I would not have believed this if I didn’t see it in print. It’s another example of the playbook pioneered by the late Dr. Steven Schneider. Bolding mine.
“This is a Sophie’s Choice: If we respond to the moral imperative to raise public awareness and alarm about climate, we have to be deceptive.
If we are committed to truth and scientific accuracy, we have to talk in hedged, caveat-filled, probabilistic language that is utterly ineffectual in reaching and activating a tuned-out public.” -David Roberts, Grist
http://grist.org/climate-energy/hawks-vs-scolds-how-reverse-tribalism-affects-climate-communication/
h/t to Tom Fuller
UPDATE: 11/2/12 On Twitter, David Roberts is claiming that I’ve misrepresented his position, and called me a “hack” for printing this.
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David Roberts | |
| @drgrist | ||
| @wattsupwiththat I called it a “false dichotomy.” You presented it as my view. Don’t blame your hackery on me. | ||
I replied that the article was misleading:
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Watts Up With That @wattsupwiththat | 01 Nov | |
| @drgrist then learn not to write misleading articles | |||
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Watts Up With That @wattsupwiththat | 01 Nov | |
| @drgrist if you have a disclaimer, such as should have been with original, happy to add it. Post stays because your wrote those words, notme | |||
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David Roberts | |
| @drgrist | ||
| @wattsupwiththat I didn’t do enough to prevent your misunderstanding, so you’re sticking with it? | ||
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Watts Up With That @wattsupwiththat | 01 Nov | |
| @drgrist just add disclaimer that you don’t endorse what u wrote in that para to ur article, assuming isn’t insult re: this, I’ll add it. | |||
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David Roberts | |
| @drgrist | ||
| @wattsupwiththat It’s not my job to correct your posts. You know it’s wrong & misleading. You can choose to leave it up or not. | ||
From my perspective, it looks more like he’s embarrassed about it after the fact, maybe because he was getting some flak. The problem with his argument is that his “false dichotomy” statement is three paragraphs above the one where he talks about the “Sophie’s Choice” and to me there’s not an obvious statement that he doesn’t believe what he wrote.
My offer is that if he wants to distance himself from that paragraph, he can add a disclaimer or clarification, and I’ll be happy to follow up with that here. I think it is a fair offer.
Why don’t I believe him about his “Sophie’s Choice” paragraph as not being his view? it has a lot to do with statements like this:
Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.”
Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.” (http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/1106?show_comments=no )
Source: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568
When a person has tendency to make such hateful and outlandish claims, one tends to believe that he’d make another similar claim, especially since he has not retracted his Nuremberg claim.
If Mr. Roberts does not believe what he wrote about “Sophie’s Choice” I’ll happily issue a correction here if he makes a caveat, disclaimer, or clarification to that effect on his own article.
NOBODY expects the warmist inquisition! Our two weapons are: Deception, Cunning, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope. Wait… our THREE weapons are…
AW: I would not have believed this if I didn’t see it in print.
Really? I thought we sceptics had become quite jaded to this kind of talk and behaviour by now.
REPLY: It is one thing to say that in private (which I expect happens often) it is quite another to put it to print – Anthony
They prove daily how little tangible evidence they have to show the public. They’re reduced to scaring the public like fire and brimstone preachers.
Hmmm… and how has Sophie’s choice been working out for you so far? You have lied, cheated, exaggerated, threatened, terrorized and de-educated children, predicted deaths of billions, and extinction of half or more of the species of the land and oceans. It has been so bad that it is impossible for a decent person to visualize how you are going to make this worse. And now you say, “No more Mr. Niceguy”! Oh, and scientists will have to stop doing science.
…and a fanatical devotion to Pope Neil deGrasse Tyson
Or in other words,
“The evidence isn’t good enough so we will have to lie.”
Ironically the more journalists and celebrity-climatologists push the “scientists-sez so don’t dare argue, dummy” meme the more the public realizes they are dealing with soft, psuedo-scientist types more akin to Freud and Margaret Meade than people like Einstein and Hubble. CAGW is simply not supported by any data at this point and the only way to “sell it” is to sell the mass hysteria like self-pleasuring will make you blind or you can get AIDS by using the same drinking fountain as gay people.
Speaking of Steven Schneider: Can anyone confirm/disconfirm that he was once on the Board of Directors of PBS? Years ago (in the ’80’s or early ’90’s) I heard a rumor that he had disallowed a movie about climate to be shown on PBS. I have never been able to confirm/disconfirm the rumor. The movie was skeptical of climate warming (even back then!) and explained how the four (or five?) “pillars” supporting climate warming were false. I recall the movie being produced by the BBC, showing how things can change.
You thinkers are too stupid to see!
And these same progressive liberals blast Christians for being self-righteous, dogmatic, control freaks obsessed with imaginary nonsense…
This is not new and it is not surprising. This is the language of the True Believer and it goes back to our most ancient ancestors. It is used by the True Believers in any and all theology and ideology since people started getting organized in communities. It should surprise no one.
“It is journalistically irresponsible to present both sides as if it were a question of balance. Given the distribution of views, with groups like the National Academy of Science expressing strong scientific concern, it is irresponsible to give equal time to a few people standing out in left field.
T]he overall weight of evidence” of global warming “is so clear that one begins to feel angry toward those who exaggerate the uncertainty.
-Stephen H Schneider 1992-”
And so a fifth of a century later were still waiting for unequivocal signs of armageddon. What were the predictions in 1992? When was the world going to end? How high was the temp supposed to have been by 2012? How many species were to have died? How many grandchildren have suffered CAGW since? How does one expect to convince the public of the tipping point in the offing if the temperature trend has been flat for 16 years of the 20 since 1992? The public is sceptical now, they will think you are a bunch of idiots if you get more shrill about this non event.
David Roberts has become brazen. He is now impatient with the power of political correctness. The fact that scientists and non-scientist sceptics who criticize AGW are generally treated as pariahs is no longer enough for him. He is answering the call of Al Gore, Sandra Fluke, and other birds of that feather who wants us treated as rabid segregationists were treated. The pursuit of absolute power corrupts absolutely. He calls for propaganda to replace science. He aspires to a form of communism as pure as Lenin’s.
Heads – up. “Climategate Revisited” about to start. No proxy needed.
21:00 – 21:30 UTC-5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_radio_four
Ovid noted the same thing 2000 years ago: exitus acta probat.
oops 21:00 UTC
Was thinking of the upcoming clock chane from EDT.
The statement is beyond surreal, right up there with: The floggings will continue until the morale improves.
This may rate up there with Mann’s Nobel Prize embellishment as an example of admission against interest.
The author of that old 1992 article quoting Stephen “scary scenarios” Schneider and this 2005 “Katrina’s Real Name” article http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_name/ are one and the same person.
Actually, I wish that attitude (i.e., ‘The end justifies the means’) was only restricted to climate matters. Gee, I wonder where it came from?
Many of the same characters & all the same tactics recur in every Loony Left academic hoax since at least the ’70s. When I interviewed Schneider about Nuclear Winter, he spoke much more scientifically than when pitching the brazen Commie plot in public.
DirkH says:
NOBODY expects the warmist inquisition! Our two weapons are: Deception, Cunning, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope. Wait… our THREE weapons are…
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There may be some agreement between the warmists and the Pope. In his Encyclical Letter of 2009, Pope Benedict wrote this:
“50. …the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate obliges all international leaders to act jointly… ”
“…to guarantee the protection of the environment… there is urgent need of a true world political authority…”
Warmists would agree with the Pope’s comments above and with his idea of “pursuing justice through redistribution.” But they would not likely agree with the Pope’s desire “to ensure that the redistribution of wealth does not come about through the redistribution or increase of poverty.” Most strident warmists want an increase in poverty, at least in the developed world, to drastically lower CO2 output.
@ur momisugly NeedleFactory
Check this out:
http://richardminiter.com/pdf/19910208-art-csm.pdf
I remember watching a documentary in the US in the late 80’s to early 90’s that matches your description but I have no recollection of what network aired it.
We are mocking the guy but he describes the academic reality. Scientists feel compelled to comply with moral responsibility: the Oppenheimer syndrome. This is why many of them follow the warriors of the good against evil, they fear to be among those who knew but did not say nothing. I do not know how it is in America, but I can certify it is the case in Europe. Leftists used this feeling of culpability to impose their point of view, it is the well known gramscist strategy: take control of culture if you want to take the power.
What is expressed here is the ideological base of the principle of precaution: if you are not 100% sure your acts do not have bad consequences do nothing.
AW: I would not have believed this if I didn’t see it in print.
JK:
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is” Al Gore in Grist, 09 May 2006,
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“ So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.” Steven Schneider, DISCOVER OCTOBER 1989, Page 47,
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Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, Jim Hansen, “Can we defuse The Global Warming Time Bomb?” August 1, 2003
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html
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See http://sustainableoregon.com/oktolie.html
Thanks
JK
I having a 27 year old daughter named “Sophie” after the book by William Styron, I find it sick and disgusting to use the words “Sophie’s Choice” in the contexts of global warming. I guess it is because it is known of the connection with the word “Denier” I wonder why I despise these people so much? (Sarcasm) I am sorry but if someone said that to my face I would in all honesty lash out and punch the guy in the mouth.