I’ve still not received any reply from Nature Climate Change editor Rory Howlett to my query about why he allowed the term “deniers” in scientific literature (Bain et al), and neither has Bishop Hill to my knowledge. Lord Leach however, has weighed in, and has sent me his letter for publication here with permission. – Anthony
=========================================================
Dear Dr Howlett,
The use of the term “denier” does your journal a disservice, both for its vagueness and for its insulting overtone.
What does a “denier” deny? Certainly not Climate Change: nor global warming since records began in the late 19th century: nor the likelihood of human influence on temperatures. What, then?
A “denier” denies certainty on a complex and still young scientific subject. A “denier” questions assumptions about the near irrelevance of solar, oceanic and other non-anthropogenic influences on temperature. A “denier” prefers evidence to model projections. A “denier” tests alarming predictions against actual observations. In short, a “denier” exhibits the symptoms of a genuine seeker after scientific truth.
I wish the same could be said of “consensus” writers – or that they showed the same restraint and courtesy towards different opinions shown by sceptics such as Watts Up With That
Yours sincerely
Rodney Leach
==========================================================
I was surprised to see WUWT mentioned. I thank Lord Leach for the hat tip.
If you haven’t written a letter, you still can. See the details here:
Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature
Some letters to the editor in the UK might also be helpful.
UPDATE: Jo Nova has an excellent letter also:
Dear Dr Phil Bain,
Right now, it’s almost my life’s work to communicate the empirical evidence on anthropogenic climate change.
I can help you with your research on deniers. I have studied the mental condition of denial most carefully. There is a simple key to converting the convictions of people in this debate, and I have seen it work hundreds of times. Indeed, my own convictions that lasted 17 years were turned around in a few days. I can help you. It would be much simpler than you think.
Firstly, to save time and money we must analyze the leaders of the denial movement. I have emailed or spoken to virtually all of them.
They are happy to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming, that humans produce CO2, that CO2 levels are rising, and that the earth has warmed in the last century. According to Hansen et al 19841, Bony et al 20062, and the IPCC AR4 report3, the direct effect of doubling the level of CO2 amounts to 1.2°C (i.e. before feedbacks).
All they need are is the paper with the evidence showing that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models. Key leaders in the denial movement have been asking for this data for years. Unfortunately the IPCC assessment reports do not contain any direct observations of the amplification, either by water vapor (the key positive feedback4) or the totality of feedbacks. The IPCC only quotes results from climate simulations.
Since science is based on observations and measurements of the real world, it follows that a denier of science (rather than a denier of propaganda) must be denying real world data. I’d be most grateful if you could explain what “deniers” deny. Deniers repeatedly ask for empirical evidence, yet must be failing badly at communicating that this is the crucial point because none of the esteemed lead authors of IPCC working Group I seem to have realized that this paltry point is all that is needed. All this mess could be cleared up with an email.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming, so the observations they deny must be written up many times in the peer review literature, right? After five years of study I am still not sure which instrument has made these key observations. Do deniers deny weather balloon results, or satellite data, or ice cores?
When you find this paper and the measurements, it will convince many of the key denier leaders. (But being the exacting personality type that they are, deniers will also expect to see the raw data. So you’ll need to also make sure that the authors of said paper have made all the records and methods available, but of course, all good scientists do that already don’t they?)
As a diligent researcher, I’m sure you would not have described a group with such a unequivocally strong label unless you were certain it applied. It would be disastrous for an esteemed publication like Nature to mistakenly insult Nobel prize winning physicists, NASA astronauts, and thousands of scientists who have asked for empirical evidence, only to find that the Nature authors themselves were unable to name papers (or instruments) with empirical evidence that their subject group called “deniers” denied.
If those papers (God forbid) do not exist, then the true deniers would turn out to be the researchers who denied that empirical evidence is key to scientific confidence in a theory. The true deniers would not be the skeptics who asked for evidence, but the name-calling researchers who did not test their own assumptions.
The fate of the planet rests on your shoulders. If you can find the observations that the IPCC can’t, you could change the path of international action. Should you find the evidence, I will be delighted to redouble my efforts to communicate the empirical evidence related to climate change.
Awaiting your reply keenly,
Joanne Nova
—————–
REFERENCES
1 Hansen J., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy and J. Lerner, (1984) Climate sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms. In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, AGU Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5. J.E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Eds. American Geophysical Union, pp. 130-163 [Abstract]
2 Bony, S., et al., 2006: How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes? J. Clim., 19, 3445–3482.
3 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8.6.2.3. p630 [PDF].
4 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. Fig 8.14, p631 [PDF] see also Page 632.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you start publicly identifying places of scientific agreement with the IPCC WG I report, it will go a long way towards silencing the use of the “D” word. As of right now, the absence of any mentions of agreement is interpreted as a rejection of the entire body of those scientific findings.
It appears that Lord Leach affirms something that AGW supporters either ignore or modify to suit themselves…the scientific method.
Good letter, the good lord (hehe:) sounds like a man of reason and principle…and because of that I expect catastrophiliacs will start attacking him personally in three, two, one….
Mailman
Simple. Brilliant.
The pathologising of dissent is a common step in any authoritarian movement.
Succinctly put, Lord Leach. This is precisely the type of thing that needs to be drummed into what has become a klatsch of immature, snivelling, holier-than-thou, sneering jabberwocky-mongers who think that the smear is an appropriate means of scientific discourse. Much easier to dismiss a dirty denier than to shore up the crumbling “science” they so snidely espouse.
Excellent!
The term climate “denier” is a deliberate attempt at hijacking the historical relevance of the holocaust in order to prevent scientific debate.
Scientists and journalists that use the term should hang their heads in shame.
Pleasant informative letter on its way to the uk editor Thursday as suggested,
regards
Anthony- I was looking back through Herman E Daly’s and John B Cobb jr’s book for the common good: redirecting the economy toward community, the environment. and a sustainable future. That’s where my comments on ecological humanism yesterday came from.
I think that book is extraordinarily pertinent to understanding the use of a term like “denier” and the anger that the scientific facts are now betraying the true dominance of the social and behavioural sciences in this agenda. They cannot come out directly and say “the economy must be subordinated to our social goals and desire for political power.” But that is always the essence. That’s why the debate must be shut down. It is entirely too close to unmasking the reality before it’s too late. As with education, irreversible change was supposed to be firmly in place before anyone with power and an ability to communicate grasped the essence and started screaming it from the mountain tops. As you have been doing so ably.
A passage from the intro to for a common good is pertinent to all of this scheming while avoiding detection. It quotes from a John C Raines: “That the social is primary in regard to the human has become by now less a claim than a taken-for-granted starting point in most American sociology and anthropology. But it is a starting point that has little penetrated American political and economic thought.”
Denier is better than acknowledging the truth that sociology and anthropology and other social science theories created with a collectivist political purpose are being treated as primary in creating public policy. That sounds bad and gets at the basis for the legitimacy of the public policy in the first place. Ad hominem attacks change the focus of scrutiny away from the ridiculous assertions like the Anthropocene.
Reblogged this on Nuclear Dawn Help and commented:
The attacks continue as pro-climate change advocates seek to label skeptics in a derogatory manner.
After looking at this article, it seems like they could substitute the terms “THE ENLIGHTENED” and “The Heretics”, for “Believers” and “Deniers”. Let the Inquisition begin (cue Monty Python: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”).
Also, I note that the hyperlinks to citations do not link to any reference information for me and no bibliography is provided. This makes it rather difficult to see what reference was cited as providing the approach: “Next, adapting an approach used previously to investigate the social effects of industrialization [ref30]” or as providing suposedly indisputable information related to climate change: “experiences attributable to climate change such as flooding [ref29]”.
Psycho-babble, mumbo-jumbo, circular-reasoning pseudo-science attempting to prove their assumptions without testing their assumptions while masquerading as science. But that’s just my opinion.
My letters have already gone out, to both Nature and the authors of the “study.” I’d encourage others to do the same. Let’s give them some real volume feedback.
Jo Nova has done a brilliant email to the editor. See http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/nature-and-that-problem-of-defining-homo-sapiens-denier-is-it-english-or-newspeak/
There was a time when people could write a letter to a newspaper and refer to black people as niggers, and the letters were published too. If objected to, the disingenuious argument was the that the word merely referred to their skin colour. Of course, all the adults knew exactly the emotional payload of that word. Eventually, the penny dropped with the newspapers and letters using that word no longer appeared on the letters page.
Let’s stop the thin edge of the wedge right now.
Pointman
I wonder when our UK Chancellor of the Exchequer,The Honourable Member of Parliament Mr George Osborne will be classified as a “denier” as well if this piece by Benedict Brogan has any “wind” behind it “The wind of change will give Tories something to cheer
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100166505/the-wind-of-change-will-give-tories-something-to-cheer/
“The Chancellor will shortly give them just that. In a few weeks, as part of the Energy Bill, ministers will announce a reduction of up to a quarter in the value of Renewable Obligation Certificates – or “Rocs”. Yes, I realise that’s hardly a sentence to set the pulse racing. But if one considers that Rocs are the means by which the taxpayer subsidises the wind farm industry, and that the Chancellor proposes to slash that giveaway by 25 per cent, then translated into plain English it means this: onshore wind farms will be killed stone dead.”
Worth a read and good news indeed if there is something behind this opinion piece. The halting of the spread of wind farms cannot come quickly enough. I wonder what the Germans are going to do now that they are about to shell out Euro 750 billion to Spain and Italy. Surely they will need to restart their nuclear power stations again as they will need to keep industry’s wheels spinning to make up for that shelling out and that is just the beginning.
Have you not had your coffee yet, or did you just glide over the second paragraph of the post?
I just went on a bit of a rant with my summer school biology students regarding some shoddy work, reminding them that adults unable or unwilling to look at data analytically will fall for any old scam that comes their way because THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
I’d like to say that it is the first time I’ve had to rant thusly, but it is far from the first time, not even this week. Sigh…
Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be labelled a “Believer.” I know, because there is a meme running around the “Believers” that people who do not “Believe” are akin to religious nuts, flat earthers, or those who “deny” evolution (I don’t “deny” it, but the way “deny” is used here I find offensive, something arrogant about “We are right, and you are wrong.”).
Which I find quite ironic. Real skeptics have not cut down the range of possible futures as have believers. We are open to being convinced, but a few things might help. Like models that predict the actual change in temperature. Like completely open data and methods.
These Believers do seem like some kind of nut jobs, as I think about it. “The end of the world is near, so say the monks,” but the monks won’t translate the book into a language you can read (i.e., publish results).
In return for “Denier” I now call CAGW fanatics “Climate Jihadis”. Feel free to borrow the term should it suit. Certainly, they seem to be as dangerous if not more so than the Islamic version. Both are as nuts as each other – maybe they need introducing?
did you just glide over the second paragraph of the post?
No, it just is incredibly vague and can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean when put next to the IPCC report. Science works at a much greater level of detail.
Phil C says:
June 20, 2012 at 8:49 am
.”is interpreted as a rejection of the entire body of those scientific findings.” ..who is making such a rash interpretation? let me guess, it will be the warmist believers! – those who also rashly interpret data (or ignore/adjust it to suit)! LOL
I think that Denier has a very appropriate place in the discussion of climate change with possible anthropogenic contributions. I believe that the most appropriate place for that maligned word is in the phrase “Data Deniers”. There is nothing more detestable than a Data Denier that either:
1. Denies any obligation to show the data which he claims form the basis of his work,
2. Denies any obligation to consider data which might cast doubt upon his work, or
3. Denies the quality of the original data by changing it so that it is more supportive of his work.
Of course the term Believer should only be applied to those who hold to their beliefs and are not interested in anything which might challenge it.
Donald K. Mitchell
I prefer the term Plausible Denier.
There is no greenhouse effect at all, of increasing atmospheric temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. This post is just continuing “lukewarmer” propaganda, which is just as obnoxious as alarmist propaganda; I deny both, and I label you all incompetent in the face of clear and definitive physical evidence (my Venus/Earth comparison) that will have to be faced by everyone, if the incompetent climate consensus is to be corrected and real knowledge can advance. There is no “good” side vs. “bad” side in the climate debate, if you define it as greenhouse effect (GHE) alarmist believers vs. GHE lukewarm believers. There is no real difference in the incompetence shown by both groups, to a competent physicist.
Robin says: June 20, 2012 at 9:07 am
Setting aside the fact that these days the UN seems to be generating (and/or “inspiring”) a plethora of papers, placards and polemics in which the subordination of the economy [as we currently know it!] is being advocated increasingly openly, viz the creepy “Future We Want” and its derivatives …
This would also go some way towards explaining something I’ve never really understood: If, as the IPCC claimed in 2007, the human generated CO2 -> CAGW “link” is so “certain”, why shroud it in the fog of “greenhouse gases”? And, at that point, why didn’t the UNEP simply say, “Thank you very much, IPCC scientists. You’ve done a wonderful job, so now you can go home!”?
Think of all the $ expended in the name of “climate change research” (and/or facsimiles thereof) – not to mention “carbon trading” – over the last six years that could have been far better spent on ameliorating real problems in the world!
I’ve never really subscribed to the “conspiracy” theory of history, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult not to consider that perhaps the “climate wars” have been fostered – if not actively permitted to fester – as a diversion, so that reasonable people with enquiring minds would be less inclined to say, “Hang on a minute …what’s this Agenda 21 all about, anyway?!”
Methinks that perhaps the “vision” of Strong and Brundtlandt – and their like-minded cronies, acolytes and lesser-lights – did not include (or take into account!) the power and reach of the Internet twenty years down the road.
If you would know the subtext informing such such “Denier” pejoratives we suggest referencing Pentti Linkola, whose final solution is to exterminate 99% of the human race by chemical-bacteriological-nuclear means employed by a totalitarian global super-State. But characterizing this existential villain for what he is will occasion moderators’ shocked remonstrances.
The evidence suggests that the “global warming” agenda is actually a punitive redistribution scheme. Still, as the funds are not kept by the world’s poorest, I have to wonder who, exactly, is profiting from the so-called “consensus.”