As we all know, the debate over global warming is contentious, often vitrolic. Labels are often applied by both sides. One the most distasteful labels is “denier”. I’m pleased to report that the UK paper The Guardian has taken on this issue headfirst.
In a recent email exchange with the Guardian’s James Randerson, where he discussed an outreach opportunity to climate skeptics via a series of stories on the Guardian website, I raised the issue with him.
From: “Anthony Watts <xxx@xxxx.xxx>
Date: Friday, February 19, 2010 11:13 AM
To: “James Randerson” <xxxx@xxxxx.xxx.xx>
Subject: Re: Guardian: CRU emails
Hello James,
Thanks for the response.
If the Guardian truly wishes to engage climate skeptics, I do have a piece of advice that will help tear down walls. Get the newspaper to go on record that they will never again use the label “deniers” in headlines or articles.
For example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/15/climate-science-ipcc-sceptics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers
And there are many others I could cite.
That simple, single act, recognizing that the term is erroneous, distasteful due to its holocaust denier connotation, and unrepresentative of the position on climate change of many who simply want the science to be right and reasonable solutions enacted would be a watershed event in mending fences.
There’s no downside for the Guardian to do so that I can envision. It would elevate the paper’s credibility in the eyes of many. The Guardian can lead by example here.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best Regards,
Anthony Watts
Yesterday I received an email from him. It is my impression that he sent the suggestion out to other staff members and there was a discussion about it, which was written about here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/climate-change-scepticism-style-guide
I excerpt the relevant paragraphs here, highlight mine:
We have been discussing such terminology, and some of my colleagues have suggested that Guardian style might be amended to stop referring to “climate change deniers” in favour of, perhaps, “climate sceptics”.
The editor of our environment website explains: “The former has nasty connotations with Holocaust denial and tends to polarise debate. On the other hand there are some who are literally in denial about the evidence. Also, some are reluctant to lend the honourable tradition of scepticism to people who may not be truly ‘sceptical’ about the science.” We might help to promote a more constructive debate, however, by being “as explicit as possible about what we are talking about when we use the term sceptic”.
Most if not all of the environment team – who, after all, are the ones at the sharp end – now favour stopping the use of denier or denialist (which is not, in fact, a word) in news stories, if not opinion pieces.
The Guardian’s environment editor argues: “Sceptics have valid points and we should take them seriously and respect them.” To call such people deniers “is just demeaning and builds differences”. One of his colleagues says he generally favours sceptic for news stories, “but let people use ‘deniers’ in comment pieces should they see fit. The ‘sceptics’ label is almost too generous a badge as very few are genuinely sceptical about the science but I think we have to accept the name is now common parlance.”
I applaud the editorial staff at the Guardian for taking this step, and even more so for having the courage to put it to print. I thank James Randerson for bringing the subject to discussion. I hope that other editorial staff and news outlets will take note of this event.
On that note let me say that we could all (and that includes me) benefit from the dialing back of the use of labels, and we should focus on the issues before us. There’s really nothing positive or factual to be gained from such labeling.
I call on readers of WUWT to reciprocate this gesture by The Guardian by refraining from labeling others they may disagree with here and at other web forums.
Let’s all dial back and treat others with the same respect in conversation as you might treat dinner guests having a discussion at home.
My position has been that there is no debate that the earth has warmed over the past 100+ years, but that the magnitude of the measured warming and the cause(s) remain in debate. The question of whether such warming is beneficial or detrimental depends on who you ask. I’ll also point out that it took our modern society about 150 years of science and technology advances to get where we are now. Doing it cleaner and better won’t be an overnight solution either.
There are also other pressing environmental issues which have been swallowed whole by the maelstrom of this worldwide climate debate and are getting the short shrift. The sooner we can settle it, the sooner we can get on to solving those.
UPDATE:
In related news, the nastiness of debate caused one long time blogger to close his discussion forum.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7043753.ece
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John Whitman,
Many people have a problem with using their real names on Web sites.
You and I may not be afraid of the establishment. Being an independent free-lance professional, I don’t care if I will be blacklisted by some governmental or non-governmental organization. Being a non-conformist, I even enjoy being blacklisted by totalitarians.
Not everybody, however, is in such position. People who work in large corporations or in the government institutions may not toe the AGW party line intellectually but would be bullied, non-promoted, or even fired if their bosses would know how they think. I don’t have anything against these people protecting their well-being from ideological predators.
(Believe me, I know some cases when organizations like moveon.org literally destroyed people’s careers — hate is the only thing they are really good at.)
Laughing out loud.
John Whitman, you obviously are a blog [snip]
Translation:
I would rather people behave the way I want them too. WUWT would you please set up an area for me and my reading and my commentary habits. I dont like them other people. My words are sacred.
Here’s an elegant solution John, dont respond or comment to people you don’t want to comment to.
Just move on.
So is commentary on this blog to be limited to Bill Poster’s real name or should Bill Poster be prosecuted.
I had a quick scan of the site, I can’t find a comments policy.
The moderation team is
CTM who has outed himself but likes his handle, breaker breaker come back.
DB Stealey
Evan Jones
Rog TB
Mike L.
Capn Jack Walker, mermink hunter.
Reply: 10-4 good buddy what your 20? ~ ctm
In the comments section for an article titled “Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned” over at Scientific American, a raving warmist ‘lakota2012’ (2012 as in the end of the world according to a calendar?) makes at least five death threats aimed at ‘Deniers’
“Death is the only cure for Conservative Ignorance.”
“Yes. It is high time to get the U.N. out of the U.S. and the U.S. out of existance.”
“Oh look. Another Americant coward who demands that the world can’t be warming because his taxes are too high. These denialist vermin will have to be exterminated of I’m sorry to say.”
“There will be a price to pay for Conservative traitors who lie their society into destruction. That price is oblivion. And correctly so.”
And there was one that may have been pulled where he says the trees will look like Christmas Trees with all the conservatives hanging from them, and that he has the rope —and is waiting.
The people asking questions or making statements were quite civilized. The warmists, — not so much. They are digging their own grave but are too brilliant to notce.
How about another meaning for denier:
http://www.stockingshq.com/articles/advice/060113denier.htm
I find the totally unexpected confluence of words from the French and English languages amusing. I’m not personally offended by the word “denier” as it cannot be removed from the English language due to one unfortunate class of historically-challenged individuals. I think it quite pathetic that scientists and adherents focussed on greenhouse gas warming scenarios (FOGGs) have to name-call to misdirect the general public away from the scientific issues. I personally think that the AGW alarmists should be called “climate gnostics”: this captures the anthropocentric religious essence of the belief that blames corporeal humanity for all the evil (i.e. global warming) in the world.
Gnosticism, a group of religious beliefs that predated Christianity, had a situation-ethics version of personal morality (post-normal science, anybody?) and viewed the material world, especially the human part of it, as evil. The believers had the divine spark of personally revealed divine revelation that led to personal salvation, while most of humanity were doomed unbelievers, who failed to recognize the fallibility and evil of material existence. There was no set of rules that guided the gnostics: they were reliant on personal divine revelations – just as climate ‘scientists’ seem to rely on novel interpretations of science to justify their proclamations of world salvation.
I think the claim that it somehow puts people of this bent in the same boat as Holocaust denialists is very weak as an argument. It would seem to be more because it puts this group in the same boat as flat earthers and other non scienctific groups, which you find distasteful because you are scientific.
Go on, admit it 🙂
Andy
@CRS, Dr.P.H. (19:58:23) :
//
Actually, I prefer to wear the label “climate heretic.” Seems more appropriate.
Well done, Anthony, thanks for engaging these folks and getting a response!
//
Bertrand Russell’s “History Of Western Philosophy” has an interesting section on the rise of science, and what that did to philosophy, which had previously always sprung from religious faith.
As part of this, he examines what the prime attributes are of each. Imagine my surprise when I realised that AGW is presented, not as science, but as a religion.
I was, knowing nothing of the matter, and believing scientists would not be prejudiced in any way with regard to the presentation of AGW, once a believer. However, the increasingly strident and abusive language used by such self-appointed evangelists as Monbiot, made made me question what was happening. I slowly became a sceptic, and having just finished the “Science” section of Peter Taylor’s excellent Chill (buy it or get it from your library, it is an excellent read, and almost all of it accessible to a lay person such as myself), I consider my self a full-blown sceptic. Fairground barkers such as Pachauri don’t help their cause, either, or our idiot politicians in the UK, calling us “flat-earthers” and “deniers” when they know nothing of the science, does not help either.
Mr. Watts – thank you for your hard work, and your excellent blog. Peter Taylor last year challenged Monbiot to a debate on AGW, and having had one Cif comment in a Monbiot column asking him whether he responded, deleted, I have asked him again. So far that has not been deleted, so far, he has not replied.
Brief catalogue details for “Chill”
Chill, a reassessment of global warming theory: Does climate change mean the world is cooling, and if so what should we do about it?
ISBN 9781905570195
Contents
PART ONE: THE SCIENCE
Chapter One UNCERTAIN SIGNALS Is there a human imprint?
Chapter Two NATURAL CAUSES Part of a pattern
Chapter Three SATELLITE DATA Evidence contradicts global warming theory Chapter Four CLOUD COVER Changing patterns can explain the warming Chapter Five OCEANS CYCLES Repeating cycles control cloud cover
Chapter Six POLES APART Different patterns in the Arctic and Antarctic
Chapter Seven THE SOLAR SOURCE The variable sun creates cycles
Chapter Eight COSMIC RAYS The missing link?
Chapter Nine NEW THEORY An alternative explanation of 20th century warming
Chapter Ten PREDICTION The next fifty years: global cooling?
PART TWO: THE POLITICS
Chapter Eleven VIRTUAL REALITIES Misled by computer simulation?
Chapter Twelve DELUSIONS The hubris of climate prediction
Chapter Thirteen COLLUSIONS The development of interests
Chapter Fourteen URGENCY & ERROR The futility of fighting inevitable climate change
Chapter Fifteen VULNERABILITY & ADAPTATION The necess…
Summary Reveals a disturbing collusion of interests responsible for creating a distorted understanding of changes in global climate. This book concludes that the main driver of global warming has been an unprecedented combination of natural events.
””””Alexander Feht (21:31:59) : Many people have a problem with using their real names on Web sites. ”””’
Alexander,
I am not intolerant of anonymous commenters. I do blog with them. But I need to be directly honest, in my nonblog life [real one?] I cannot accept anonymity in any of the people I deal with, it would add to my risk. In the blogosphere, there is some potential risk for me to be in a blog with an anonymous person.
One has to think about the potential risks to the non-anonymous in blogs with anonymous. One cannot just focus on some potential risk to those who fear being intimidated by employers or organized religion, or NGOs or gov’ts because participation in a climate science blog. Such intimidation is illegal in the USA.
I have a limited ability to understand, I guess, because I cannot imagine here in the USA accepting a situation where I cannot say exactly what I think.
Perhaps my professional background gave me a thick skin early on in my life. Commercial nuclear power in the ’70s, ’80s & ’90 in USA was considered relatively evil by the environmentalists and questionable by a significant part of the population. So, I developed a tough independent attitude. I have hundreds of anecdotes about really negative behavior toward me. Screw them.
However, I do have the ability to understand why I cannot say exactly what I think in the totalitarian environment of the Peoples Republic of China. I keep my mouth shut there.
John
“If someone really does think that climate change is not happening – that the world is not warming – then it seems fair enough to call them a denier”
He is out to lunch, really. Warming since when? By how much? Due to what? If I am sceptical that it is cooler now than it was last July, I am certainly in denial. If I doubt that it is warmer now than in 1200? If I doubt its warmer now than it was in 1934?
Is the man really saying that if you doubt that modern, post 1975, warming is unprecedented, you must be in denial? That no other reasonable opinion on this is possible? Or if not, what exactly is he saying?
Anthony, you are a generous man to step forward the way you did. The one thing I wish would have been sent back is what they want to be called when you must reference those on the other side of the fence. Any suggestion I might throw out now would be premature and all seem offensive to them, however a hole exists that needs to be filled. They need to answer the question “We are skeptical observers, what shall we call you without causing offense?”.
CTM ,
Just outa Mermaid town on flip flop. YL Chicken ranchers, finally started asking for chick feed.
other delegates run out of grant money, way back
no A&A , on point to jibber jabber, 4-10
thanks for update on candles burning, while back.
10-10 Good buddy.
ON topic, language and comms has rules. The basic rule is play hard but play fair, dont talk jabber and dont swear.
10-10 all.
Reply: 5 by 5 ~ c(b)tm
”””’Capn Jack. (21:35:37) : Laughing out loud. John Whitman, you obviously are a blog [snip]. . . . . . Here’s an elegant solution John, dont respond or comment to people you don’t want to comment to. . . . . Just move on. . . .”””’
Capn Jack,
My sincere apologies for suggesting an idea that might disrupt the status quo of anyone here at WUWT.
Mea Culpa.
The open play of ideas perhaps should not be even suggested here if it could possibly cause change that threatens anyone.
John
Yes, congratulations to both Anthony and the Guardian.
DEBATE, albeit sometimes robust, is the only way to go forward.
Name calling is childish and counter productive … let’s call the AGW protagonists “warmers”!! *grin*
peace
Re: anonymity
Wherever I comment on blogs, I use the name ascribed to this comment. Hence, if people read my name in any comment, whatever blog that might be on, whether to do with climate or a variety of other topics of interest to me, they can associate that with the one individual.
But here’s the rub: what if my name is actually a nom-de-plume? How do you know I am Michael Larkin or Phil Fanacapan? And what does it matter? It only matters, I’ll opine, if one is actually a well-known individual and seeking to hide behind anonymity.
In these days of cyber crime, phishing, and so on, it is actually quite wise to adopt a nom-de-plume. And as has been pointed out, there may be consequences for those who use their real name which they don’t deserve.
If one were liable to lose one’s means of making one’s living by using one’s real name, I think one would be circumspect about doing so, and rightfully as it would be not only oneself, but one’s family, that would suffer. Hence I personally don’t mind if people use pseudonyms. It’s more important to me that they use it consistently and don’t change it so that they can re-emerge under some other guise, thereby avoiding any opprobrium attached to their former soubriquet.
Awww. Does that mean I will have to stop calling them Global Cooling Deniers?
.
“I accept only what I am forced to accept by reasonably reliable evidence, and keep that acceptance tentative pending the arrival of further evidence. That doesn’t make us popular.”
asimov in foundation and earth says this.
I dont argue the climate has changed, its always changing, but i do question how much humans has influenced this change. And i also do question which way it will go, colder or warmer, and i also question is warmer a bad thing or a good thing.
I prefer to be called questioner, we have questions, the AGW/CC lobby wont give us the answers.
”””’Michael Larkin (23:47:43) : Re: anonymity”””’
Michael,
1. As you point out, there are those who weigh both the advantages and disadvantages of anonymity, then choose anonymity.
2. Likewise, there are those who weigh both the advantages and disadvantages of non-anonymity, then chose not to be anonymous.
3. In the physical world, virtually nothing I do or the people around me do is anonymous. Yet, I see absolutely no fundamental problems.
4. Crime exists in both cyberspace and in the physical world. Should always be cautious, and it doesn’t necessitate or even suggest need of anonymity.
5. Each individual blog can decide to be what it wants to be, just as I am sure this blog will decide to be what it wants to be going forward.
6. Some blog owners exercise severe censoring as a vehicle to make their blogs be what they want them to be. Others have some balanced moderation and others have no moderation. I have no comment.
7. I am not sure if the idea of a multi-layered blog could in theory work. Multi-layered blog would conceptual be one where people choose the anonymous option or the non-anonymous option. Both options could see each others posts or not but ability to post may be restricted across options. It allows the exercise of choice with a blog while still being in blog you like.
Hey, everybody, if anybody from WUWT was here right now I would buy you a bite and a brew in celebration of being flamed [if that is the correct expression] for my very first time on the internet!!! See ’Capn Jack. (21:35:37). Thanks Capn Jack, I would buy you many pints for your flame services.
John
“… The ’sceptics’ label is almost too generous a badge as very few are genuinely sceptical about the science but I think we have to accept the name is now common parlance.”
What a winging mealy-mouthed comment from the Guardian report above!
I am not any sort of a scientist and I totaly disbelieve the claims about “global warming due to increasing levels of CO2 in te atmosphere”.
Here is why.
Using my laptop calculator and starting with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at almost 400ppmv, if I divide 1,000,000 by 400 I get 2,500, that means one out of every 2,500 molecules in the atmosphere will be a CO2 molecule. Thus for every 2,500 cubic meters of air there will be the equivalent of 1 cubic meter of CO2. From Avogadro’s number I can find the mass of that CO2. It turns out that the mass will be a fraction under 2 kilograms. The mass of that 2,500 cubic meters of air will be 3,000 kilograms. This gives a CO2 to normal air mass ratio of 1 to 1,500.
However much heat energy the CO2 absorbs, it will require at least 1,500 times as much energy to bring the air to the same temperature. Actually that is not quite true because normal air needs about 15% more energy than the CO2 to reach the same temperature, so it neads 1,725 times more energy. But there is a problem, the CO2 also radiates back to the ground and warms the ground up some more! If the CO2 is absorbing energy, passing some of that energy to the air, AND radiating energy back to the ground, I am very confused. Especially the bit about the ground warming the CO2 FIRST which then radiates back to the ground to warm it some more. I am unable to find any references to how this works.
The phrase “voodoo science” seems to be on my mind, can’t think why.
John Whitman, I get snipped here and there I dont take it personal.
No biggee.
People use nom de plumes for various reasons. When I go hard I use my real birth name. That means to me importance of debate.
Personally I think Jo Nova’s site has a great comments guide.
JVK.
The real problem for me with this is that I was enjoying welcoming Jones, Curry and so on to the ranks of being deniers. They both have made statements recently which have labeled them as being in the denier camp (MWP open to dispute for example).
How big of them.Condescending snip snip snip.Be grateful for the crumbs thrown,is that it?
Well done Anthony and I also bestow a shallow bow to Mr Randerson – not the full bow of respect, though, as he includes the phrase “very few are genuinely sceptical about the science”.
How many is “very few” Mr Randerson? What methodology have you used to arrive at this conclusion? I imagine it is a similar methodology used by the Times leader writer (who likens climate change sceptics to ‘village idiots’) and a number of BBC news correspondents who use the formula “most scientists believe” in their reports without any supporting statistical evidence.
As a former journalist (brought up in the old school where hard facts were required to support any assertion in copy) I believe we have more to fear from those sections of the media who blindly follow the establishment line than we do from self-regarding and blinkered scientists. I invite all followers of this noble blog to challenge lazy and subversive journalism wherever they encounter it.
I suggest we should call ourselves ‘climate rationalists’.
Steve Goddard (11:04:02) :
I never understood how someone could “deny” the future as predicted by a computer model.
Are low-paid government computer programmers and climate scientists supposed to be some sort of gods who know the future?
“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”
G K Chesterton
I’am afraid that belief in God is itself part of the ‘anything’ that people can produce reasons to beleive in.
This is what they propose…
We have been discussing such terminology, and some of my colleagues have suggested that Guardian style might be amended to stop referring to “climate change deniers” in favour of, perhaps, “climate sceptics”.
So if one is sceptical of CAGW, then one does not belive in climate!! Amazing, how difficult is it to call it what it is. (CAGW sceptic)
Better still stop the reference “climate sceptics” or “global warming sceptics”. Are we not CO2-made global warming/climate change sceptics? Is the scepticism not about CO2 taking exclusive control of the Earth’s climate in the latter part of the 20th Century, something it has not done before?
The evidence of climate change of global warming is not in question, but it is NOT evidence of CO2 being suddenly in charge.
Words are important and it is a deliberate tactic in my view to keep the semantics focussed on global warming and climate change, for which of course there is observable evidence, because evidence about CO2 is not clear.