or ignoring him.
Sometimes you need to just take a minute to marvel at the scale of the irony.
How much insight does it take to recognize that the term “alarmist” is often intended to be, and often interpreted as, a pejorative?
Consider that we have here a respective academic who flies across the Atlantic to deliver a speak to a group comprising people with significant political power an influence, and delivers a talk which could be directly lifted from, or considered a scientific parallel to, what we all heard regularly from out junior high school teachers out on the playground.
Anders –
There are some (Ben Pile, for example) who seem completely disinterested in doing so.
Yeah. Ben’s a trip. But at the basic level of human motivation, I think that it is relatively few who aren’t motivated by a goal of improving the discussion. My guess is that Ben really believes that what he is doing will improve the dialogue. i think that what’s going on becomes only that much more interesting if you try to figure out how some people envision the cause-and-effect mechanism, and how they are able to discount the evidence presented to the about the effectiveness of their operating cause-and-effect paradigm.
Joshua says:August 5, 2017
So why does he just repeat the same kind of actions that can easily be predicted to produce the same minds of results that he has been so concerned about in the past?
–
That has ALWAYS been my main response to Roger
–
Perhaps there is a message here for you to consider?
Eli Rabett says
The issue has always been the funders.
–
No.
You can say that but there are a lot more issues than funders.
And like Joshua,
You could always look at the two sides to your comment.
ATTP, straight out you confound me.
Thank you.
In my world, obviously distinct from reality,
there may be low climate sensitivity and a low level of risk from fossil fuels.
I think that straight shooting is very important, admitting the inconsistencies is important
And working out adaption strategies consistent with the best for most people now is important.
There are many risks seperate to and immediately more important than pure climate strategy that need our attention.
Some of these, overpopulation, North Korea, dovetail into our concerns anyway.
Paying attention to other people’s concerns, even if not believing in them, helps make decisions more palatable to everyone.
Based on the video, I estimate about three dozen in attendance.
angech –
Perhaps there is a message here for you to consider?
There always is, angech, there always is.
But why so cryptic? I’m not smart enough to interpret cryptic comments. Spit it out, son.
angech –
Also, when you quote me, please reproduce the italics. If you don’t italicize “concern” there, you lose important meaning.
Magma,
Do you mean three dozen mainstream Climate Scientists, or simply three dozen people in the audience?
Micheal Mann is not the polemicist and is a poor choice to contrast with Imhoff.
He does appear to be skepticworld’s choice for successor to Al Gore as the Antichrist…
@ATTP, I think both of us know the answer to that already 🙂
Magma,
Indeed 🙂 I was actually trying to understand the context of your comment. Wasn’t sure how it related to what you quoted from johnrussell.
@ Joshua
No they aren’t. They are interested only in pushing their position. They have no concept of or interest in dialogue, a two-way process which would require that they accept considerably more of the scientific evidence. This they cannot do as it would fundamentally undermine their position. So they repeat the same old crap because that is all they can actually do.
Actual ddialogue would kill them.
Hi Magma. So do the ‘three dozen’ say anything? Yes; I guess I should watch the video. But do I have to when aTTP has taken the hit for me?
T-rev:
As an atheist, my morality isn’t fully codified, nor is it binary. In that light, I don’t think all amateur (for a later comment) deniers are ‘evil’, but I do think they should feel ashamed. Personal responsibility has a crucial role in determining how Dramas of the Commons end. If popular sovereignty is going to bring AGW to a less-than-apocalyptic ending, it will require every sovereign to try his (gender-neutral) hardest not to fool himself.
That’s why I’m alarmed! Speaking as a US native, I’m afraid too many of my countrymen are happy to fool themselves: “it’s not happening”, “it’s not our fault”, “it’s not bad”, “my family won’t be among the victims”. They’re willing to believe preposterous lies from transparently professional liars, rather than make the effort to learn the readily available facts. It’s easy (for me, at least) to be sympathetic, because most of us were raised to regard the USA as morally exceptional, and every American exceptionally entitled. AGW is an exceptionally yooge buzzkill for us!
Nevertheless, it’s simply childish for any American who even suspects the truth about AGW to hide from his responsibility, individually and collectively, to bring down the curtain on the Tragedy of the Climate Commons*. AGW has already had tragic consequences for tens of thousands of people globally, for which we may plausibly plead ignorance before the fact. But the fact is now known to all genuine skeptics, and the longer we deny our responsibility going forward, the greater the aggregate tragedy will be, even if random individuals are spared the worst. Whether we’re ‘evil’ or just fools, Manichean shame on American voters for failing to act like adults!
Once again, I’m relieved I don’t have offspring. The buck stops here.
* And we’d better hope we can cajole or coerce China and India by our unilateral actions, Mr. Mosher.
> There’s, of course, nothing wrong with associating with such an organisation, or being hosted by them.
I don’t think that’s true. I certainly don’t think that it is “of course” true; at the very least, it is arguable. Indeed, I’d argue that it is false.
> However, you can’t expect to not be judged in some way for doing so…
Which in essence contradicts what you’ve just said.
WMC,
Agreed, that was too strong. What I was thinking of was, for example, Scott Denning talking at the Heartland conferences. I don’t think people would have regarded his doing so as somehow endorsing their message and most – I think – probably regarded it as something worth trying, even if the net effect was negligible. What I should probably have written was that it’s not necessarily going to be regarded as wrong to associate with such organisation.
Not really; I thought this more a truism, than anything else. In a sense, you can be judged on the basis all your associations; the outcome could be positive or negative. However, if you know that an organisation has a poor reputation, how your association is judged probably depends on how you choose to interact with that organisation. Are you going to make clear that you do not endorse their message, or are you going to completely ignore their poor reputation?
Actually, maybe I’m being too accomodating :-); I think I was being literal when I wrote about the association. It is clearly not *wrong* for an organisation like the GWPF to exists and so clearly it’s not *wrong* for people to associate with it. However, given its reputation, an association is likely to be judged in some way and how it is judged is likely to depend on whether, or not, the person appears to endorse their message, ignores their message, or actively/openly criticises their message.
aTTP:
I confess that’s not clear to me.
Mal,
Okay, to clarify again, I guess 🙂 People can certainly hold the view that it is “wrong”, so maybe I should go back to my first clarification. I guess all I’m really getting at is that organisations like the GWPF exist and it’s not necessarily wrong for someone to associate with such an organisation. However, how one chooses to engage with that organisation will clearly influence how people judge your association. In a sense I’m suggesting that it would be naive to associate positively with the GWPF and then expect there to be no criticism of that positive association.
aTTP:
OK, I’m caught up, after crafting my previous comment while everyone else was mashing on the Post button. In my personal moral system, it may not be precisely ‘wrong’ to fool yourself, even if you’re a scientist. It’s almost always shameful, however, and it’s never respectable. Especially if you claim to be a scientist. YMMV.
Sorry boss, but I disagree. In my little moral universe, knowingly peddling falsehoods is wrong and the GWPF cannot be unaware that much (most) of the stuff it pushes is garbage.
@ johnrussell40:
Typical communication blunder. I could have saved three comments by writing the first more clearly. The audience to Pielke’s talk consisted of three dozen people in a small room. There was about an hour-long Q&A afterwards so one might be able to gauge their position(s) and expertise wrt climate change, but 2 hours on an RP Jr. talk is more than I’m willing to expend today.
BBD, I know you weren’t responding to my latest, because I’m not your boss ;^).
Sorry Mal, that was directed at ATTP…
Is he your boss?
There is an asymmetry in how disappointed each side would feel if it was proved wrong and the other right.
My threatened later comment:
I presume to speak for a lopsided consensus of this blog’s commenters, that we not only accept the reality of AGW but assign it a moral value of ‘bad’. We acknowledge our marginal share of the common pool of tragedy, and we individually accept our responsibility to act collectively to mitigate it. I went to EFF U (h/t Joshua 8^D), so anyone who wants to argue can argue with himself.
Science offers scientists mostly intangible rewards, and if RPJr. has no pecuniary motive to deny AGW, then he’s guilty ‘merely’ of fooling himself by associating with stinktanks like GWPF. Is he a sinner? Maybe, but let she who socializes no direct or embodied marginal climate-change costs be the first to sugar her neighbor’s gas tank. Billions of humans are liable for AGW from reckless disregard, rather than intent. We’re all guilty of our own contribution to global tragedy in pursuit of private happiness. Few of us, though, can afford to pay a tiny fraction of our personal liability for climate-change arrears. We can only repent, and promise to pay for our future marginal costs as we incur them.
Should private profit from other peoples’ socialized costs be the measure of an individual’s culpability for AGW? As Balzac reputedly said, ‘behind every great fortune there is a crime’, and GWPF’s actual raison d’être is hardly ‘non-profit’. Every genuine skeptic knows (citations furnished if you somehow don’t) that a tiny minority of individual persons are betraying their own and everyone else’s posterity solely for short-term financial gain, with full knowledge of and deliberate disregard for the consequences, if not actual malice aforethought; and one doubts status among the world’s wealthiest can be attained or maintained without at least a little malice.
Are fossil-fuel billionaires evil? They surely all know* that AGW gave them wealth and power, and that those will accrue only as long as AGW is exacerbated. Whether cynically or from pathetic self-justification, some of them are investing a fraction of their revenues in a strategy to hold off political challenges from their victims, who are everybody else on Earth now living and yet to live including their own descendants. Their tactics include suborning science. They’ve enlisted a few ‘useful idiots’, namely cognitively biased scientists, to stitch sheeps’ clothing for their predatory designs. What are we to think of these self-fooling soi-disant scientists?
* If they don’t, how come I ain’t rich?
OK, Magma. I guess I was interested to hear, without having to wade through them myself, what we can learn from the questions the audience asked. Were the audience all fake ‘skeptics’, sucking up what they wanted to hear, or was there any sceptical (correct meaning of the word) questioning? Has anyone seen the Q&A?
> Indeed, I’d argue that it is false.
@ Mal
Only in these hallowed confines where his writ runs 🙂
BBD –
No they aren’t. They are interested only in pushing their position.
Could be, but here’s my thinking…
First, I’m not sure that wanting to improve the dialog and pushing their position are mutually exclusive. I guess maybe willard can explain whether in the world of formal logic they should be wholly incompatible, but I think that in the real world people can kind of want to do both, as people can have inconsistent or conflicting or contradictory goals.
They other thing is that I see “them” saying the same about “us” all the time, and I know that they are wrong about that. I have a hard time with the parallel aspect of the climate wars. How do I know that their claims about their side are invalid when my side makes the same claims?
My sense is that “they” do want to improve the dialog but aren’t very well equipped to do so. And so their view of how to improve the dialog becomes limited to a context where the discussion takes place on their terms, and their precious little identities remain protected from cognitive dissonance, and they don’t have to face their own demons and contradictions. Throw in a healthy dose of Dunning-Kruger, and you’ve got a real mess. But I see those mechanics as pretty much basic human nature and not disproportionately distributed – especially when I look at the climate wars as proxy battle for a larger ideological struggle.
They have no concept of or interest in dialogue,
In my observation, there aren’t a whole lot of people who manage to put basic tenants of conflict resolution and core principles of stakeholder dialog, into practice. There really are some principles that seem to me to rather simple and basic, but nonetheless seem to just fly over the head of many people that are engaged in these discussions (even the many who are much smarter than myself). It’s quite interesting, really. It’s kind of stunning that the basic schoolyard principles that were the core of Roger’s presentation , are things that a respected academic would be proud of as if he was presenting something sophisticated or insightful.
a two-way process which would require that they accept considerably more of the scientific evidence.
I think that there is a more basic requirement, that in some kind of hierarchy is more fundamental than “accepting” evidence, which is more explanatory. They (and we) would be required to use mechanisms to help them to de-identify with the dialog process.
This they cannot do as it would fundamentally undermine their position. So they repeat the same old crap because that is all they can actually do.
I think they cannot do what is required to have better dialog, because they are too identified with the dialog. They aren’t unique in that regard. But that doesn’t mean that ultimately they don’t desire a better dialog. It’s kind of like having the same fights over and over with a life partner (or, perhaps, that is something that other people don’t do?). They certainly want to have better dialog, but they engage in the same, circular mechanisms of broken dialog over and over because (1) those mechanisms developed to serve some functional purpose once, but remain in place as a kind of legacy mechanism even though they no longer provide any benefit except to address some vestigial wound, and (2) they can’t free themselves enough from those vestigial wounds to develop the skills needed to develop new mechanisms.
Actual dialogue would kill them.
Well, in a sense it would. They would need to shed an old, familiar self and move forward. It’s not easy to do.
See Jane Mayer’s Dark Money for the details.
But they are. Please see my earlier remarks about the definition of dialogue, a term I suspect you are using loosely here. They *can’t* enter into an improved dialogue because that would mean accepting scientific evidence that renders their position untenable.
BBD –
They *can’t* enter into an improved dialogue…
I don’t disagree…but I question whether we can know that means that they have no such goal.
With the always important caveat, of course, that mind probing always means walking on shaky ground.
“Manichean paranoia refers to the idea that both sides regard the other as evil”
I think either Roger doesn’t know what “evil” means, or I don’t! ;o)
I don’t think climate skeptics are any more evil than anyone else. None of us want to change out lifestyles for the worse, but at the same time none of us like the idea that out lifestyle is having negative effects on others, even if they are far away in space and/or time. None of us are fully rational about balancing conflicting short term and long term interests and one way in which it can be “resolved” is to be in denial about the science (so we don’t have to worry about the negative effects on others). If you weren’t a good person, you would have no reason for denial as there would be no conflict.
I could do without this sort of hyperbole.
“Engage with those with whom you disagree:”
Like this hasn’t been tried. The discussion about Salby at Bishop Hill shows where that gets us. Note that the start of the discussion by Mike Jackson is, shall we say “not very friendly”, and Martin A follows this up with a partisan religious metaphor “True believers”. ATTP, I and others discussed the science in a rather more civil manner, and some responded more civilly in return, but did anybody accept the science (on this most basic and well established issue) in the end? No. And that was one of the more positive discussions!
Of course I am still willing to engage with them, but I no longer think there will be anything gained by it, it is just the “right thing” to do anyway.
Has anything come of the famous lunch between skeptics and scientists? Not as far as I am aware (be happy to hear about it if there is).
“Other examples of eff-U issues, were highlighting the so-called “pause””
why is that an eff-U issue? If the scientific community are discussing it, then why shouldn’t we? I’m perfectly happy to talk about the apparent “pause”, I’ll even help you convince me by saying how to start a convincing demonstration: Show that there is statistically significant evidence for a change in the underlying rate of warming. The “pause” is an interesting topic for discussion, e.g. statistics, forced response-v-unforced response, ENSO, volcanic forcing…
The key feature of Manichean paranoia is that the opponents are characterised in absolute moral terms. They are bad, we are good, they are the worst, we are the best. The discourse becomes dominated by the good/evil distinction.
Manichean paranoia, (examples can be found in Creationism, satanic abuse allegations and Brexit) results in any evidence, biological, forensic or economic, is judged on how well it supports the a prior moral judgement of the other side as maliciously evil and hell-bent on destroying human society.
Or your immortal soul.
The more evil your opponents the more righteous your stance against them.
It is fully Manichean when the possibility of a middle ground or compromise (however unlikely that truth occupies it) is rejected as MORALLY unacceptable.
The best indicator that an individual, or governing body, has succumbed to Manichean paranoia is the response to any suggestion that the other side are not the embodiment of absolute evil that are inimically opposed to all that is good and true.
If the moral superiority of your position is the most important thing evidence is only judged in that context.
So for Brexiteers, an economic study that casts doubt on the bright uplands of independence, is used to condemn the writer as unpatriotic to cast doubt on the UK’s entrepreneurial ability, a traitor for wanting to remain and doubly a traitor for promoting remain against the sovereign(?) democratic vote of the referendum. The Daily-Express comments indicate enthusiasm for the widespread use of the traditional punishment for traitors.
This is the problem with Manichean paranoia. From a historical perspective it usually ends up with someone, or some body of identifiable outsiders, getting accused of sacrificing babies and drinking their blood.
> The discourse becomes dominated by the good/evil distinction.
We could add ecologization:
or sociologization:
and up to about just anything that could serve as a distinction, because ClimateBall ™ players and spectators fill up themselves boxes that convey judgments or qualities:
Blaming blaming is self-defeating.
angech –
So what happened, bro? Where’d ya’ go? Aren’t you going to explain what you were referring to? Why direct a comment to me, that I don’t understand, and not clarify? What would explain doing that?
AT should note that what Pielke said is not what his hosts represented it to be , nor was the audience he addressed a representative one, witness the GWPF’s transformation of the hour long talk into a single cartoon:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/07/pielkes-gwpf-performance-further.html
Elsewhere in the world of semiotic metatmorphosis, Willard should also note that should he ” add ecologization:” geophysicists may think he proposes subducting the opposition to a depth sufficient to implode a basalt blockhead into a mixture of garnets and jade.
Hi, Joshua.
The trouble being that I too have a partner, a life and a time zone issue.
Your comment
-Joshua says:August 5, 2017
So why does he just repeat the same kind of actions that can easily be predicted to produce the same kinds of results that he has been so concerned about in the past?
–
“That has ALWAYS been my main response to Roger”
–
Contained an absolute (Always) response of your that was just what you had complained about Roger using . As in “So why does he just ( implied Always) repeat the same kind if actions.
That was all but you knew that.
In regards to why, you and ATTP would see it as trying to drag you down into the mire. On the other hand from my perspective only I see it as the other way.
“How much insight does it take to recognize that the term “alarmist” is often intended to be, and often interpreted as, a pejorative?”
Often is different to Always. It is like a feminist [Snip. Don’t go there, Doc. Please. – Willard]
It’s hard to note when qltm, Russell.
Speaking of tribal networks:
https://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/
Damn activists!
If only they could get off the energy think tank’s lawn.
To reflect the recent reasoned and moderate positions the GWPF took, here’s a list of the press releases title for 2016-2017:
CLIVE JAMES: ‘CLIMATE ALARMISTS WERE BOUND TO RUN OUT OF CREDIBILITY’
NEW REPORT: CCS WOULD MAKE RENEWABLES AND NUCLEAR ENERGY LOOK CHEAP
UK FILM PREMIERE: THE UNCERTAINTY HAS SETTLED
ANDREW MONTFORD APPOINTED GWPF DEPUTY DIRECTOR
RED TEAMS CAN SAVE CLIMATE SCIENCE FROM ITSELF
THE WORLD’S FIRST STATE OF THE CLIMATE SURVEY BASED ON OBSERVATIONS ONLY
AS POLAR BEAR NUMBERS INCREASE, GWPF CALLS FOR RE-ASSESSMENT OF ENDANGERED SPECIES STATUS
NEW PAPER: COMPUTER PREDICTIONS OF CLIMATE ALARM ARE FLAWED
REPORT REVEALS £300 BILLION COST OF BRITAIN’S CLIMATE CHANGE ACT
PROFESSOR GARTH PALTRIDGE JOINS GWPF’S ACADEMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL
SCIENCE IS IN DEEP TROUBLE, NEW PAPER SHOWS
PETER LILLEY CALLS ON UK GOVERNMENT TO ABANDON FATALLY FLAWED STERN REVIEW
DONNA LAFRAMBOISE: PEER REVIEW — WHY SKEPTICISM IS ESSENTIAL
NEW PAPER REVEALS HIDDEN COST OF UK CLIMATE POLICY
JOHN CONSTABLE JOINS GWPF’S ACADEMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL
PROFESSOR ANASTASIOS TSONIS JOINS GWPF ACADEMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL
NEW PAPER: DROUGHTS ARE NOT GETTING WORSE AND THEY ARE NOT CAUSING WARS
AFTER EL NINO, WILL THE GLOBAL WARMING PAUSE CONTINUE?
NEW CHAIRMAN OF GWPF ACADEMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL
***
INTEGRITY ™ – Use Caps Lock
Thanks angech –
Just to be clear, when i said that was ALWAYS my response, I meant an internal response, not my response (expressed) TO Roger.
But, no doubt, you are certainly correct that ALWAYS is a bad word in terms of advancing dialog.
So to rephrase, Roger often engages in a pattern of engagement that produces the kinds of responses that he often complains about – and it seems to me that the pattern is easily predictable, even though Roger often seems to locate all of the responsibility for the negative dynamic with others. In fact, while I can’t say he ALWAYS does that because I couldn’t know if that is always the case, I can say that I don’t recall him ever talking abiut how what he does might contribute to the negative dynamic.
Let me ask you, can you recall Roger acknowledging any level of accountability for the negative dynamics for which he is very concerned?
When you and your partner engage in repeated patterns of negative exchanges (I hope I’m not being too presumptuous to imply that might happen, sometimes), do you uniformly think that your partner is fully responsible? Or do you think it is more realistic to self-examine for, and then acknowledge some level of accountability, and/or important in terms of advancing forward to express that acknowledgement?
How often have you seen Roger complain about other people being responsible for the problems? How often have you seen him acknowledge that he has some responsibility?
Oh, and I didn’t know what you were referring to, which is why I asked. Apologies for my impatience, although I have noticed that you SOMETIMES, I would say maybe bordering on OFTEN, don’t answer my questions, and that gets frustrating.
(semi-seriously) — If there is to be a ‘dialog’, why not have it here? This tends to be a relatively moderate group, in tone at least, and yet quite sophisticated. certainly attp as a host is the antithesis of Manichean.
It looks like a few percent of humanity does not realise that their own behaviour matters, who think they are only reacting, but do not see the system dynamics.
Funny how Pielke claims that only the elite cares about climate change. Even in America that would mean that more than half of the population belongs to the elite. Kinda defeats the purpose of the term.
Don’t talk about the elite that makes money by delaying action, “donates” to politicians places “advertisements” in the mass media and maintains a network of think tanks and lobbyists.
Latest GWPF tweet:
Over at CargoCult Etc. they got all excited about what are relatively high monthly anomalies in June and July (WUWT projects .77 ℃ for GISS afterJune’s .69 ℃.)
Global cooling is right around the corner!
Climate Reanalyzer is forecasting some exceedingly high numbers for early August. It could collapse 2nd half. Lots of .7s, some .8s,and even a .9.
“The issue has always been the funders. Without the funders the deniers are just run of the mill deniers like the flat anti-Vaxxers, but strangely the Pielkes and the Grundermans always never mention the funders.”
On the contrary. The most effective have received next to nothing.
The funded groups just re use what the real “thought leaders” of the skeptical side produce.
In short, why pay McIntyre, Watts, Lewis, and the others when
A) they do it for free
B) funding them exposes them to the very charge you make.
“Engage with those with whom you disagree:”
Marsup, I think if you read his text he seems to be sayinging engage “in person”
Maybe you should ask Tol for an invite to his house?
jk.
Anecdote. I met Eli. in person
We dont fight anymore.
I met Heller. I resisted the urge to stuff his head in the nearest toilet. That was a victory.
“(semi-seriously) — If there is to be a ‘dialog’, why not have it here?
Most blogs have enforcers and intigators. Should your team even have a minor screw up,
instiagtors and enforcers will ensure that a brawl breaks out and the zamboni will be along.
angech
“Some of these, overpopulation, North Korea, dovetail into our concerns anyway.
Paying attention to other people’s concerns, even if not believing in them, helps make decisions more palatable to everyone.’
Somebody has taken over your account.
One consequence of detoxifying the debate is that pragmatic folks would actually find ways of working together.
@-W
“Blaming blaming is self-defeating.”
Not blaming, describing.
The products, and tweet, of the GWPF show an avoidance of Manichean paranoia. Except perhaps in the implied ‘dogwhistles’.
But it does show careful design for the target audience. Nothing they produce would have any traction within mainstream climate research, only with those who believe the science is wrong and want support for that position.
Perhaps they also hope to capture converts. Those who really WANT to believe the science is wrong, but are held back by the lack of any voice countering the 97%.
No such construction of doubt is required for the Manichean paranoiac. The certainty that your opponents are intrinsically evil and pose an absolute existential threat to human future results in ANY scientific information (or mis-information) is co-opted as proof of the sub-human immorality of the other side.
The GWPF may be manufacturing ‘doubt’. But the Manichean paranoiac already knows their opponents are the embodiment of pure evil, so claims that mainstream science has got something wrong do not engender doubt, but certainty that your opponents lie and commit fraud. And because the other side are against anything that is good, information they present is inevitably a hoax perpetrated to further an evil agenda.
The toxic consequence of a Manichean paranoia position is that it prevents pragmatic solutions. Any mutual agreement over details, or attempt to work together is ‘supping with the devil’. Any admission that your opponents are less evil might mean your fight against them is less righteous. People may be reluctant to accept they are wrong about facts when money is at risk. They are unconvertable if convinced they are on the side of good against evil.
Has it occured to anyone what Pielke Jr was talking about our dear old Wottsywotts?
Richard,
You may need to rewrite that, because it’s not clear what you’re actually asking.
Steven Mosher wrote “Marsup, I think if you read his text he seems to be sayinging engage “in person”
That seems like a case of “impossible expectation”; the medium of engagement is irrelevant in resolving disagreements if both parties want the disagreement to be resolved.
I rarely meet in person skeptics that actually want to discuss the science, so the pace of improvement in the dialog following that approach would be glacial.
It has also been tried, c.f. the famous lunch between skeptics and climate scientists that appears to have made no progress in the dialog whatsoever (I’d be very happy to be corrected, it was worth a try anyway)
“Maybe you should ask Tol for an invite to his house?”
No, that would be a grave faux pas! I’d happily share a pint or two at the pub with him next time I am in that part of the world (or in Norfolk if he visits here). I’ll report back if he explains exactly what penalty term he used in his segmented regression model ;o)
Steven Mosher, impressed about outcome with Eli and Heller (but for different reasons). Good show!
Richard Tol wrote “Has it occured to anyone what Pielke Jr was talking about our dear old Wottsywotts?”
Roger Pielke Jr’s suggested “Maintain the integrity of science assessments:”
My irony-o-meter definitely registered that one (“marginals assumption”, not dealing with outliers, not being willing to state the penalty term in a statistical analysis, meaningless but “sciency” null ritual NHSTs, asking questions in a comment paper that had already been answered)!
Joshua
“When you and your partner engage in repeated patterns of negative exchanges (I hope I’m not being too presumptuous to imply that might happen, sometimes),”
We do not talk about the climate much to avoid above.
I have a 95/5 theory re marriage which is applicable to most of life.
One person in any relationship does 95% of the work.
While this ratio is preserved the relationship is happy.
When someone has to do 96% the relationship is on a rocky road to ruin.
The funny thing is both my wife and I (like everyone else) think we are the one doing the 95%.
Mind you taking the bins out and mowing the lawn is very time consuming for a male.
“Steven Mosher wrote “Marsup, I think if you read his text he seems to be sayinging engage “in person”
That seems like a case of “impossible expectation”; the medium of engagement is irrelevant in resolving disagreements if both parties want the disagreement to be resolved.”
I think my narrow point was about his text.
‘in person”
I think that’s correct. If we cant agree on what is written in black and white, then discussing whether
or not it has merit is pointless.
Kinda like refusing to admit errors about positive numbers.
so to the narrow question about his text.
Steven,
He did say “in person”. If he really meant only meant face-to-face engagement then that would seem rather ineffective. How many people could you really encounter? That’s not to say that face-to-face isn’t a good way to interact, as it probably does make it less likely that the discussion would degenerate, but if his method requires this, then it’s probably pointless.
I admit that I didn’t initially make that distinction and agree that is what he wrote. I’ll try and make sure I explicitly state my agreement next time, you are correct it is a good habit to get into, especially online where the non-verbal cues are absent.
Admitting you are wrong or have made a mistake is never pleasant (having written a corrigendum for a paper I know that only too well). If you are a scientist (or any other kind of academic) you have to be able to do it, there really is no option. It isn’t quite the same if you are a blogger or a journalist or a politician.
The distinction between physically “in person” and virtually “in person” ought to be weaker than it is. When you respond to someones comments online, you are responding to a person, rather than a set of characters. Perhaps the blogsphere would be a more productive place if we were more conscious of that? I’m not completely sure I know what he meant by what he wrote (I haven’t watched the talk itself), as taken literally it is not a very useful suggestion, but taken a bit more loosely (implying dealing with people as persons rather than as members of a tribe) is rather more sensible.
BTW, if you ask it as a direct question, e.g. “Marsup, do you agree that in the text he is sayinging engage “in person”” that will prompt me to give a direct answer if that is the narrow point you are making as direct questions invite less interpretation.
I thought it was odd to see “in person” in his presentation. really odd.
so i watched.
around 19:20 he starts.
He seems to really emphasize IN PERSON around 19;50.
This strikes me as odd. And then he launches into a tale about how he has been victimized
there only seems one way to rectify this. Invite him to be on the red team with dad.
I’m working on a post about Red Teams… and the what does it mean to be disinvited to red teaming.
haha
It also allows GWPF to pat themselves on the back for engaging with someone who believes in a carbon tax.
> Not blaming, describing.
That’s just crap.
But I only say this descriptively.
Has it occured to anyone that Pielke Jr was talking about our dear old Wottsywotts?
Has it occur to anyone that Junior’s constant shirt ripping is a little histrionic?
Richie, perhaps?
Don’t be shy. We’re just describing.
Richard,
Even if he was (which is unlikely, given that he didn’t seem shy of presenting examples) why would that make any difference? If you really think me doing something different would somehow fix the climate policy debate, then you’d seem to be suggesting that I have far more influence than I’m pretty sure I have.
“Has it occured to anyone that Pielke Jr was talking about our dear old Wottsywotts?”
I don’t think he meant “Engage with those with whom you disagree and make it personal”. ;o)
“It also allows GWPF to pat themselves on the back for engaging with someone who believes in a carbon tax.”
While the Josh the GWPF cartoonist found room for three dozen other memes , he literally left carbon taxes out of the picture linked above
I love me moralizing atheists.
They are objectively worse than the dang Calvinist who preached to me as a kid that dancing
was evil.
““It also allows GWPF to pat themselves on the back for engaging with someone who believes in a carbon tax.”
While the Josh the GWPF cartoonist found room for three dozen other memes , he literally left carbon taxes out of the picture linked above”
hence the word “allows” rather than “forces”
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2017/08/05/manichean-paranoia/#comment-100785
Would you be willing to unpack that a little more, Mr. Mosher? I confess my knee-jerk reaction to it is as follows:
“Deflect much, Steven? Play the victim much? Make mountains out of ‘alarmist’ speed bumps while excusing cognitively motivated pseudo-skepticism much?”
It’s possible I’ve misinterpreted you, however.
> Would you be willing to unpack that a little more, Mr. Mosher
I’d rather not. This usually turns into playing the ref.
angech –
I have a 95/5 theory re marriage which is applicable to most of life.
One person in any relationship does 95% of the work. ..The funny thing is both my wife and I (like everyone else) think we are the one doing the 95%.
Seems to me that in most conflicts, each side is convinced that the otter side is responsible for the problems, yet in my observation most times the responsibility is pretty evenly shared.
What I find is that the problem is that people have trouble recognizing that in fact, both perceptions have a reality. People tend to think that their own reality is negated by the other person’s reality, and thus become attached to their own perceptions (out of a fear of negation) in ways that prevent resolution. As I said, it’s a tough nut to crack.
I’ll try to duplicate a point of his.
We get more expensive energy and vote for that pain to stop. It’s immediate, same as the economy helping to determine who we elect as our President which is a theory with some merit.
So we fund innovation and have a small carbon tax. And then this works and we get innovation that provides clean and affordable energy.
But with the plan in place, the Republican voters were supposed to change their behavior and be more efficient and demand things like better wind turbines. They instead pushed back against the government and for good measure, about any renewable scheme you can find.
High costs of conventional generation was supposed to be blamed on conventional. It is blamed on renewables. We can debate whether they should be blamed, but the point is there is contingent of people with that message and it sells.
So the idea is to get a small amount of pain, not upsetting the Republicans, and getting something that makes economic sense. We did get substantial innovation, causes debatable, with natural gas fracking. That has cushioned the economic pain and propped up wind and solar. And the drive for fracking was not a lofty goal, it was capitalism. One second thought, capitalism is a lofty goal. Natural gas became the needed batteries. I need a battery, this is the cheapest thing that can fulfill the goal, use this instead.
Mosher:
We don’t say ‘objectively’ anymore, Steven, we say ‘intersubjectively’. I can’t verify your assertion, I’m afraid, so it’s possible you’re fooling yourself.
As an atheist, I don’t claim knowledge of ‘good’ or ‘evil’; all I know is what kind of Universe I want to live in. I’ve constructed my own private ‘moral’ system, from which I make ‘moral’ judgments autocratically. Just like you, Steven.
Often I make moral judgments using an internal theory of ‘mind’ or ‘the other’, and my subjective interpretation of an other’s perceptions. How do you make your moral judgments, Steven? Do you have a theory of ‘the other’, or are you alone in your subjective Universe?
Is there an intersubjectively-verifiable rationale for doing anything at all, even taking/not taking your next breath, Steven? What kind of Universe do you want to live in? What makes your life subjectively worth living? Or are your own motives wholly unexamined?
I doubt you know what kind of universe you want to live in Mal.
You might think you do, but I doubt you do.
Very interesting you should raise the issue of other minds.
awesome book.. by one of those calvinists from my childhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_and_Other_Minds
Read it.
lastly. it is most definately objective true, I’d say absolutely certain, that moralizing atheists are way
way worse than any of the annoying calvinists. Guess why!
“It’s possible I’ve misinterpreted you, however.”
Na it’s pretty much certain.
Regardless of who runs a blog then tend to fall into certain enagement patterns. iron laws of blogs.
its got very little to do with the host, or even the players.
FWIW I find Roger Jr. annoying as hell, and probably the most objectively annoying thing in the whole history of the universe was reading exchanges between Joshua and Jr.
Neither of them would be as lucky as heller
Steven Mosher:
Of course you do, Steven. Doubt is your product 8^D!
Knowledge hasn’t been successfully monetized, thankfully.
> We don’t say ‘objectively’ anymore
I do.
Objectively speaking, Richie’s oppositional defiant symptoms lasted beyond the normal six months to diagnoze a disorder.
Just a description.
A unambiguous shared vocabulary is a prerequisite for shared understanding. As we we don’t appear to share a vocabulary, no shared understanding is possible.
> As we we don’t appear to share a vocabulary, no shared understanding is possible.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Well, if we could see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices, then we might be able to enhance our shared understanding.
Discord.
“A unambiguous shared vocabulary is a prerequisite for shared understanding.”
not really. ambiguity is often key to understanding.
however i understand your urges for a mechanistic approach.
try to control them.
Me:
That’s partly because of low demand [testing my ability to embed a jpg image]:
Well, that didn’t work. Is it possible to embed a jpeg in a comment?
FWIW I find Roger Jr. annoying as hell, and probably the most objectively annoying thing in the whole history of the universe was reading exchanges between Joshua and Jr.
I can die contently now, knowing that my life has served a purpose.
> Is it possible to embed a jpeg in a comment?
Yes, just put the link on a line of its own, e.g.:
“I can die contently now, knowing that my life has served a purpose.”
NOW? now? if youd have done it earlier we all would be more content.
Like this?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/By2ftWnIYAIXPpv.jpg:large
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/By2ftWnIYAIXPpv.jpg:large
No, remove “:large” – the line needs to end with “.jpg”.
[Self-snip. Chill, Willard. – Willard]
“Yes, just put the link on a line of its own, e.g.:”
What I see after that line is an actual image, rather than the html source.
> No, remove “:large” – the line needs to end with “.jpg”.
Let’s try it again, shall we?
Huzzahs!
Grrrt.
Found the help page:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/comments/embeds/
Joshua “I can die contently now, knowing that my life has served a purpose.”
A medal of honor? A t-shirt? I doubt somehow you will get it signed.
Steven Mosher says:
“I doubt you know what kind of universe you want to live in Mal.
You might think you do, but I doubt you do. FWIW I find Roger Jr. annoying as hell, and probably the most objectively annoying thing in the whole history of the universe was reading exchanges between Joshua and Jr.
Neither of them would be as lucky as heller”
A universe without flushing toilets becomes eminently desirable for some of us.
Or perhaps it should be full of deep sea divers helmets for emergencies.
“What I find is that the problem is that people have trouble recognizing that in fact, both perceptions have a reality. People tend to think that their own reality is negated by the other person’s reality,”
“Is there an intersubjectively-verifiable rationale for doing anything at all”
“A unambiguous shared vocabulary is a prerequisite for shared understanding”
All three expressions of the fact that we are alone without an ability to know if we can truly communicate with another person.
One way out is to believe that we can unless we are presented with proof that we cannot. As above. Steven and Joshua are not alone in the world.
First this
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-civic-blockchain-token-idUSKBN19D200
later you can monetize all of your personal information and stop giving knowledge about you to google and facebook for free.
” The certainty that your opponents are intrinsically evil and pose an absolute existential threat to human future ”
My opponents are denialists, whose positions are intrinsically contradictory and disorganized. (Has Pielke admitted publicly that if thermal outgassing of CO2 from th ocean is a significant source of its increase in the last 100 years, then there is no way that the so-called Medieval Warm Period was global/oceanic? Have Cristy and Spencer pointed out to the Republicans in congress who invited their[Christy’s] testimony that the satellite observed trend of middle and upper tropospheric temperatures lower than projected by models means climate sensitivity is higher than models estimate?)
My singular ally is intrinsically amoral, and cares not on bit whether it poses an existential threat to human future.
My ally is reality.
“I doubt you know what kind of universe you want to live in…”
I’d much rather know as much as possible about the only choice we have, and I find that science provides more reliable and less subjective answers than prayer, tea leaves, entrails of various sorts, or Tarot cards(originally invented in northern Italy for playing games).
But I’m agnostic, and don’t believe that I can create my own reality.
I also think that convincing the people in the US who do believe that they can create their own reality, or are otherwise so clueless about science* that AGW is not a hoax can ony be done by hard painful experience. Getting them to give up the lazy lifestyle that fossil fuel affords may come after global warming driven disasters, but I wouldn’t bet against doubling down on stupid. The hard lessons are much more likely under Donald Trump and the Republicans than under Hilary Clinton and a hostile Republican congress, and tanking the US economy will reduce CO2 emissions faster than any voluntary program proposed; with Trump’s eff U withdrawal from the Paris accords, they stand as much chance as a snowball in Inhofe’s Senate. Plus, the Republicans will get less traction blaming Clinton/Dems with their own guy as president. Which is why I had planned to vote for Trump. (I overslept and didn’t make it to the polls; long TMI story)
* Pew Research poll – “…far fewer are able to identify the property of a sound wave that determines loudness. Just 35% correctly answer amplitude, or height. Some 33% incorrectly say it is frequency and 23% say it is wavelength. And just 34% correctly state that water boils at a lower temperature in a high-altitude setting (Denver) than near sea level (Los Angeles).” Let aone understand why.
” Twenty-two percent of Americans incorrectly say that astronomy – not astrology – is the study of how the positions of stars and planets can influence human behavior.”
and “46% identify the correct image showing the lines crossing after they pass through a magnifying glass.”
An 11-question test developed by Jon Miller, the director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at the University of Michigan found ” only 37 percent agreed with the (true) claim that “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” and a full 53 percent agreed with the (false) claim that “the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.”
Those who fail to learn the lessons of past extinctions are doomed.
@-SM
“lastly. it is most definately objective true, I’d say absolutely certain, that moralizing atheists are way
way worse than any of the annoying calvinists. Guess why!”
Because they impose far greater constraints on individual freedom of thought ??
(sarc/off)
Plantinga, REALLY ?!
http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/horner-logic.shtml
“A unambiguous shared vocabulary is a prerequisite for shared understanding.”
[interesting video – poor kid!]
“Well, if we could see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices, then we might be able to enhance our shared understanding.”
“not really. ambiguity is often key to understanding. however i understand your urges for a mechanistic approach. try to control them.”
I should just point out, there is no shortage of people on line with autistic spectrum disorders, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, especially when discussing technical or scientific subjects. If someone asks you to use unambiguous language, it is not an unreasonable request, and sometimes you may be excluding someone from the discussion by being willfully opaque, when they are not being dim and are doing their best to understand.
I also don’t think ambiguity in science communication is key to helping people understand things (although of course experimental/observational data is often ambiguous/equivocal).
For an example of something a bit closer to actual evil, there is the current twitter storm between Profs. Nassim Taleb and Mary Beard, which started over a BBC educational cartoon about Roman Britain, which featured an African character. In that case there is no reason for denial, none of us loose anything by considering how Roman Britain would view diversity and it seems purely about tribal identity (cultural, ethnic, gender and sciences-v-humanities). Sadly climate change is not the only topic that brings out the worst in some (and the best in “otters” – see I’m doing my best to adapt to vocabulary ;o). I suspect that some of the things that have been tweeted would not have been said in a face to face meeting between the parties, but sadly there is a fair amount that I suspect would.
Dikran, we’re talking Nassim Taleb – he wars with just about everyone.
See the RationalWiki entry on Taleb
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
I fully expect Taleb to be a really unpleasant person in person, too.
Maybe we need some kind of social media metric that indicates just how much of a jerk someone is?
Of course, there may be some that think it ironic that I’m suggesting such a thing 🙂
He blocked me for pointing out his errors and/or misreading of Prof. Beard’s tweets (I did say he was being thin-skinned, but that was rather mild compared to some of the things he wrote, and he did prove me right by blocking me ;o). The hubris regarding a field other than his own (surely most of us grow out of the science-v-humanities thing as we grow up?) is rather familiar from the debate on climate (e.g. carbon cycle researchers being wrong on the most fundamental aspect of climate change, i.e. the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2, which is hubris on a truly monumental scale!).
I hope I don’t get one of his papers to review, I’d probably have to decline on the grounds that his behaviour might potentially bias my review.
“I should just point out, there is no shortage of people on line with autistic spectrum disorders, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, especially when discussing technical or scientific subjects. If someone asks you to use unambiguous language, it is not an unreasonable request, and sometimes you may be excluding someone from the discussion by being willfully opaque, when they are not being dim and are doing their best to understand.’
The only unambiguous language I know is math.
There is a difference between being stuck with the ambiguity we have and being willfully opaque.
we could engage in parsing what each other say. That typically doesnt end well.
My point. The request to be unambiguous is rather ambiguous.
Does it mean only use words that have one meaning? one meaning in all contexts?
one meaning for me? or one meaning for you? or one meaning for most people?
The alternative is to
1. repeat what you think Im saying in your words.
2. Ask if you got my meaning.
3. Repeat until we agree or agree to disagree.
i would agree that in science we should try to limit ambiguity, however, his request seemed broader than that. Perhaps again, his request was ambiguous.
See how tedious this can be
““lastly. it is most definately objective true, I’d say absolutely certain, that moralizing atheists are way
way worse than any of the annoying calvinists. Guess why!”
Because they impose far greater constraints on individual freedom of thought ??
(sarc/off)’
No, because they dont waste time telling the non elect how to act. you do understand the idea
of election? ah doesnt matter. dont worry. If you not elect, there is nothing you can do.
With moralizing atheists it’s all about imposing constraints.
Brian,
Thank you for answering Mal’s questions. It’s funny how people do that.
“The request to be unambiguous is rather ambiguous.”
At the end of the day, you have to do your best and use your common sense. In electronic engineering this is known as an impedance mismatch, there are three alternatives, adjust the impedance of the sink, adjust the impedance of the source or adjust both sink and source impedances a bit. Put in more general terms, ideally we want to adapt our use of language to maximise the communication of information whilst minimising both our expenditure of (mental) energy and that of the intended recipient (otherwise they are likely to decide that it isn’t worth the effort to understand you even if you have a useful point to make).
Maths isn’t unambiguous (unless perhaps it is entirely abstract “pure” maths) as you need to define what the symbols actually mean. This is often a problem with reviewing papers, sometimes the use of overly complicated mathematical notation serves only to obscures the idea.
“There is a difference between being stuck with the ambiguity we have and being willfully opaque.”
I certainly agree there.
Ah, that won’t work either, here is another one, perhaps this will work.
Perhaps I should have written “If someone asks you to use straightforward language, it is not an unreasonable request”?
Since people mention ambiguous language, this article on academic language and the problem of meaninglessness seems relevant.
Steven Mosher:
Well, that’s actually useful information, Steven, even if it is pretty far off topic. Thanks 8^).
Interesting article ATTP
But, and this should go without saying, if people are actually trying to communicate with one another their words need to have meaning, …”
that is a big “if”! I suspect quite a lot of opaque academic writing is the equivalent of a silverback gorilla beating his chest. ;o)
I agree with the point (if I understood it) about the requirements of different fields being different and some subjects being harder than others to communicate effectively.
“Taking ___ Seriously.”
In computing it used to be
“___ Considered Harmful.”
I’m not sure which is more offensive!
> For an example of something a bit closer to actual evil, there is the current twitter storm between Profs. Nassim Taleb and […]
Let’s stop reading right there and recall:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/speedoscience/
I have no idea what Willard is saying there.
I think the relevance is that Taleb appears in the SpeedoScience post. Also, Speedoscience is meant to sound like pseudoscience, but is a situation where people show to much of themselves when they engage in it – illustrate their biases. That’s my understanding, at least. I don’t always understand Willard either 😉
Ah, most of the “something a bit more evil” I was referring to in my post were tweets not made by Prof. Taleb himself, but by his followers (and to a much lesser extent some of the tweets supporting Prof. Beard, which went a bit far, although it is only human to get angry when we see injustice), which I didn’t make clear. Taleb was mostly the tedious science-v-humanities tribalism (although I am glad I am not on the equality and diversity panel at his institution!). I didn’t understand the SpedoScience article either, but at least I now have a hypothesis that suggests I haven’t done something wrong!
> at least I now have a hypothesis that suggests I haven’t done something wrong!
I too have one or two. You’d like me to share?
“The current twitter storm between Profs. Nassim Taleb and Mary Beard” might not be the best way not to refer to Nassim’s tweets.
SM:
I think I see your error: I’m not telling anyone ‘how to act’, I’m merely assigning moral value to their actions within my subjective moral system.
Steven, of course you are existentially and politically free to publicly deny that AGW has already caused injury, quantifiable by intersubjectively-agreed metrics, to other individual persons who AFAICT subjectively interpret the injury as tragedy. I’m equally free to say “shame on you, Steven Mosher“, and to exhort others to say it also. Ain’t free speech grand?
Ahem: from both moral and pragmatic reasoning, I can’t dismiss reasonable concerns you may have for your physical safety from unreasoning mobs. Collective decisions often traverse at least one slippery slope, a good reason for individuals to be leary of them. If that’s what our dispute is about, Steven, please say so.
Nor is CF&D with BAT “all about imposing constraints”. At ‘worst’, it’s about collectively, i.e. politically, constraining the existential freedom of individual fossil fuel producers to enjoy private wealth ‘beyond the dreams of avarice’ by socializing the marginal climate-change costs of their products. On my moral judgment, consequentialist libertarians are permitted to go on cherishing flush and/or sanitarily waterless toilets, along with other affordable private dreams. Deontological libertarians, OTOH, are on their own ;^).
And of course, Steven, you and I are just two US voters. You vote according to your private moral system, I vote according to mine; whomever sides with a legal plurality of our fellow voters, ‘wins’. Largely because moral systems are subjective, not every voter can expect to ‘win’ every time. If you and I vote the same way, we both win, with no need to resolve residual ambiguity. That’s how collective decisions are made under popular sovereignty; in my a-theistic understanding, at least.
> I’m not telling anyone ‘how to act’, I’m merely assigning moral value to their actions within my subjective moral system.
By the same token, Nassim calls his opponents “retard” not because he wants them to change, but because he likes to describe and assign value according to his own moral system.
You’re clutching at straws, Mal. Own your schtick.
Hmmm, I am totally against obscure language in academia, but I have to defend ambiguity a bit. It makes ordinary conversations much more fun – and creates social bonds. Here is an article I wrote years ago which contains quite a few jargon terms from linguistic pragmatics (I am sorry to say) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216699001320
brigitte,
Interesting. I’d never thought of something like that; that there might be situations where people are essentially obscure for effect.
Quite difficult to have a good joke without some ambiguity (the “ceiling people” one was very good). Of course it can also be quite useful for winding people up and being annoying (weakening social bonds). Got as far as section 4 and only had to look up six words so far ;o)
ATTP like being English? ;o)
> I’d never thought of something like that; that there might be situations where people are essentially obscure for effect.
What Eli or Russell do is in line but not exactly how conversationalists proceed:
I surmise that before meaning anything, one must mean well. So communication is both production and seduction, to borrow from a French po-mo guy I can’t recall the name right now.
Willard,
Indeed, now that you mention it, I should have been well aware of people who are obscure for effect 🙂
I suggest we ban ’em.
Willard:
Uhmm, no problem, if I take your meaning?
I think my ‘schtick’ is publicly passing my private moral judgment on virtual individuals who publicly deny, explicitly or otherwise, that AGW is a Drama of the Commons that has already ended tragically for literal individuals. Virtual others are free to react with virtual fury. By the same token, I’m free to subjectively interpret any responses as virtual evidence for something, subjectively pejorative or not. I thought that’s what we’re doing here.
I’m afraid that’s as unambiguous as I can make myself. Of course, I could be misinterpreting your vocabulary and/or phrasing. Regardless, it’s your blog, your rules.
“sometimes the use of overly complicated mathematical notation serves only to obscures the idea.”
For example, over at Tamino’s where he discusses a recent paper by Boretti/Parker:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/can-albertalberto-parkerboretti-handle-the-math/
Key quote from Tamino:
Ambiguity is your friend if your goal is to make the other person think you’ve said something they agree with (e.g., you’re a politician talking to a voter) but want to be able to deny their interpretation later on (e.g. they voted for you and now you want to take away their health care, and they are angry because they think you were going to make it better).
Hmmm. Comment awaiting moderation. Maybe because I have the d-word in it?
Bob,
Not sure, possibly.
Bob, I don’t mind people spelling out (fairly) standard stuff in papers, especially if the main author is a student (or someone moving fields) as they may not be that confident and merely want to make sure the reviewer can easily find a mistake if they have made it and easily explain exactly where it has arisen. The again, maybe I am not as confident about these things as Tamino.
One thing is true though is that putting a few standard equations in is probably quite good for making your stuff look properly sciency when you blog about it. ;o)
“but want to be able to deny their interpretation later on ”
yes, that is very much the downside of ambiguity
> I’m free to subjectively interpret any responses as virtual evidence for something, subjectively pejorative or not. I thought that’s what we’re doing here
Then it should follow that what your “interpretation” (again with the distanciation) does goes beyond a mere observation, and that it condemns something.
That you’re not prescribing anything specific doesn’t mean you’re not prescribing at all. At the very least you’re conveying the idea that one ought to do something that doesn’t fit under your interpretation. What relevance would your comments have otherwise?
Compare and contrast:
(1) Science can’t prescribe anything specific because one cannot derive an ought from an is.
(2) ClimateBall players can interpret responses as evidence of something pejorative or not without passing judgments because it doesn’t prescribe anything specific.
The first argument has been made by Junior to justify is Honest Broker stance. The second argument is the one you’re making right now. I don’t see any tangible difference, and I think both arguments are wrong.
Is that clearer?
Oh so that’s how you spell it.
Never did like NNT.
Bob Loblaw:
Yes. Scientists, OTOH, adopt a specialized ‘packed’ vocabulary, or ‘jargon’, made up of words and phrases from common language that can be sufficiently disambiguated by text; e.g. ‘degree’ and ‘global’, but not ‘catastrophic’ or ‘evil’. Without that foundation it’s too easy to fool themselves and each other, rendering intersubjective (formerly, ‘objective’) verification powerless to discern truth or falsehood. In my humble schtick.
That was quite good.
In fact, I was a bit disappointed in that 8^(!
Missed much of the party, but FWIW 🙂
To be even clearer, I do confess my bias for zest and gusto:
http://michispencer.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb-antifragile/
Take away naming, shaming, and blaming and the blogosphere disappears.
@-SM
“No, because they dont waste time telling the non elect how to act. you do understand the idea of election?”
And yet Sunday trading, or any actions other than church attendance, have been strongly resisted by the Scottish Calvinists via legal means until recently.
Apparently even the unelected offend Calvinist if they have fun on Sunday.
Willard:
Ah, more disambiguation needed. I am ‘condemning’ in some manner of speaking, although I’m unaware of any deity I could effectively invoke. Partially from private ‘moral’ reasoning, I might argue in favor of proscriptions, e.g. by duly regulating coal. I prescribe, FWIW, CF&D with BAT; I haven’t thought of a recommended nudge on the ‘free’ market from the visible hand as ‘condemnation’, but I’m subjectively sure Exxon’s lawyers could argue that ad infinitum et absurdum in their own specialized vocabulary.
‘Interpretation’ may need disambiguation also. While I reject strawman radical deconstructionism’s conclusion that no belief about ‘the real world’ is more justified than any other, post-Po-Mo I have come to replace ‘objective’ with ‘intersubjective’ ;^). I therefore maintain that my condemnation can hardly be anything but an interpretation.
As I’ve been at pains to point out, however, my ‘interpretation’ neither existentially (ever) nor legally (for the most part, yet) compels anyone, not even me; hey, I’m an existential autocrat just like you 8^D! And you each have as much responsibility for choosing specific legal compulsions, or none, as I do. I’m just sayin’ 8^|!
What else can I say in text alone?
Thanks Willard!
Take those away from AGW and there’s nothing to argue about.
> I therefore maintain that my condemnation can hardly be anything but an interpretation.
Fair enough, Mal. As long as you don’t fall for the Honest Broker’s “there’s no fact/value dichotomy, but I can present just the facts if I take care of presenting myself as a progressive, blue dog Democrat,” all is well.
It’s not what one says one believes that counts, it’s what one does with one’s beliefs.
Climatologists caught lecturing in Speedos are liable to be stoned with climateballs at the audeince’s discretion.
If climate scientists can dodge wrenches, they can dodge balls:
bbd, thanks for posting one of my favorites from my misspent youth! Great stuff. Meanwhile, I’d suggest another narrative that fits with RPJr, who imho gets too much tolerance from people who wish to see the good in people (a nice trait, I admit). Here’s the short Rovian list via Luntz from Schopenhauer: Entangle, Demoralize, Attack, Confuse, Contain, Intimidate, Insult, Deceive, Demean. I also note that people like RPJr and Tol make nice salaries doing what they do, and defending it is their bread and butter. RPJr’s complicit behavior with Republican Congressional deniers does not speak well of his open mindedness. The demands for staying open seem to be a one-way street when it comes to the vast variety of confirming evidence and science he wishes to diminish.
I didn’t show up here to do that, however, but to provide some brief light relief courtesy of Gilbert and Sullivan’s King Gama:
If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am:
I’m a genuine philanthropist — all other kinds are sham.
Each little fault of temper and each social defect
In my erring fellow-creatures, I endeavour to correct.
To all their little weaknesses I open people’s eyes;
And little plans to snub the self-sufficient I devise;
I love my fellow creatures — I do all the good I can —
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
To compliments inflated I’ve a withering reply;
And vanity I always do my best to mortify;
A charitable action I can skillfully dissect;
And interested motives I’m delighted to detect;
I know everybody’s income and what everybody earns;
And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns;
But to benefit humanity however much I plan,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
I’m sure I’m no ascetic; I’m as pleasant as can be;
You’ll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I’ve an irritating chuckle, I’ve a celebrated sneer,
I’ve an entertaining snigger, I’ve a fascinating leer.
To everybody’s prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman’s age in half a minute — and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
And I can’t think why!
(S/)He can’t think why!
“adopt a specialized ‘packed’ vocabulary,”
…one of which is mathematics. I could say something like
…but it is a lot easier to write
You can only read that if you speak mathematics, though. Like if I wrote this in French, you’d only be able to read it if you know French or can get it translated into a language you know.
Susan Anderson cuts through the crap again:
Ms. Anderson, please consult with Senator Warren about entering politics. Our country needs you.
I see people like RPJr as rent-seekers. They need to make sure the controversy continues, so that there is something to “broker”, and then they need to be seen as that broker so that they can profit from it (whether that is money, status, career profile, being a Very Important Person, being invited to all the right parties, or whatever floats their boat).
BBD: absofreakin’lutely. Hell no, I’m an existential autocrat and I won’t go!
And there’s nothing like a faceful of CS and a police baton in the junk to make an instant radical out of a draft-age guy, I can assure you.
Willard:
I’ll be Damned if I do ;^)!
“I don’t mind people spelling out (fairly) standard stuff in papers”
Nor do I, as I have done so myself. In one particular paper, while I was still a grad student, where the standard temperature, humidity, and wind equations were log-normal with height, not linear – and the main purpose of the paper was to illustrate how much easier it was to process multi-height data from multiple sensors when you used it in log form instead of the common two-point linear approximation.
I also had a tendency to put a “Nomenclature” section up front, where I defined all the mathematical symbols/variables I was using. People using the equations every day wouldn’t need that, but needing to wander back through a long paper trying to find where they defined the term you don’t remember is a pain in the @$$.
…but over at Tamino’s you’ll note that I commented about reading a paper (open review, never published) that had engaged in such deep profundification that they didn’t even realize their “new” statistical approach was standard stuff and had invented a new term for something very ordinary.
Bob Loblaw:
To be sure. I’m thinking of words from common language, however. A clever science fiction short story about that was published 60 years ago.
BBD – thanks for the William Empson video – and for people engaging with the ambiguity topic. I’ll have to get back to that properly at some point.
brigittenerlichBrigitte:
No pressure ;^D. There will always be plenty of ambiguity to get back to!
“I’m thinking of words from common language, however”
Interesting anecdote. I worked in France for 6 months many years ago. I became reasonable fluent in French, but near the end of the period a uni-lingual francophone started reading numbers to me to write down. I couldn’t do it. My brain was still wired to do numbers in English, even when I was reading text in French. It’s a different language. It wasn’t necessary to distinguish between numbers in English or numbers in French (when reading or writing) because they were just numbers. Numbers and mathematics are their own symbolism, independent of the language they are being used in. Only when we speak them do they take on a different language.
You don’t have to be a Manichean paranoid to hit on Hiroshima bombs as a metric for radiatve forcing, but it helps:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/08/there-goes-sun.html
fun to watch Mal try to clear up the ambiguity in his positions..there is a relationship to the moralizing here too.
anyway.
language is more than communication.
its rarely just me giving information to you.
oh. my suitcase is blue.
my plane leaves at 12pm Beijing time. terminal 3.
just the facts
on an unrelated note ask yourselves how many times you have struggled to understand willard…and then went AHA..
isnt that objectively more pleasureable more effective than just a straightforward statement of fact. oh I need clean socks.
and think about the pure joy of climateball speak and spedoscience metaphors
ill take the dance and flourish and messy ambiguity every day. come to think of it its better communication.
Steven Mosher:
And I’m obliged to our host for allowing me to do so, as I’m quite clear on my positions myself. I hope you enjoy the same opportunity at some point, Steven ;^).
Perhaps this will help communication,I learnt it 30 years ago but this is the closest version I could find
“Indicate the route to my abode
I’m fatigued and desire to retire
I imbibed some light refreshments 60 minutes ago
And it went straight to my cerebellum
Where ever I may perambulate
over land or sea or agitated ocean
You will always hear me chanting this melody
Indicate the route to my abode”
Saying I am on the same page as all of you does not mean I understand most anything of what you are saying, ☹️.
mal.
my position？
im in the back of a taxi.
attp.
hayhoe video was nice.
interesting perspective.
question. if you were to engage with Jr or
richie what values would you start with？
honest question. i am stumped in regards to how i would start
quasi nihilist at times.
Your suitcase being blue may be a fact, but it is not unambiguous. There are many shades of blue. That kind of ambiguity can be useful, also in science, because we only know things within a confidence interval. Climate change or global change are ambiguous terms, but can be useful to explain why a specific problem is interesting.
“question. if you were to engage with Jr or richie what values would you start with？”
That is one reason why Pielke’s first suggestion, “talk and listen in person with those you most disagree with”, does not work. Within science it still works somewhat (but even there is would be naive to assume everyone is reachable for open debate on any topic). In the public debate, which I assume Pielke talked about, it is likely more fruitful to talk to people you disagree with somewhat, but talking to people you disagree with most is very likely a complete waste of time. Better people in middle do so.
victor.
you seem to be disagreeing with hayhoe.watch her video. attp liked it.
gav8n too.
just sayin you might.
sky blue. unambiguously not red.
think of blues as a confidence interval.
Look at who RT-ed this:
Why do you think I disagree?
> im in the back of a taxi.
Then you might like:
Something has gone missing in the discussion about reality and theory wrt the existence of the GWPF. Of course in a free country organizations that are not seditious have a right to exist (though it is arguable that in terms of long-term survival of the fittest, the GWPF is not helping). But one major purpose of the GWPF in the UK (we have similar organizations in the US, and there is some coordination between them and GWPF, and overlapping memberships) is to provide politicians with canned information that either misleads them or provides them with cover for their looting and burning ways. The GWPF seems to be leading rather than supporting May’s climate policy. This is not OK.
There’s a graphic showing overlap with our Kochtopus and climate denial organizations across the pond in the Brexit campaign. As a result, for example, land-based wind is not proceeding, a dangerous delusion, while fracking is being promoted for public lands and shoved on communities that don’t want it. They may discover, as we have, that this makes people angry enough to act.
[Mal, thanks for the compliment, but I am not charismatic and too old. I try to be active, no doubt that could be more. Warren is a force of nature, I agree.]
Steven,
I don’t know either, but a few thoughts. I agree with the mantra that facts aren’t enough, but what they aren’t enough for is to persuade people (or, to convince people). I think it’s great that some people go out and find common ground so that they can identify with groups who are dubious. Not everyone, however, has to do this.
Also, Jr and Tol and not simply members of the public; they are experts in this general area. I don’t think that someone like me should have to find some kind of common ground so as to engage with people like Jr and Tol. They should be receptive to facts, in my view at least.
Victor,
Let me clarify what I meant. When I first started listening I didn’t really agree either. However, what the video did well was to provide alternatives and explain those well. It’s nice change from those who keep highlighting that facts aren’t enough, or that we should move on from consensus messaging (which isn’t really a focus anyway), but who don’t present (to me, at least) some kind of viable/clear alternative.
I don’t think everyone should do what Katharine Hayhoe is doing, but I do think we should applaud those who are findings ways to engage with groups that are predominantly dubious about climate change.
Bob, missed your comment, will re-read.
“that had engaged in such deep profundification that they didn’t even realize their “new” statistical approach was standard stuff and had invented a new term for something very ordinary.”
Sadly a fairly common occurrence. ISTR a very eminent prof. in my field once saying that “the best place to find a new machine learning algorithm is in an old statistics journal” (or words to that effect) ;o) Detecting these things in peer review (and preventing the embarrassment of the authors) is one of the things a reviewer can do to help a fellow academic (if there is a peer review). Have seem some examples in my time 😦
Dubious about climate change? No
No.
Dubious about human caused Climate change being extreme and severe and bad.
It is all one way traffic with no stop lights , no pause lights and No discussion.
No one is prepared to give one inch on this thus making the title of the blog sadly true.
Manichean.
Back to the sesquipedalian nature of the comments which will at least not hurt my feelings due to my naivety in regards to orthogonal and didactic repetitive syntax.
angech,
I’m meant dubious that it could be severe and bad and that it is something we should be considering addressing.
“Dubious about human caused Climate change being extreme and severe and bad.
It is all one way traffic with no stop lights , no pause lights and No discussion.”
err.. I don’t think that is entirely fair.
angech
‘Extreme’ ‘severe’ and ‘bad’ aren’t sufficiently disambiguated to be intersubjectively verifiable. Just how bad do you need AGW to be before you’ll vote for something like Carbon Fee and Dividend? Are you willing to talk about quantitative measures? Do you accept that AGW has already resulted in some number of premature human deaths, for example? I’ll cite peer-reviewed evidence if you insist.
Victor Venema:
I ‘unequivocally’ agree with the quoted sentences. AFAICT, we’re coming to the same conclusion by slightly different paths. I’ll enclose some words with residual ambiguity in this context in single quotes; I’ll unpack ‘global’ further.
I’m looking at ‘Science’ as a human cultural institution that evolved to address problems of survival and reproduction that all organisms face. While incorporating older cultural trends, it arose primarily in Europe after 1500 ‘CE’, and has since been ‘globally’ adopted, i.e. ‘found in a majority of countries, if not with equal uptake’.
You and I opened this discussion on stoat a few years back: I maintain that as a social phenomenon, ‘intersubjective verification’ or ‘peer-review’ sensu lato is at Science’s foundations along with ’empiricism’. Its early practitioners communicated their ’empirical’ findings to each other through written language on animal skin or plant fiber media. They identified the need to use language that was unambiguous enough for their ‘peers’ to verify their specific results, but recognized that further disambiguation was seldom ‘cost-effective’.
‘Science’ was more successful at explaining and predicting ‘reality’ than all previous cultural institutions, e.g. haruspicy. Its language has been unambiguous enough to swell the ‘global’ human population, i.e. ‘summed over all countries’, by a factor of ‘approximately’ 15 in ‘approximately’ five centuries.
Both of those numbers have ‘confidence’ limits around them, but are unambiguous enough that anyone with sufficient scientific training and discipline can verify they represent ‘unprecedented’ (“Quantity has a quality all its own.” -attrib. Joe Stalin) challenges to human survival and reproduction on a ‘global’ scale; i.e. ‘affecting every human on Earth from now into the foreseeable (within confidence limits) future’. To date they are either too ambiguous, or perhaps not ambiguous enough, to solve those problems on a ‘global’ scale.
Unless you ask, I’ll allow you to disambiguate that last ‘global’ yourself. Would you like me to disambiguate more? Otherwise I’ll assume you do too know what I mean 8^D.
@-angtech
“Dubious about human caused Climate change being extreme and severe and bad.”
I am dubious about human caused Climate change being moderate and mild and good.
Is this a Manichean opposition, or does the difference in the potential ‘regret at being wrong’ matter?
It’s not about ‘truth’. Science is a thought process that uses technology to alter reality. A.I. or A-Bombs it’s the same process. I learned this watching Rick & Morty.
Over on the skeptics blogs there is an uproar over biased Google and Bing search results. They don’t seem to realize that the search engines are A.I. machines. If the collective consensus of the web is that AGW is real it’s because most of the humans connected to net believe that too, probably from first hand experience of extreme weather events.
OT: if Nick Stokes is following, I suspect that nobody can comment on the new topics at Moyhu.
JCH,
Why?
Steven Mosher:
Full-time gig?
I think it’s happened before. Spam comments; adjust filters; some commenters locked out. Nick has a great website, so I’m not complaining, but Olof and Uli, etc. often comment and I’m wondering whether or not they can get through.
Another OT: I’ve been trying to entice Paul Clark(sp?) to update Wood for Trees. It’s been forever since GISS has updated. If anybody knows him, I’ll donate to him to get his site back up to snuff. Genuine oil money.
Late to the party here! I watched Manichaean Paranoia.
Several of you accuse Pielke Jr. of not accepting facts. What are the specific facts you claim he does not accept, and are you referring to something in his discontinued blog entries, his “storm” graphs and reports, his casualty insurance reports, statements in his books, and/or something in the lecture and Q&A period that I just watched?
Douglass,
Where are such claims made?
This is very strange. Am I misinterpreting the implication that “and if RPJr. has no pecuniary motive to deny AGW, then he’s guilty ‘merely’ of fooling himself” he’s fooling himself about, and not accepting some fact(s). Does he reject AGW?
or “More likely the sports people were either catching on to his act” again refers to him not accepting or misrepresenting facts about himself or something else?
There are many more pejorative comments about him that, it seems to me, obliquely if not directly, refer to his rejection of something very basic, but that rejection of something basic basic is never spelled out. Does Pielke Jr. agree on both first principles and on the climate data that we all consider essential?
Douglass,
Possibly not, but you might need to be specific about which comments you’re responding to. The main theme of the post, though, is about his talk that attempts to make suggestions about improving the climate policy debate.
Variable Variability, Hotwhopper, Rabett, Moyhu, and uknowispeaksense are all down. Here’s hoping it’s just a glitch.
Are they all blogspot blogs?
aTTP, Mr. Allen quoted my first comment. Mr. Allen, Roger Pielke Jr. is considered by many climate realists to have staked his academic career in Political Science on playing both sides against the middle; a common career strategy in academia, to be sure. The GWPF is considered by many climate realists to be a professional disinformation services firm, largely funded by fossil fuel wealth in an effort to delay the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. The specific charge against RPJr here is that he appears to deny the GWPF’s actual mission, and enhances its specious claims to legitimacy by lending his academic credentials.
Mal, you are so much clearer than I was. ’nuff said.
aTTP, dunno. Just noticed in your blogroll because I was thinking of HotWhopper.
[OT: does anyone know anything about Jon Rappoport? Emergent (not new, but more visible) US denialist gaining prominence. I’m still stuck in family care, so am less engaged than I’d like to be. I did google, so if you don’t know, nothing is an OK answer.]
They’re back in business.
> Am I misinterpreting
Are you seriously arguing by just asking questions, DouglassA?
The blogger blogs seem to be working at the moment. I do get double traffic at the moment from URL spammers in massive spikes. uknowispeaksense is on WordPress and it looks like he deleted his blog. Hope he is okay.
ATTP:
which facts is Jr not receptive to?
> which facts is Jr not receptive to?
Start here:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/poor-roger/
Then follow the links therein.
After that, there’s my favorite:
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/08/roger-pielke-jr-s-inkblot/
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. ”
1. I see no specific fact here
“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.”
1. I see no facts here.
2. Having a questionable interpretation is not being unwilling to recognize certain facts.
3. Annan Hearsay?
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).”
The rest of this seems to be about his personality.
I think Peilke is annoying. Style wise. But I have yet to see him say anything that was outside
the climate science consensus as defined by the definitive investigations of Cook.
His disagreeements tend to be on peripheral matters, matters where the science ( or facts if you like) are less settled.
Ah Pielke on probability.
reminds me of Mann and un centered PCA
I have no doubt we can ine his writings for getting things wrong and digging in his heels.
I was more concerned about his resistance to climate science facts.
“James and Roger also exchanged posts that involved explaining probability to an undergraduate, but I can’t seem to find it.”
Is this it, perhaps? For me the problem is not that he got things wrong, and dug his heels in, but that he went so far beyond what what in the paper in his blog presentation of the argument, which is not very “honest broker”. It is a shame that the comments on Roger’s blog haven’t survived, ISTR a nice discussion of the point in making probabilistic predictions rather than certain ones, but perhaps it was elsewhere.
“reminds me of Mann and un centered PCA”
nice use of deflection, very subtle ;o)
@-SM
“I was more concerned about his resistance to climate science facts.”
I thought his MO was to avoid engaging with climate science facts, confining his analysis to secondary interpretation so that doubt is cast on the science, (no disaster cost attributable to climate change) – with plausible deniability.
> I was more concerned about his resistance to climate science facts.
In return, I am not that concerned about that concern, since it’s far from clear that it’s relevant to anything. Over the years, you ought to know that Junior’s into plausible deniability, always. So I don’t feel the need to be your monkey here and will recall episodes because younger ClimateBall players ought to know.
There was the one between BrianS (from Eli’s fame) and Junior:
Junior’s issues are more about logic and deeds than fact and personality. But yeah, Junior seems to deny the time asymmetry thing. And considering that ALL the comments from Junior’s archives are now gone, he may also be denying the past a bit. Stalin-like? You be the judge!
Some ClimateBall archeology made me discover old new episodes, like this one:
[Eli] Do you agree or disagree that there has been an organized, well-financed effort to stop or delay action on AGW? (My answer is that this happened)
[Junior] Agree.
[Eli] Do you believe that that action has been effective or do you claim that the same policy path would have been followed in any case. (My answer is that the campaign was effective and a different policy path would have been followed, although it would not have completely met the challenge. If nothing else I can point to the tobacco case as an exemplar)
[Junior] Don’t know. It is not clear to me that there is any quantifiable relationship between political advocacy, policy commitments, and greenhouse gas emissions (except as you point out those policies implemented for non GHG reasons which have GHG effects, a big lesson there). For the flip side look at Europe. The actual effects of post-FCCC GHG mitigation advocacy and policies on real-world GHG emissions in Europe, where there is no serious organized opposition to GHG policies, is pretty hard to see. One thing they teach us in policy school is to be careful about policy evaluation by counter factual. Data is always better.
[Eli] Point 2: The organized campaign against action on AGW produced qualitatively different US energy policies. Quantitative measures of might have beens are not on offer.
(Note to John – if one maintains that the actions of the denialists should be ignored because they had no effect they carry no responsibility for their actions. While the Exxons will have to be at the table, they should have to work hard to earn trust and good will and bear costs in proportion to their responsibility. )
Claims wrt the EU are tricky. First, Kyoto and the fccc give no credit for good emissions policies before ~1990. Second, because the answer depends on which EU. Almost all of the increase in the EU 15 has been in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece. Per capita GHG emissions from the non-Warsaw pact EU is substantially below the US. You could make the same point wrt to the states in the US, which shows both policies which must be adopted and the places where we must concentrate.
This is a good example how one must look at data in detail to make policy and that mixing things together is good for making sausage.
[Junior] On #3: […]
Spot the squirrels.
The exchange (let’s not kid ourselves – it’s not what I would call a conversation) soon broke off and went in at least two other places.
While ClimateBall archeology is fun, it takes some work. Most links get deprecated after a while, so it’s hard to keep track of the times and the lines. However, sometimes one gets lucky enough to find a roadmap:
Most of the important links seem to work, except those at Junior’s old gig. Did I tell you that Junior deleted his old blog too?
And yes, MT’s troubles implicate Junior – he’s the one who sent an email to Morano about MT.
Coincidence? You be the judge!
For those who aren’t in the know, when I say “Coincidence? You be the judge!” I am referring to Junior’s usage:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2013/02/interesting-timing-to-be-removed-from.html
This episode showed that Junior’s black helicopters make no sound – readers only hear them in their heads.
When Junior uses a smiley, reach for your wallet.
Is it a coincidence that after a comment that ends with MT‘s
Junior fails to respond while almost raising concerns:
?
You be the judge!
To clarify where the above exchange between Eli and Junior, let’s cut and paste this whole follow-up comment by Eli:
From megalomania to paranoia.
When it matters, Eli can be quite clear.
Junior did not respond. In fact, Junior disappeared after being wowed by MT.
Let’s wonder why.
It’s the stories that Willard is highlighting that makes it difficult (for me, at least) to be all that sympathetic towards Roger’s “woe is me!” narrative. There is something to be said for taking some responsibility for the position one is in, and also some responsibility for how one might have contributed to the poor situation we are in today (with respect to dialogue about climate).
While ClimateBall players wonder why Junior left the building a bit before having contacted Marc Morano, let’s put Junior’s argument into pragmatic perspective:
[1] Some sort of comments give far more ammo to your political enemies than anything Junior could ever say or do.
[2] Junior himself promoted in the Contrarian Matrix comments about which he’s raising concerns, e.g. Al’s heavy ones, Jim’s megalomaniac ones, MT’s fascist ones, etc.
[3] Junior washes his hands over any kind of responsibility regarding Eli’s points by placing the blame for inaction on those who want action not those who have blocked the action (cf. 1).
Considering that Junior participated and still participates in the organized campaigns by the Contrarian Matrix, it seems to me that Junior’s (Honest Broker) stance is at best self-serving.
> There is something to be said for taking some responsibility for the position one is in, and also some responsibility for how one might have contributed to the poor situation we are in today (with respect to dialogue about climate).
Jinx.
Perhaps the best way to look at Junior’s shenanigans with the Moranos of this world is to put it into the Broker perspective:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/03/honest-broker-and-yellow-pages-pielke.html
Junior’s own brokering activities speak for themselves, and as any ClimateBall players can see, they go beyond personality.
Good quote on what brokers do from Eli there.
Thanks, BBD.
This quote shows that Junior’s concern brokering is more a feature than a pathology.
This is fun…
I have noted with interest previously that we have this:
In contrast to this:
And now I find that I can add this:
“It’s the stories that Willard is highlighting that makes it difficult (for me, at least) to be all that sympathetic towards Roger’s “woe is me!” narrative.”
why would ones sympathies matter in any case.?
I am still looking for some of those consensus science facts that Jr. refuses to accept.
Of course roger is annoying. but I thought we had turned to the facts roger refused to accept.
Is he a boy behaving badly on the internet? well duh.
Steven,
They don’t, but why else would he keep telling his stories?
Okay, I didn’t make this claim and I don’t think it is quite this simple. What I’ve seen is that Roger will highight things that are true, but not the whole picture. Or, he interprets – for example – the lack of a stastically significant trend as an indication that there is no trend. The irony here is that part of his presentation was suggesting that we need to be aware of how what we say is interpreted. Well, a great deal of what he says is interpreted as either evidence against AGW, or an indication that there is nothing to be done. Well, if he thinks that these intepretations are wrong, and if thinks people should try to avoid saying things that could be misinterpreted, then maybe he should try to avoid this?
Someone asked a question on the internet and people aren’t providing a suitable answer? Well duh 😉
willaard
“In return, I am not that concerned about that concern, since it’s far from clear that it’s relevant to anything”
“Also, Jr and Tol and not simply members of the public; they are experts in this general area. I don’t think that someone like me should have to find some kind of common ground so as to engage with people like Jr and Tol. They should be receptive to facts, in my view at least.”
simple conversation. perhaps you missed it.
SM: I liked Hayhoe, connect on values first to engage ( in talk about the climate)
SM: ATTP what values would you share with Jr?
ATTP: he’s an expert, we dont to connect on values, he needs to be receptive to facts.
Now ordinarly in this context one understands that we are talking about the facts of climate science.
I referred to hayhoe and her piece on talking with skeptics. This whole discussion has been about
engaging with skeptics and yes visiting their vile meetings.
Hayhoe mentions that one shouldd connect on values first. ATTP liked her tweet. so did I . I liked her video. And so the question; ‘what values would you connect with ATTP?”
This is all in the context of discusssing climate science with those who you disagree with.
And ATTPs response is that since jr is an expert, he doesnt expect to start with a meeeting ground
on values, the only thing he expects is a willingness to accept facts, presumably facts about climate science and not ( for example) baseball facts or movie trivia facts.
Comes my question: what facts ( in context facts about climate science ) is jr UNWILLING to accept?
Then comes your volley of squirrels. hint, tossing live squirrels is more entertaining than dead squirrels.
the simple fact is that Jr is annoying for a whole host of reasons.mostly personal, mostly his style in internet debate. I would guess On the SCIENCE, you couldnt point to one significant tenet of climate science agreed to by 97% of us, that Jr. Disagreed with.
he crossed a bunch of green lines. It is far easier to Push him toward the skeptic camp than it is
to own him as part of the very loose consensus of people who believe in the science and are willing to actually do something.. ya, he supports a carbon tax.
Basically you have a choice. Push jr closer to the skeptic camp ( though shalt not testify as an imhoff witness ) or accept Jr as one of those people who basically accepts the climate science we all do, and ignore his boorish behavior ( talking to skeptics, being a bad stylist, being a brat)
“Or, he interprets – for example – the lack of a stastically significant trend as an indication that there is no trend.”
This is a good one. I saw him do that on twitter last night, .. that medium is awesome for making misleading points in 140 chars, .. cause it takes multiple tweets to undo the damage.
> Push jr closer to the skeptic camp ( though shalt not testify as an imhoff witness ) or accept Jr as one of those people who basically accepts the climate science we all do, and ignore his boorish behavior
Can you spell false dilemma? Junior is Junior. He’s here to stay, even if he claims otherwise. He will neverendingly find concerns to broker everywhere he goes.
***
> simple conversation.
Sealions seldom have simple conversations, and you got to admit that brokering concerns is a nice way to respond for Junior’s concern brokering.
***
Speaking of trends:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/extreme-events/#comment-74947
Since Junior built his career over this, I doubt he can hide under the 140 chars excuse.
SM https://www.skepticalscience.com/statisticalsignificance.html is less than 140 characters, if that is of any use. Not got round to part 2 yet, partly because Tamino pretty much did that already.
Willard, the two most important words that can be heard from an honest broker’s lips are:
“Don’t trade.”
I thought they were “trade yourself,” Russell.
I dunno willard.
Seems you will go to any lengths to poisen any attempt to avoid a clean slate engagement with Jr or anyone else who has crossed a green line.
That’s ok. Telling but ok.
=={ Seems you will go to any lengths to poisen any attempt to avoid a clean slate engagement with Jr or anyone else who has crossed a green line.}==
It’s really mean of willard to victimize RPJr. (or anyone else) like that. Bad willard.
> I dunno
Of course you don’t know, Mosh. Look. Junior’s been playing these silly greenline tests before you did. It worked as well for him as it worked for you. Portraying this as a “clean slate” thing goes beyond the limits of justified disingenuousness, for the very same reasons the luckwarm playbook does, incidentally.
Which factual claims do you dispute, BTW? I don’t think you dispute any. Golf clap.
If you’re interested to know which factual claims “science says,” as Junior so elegantly puts it his SREX review, then you should scratch your own itch. At the very least, reading above ought to have told you that Junior can’t even get SREX’ position straight. This is supposed to crown his climate science achievement.
Here’s the alternative I propose. Look what he did with Hansen. With MT. With James. With NG. With Trenberth. I might be missing a few dozens here, it’s a M.O.. If you get the idea that your factual quest is more than irrelevant to Junior’s brokering concerns, I guess I’ll need to add more. There’s the decarbonization episode too, for instance:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/07/theres-word-for-that.html
Besides, our Honest Broker disagrees that we can’t dichotomize facts and values.
Can you spell false dilemma?
Good catch. I suppose the better way to frame it is this.
I observe that certain folks who live on the border, say wadhams or gore, have their lapses erased. While others have their lapses reiterated.
There is no absolute requirement that they be treated exactly the same but the asymmetry is a message. Did berating judith for inviting mcintyre play a role in her journey to the dark side?
I think so.
Speaking of how we speak to enemies. Some peopke sound like trump talking about north korea or isis. Reliving the past is one way re enforcing existing battle lines. If I were funny I might note that the treatment of jr. Is a great recruiting tool.
But I’m sure he would overplay that victim card.
“> I dunno”
Third base.
(Watt’s on second; I find that telling.)
> It’s really mean
That’s too gentle, J. Go for megalomaniac, pathological, or paranoid. Better yet, write a book about it. Then ask for a clean state.
Let’s give Mosh a bathtub instead:
http://standupeconomist.com/roger-pielke-jr-part-ii/
This is getting boring. You can find me in my garden.
Live squirrels willard they work much better.
You remind me of the skeptics who want to re litigate every
Slip up gore made or mann made . The outcome of this approach is basically no movement of battle lines.
Kinda like solving the middle east issues by discussing 1967 all over again.
We get that jr and tol are annoying. So do you want to make peace with your enemies or finish them off? Or some other choice.
It could be the best way forward is to waste no energy on your enemies and just ignore their bad bahavior. I’ll grant it’s more fun to discuss past sins..easier too. It’s part of its own unoriginal matrix.
Since Junior built his career over this, I doubt he can hide under the 140 chars excuse”
Ah willard my point was I could not correct him in 140 characters. And that using Twitter to misrepresent, as he did,
Was effective because it is hard to correct him.
Ya attp. There are a few things that bore me.
Jr discussion.
Tol discussion.
Consensus discussion.
Otherwise discussion here is normally entertaining and instructive.
Waiting to get my brakes fixed and new tires.
Steven,
It’s not called same ol’ same ol’ for nothing. FWIW, I find myself interested in how the debate could be improved. I’m unconvinced that many are genuinely interested in doing so. Would be more then willing to be pleasantly surprised.
“Better yet, write a book about it. Then ask for a clean state.”
Tabula Mosher
“I observe that certain folks who live on the border, say wadhams or gore, have their lapses erased.”
I challenge you to support that statement, especially on this blog. This is the shameful false equivalence that you are so desperate to deny.
The outcome of this approach is basically no movement of battle lines.
Cause and effect? Is it “th[at] approach” that fails to move the battle lines? Well, that approach doesn’t move the battle lines but neither does any other fucking approach so I think that your causality is a bit dubious.
Certainly unlike myself, or maybe willard or perhaps Anders or many of the others engaged in these discussions, RPJr. has instrumentality.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t mix that instrumentality with accountability. As long as he lacks accountability, and fixates in his self-victimization, he doesn’t exercise his instrumentality towards moving the battle lines. It is RPJr. who is responsible. Along with others that have instrumentality. Blaming Anders or willard is sameosameo, doesn’t move the battle lines, and I would say, manifestation of motivated reasoning to boot.
Kinda like solving the middle east issues by discussing 1967 all over again.
Yes, Kinda like that.
RPJr. not being accountable, and blaming the state of affairs as well as his victimhood on others, is kinda like solving the ME issues by discussing 1967.
And just like in the ME, many of those engaged don’t see their way clear to a solution w/o their aggrievements being addressed. Because their aggrivements is what drives their engagement.
Well, except that in the ME, the aggirevements are real and deeply meaningful and inextricable from real suffering. And in RPJr’.’s case, the aggrievements are largely the result of his self-victimization (not completely, mind you, as I do think he has been treated poorly at times) and inextricable from pearl-clutching from fainting couches (with some plausible deniability and some “When did you stop beating your wife?” mixed in for added flavor).
.
It could be the best way forward is to waste no energy on your enemies and just ignore their bad bahavior. I’ll grant it’s more fun to discuss past sins..easier too. It’s part of its own unoriginal matrix.
Hmmm. At first I was going to agree. But then I thought that not wasting energy on your enemies, in and of itself, wouldn’t likely move the battle lines, IMO. Constructive engagement with your enemies would be the way to move the battle lines forward. In fact, I would argue that constructive engagement with your enemies equates to moving the battle lines forward, and nothing else does.
One key part of constructive engagement would be a willingness to be accountable. Accountable to your enemies. Imagine that.
And another key part would be to emancipate your victimhood. That’s a tough one.
OK. Let’s try to find some ballpark:
http://www.robertbryce.com/articles/248-bryce-interviews-roger-pielke-jr-of-the-center-for-science-and-technology-policy-research
Here’s the abstract of the updated paper:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/03/04/differential-temperature-trends-at-the-surface-and-in-the-lower-atmosphere/
Finding the factual disagreements between Senior and (say) the IPCC might be helpful. Not finding any factual disagreement too. What’s quite clear is that Mosh is usually more than agnostic regarding satellite crap, cf. the comment thread.
Perhaps Mosh ought to go first.
“Waiting to get my brakes fixed and new tires.”
As someone infinitely wiser than me once suggested:
“Learning to pronounce Pielke could lead downslope to a Meineke Muffler jingle …”
No apologetics will ease Junior (nor Fuller, as if that need to be said) onto “Teh Blue Team”, as SM ultimately intimates.
Thanks for your indulgence.
Please chill, Corey.
Here’s BartV’s take:
https://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/comment-on-pielke-jr/
It’s not like we’ve never been here before.
“Finding the factual disagreements between Senior and (say) the IPCC might be helpful. Not finding any factual disagreement too. What’s quite clear is that Mosh is usually more than agnostic regarding satellite crap, cf. the comment thread.
Perhaps Mosh ought to go first.”
“These findings strongly suggest that there remain important inconsistencies between surface and satellite records.”
Yup. it’s one of the unsettled issues. RSS has recently fixed their problem.
WRT UAH. There is an important inconsistency. we all can see that. Explainations vary.
I have mine, Zeke has his. Skeptics are certain the reason is shitty surface temps.
My sense is there is no 97% consensus on this.
Hi Joshua.
One reason I dont spend much time reading Jr is that
A) he is a prick
B) he never admits he is wrong when he clearly is.
c) He never moves beyond the victim card. I dont mind him playing it, but he needs to get over it already.
I’m not blaming willard or ATTP for Not moving the battle lines. I guesss what I’m saying is their responses just reinforce them. It’s boring.
What would move the battle lines? I dunno, this branch of the discussion started when
I said I liked Hayhoes suggestion that finding common values was worth a try.
Tryin to find facts we agree on, doesnt seem to work.
re litigating past sins doesnt work.
So. since the planet is at stake and everyone should do their part, and since the cost of trying is deminumus… maybe
A) try to connect on values.
B) leave past sins at the door.
C) keep your side of the street clean.
What is the cost of that? and what’s the upside if it worked? Precautionary principle
“Seems you will go to any lengths to poisen any attempt to avoid a clean slate engagement with Jr or anyone else who has crossed a green line. ”
“One reason I dont spend much time reading Jr is that
A) he is a prick
B) he never admits he is wrong when he clearly is.
c) He never moves beyond the victim card. I dont mind him playing it, but he needs to get over it already.”
;o)
My own recipe for moving the “battle lines” is to consider the arguments and be willing to change your mind. However that will only work if both “sides” are decided by the strength of the arguments, which I don’t think is completely true for any of us, and there is a broad spectrum in the degree to which this applies in the public debate on climate.
“A) try to connect on values.
B) leave past sins at the door.
C) keep your side of the street clean.”
I fully agree with (B) and (C), (A) is the problem as the reason there are battle lines in the first place is generally that we don’t share the same values. I suspect an honest and open discussion of values is likely to be more divisive than discussing whether there is a scientific consensus or not (which ought not to be divisive anyway) as it is exposing the thing we really hold most dear. I suspect that is why we spend so much time disagreeing about science that is better established than many other areas of science that we take for granted.
Also if there are scientific questions (including whether there is a consensus) that you view as “Eff-U” issues, then the problem lies with you, not the person that wants to discuss them, it is you that is being irrational. I suspect it is largely a defense mechanism used to prevent being exposed to science that contradicts your values. It’s hard to think of any issue that would be an “Eff-U” issue for me, relating to climate change.
“B) leave past sins at the door.” some people make that really difficult to implement 😦
> the reason there are battle lines in the first place is generally that we don’t share the same values.
Yet I bet I share 97% of Junior’s values. At least those I suspect I know about him or me. I don’t think we know ourselves well enough to really know what values we really have. Self-reports are overrated.
Sharing the same values is less important than to share the values we have. This is my take-home from the still face experiment: we connect with otters before we can conceptualize what we convey. Lack of connection implies violence. “L’ignorance est le plus grand des mépris” – ignorance is the highest form of despise. ClimateBall is usually more affectionate than that. If bouts are how ClimateBall players connect with one another, so be it. It’s still better than what we see in Barfly.
Were I to share anything live with Junior, it wouldn’t be facts. I bet we’d talk about kids. Sports. Life. Sure, I’d try to explain to him that his Honest Broker thing gets the fact/value dichotomy upside-down, but chances are I wouldn’t make it my main communication objective. Perhaps my main objective would be to convey that notwithstanding my abrasive persona I mean well and I know he means well too. Of course, sooner than later I’d relay Mosh’s impressions. They’re mine too. I think it’s important to be clear about that with people you don’t despise. But that belongs to things we say in person, not online.
All in all, I think our predicament is caused more by roles than personalites.
“Sharing the same values is less important than to share the values we have.”
I certainly agree with that. I did have rather more to say, but I think I’ll leave it at that.
willard –
Sharing the same values is less important than to share the values we have.
I agree also.
I might take it a step further. Sharing the values we have might be less important than valuing the values that we share. It seems to me that we tend to discount them relative to the values we don’t share (or at least we tend to perceive as not sharing).
Also.
All in all, I think our predicament is caused more by roles than personalites.
It strikes me that personality politics reflects (if not causes) much of the predicament. IMO, discussing RPJr. boils down to personality politics.
Hi Steven –
I’m not blaming willard or ATTP for Not moving the battle lines. I guesss what I’m saying is their responses just reinforce them. It’s boring.
It’s repetitive. It can also be entertaining. Sorry for the misinterpretation. As I read it, you were blaming if only in the sense of opportunity cost. I question whether the opportunity exists, with RPJr.
What would move the battle lines? I dunno, this branch of the discussion started when
I said I liked Hayhoes suggestion that finding common values was worth a try.
Yes. Common values is a key, IMO. I might refer to it more within a conflict resolution framework. Looking for win-win outcomes, or synergies, where ownership of the outcomes is shared. But there are context constraints. Sharing common values largely requires good faith intent.
Tryin to find facts we agree on, doesnt seem to work.
re litigating past sins doesnt work.
Getting away from re-litigating past sins is kind of the rules of the road in conflict resolution.
A) try to connect on values.
B) leave past sins at the door.
C) keep your side of the street clean.
Nothing to disagree with there
What is the cost of that? and what’s the upside if it worked? Precautionary principle
Yeah. I can’t think of any cost, really. I suppose some might argue that there is an opportunity cost. I happen to disagree as I don’t see benefits from the current form of engagement and I don’t see any other approaches that would likely be more efficient.
> I don’t see benefits from the current form of engagement
Standing aside that I reject the whole engagement idea, I see two benefits in what I’ve been doing so far in this thread.
First, the ClimateBall episodes get centralized. Next time I or others may need to revisit the times and lines of Junior vs Jim, MT, or anyone else, this thread will provide a good starting point. That’s how I roll.
Second, it counters manipulative exploits. I dislike manipulation almost as much as gaslighting. So quoting stuff’s my way to remain constructive.
Standing aside that I reject the whole engagement idea, I see two benefits in what I’ve been doing so far in this thread.
Just as a matter of clarity, when I spoke of current forms of engagement, I was speaking more generally and not so much thinking of this particular thread or even this particular blog.
That said, I would be interested to know more about rejecting the whole engagement idea.
First, the ClimateBall episodes get centralized. Next time I or others may need to revisit the times and lines of Junior vs Jim, MT, or anyone else, this thread will provide a good starting point. That’s how I roll.
Such developments notwithstanding, I don’t see how this current thread stands out from myriad others. Of course, “benefits” like values are in the eye of the beholder. While I might benefit from seeing a good argument being made about RPjr., or a good explication of climateball, -in a dopamine sense, or in the sense of an addict, – I don’t gain a larger clarity outside that context. Or benefit that I can see. I try to not make that judgement for anyone else – not always successful.
Second, it counters manipulative exploits. I dislike manipulation almost as much as gaslighting. So quoting stuff’s my way to remain constructive.
I think that quoting is an important tool for constructive engagement (your rejection of that idea notwithstanding) , but like using metaphors it can be used in different ways. It can be used to inform and illustrate, or it can be used recursively within a structure that shows no overall, external change.
Hmmm. I just built this comment around quoting, didn’t I?
“I fully agree with (B) and (C), (A) is the problem as the reason there are battle lines in the first place is generally that we don’t share the same values.”
We should probably ask Hayhoe to come in here and defend her views.
Maybe I heard her wrong , but she seemed to say the science was settled on this.
Not saying we shouldn’t do (A), just that it is (IMHO) more where the problem lies. The science is “settled” compared to the issues relating to values which are in such disarray some would rather talk about whether the rise in atmospheric CO2 is a natural phenomenon or is man-made in order to avoid the difficult stuff. I rather agree with what Mike Hulme writes in “Why We Disagree About Climate Change” (although I don’t really understand how this fits with what he says about consensus messaging etc.). My point is that it may well be just as divisive to really talk honestly about our values, and just as bruising where our desired (in)action is shown to be incompatible with our stated values.
Steven Mosher:
In case my previous disambiguating comments still haven’t cleared things up for Steven, let me spell it out.
I’ve owned my ‘schtick’ in this discussion of Manichean thinking: “naming, shaming and blaming”. That’s because AGW has economic foundations. IOW, it’s a result of how people treat each other. Therefore, it has moral dimensions! The only reason for anyone to argue about AGW is that people are being hurt by it. Is that really so hard to understand? Why would any of us care otherwise?
I’m not generally in favor or ‘litigating’ past ‘sins’. ‘Justice’ isn’t my top priority; bringing the global Drama of the climate Commons to a less-than-apocalyptic ending for as many people as possible is. But will Steven concede that passionless presentation of facts hasn’t been able to overcome the political power of concentrated fossil fuel wealth? If the US is to enact effective legislation to internalize more of the marginal climate-change costs in the market prices of fossil fuels, it’s my belief that AGW-denial must become socially unacceptable. If anyone thinks it shouldn’t, shame on them!
If Steven’s hyperbole is intended to be humorous, he should consider making that clearer. Just so there’s no mistake: when I say “Shame on Roger Pielke, Jr. for pretending the GWPF isn’t a professional disinformation services corporation providing bespoke AGW-denialism to the fossil fuel industry”, I’m not saying “I demand that Roger Pielke Jr. be immediately arrested and hung from the tree outside his office until dead.” Is RPJr a sinner? Maybe, but only a little more than any fossil fuel user. The freedom US consumers enjoy to send their fossil carbon emissions freely out their tailpipes has already brought tragedy to tens of thousands of people. Is shameful too pejorative a word for that?
Today Aug. 10, I called in on a C-SPAN segment called Washington Journal. Last half of the show they had two topics that were about science. One was the EPA scientist who was being harassed by EPA to suppress climate science and the second topic was about A.I. with Wired editor Tom Simonite. I was able to ask Tom about applying A.I. to the problem of science consensus on AGW. He was not aware of a current project but noted that the DARPA BS detector was more about social science. He was doubtful that just because A.I. proved the climate science was correct that it would convince skeptics to change their position.
The call ended but I disagree with Tom because humans trust machines more than they do each other. It’s all about how the information delivered. It might turn out to be a traditional media platform or something more exotic like VR. Well at least I got the idea out there to a pretty large audience: 2017 C-SPAN Audience Profile
70 million accessed C-SPAN content in past six months
9.5 million access C-SPAN content several times a week
> I would be interested to know more about rejecting the whole engagement idea.
Simply put, engagement puts too much expectation on ClimateBall exchanges. Most of the times, commitments aren’t even respected. Worse, bogus commitments get burdened upon others.
Shellenberger’s case comes to mind. Over and over again, he claims to seek engagement. His tweeter feed shows otherwise. I’ve seen his “you’re not engaging!” as a way to bring exchange to a close more than real effort to engage. He’s not there to discuss anything. He’s there to peddle his schtick.
It’s not that I reject the possibility that engagement occurs. I just don’t expect it. Nor do I impose it as a requirement. Minimal commitments management suffices for me. See for instance:
https://judithcurry.com/2017/07/29/update-on-the-strength-of-aerosol-forcing/#comment-855911
A New Guy claims I’m an idiot for citing a Wiki page that contains an inaccuracy. He doesn’t say why, one reason being that it risks reinforcing the point I was making. So he fails the basic commitment he undertook when he started his browbeating.
As long as I get something out of my comments and those I read, I don’t mind much.
I gotta love me some moralizing atheists. Shame on you.
We might talk about Shame as a source of behavioral control and shame-honor cultures.
Especially important here is revenge. That makes your comments about locking people
up very telling. Did you realize the connection between shame-honor culture and achieving
honor balance through revenge? do you understand 한?
Typically the revenge for past injustice would be carried out over 3 generations.
It’s also interesting you used the word socially unacceptable. Sometimes the punishments
in shame cultures are Exile.
Shame cultures are also big into suicide.. or metaphorically.. not having children.
any way
“That’s because AGW has economic foundations. IOW, it’s a result of how people treat each other. Therefore, it has moral dimensions! The only reason for anyone to argue about AGW is that people are being hurt by it. Is that really so hard to understand? Why would any of us care otherwise?”
Ah no. AGW has physical foundations. Its a result of how molecules treat EM.
Further, just because something is a result of how people “treat” each other does not mean
it has moral dimensions. That would make all my interactions with you necessarily moral.
“The only reason for anyone to argue about AGW is that people are being hurt by it.”
I dunno I would argue about it even if nobody got hurt. Heck folks argue about flat earth,
they argue about 9-11, they argue about how many angels can dance on the head of pin.
” But will Steven concede that passionless presentation of facts hasn’t been able to overcome the political power of concentrated fossil fuel wealth? If the US is to enact effective legislation to internalize more of the marginal climate-change costs in the market prices of fossil fuels, it’s my belief that AGW-denial must become socially unacceptable. If anyone thinks it shouldn’t, shame on them!”
Concede? I think thats the premise of everything we have been discussing here. As for overcoming
political power? My sense is a not too small number of people blindly oppose it initially simply
because their first exposure is scolds like you. Suppose I picked Trump as my spokesperson for getting your kids vaxcinated. I would hazrd that many people ( who didnt know better) would oppose it, just because of who spoke in favor of it.
No no, this doesnt mean you are too blame for having Gore as a spokesmodel. he was key to raising awareness in the tribe of the left.
So why dont folks believe the science? dunno, I’d guess the following play some kind role
A) because the science is hard to understand
B) because very few people in their tribe, even those who understand it, will speak truth to them.
C) because tribal identity works for them and they dont want to give up what works.
D) because some of the spokesmodels we used are divisive.
E) because some of the messaging can be taken as an insult.
There are probably more.
My bigger point would be ( and I’ve changed on this over the years ) I don’t think you actually
need agreement from the ‘governed’ to proceed with policy. It will limit the amount of pain your policy can apply, but its best to get started with something. For like 25 years we knew and have
done nothing much. Perfect has been the enemy of the good.
In short, you dont need to engage. there is no moral or practical requirement.
people ask me questions all day. I dont owe them free answers.
Should you choose to engage, its useful to have a goal in mind
A) engage to change minds
B) engage to distract
C) engage to amuse yourself
D) engage to shame
E) engage to share information
F) engage to practice the art of engagement.
G) engage to delay
You can engage for all sorts of reasons. Every goal will have different tactics and different
success rates. Want a silver bullet? If I had one I would make millions. Imagine being
able to change human behavior with just words. Shit I would patent such a thing
and licence it.
I have no interest in shaming a person who needs to disbelieve in
AGW to be a member of their tribe. Like nature I only care about the C02 they actually
put in the atmosphere. It seems clear to me that there is a very loose connection
between the c02 one emits and the beliefs one has about AGW. I believe in AGW
I rack up huge airline miles. shame on me. you realize most american are shameless.
Shame would work in a shame-honor culture ( think confucian cultures)
At the limit however if we start to have policies that really hurt people today for a future
promised benefit, then ya, you need a little bit of “consent” from them, at the margin
you need them not to riot.
Shame on you, Steven Mosher. Sometimes ‘shameful’ means precisely ‘shameful’, and ‘socially unacceptable’ means precisely ‘socially unacceptable’. You’re only trying to escape responsibility for making poor people who won’t benefit from your next tankful of gasoline pay for your marginal climate change costs with their homes, livelihoods and lives. That’s unacceptable in any civil society, Steven.
> Shame cultures
Guilt cultures haz all the fun.
“At the limit however if we start to have policies that really hurt people today for a future
promised benefit, then ya, you need a little bit of “consent” from them, at the margin
you need them not to riot.”
I wonder what % need to riot and if they know if they tried any kind of mass revolt then marshal law would crush them instantly.
If your wondering how close we are to actual riots keep a eye on the Rapture Index.
https://www.raptureready.com/rapture-ready-index/
Surprising that the all time high (189) was just a few months ago just before the 2016 election.
Rapture Index scale;
100 and Below: Slow prophetic activity 100 to 130: Moderate prophetic activity 130 to 160: Heavy prophetic activity Above 160: Fasten your seat belts.
Mal everything you said fits perfectly with a shame culture mentality. Sorry. As willard notes guilt culture has all the fun.
I believe the west at least the left of the west is slouching toward a shame culture. It’s interesting to watch them.
Did you even know about shame cultures…open question.
I believe the west at least the left of the west is slouching toward a shame culture. It’s interesting to watch them.
I have a lot of experience with “shame-based” cultures. Quite a bit of experience with “the left* too. Don’t see much similarity.
Certainly no more than with the” war on Christmas” or the “America first” branch of American culture.
Convenience sampling has its problems.
My sense is a not too small number of people blindly oppose it initially simply because their first exposure is scolds like you.
So Mal made them do it?
Do you think that their near uniform ideological alignment might have more explanatory power?
Nah. ‘prolly just coincidence, eh? Must be because of all them “scolds.”
. Suppose I picked Trump as my spokesperson for getting your kids vaxcinated. I would hazrd that many people ( who didnt know better) would oppose it, just because of who spoke in favor of it.
So is that because Trump is a scold, or because they are ideologically opposed to Trump. Suppose it were McCain or Lindsay Graham or Mike Pence or David Brooks who were appointed spokesperson. Would those many people (who didn’t know better) suddenly fall in line?
Methinks you are not isolating variables in your causation equation.
C’mon, J. Z’obvious that Freedom Fighters haz all the guilt.
Not to menchen all the good cheezeburgerz
And all the rhetorical questions:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/steig-the-shameless/
Without the question mark, you’d think Lucia’s a leftist.
Without the question mark, you’d think Lucia’s a leftist
‘prolly false flag, she’s just pretending to be a leftist to make us look bad.
> she’s just pretending to be a leftist to make us look bad.
Nah, J – that’s Our Stoatness’ guru, TimW:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/kevin-anderson-how-numbers-reveal-another-reality/#comment-101142
Since leftists are economics deniers according to Our Stoatness’ memo, I would tend to agree that TimW’s a lefty. But then Jezebel might disagree:
http://jezebel.com/5915392/stupid-ideas-your-whore-pills-are-polluting-our-pristine-waters-and-you-should-pay-for-it
I have no idea how this guilt/shame thing works, but I like it.
Joshua:
Hah, hoist with my own petard? Shame on me 8^D! Yeah, no. I’m not so grandiose as to think I have that much influence on AGW-deniers. They’ve got lawyers, guns and money, all I’ve got is facts, logic and sexagenarian emotions 8^(.
Speaking of cultivating shame, here’s a thread by a clown and his clown experience with kids:
“I believe the west at least the left of the west is slouching toward a shame culture. It’s interesting to watch them.
I have a lot of experience with “shame-based” cultures. Quite a bit of experience with “the left* too. Don’t see much similarity.
Certainly no more than with the” war on Christmas” or the “America first” branch of American culture.
Convenience sampling has its problems.”
I would hazrd you have zero experience with Shame culture. You’re thinking Guilt culture.
“So Mal made them do it?”
Ah no, you’ll see I dont argue that.
read harder . think deeper.
Willard:
‘Fairness’ matters at least politically, but “it’s always something.” Some nicotine addicts argue they’re being unfairly taxed for their marginal air pollution costs. But taxes internalize socialized marginal costs whether they’re collected from consumers or producers. In my private utility-optimization model, the difference here is that commercial contraceptive drugs have high positive social (including ‘environmental’) as well as private utility; while nicotine has zero or negative social utility, but positive private utility only for consumers who are addicted, and who can choose not to be. IMPUOM, that is, if it needs to said again.
Collective intervention in the ‘free’ market traverses many a slippery slope. Caution is advised, to keep our feet while making progress towards the goal (you do too know what I mean). Vote with your feet, not your ass.
SM:
1. Write clearer. Disambiguate unless you know your audience can do it from context. Conventional capitalization and punctuation have positive value IMPOUM (to unpack that acronym, see my previous comment).
2. Think broader. For example, there are more ordinal points on my private moral scale than two; and they are only partially culturally determined.
Hmm, you can’t actually unpack that acronym from my previous comment. Try IMPUOM instead.
Steven –
=={ I You’re thinking Guilt culture. }==
Oy. Back to telling me what I’m thinking again, eh?
I lived in Korea for a year, Taiwan for 6 months. And not in ex-pat communities. Traveled in Thailand and Japan for about 6 months or so.
I have worked, for about two decades, with students and clients from those countries as well as from China and from countries in the ME where shame is generally considered an important cultural element. Some of those students and clients I worked with over a period of years, delving very deeply into what goes into cultural adaptation and assimilation.
Consider just a couple of important cultural elements and compare them as typically found in shame-based cultures, in relation to the American political landscape (as configured on a left/right axis): Views on the roles men and women , or views on sexuality (let’s leave out Thailand there). Views on psychology and the value or role of therapy. Views on authority.
I’ll repeat:
You’re cherry-picking to confirm a bias.
Steven –
=={ read harder . think deeper. }==
As I see it, your are blaming their blind opposition on Ma’ls scoldness (looking beyond whether it’s true that he’s a scold). I think they they are fully responsible for their own blind opposition, and perhaps just choose factors such as Mal’s engagement, of Al Gore’s weight, as a convenient excuse. If you have another argument to make, I’d be more than happy to read it and consider it. I think that’s part of the point all of this. Your instructions, on top of coming across as condescending, serve no purpose from a point of engagement. If it helps you to feel better, just consider it as that I’m not smart enough to figure a lot of stuff out. That may well be true. You aren’t serving any kind of instructional purpose by such empty instructions.
I should add…you are blaming it on Mal’s scoldness or the scoldness of people who are like Mal in their scoldness. Perhaps you meant that you weren’t blaming Mal, specifically? I think that’s a silly point if you were – but the possibility should be acknowledged. My point was that blaming blind opposition on scoldness (be it Mal’s or that of others) fails to appropriately hold people accountable for their own belief formation.
Joshua:
I can’t say it any clearer myself 8^)!
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