How Climate Skeptics Can Win Friends And Influence People

Too busy destroying the planet and oppressing good guys to read this book, sorry.

Libertarians in the US are a good example. They often partner with Conservatives on policy issues but not so much on climate change. Libertarians have Othered skeptics.

Where the hell d’you come by that conclusion? Maybe some among the self-anointed Libertarian Party “establishment” might could’ve gotten suckered by the cAGW fraud – and that poor sap, Ronald Bailey, over at Reason magazine got that hook down his gullet, but libertarian scholars, writers, and thinkers have largely been in the skeptical camp for decades.

“Manmade Global Warming” is a collection of ideas that have been thoroughly discredited by real science for years. Yet you would never know it by observing the behavior of politicians, media personalities, and certain corrupt academics and scientists. There is not now, nor was there ever any scientifically respectable evidence for global warming. Like Lysenkoism, it is a complete and total fabrication, a hoax.
Yet it continues to have a strictly political life because, just as Lysenkoism served Stalinism by backing up Marx’s flawed notions — Global Warming serves today’s collectivists by offering them an excuse to seize control, not merely of the means of production, but of each moment, every aspect of the lives of every individual under their thumbs.
To be absolutely certain the opportunity isn’t missed, dissenters — meteorologists and others willing to dismiss Global Warming as the crock it happens to be — have found themselves intimidated, denied funding and tenure, even fired. Here and there you’ll even see demands that “climate change deniers” be prosecuted, imprisoned, or executed. Somewhere, the ghosts of Stalin and Lysenko are having a huge laugh together.

— L. Neil Smith, “Lysenko’s Revenge,” The Libertarian Enterprise (30 August 2009)

Define “anti-vaxxers”.
“anti-vaxxers” is like “denier”. It’s a meaningless derogatory label. You could as well write vaccine deniers.
Many MD criticise the official view that all recommended vaccines are useful.

I typically use an approach that I think I picked up from Bjorn Lomborg. Let’s say its all true: is keeping 1/3 of earth’s population in subsistence poverty conditions really the answer? When the number 1 predictor of infant mortality and early childhood death is extreme poverty, and the number one cause of extreme poverty is lack of affordable energy?
You have to be talking with someone with at least a moderate amount of intelligence for this argument to make sense to them, since it has two steps rather than just one.
Also don’t forget the C.P.Snow effect: those calling themselves intellectuals these days generally can’t look at numbers or any kind of chart or graph and be able to make sense of it. They live and die by narrative alone, and it took me a few tries in an email exchange once to realize that the genuinely high-IQ guy I was talking with didn’t have any clue how to interpret a graph.
I had success with him by switching to that energy-use ‘narrative’, the way poverty and lack of access to energy go hand in hand, and challenging him to think outside his U.S.-centric worldview and understand the horrific effects Green recommendations (to increase the cost of energy and phase out the cheapest fuels altogether) would have on the world’s most vulnerable.
It was a pretty effective approach in this case.

Well now, that’s a hefty can of Movement Madness you’re whipping up.
1. Despite your statement, it has been my observation that Libertarians are far more prevalent in the skeptic camp than Republicans. Somewhat ironically, the Democrats have a habit of Othering both as Conservatives. Whilst some of the Republicans have a habit of Othering Libertarians by calling themselves Republicans. And quite oddly the more big-tent Republicans often include Libertarians under the heading of Conservative. It’s a wide word, Horatio.
2. Fringe ideas, or ideas that are *considered* to be fringe, cause the more pro-social types to flee from comment or staking out any unfortunate positions that might cost them socially. The rather obvious consequence is that many vocal members of such fringe ideas are similarly on the fringes with other things. The reasons run the gamut from madness to methodology. But fringe ideas collect fringe walkers, be they anti-vaxxers or Libertarians. Get over it.
3. There are no short, sweet scientific arguments to sway the masses; whatever your reasons are for dipping your toe in the Climastrologist lament about needing better messaging. The problem here is that the science either does not support, or outright refutes, the entire hypothesis. And that’s entirely aside any other facts on the ground, such as:
a) The repeated claim that climate models don’t do predictions — eg, they are not scientific models
b) That the IPCC is an exlusively political and purposesly one-note political activist junket by their own statements.
c) That all the ‘cures’ proposed make the hypothesized problem worse.
d) People believe most readily what media tells them is ‘true.’ And the media bleats constantly about the ‘reality’ and ‘consensus’ of global warming problems.
4. Studies, if you lend them credibility, show that the fastest way to close someone’s ears is to disagree with them. Rather, you’re better off with mockery, associating the Others with moonbattery and hoaxing without ever claiming that of your immediate audience, and using agreement with their position to descend into enthusiastic absurdities that follow. It’s all a bit Machiavellian, so you can keep your own counsel on it.
5. Teaching is all about repetition, repetition, repetition.