Skeptic movies meet their goal whereas alarmist ones do not

The results suggest that there may be something about climate skeptic films that makes them more powerful.
———
Proves the old addage “honesty is the best policy”

Rob Crawford says:
July 1, 2013 at 1:23 pm
Of COURSE new information will cause opinions to change while old information will not.
ROFL. Exactly, this is the only reason why skeptics are winning. People just look at that new information.
Well, I trust humans are cleverer then that, but you are entitled to your own opinion.

My God, how dare those skeptics use facts against us!

I think they are more powerful, but for obvious reasons: the science behind global warming is actually very flimsey, but as Rob Crawford wrote, the message is beat into our heads that we just sort of accept it. Despite that tepid agreement, very few people really care about global warming as poll after poll shows. I suppose it’s “a mile wide and an inch deep” as the saying goes. Then people are introduced to skeptical ideas, most of the time for the first time, and they are introduced to an alternative explanation or an expose of how flimsey the science is, etc. They see warmists act hysterically, claiming every event is tied to global warming, even natural events. Then people feel lied to and they stop believing anything the warmists think.
The problem, in my opinion, is that people are not given the whole story through normal channels, the press is not skeptical enough (as they should be) and skeptical information becomes a “forbidden fruit” to them. The warmists are not interested in the truth, they are interested in directing everyone’s opinions to match their own opinions, by any means necessary, and this hurts them in the long run. I think Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH really hurt the movement as it basically took over the whole thing, making it militant and hyper-partisan.

His argument that “enviromentalism” is the opposite of skepticism to the claims of IPCC “consensus” science is ridiculous. He is one of the trend that is moving towards staking a position about “climate change” rather than “global warming.” From their point of view, I think they can grade themselves as effectively transitioning to a position where they can claim, falsely, higher moral authority, because they can deny without shame that their positions have changed. Pretty soon they will forget “warming” altogether and stake the money train on “climate irregularities” or similar garbage verbiage. In a few years they will be claiming they always only meant extra CO2 would only do “something,” maybe something very small or nearly undetectable, but that was always their position.

Wait, “skeptic” films? There are such things? Could someone name a few of them?

Funny how running around shrieking “BRAWK! The Sky is Falling! BRAWK! The Sky is falling!” just isn’t as effective as a calm and simple demonstration of the facts
Almost as funny as the way that alarmists are now having to face the downside of having almost total control of the media narrative up until now. There’s no way to keep that kind of thing going forever, especially when the weather refuses to cooperate and do what you said it was going to do. Which is why there’s nothing but downside for them whenever this issue comes up in public, and why they’re reduced to saying “Don’t watch the movies! Don’t read the stories! Don’t listen to any debate! It’s EVILLLL!!!! Close Your Minds to anything but our narrative!!!”
And that’s all they’ve got. And they’re surprised that it isn’t “effective”????
Funny to watch people go down with the wreckage of their own delusions.

Dirty skeptics and their dirty facts.. Its seems even the alarmists are losing heart trying to cobble together another embarrassing inconvenient truth propaganda piece..
There was no rebuttal to Al Gores crappy movie, it stood alone with nothing but the odd brave voice calling out horrible BS inside..
Now with the skeptics movie you can compare the two side by side with an honest assessment of the research and the facts involved.. Point and counter point, straight into who’s pulling on who’s wiener..
Idiots cant pretend to save the world under such harsh conditions..
Its not so much the funding, its having your name attached to a flop disgrace that could very well be the straw that broke the camels back.. where is Al when they need him?

Anthony: verb and subject do not agree in your headline: it should read:
“Skeptic movies meet their goal whereas alarmist ones DO not”
REPLY: that was already corrected prior to your comment, refresh – Anthony

“The results suggest that there may be something about climate skeptic films that makes them more powerful.”
Because you see clearly that you are being manipulated. You see misinformation and half-truths. You check the sources and see over-exageration. You compare discourse and practice of narrators. You hear fallacies. You see IMF, World Bank, UN, EU and all XYZ combinations of the world. Peoples don’t trust in politicians by nature. And, after all, peoples love the truth and hates lies. Just some investigations lines.

Umm shouldn’t that be DO not does? in the header.
As for the rest of the balderdash read into what you will: nonsense is always nonsense but can be amusing if only to watch others take it seriously.
Kindest Regards

James Schrumpf beat me to it. What are these skeptic films they studied to come to their conclusions? I’m getting tired of them blaming a communications problem for the fact that their lies aren’t getting through to us.

Hilarious. “views on climate tend to be influenced by partisan media rather than unbiased research …. Obviously its bad news if films produced by climate skeptics have a stronger impact… “

I know the answer to this one.
It’s because the truth is usually recognizable.
Plus their story just sounds so fabulous.
2+2 is 5…We’ve always been at war with Eastasia
I swear more and more it looks like BO is acting like Big Bro.

Exposure to the facts leaves people less inclined to panic.
And this is a bad thing?

From the abstract:
“Although there is broad scientific consensus that global warming is happening and that it is human-caused, these issues are denied by climate change skeptics.”
I don’t see how anything useful can come after a sentence that so mangles the issues. While I have no use for Al Gore, I am not a climate change skeptic; I accept that climate changes naturally all the time, always has and always will. I also accept that the Earth has warmed somewhat since the Little Ice Age–the degree is disputable–and that humans may have contributed to some extent, especially through land use changes.
The real issues, which this paper apparently ignores, is whether the alarmists can reliably predict future climate–they can’t–and whether the unlikely consequences of their unlikely warming justify currently enacted and proposed mitigation measures–they don’t.
BTW, Greitemeyer for some reason omitted the strongest evidence that “skeptic” films are effective: 1) the very fact that he felt compelled to warn us against them; 2) his warning was published.

Sceptic films make sense, alarmist films do not? That’s my hypothesis for the different effects.

Has he never read Chicken Little or the Boy that Cried Wolf?
Perhaps he should read Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails!

Hicks dont call gas petrol, they call it “Go Juice” YeeHaawww!

AGW is a political movement based on a theory thats been carried forth by the lib left political establishment.. Government, schools and the media will vote for their pet cause as sure as they will vote for the next one answer multiple choice question (their next leader)..
One really only has to look at the (left/right) political orientation of any given population sample to know in advance what the support for this political cause is going to be.. The best one can hope for is your opponents don’t show up on election day, but that hardly makes one a believer..
Europe loves global warming because there is no functional right wing to oppose it there..
North America with a functional right wing is and will always be problematic to the cause..
The rest of the world is either lining up for climate justice free money or extremely amused at the western democracies killing their own economy..

I wanted to say a whole lot but I’ll leave it to Churchill.

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
Winston Churchill

PS I am not a conservative.

Look guys, when did lies ever win in the long run? A lie may be exposed in minutes, an hour, a day, a week, a month, decades even, but in the end it will be exposed. AGW is based on exaggeration of the effects of warming for the rest of this century. A little warmth and co2 is great. Take a look at the biosphere and remember that we have been coming out of the Little Ice Age. Just look at the temperature jump between 1910 to 1940.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/j/l/warmingtrend.gif

I think that while it is still too early to genuinely attribute weather and temperature to to climate change, burning tons of fossil fuels such that we have no passed 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2 can’t be a good thing.

BarryW says:
“July 1, 2013 at 1:35 pm
My God, how dare those skeptics use facts against us!”
LOL:
Yeah, you’d think the Alarmist science are the religious zealots.
While the skeptics are the ‘evil’ heritics.
Quite plain and simple alright why alarmist propaganda isn’t working and skeptic films are.
Stop piling on the Alarmist over exaggerrated pile of BS.
Stop using fraudulent data. Stop making false projections/predictions, etc.
And above all else stop downright lying.

I hate to be the purveyor of doom, but this isn’t exactly good news. When the warmists believe they are winning, they allow the lesser ones to play their own games. Now that they know that their line isn’t swallowed by the proverbial starving college students, prepare for active suppression of the countervailing view.
Obama picks now to start his green initiative, despite all of the reasons not to. He doesn’t have the votes to raise money with a carbon tax, but can wreck the economy and has promised to do so. He’s already promised to make Catholics pay for abortions. All of the major newspapers are dependent on government notice publications at full advertising prices, all of the networks dependent on airtime. Obama has used the odious 1917 Espionage act more times than all of the other subsequent presidents combined. He blatantly flouted the constitution to nominate his cronies during non-existent recesses.
Now that they know no one will believe them if they hear anyone else, prepare for the suppression of the anyone else.

The thing with CAGW movies is they are per se unbelievable and insist on using those dark monotone voice overs. It’s just p[lain boring and patronizing. There is also the issue of overkill and people sick to death of being told we are all doomed. Almost every documentary about any feature of the natural world has been, for at least the past decade, spoiled by some inevitable return to claims about how humans are screwing the planet. The Bear has given up watching nature documentaries. Sick of the BS, to be frank.

Tim Neilson says:
July 1, 2013 at 4:17 pm
What the flying duck is “Environmental Psychology”?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Another way to grab grants from the climate gravy train. The ‘Soft” sciences were feeling left out so they invented a new name.

It’s as we all prognosticated. Near the end their voices become shriller – still none of which contain any fact.
The recent BBC (yeh.. I know) documentary: “ORBIT – Earth’s Extraordinary Journey”, all 3 episodes were full of fact, regarding atmospheric and ocean current changes during different seasons, including – tadaa.. – Milankovitch Cycles. They left out Solar cycles, PDO, AMO and ENSO altogether. It was a very informative series stuffed with facts and a definite must-see. For the BBC to produce such a thing is surprising.
Here’s the unsurprising thing. One of the presenters somewhere near the southern tip of Greenland, relying on the words of a single, possibly 50 year old Inuit that knows absolutely nothing about the planet he inhabits, says that the ice extent has reduced over the last 20 years. The presenter then makes this bold assertion

“The existence of the sea ice here in Greenland, is testament to the complex response our planet has to the Sun in whose orbit we travel. But, it’s a very delicate balance. And no-one is more acutely aware of that, than the people who live here.
[Inuit] tells me that even before the storm [2012], that this year there’s less ice than in previous years. It’s part of a trend all over the Arctic. The area covered by sea ice has shrunk significantly in the last 20 years. A series of warm winters have meant the seas haven’t cooled down as much as normal, so not as much ice has been able to form. There’s little doubt, that the cause of the warmer winters, is us.
Global Warming can feel like a myth, when back in the UK, we’ve endured a string of very cold winters, but here on the front line, it’s a reality. Those predictions suggest that the Arctic will continue to warm rapidly over the course of this century. It could be that we may prove capable of generating the kind of climate change that in the past, has been created by the changes in the Earth’s orbit.”

And that’s it – No scientific explanation for that statement whatsoever! Well, it was very carefully worded and the UK has had some recent cold winters. But – they show how this happened earlier through changes in the course of the jet stream brought on by seasonal change!
I wanted to edit that section from the series, but decided to leave it in and added some real facts and a warning at the beginning of my re-edited DVD.
It’s no wonder when they bombard you with proven scientific facts and then resort to a pathetic “message” not backed by anything other than the BBC head office wanting to stuff that in there, that they’re no longer believed. Thankfully, none of the series from Prof. Brian Cox included any of that gumpf.

Good find Benoit!

The essential point here is that most persons are not indoctrinated in global warming hype, either pro, or con. They are therefore, naturally skeptical. When someone arrogantly proposes a, “single cause”, cause, as it would seem, how could they possibly be as convincing as persons (still) maintaining that there is a distributed climate effect?

Some comments have compared the skeptic/alarmist divergence to one like science/religion. This seriously misunderstands the intellectual battlefield. It is actually a modern/post-modern disagreement. Alarmist are squairely in the post-modern camp.

@Janice Moore –
Yes, the alarmies are getting desperate, methinks – wonder how they will react to Briffa’s apparent defection (left-handed and back-door though it may be, it’s sure to enrage AND scare them.
Working on second volume of trilogy, looking for more testimonials for first volume so I can send queries on it (have two, but would like to get at least four); not much done on music lately, though I do have four big projects waiting for me: a 10th Symphony, of which only the first movement is complete; two arrangements of string quartets for string orchestra; and a set of pieces for harmonium (reed organ). Not sure you would like 10th Symphony – it’s pretty astringent, but I have written some more conservative pieces.
BTW – prayers are always welcome and appreciated. For me, it’s as much what they mean for the person doing the praying as what they mean for me. I don’t have to be religious to recognize that.
We’re getting off topic here – but WUWT doesn’t allow sharing of email addresses, for good reason.

Re: Galane says:
July 1, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Thanks for the witty word correction. I deserved that. I will now hoard your horde missive in my “stuck it up my posterior” file.

Grandma always said to tell the truth!
If you do >>>>>> You never have to remember what you said ……..
Everyone is able to be a skeptic, if they choose, in today’s digital world, no?
Oh,,,,, the analog days 🙂

I wish that being right about the facts did make it easier to win arguments. Unfortunately, most people have the attention span of one sound-bite and have way too much “faith” in leftie politicians. Otherwise we’d win elections.

Mindert Eiting says:
July 1, 2013 at 2:21 pm
“Well, the Dutch mega-science-fraudster, Professor Diederik Stapel, who has admitted that he made up his data in 55 science publications, was sentenced yesterday to a social punishment. He has to work for 120 hours in our parks, cleaning up the dirt. Several scientists are disappointed about this mild punishment but it seems to me quite appropriate.”
The state cares for his own. From what I see Stapel was a social engineer, discouraging meat consumption, pontificating about what produces “sustainable” behaviour etc.
My hypothesis remains that, as the reputation of journalists and politicians alike has reached rock bottom, they use scientists more and more to spread statist propaganda. This will continue until even the last dimwit has learned never to trust a government scientist.

In his 1995 book “The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”
Carl Sagan not only exhorted his readers to be sceptical and learn how to think
critically, he laid his “Baloney Detection Kit” with a fine selection of anti baloney
tools.
I have no idea what numbers his book sold in. I bought a copy within days of it
appearing on the shelves and have read it several times.
Without actively applying it, I have noticed people on the whole (a very unscientific
sample!) actually have pretty good baloney filters anyway. Anything which seems
to go over the top is treated quite suspiciously. Perhaps a century of Hollywood
extremes has helped tune these filters pretty well!

Posted over at that Psychology rag:

Facts vs. Propaganda
Submitted by PaddikJ on July 2, 2013 – 2:07am.
The reason why a relatively small band of doughty realists have managed to battle a global propaganda machine – that is outspending them 10,000:1 – to a draw (so far) is probably too straightforward for comprehension by a psychology writer who resorts to phrases like “. . . people should probably be more wary of crackpot climate skeptic films.”: Facts and logic favor the realists, always, no matter how distorted by rent-seeking political interests.
Realists have no need of adolescent name-calling. The public, smarter than the propagandists suppose; smarter in fact than the propagandists, easily sees through this tactic and logically concludes that the propagandists’ case is weak, and is, in fact, propaganda.
Hope this clears things up for Mr. Horowitz; always glad to help.

This only goes to show that the viewers are smarter than the authors.

If CAGW actually WAS a serious problem, we’d be drastically cutting back non essential CO2 production. High on the list of cutbacks would be alarmist movies.

Mike says:
July 1, 2013 at 7:37 pm
“Some comments have compared the skeptic/alarmist divergence to one like science/religion. This seriously misunderstands the intellectual battlefield. It is actually a modern/post-modern disagreement. Alarmist are squairely in the post-modern camp.”
Post-modernity was simply the organized attempt by the Marxists in the 60ies to reclaim the ground they gradually lost after 1917 through the general failure of communist coups in the West on the one hand and through Popper on the other hand. These days they run large parts of government “science” with their post modernity, most notably all of psychology and sociology, but it’s devoid of meaning. It only ever can try to cling to the back of a working economy and suck its blood, and once it sucks too much, the economy dies. The eternal fate of a system of thought that despises producing anything.