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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I love this!
Thanks Anthony, great job, you’re a true gentleman.
I also would like to thank the journalists of the Guardian for taking the time to discuss this subject and for their insights.
It’s much appreciated.
“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.” AW
Exactly the point I’ve always tried to make when discussing the issue of AGW. Since AGW is very firmly identified as an environmentalist issue, if it should be found (or should I say, as has been found) to be a lie then all environmental issues will likewise to tainted. Being, at the very least, skeptical of AGW alarmism is actually a pro-environmentalist stance.
http://www.philosophical-investigations.org/Wikipedia_on_Climate_Change
“Despite this, it’s not just The Guardian (a paper I used to occasionally write articles on Computers and Education for) uncritically regurgitating Wikipedia. All over the word, journalists are writing stories about global warming using the same strategy.
A Day in the Life of an Environment Editor
10.00 Arrive at desk, switch computer on and have coffee
11.00 am Editorial meeting. Boss says write something (groans all round) about Global Warming.
12.00 Lunch
2.30 pm Look at Wikipedia
3.00 pm Ring or email someone mentioned there for comments
4.00 Tea and organic chocky biscuits
5.00 File 1000 words using WP and my vegetable patch as sources.
That’s why Wikipedia’s influence is greater than you might think, if you imagine it is just net-nerds who read Wikipedia you may be deluding yourself. Quite possibly you get a compulsory dose of it every morning in regurgitated form in your newspaper and watch it every evening on TV.
Only a few media organisations have the ‘resources’ to do any ‘research’ into these matters – one’s like the New York Times, which is a fervent backer of the cause, could it be in the interests of both the Democratic party and the Carbon Traders of Wall Street? – and the BBC. But the BBC held a meeting at which several climate experts were invited to see if there were any doubts or controversies about the climate change science, and these experts said certainly not! So the BBC has no worries. However, just to be on the safe side, it has officially designated the names of the experts it consulted a ‘secret’. Like the temperature readings used by the University of East Anglia to arrive at the conclusion that the world is overheating, these sources can never be revealed.
Now the ‘science of global warming’, which is to say, the notion that man-made CO2 has caused, and is set increasingly to do so, the planet to warm slightly, is certainly not all the ‘sceptical way’ either. But let’s not get hung up on that. For any number of reasons, the world ‘could be’ warming up, just as the theory insists. If it is, we need a rational discussion of both the effects, the implications and possible mitigation strategies.
None of these can start without a full and open exchange of views and evidence. Wikipedia has systematically distorted both – and it continues to do so.
Here there are no controversies about inaccurate temperature records, manipulated temperature graphs, melting glaciers, african famines, dehydrating rain-forests, or ‘complete lists of greenhouse gases’ that miss out the one that causes 90 % of the greenhouse effect – water vapour*.
Yet even giving the lobby its man-made global warming:
• if temperature records are inaccurate, then remedial activities will be directed to the wrong regions
• if glaciers are not really melting then emergency action to provide replacement fresh water supplies to a billion people in Asia is, to say the least, not necessary
• if the rain-forests are not really dehydrating then it is still worth preserving the rain-forests, rather than converting them to ‘biofuels’, as is the current policy
• if water vapour accounts for virtually all the greenhouse effect, then the economic value and utility of capturing other gases is functionally nil…
One could go on – but why bother? There is no debate, only propaganda. Whether Wikipedia is as we are asked to believe, just a rudderless ship being tossed here and there on the tides of prevailing opinion, I personally doubt. The bias is careful, subtle and very, very thorough. It involves wholesale abuse of the supposed principles of the site – the right of ‘everyone’ to edit pages and the expulsion of those who make changes that are ‘off message’ (like my new page on sceptical views).
Let’s leave the last word to Jimmy Wales, nominally at least, the benign dictator controlling the world’s most consulted encyclopaedia. I asked him (by email) if anything about the coverage of Climate Change there had worried him, given that it was not neutral at all, and was generated in ways contrary to his claimed principle that ‘all editors are equal’. In a characteristically unreflective reply, he wrote:
“There exists a long line of people who, when their extremist agenda is not accepted into Wikipedia, accuse the community of bias.”
Jimmy Wales, 15 Febuary 2010
Jimmy may or may not be worried about the goings on at Wikipedia. But the rest of us should be.
Notes
About those frightening images… The ‘source’ is the Goddard Institute, and Gavin Schmidt, editor of realclimate.org (set up by the PR company that Al Gore’s environmental advisor was a staffer for), and former home of Wikipedia editing supremo, William Connoley. Does Wikipedia note that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann – of the now discredited ‘hockey stick’ graph are both colleagues and chums? Or that the Goddard is run by James Hansen, one of Global Warming Theories’ founding fathers, so to speak, who has such an ‘extreme’ position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on ‘who are the greatest’ football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot’s vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. Look at the small print too- Gavin and co admit that their ‘record temperatures’ result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and ‘parts’ of the Antarctic – data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centrers do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses these dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them ‘over the entire land mass’ – obtaining many more record high temperatures!)]]
1. Quotes from Wikipedia pages are from versions downloaded on 16 February 2010. The numbers in square brackets are left in to indicate the WIkipedia footnote gobbledegook.
2. Lawrence Solomon,evidently confused by WIkipedia’s jargon, makes some large over-estimates of the influence of Connolley. I’m grateful to the Wikipedia Review for additional details on William Connolley’s activities.
2. For those who are interested, the temperature records for the Siberia and China have been shown to have been deliberately falsified, while a much-quoted temperature-survey supposedly demonstrating only as small ‘urban heat’ effect contained key assertions that were impossible -that is, were flat lies. The key temperature graph of the IPCC report the so-called Hockey Stick graph, was inserted 3 times prominently by its inventor in one IPCC report, but then having been extensively discredited – notably for having ‘ironed out’ all evidence of past changes in temperature, not included at all in the next.The IPCC claim that all the ice in the Himalayas would have melted by 2035 was discredited when it was pointed out that it came from just one scientist, linked to the IPCC’s chief, who had no evidence to back it up, and instead a personal interest in the advancing of the claim. The IPCC predictions of massive crop failure in Sub-Saharan Africa and the disappearance of the rainforests due to lack of rain followed the same pattern – one ‘partisan’ source, not peer-reviewed. Indeed, when spotted, they were flatly rejected by relevant specialists. But that debate has been suppressed – up to now!
1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
2see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/william-m-connolley/
3http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/03/who-is-william-connolley-solomon.aspx
stephen richards (11:26:02) :
“I am not inclined to forgive and forget the past activities of the Grauniad. They knew all along what they were doing. Their derisive remarks against well qualified scientists, many times more knowledgeable than them, were always unacceptable and against all principles of good, impartial journalism.”
HEAR! HEAR!
Maybe the Guardian is reviewing its use of extreme language now that it has been on the receiving end of the stream of bile emanating from RC over recent Guardian articles by Fred Pearce.
This debate about terms is a little bit silly. If one talks about GW, we’re all talking about AGW. The deniers are those that deny the Earth being warmer in the past. As they seem to deny (do they?) that it was also colder…
And if you talk about Climate Change, I can tell you that I’m a believer. I believe climate is changing today, it has changed in the past, and will certainly change in the future!!!
Who are the deniers after all???
Ecotretas
So, do you all agree to stop calling AGW a “hoax”? I do not know if that term has been used on this blog, but it certainly gets used a lot.
I would tend to call Inhofe a denier and Lindzen a skeptic.
In terms of debate, one needs to distinguish between scientific debate and public debate. There is no scientific debate on the veracity of natural selection driving evolution, but there is certainly a public debate. There is very little debate amoung professional climatogists the AGW is real and series. Even Lindzen says humans are responcible for about 1/3 of the obversed GW.
It seems more than a tad ironic that Dawkins, who proclaims that 98% of the world is delusional, would complain about the nastiness of debate.
“My position has been that there is no debate that the earth has warmed over the past 100+ years”: my position is that it’s perfectly plausible that it has warmed, but until the effect is quantified competently and honestly, it seems premature to say that it’s certain. But it seems likely, I’ll grant you.
I suspect it is dawning on the folks at the Guardian that the AGW position is looking rather less secure than it did, say, in October. From which it follows that calling people who a) have helped this happen, b) have been questioning that position all along, “deniers” and worse made the Guardian look quaint and outmoded. Now that is all very well over on the Fabian economics and policy side of the paper, but the hipsters on the environment beat couldn’t bear the ridicule.
Slowly the actual science – with its complexity and uncertainty – is supplanting the all to neat, exact to the fourth decimal place, confections generated by computer models. The need for transparency and an audit trail have become mainstream. Bloggers like our host and Steve McIntyre have more credibility than the climategate emailers.
The Guardian is simply trying to keep up as the world changes.
Anthony
I wish you well in your initiative to stop the name-calling and get both sides to concentrate on the issues. Too bad the AGW lead salesman and slide-show jockey doesn’t keep up with the spirit of the thing: http://www.herkinderkin.com/2010/03/al-gore-goes-on-the-attack/
I object to his assertions that AGW-skeptics constitute a a criminal generation. I object to being tainted by association with unnamed AGW-skeptics funded by big oil. I object very strongly to having the skeptical position likened to the desperate attempts by tobacco companies to descredit those who established the dangers of smoking. Especially from the son of a tobacco farmer! Al Gore knows what every politician knows – that one can spout the most crude obscenities with impunity as long as one avoids using “obscenities”.
PS – my cheap shot referring to Al Gore’s father only goes to show that I can be just as guilty. I rest my case. It will be a long haul bringing sense to the rhetoric. Thanks for having the guts to try it. I for one will do my best to practise moderation.
I guess nailing it down to the actual true label of “AGW skeptics” (being that nobody is skeptical of climate per se) would be too much to ask of The Guardian et al at this point ?
Perhaps one day in the future we could be labelled appropriately as such (political correctness and all). Much like how history has played out with other minority “unfavorable” groups…
*sigh*
Good work Anthony.
That offensive piece Monbiot’s royal flush: Cut out and keep climate change denier cards that has typified the Guardians coverage, still taking pride of place on just about every Guardian page remotely connected to Climate Change, makes a mockery any supposed change of heart ‘though.
“In terms of debate, one needs to distinguish between scientific debate and public debate.”
Mike, I think the real debate is “just how much of this is climatologists blowing smoke”
Honestly, do you really believe that the scientific community is that smart?
Look at all the things we can not do, control, predict, cure, or even have a clue what makes it tic.
and a bunch of climatologists want to profess that they not only have it all figured out, but know how to fix it.
It all flies in the face of common sense, and that is the real debate.
Great idea: start negotiating with frauds and liars who’ve been crapping over science for twenty years. Not.
One person who should be ashamed of himself Mr Tim Flannery Australian of the Year There will be more frequent and intense droughts in Australia
http://www.news.com.au/national/record-rain-breaks-drought-in-boost-for-farmers/story-e6frfkvr-1225836346302
Well done Anthony, although I think an apology from The Guardian would have been more appropriate.
On the other hand there are some who are literally in denial about the evidence.
I think it’s going to be increasingly obvious who has really been in denial about the eveidence..
Mike,
While evolution certainly goes on, it has so many drivers, and they interact in such a complex way that the evolutionary science is in the state of a constant flux and development.
As to the AGW theory — apart from the fact that some 35,000 professional scientists signed a letter stating that it is a hoax — never forget that “very little debate” may have different explanations: it could be “consensus” (which means exactly nothing in the scientific world); it could be also “suppression,” “persecution,” and “censorship.”
There was “very little debate” among the Soviet scientists about the “bourgeois” nature of such “pseudo-sciences” as genetics and cybernetics. And yes, this silence of the lambs was also portrayed in the Soviet media as “scientific consensus.”
As someone with a degree in Physics, and had studied this subject in 1991-1993 before leaving graduate school to pursue a real career, I find it hilarious when I am called a “skeptic” or a “denier” by people who have no scientific education whatsoever. These people are drones. Even the ones in the press and media disgust me greatly. It is as if they are the sole decision maker here. What do you get? You get hilarious moments in journalistic history when a plastic top like Rick Sanchez attempts to seek the English translation for “9 meters”. What a load.
What is even more amazing to me is that people who call me a “denier” call themselves a “believer”. This is the main problem. In physics, I was not taught to “believe” that Force is the product of a body’s mass and the acceleration. It is not something that can be “denied”. I was not “skeptical” about the Laws of Thermodynamics. However, these very real and very permanent, unchangeable laws seem to be broken by the “believers” to attain their “results”.
When I was in undergraduate physics, I took a 400 level modern physics course. It was extremely difficult, but it was the best course I took. The professor would make us apply changes to the Force Laws, such as instead of inverse square, the relation was exponential, etc. This shaped our understanding of the laws and why there are relations, like the inverse square law.
The problem is we have a new religion stemming from those who want to “believe” that Man is the center of the problem here. This may be the result of the generational shift and self-centered desires of the “Me” generation. Those who reject the traditional cultures and practices, pursue towards redefining everything and everyone by their own circular lexicons, and hyphenate everything under the sun to effectively categorize and box us up in our personal zones. And now these people, the “believers”, see themselves as the saviors of the planet. All of us masses are heretics.
Let’s go this route; let’s say that all of us who have a science degree, regardless of how many peer reviewed journals we publish endless modeled graphs and hyperbole, that we are the “science educated class”. Those who want to “believe” cannot classify themselves as “science educated class”, because science is not about truth and false. It is about right and wrong. When your theory is wrong, it is wrong. A lot of bridges have fallen from wrong theories.
The rest of the people, who may not have gone done the path of science education have every right to participate. Those who want to understand the whole issue, both sides of the equation, per se, should be called “vested participants” as it is everyone’s right to understand our world and to participate in making it better. Those who want to remain one-sided in terms of “belief” will still be called “believers”.
The end result is this: many theories, some completely ridiculous and downright stupid, have been showing significant flaws to the point of bursting. This is due to the fact that these theories were wrong, not that enough people did “believe” these ideas. Bad ideas occur all the time. These usually lead to better ideas. Bad ideas are not false, they are just wrong.
So when I hear that the “press” is discussing how to classify us, I laugh. I have a classification for them that has been tossed around quite a bit. I call them “dinosaurs”.
Oh, and still a great site here, Mr. Watts. Keep growing.
Mike (13:17:17) :
So, do you all agree to stop calling AGW a “hoax”?
Well, we can’t call it “science” because many of its main proponent Climate Scientists refuse to follow the Scientific Method. So what term do you propose instead?
I’m not a scientist. I’m an engineer. I design and build dams and hydroelectric projects. To do this, I need a good understanding of both climate and weather and I’ve been doing this for 45 years. I’ve worked in Mongolia where temperatures drop to -50°C and Australia where they go to plus 50°.
I, personally, am not aware of any warming over the past 45 years, but am prepared to acceot that some has occurred.
I consider myself to be a climate-change skeptic.
1. There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that there has been some warming since 1970.
2. Obviously, most of this evidence comes from areas where most of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet reside
3. For the most part, temperature date from the places where people don’t live in great numbers (95% of the area of our “fragile” planet) is generally anecdotal and not scientific
4. There is no way of establishing if temperatures since 1970 have been warmer than the MWP or the Roman max
5. If 1. is correct, there is no way of establishing magnitude of change to a precision of better than ± 1° (since 1970).
6. If 1. is correct, there are many possible explanations: natural cycles, land use changes, CO2.
7. If sea levels are rising by 3 mm/year, we would have seen a 2 m rise in sea level in Port Philip Bay (at Melbourne, where I was born and last visited in Jan 2010). When I look at the rocks at Picnic Point in Sandringham, I have difficulty seeing more than 25 cm rise at most.
As a serious, competent and honest engineer, I find it troubling to find that there are “scientists” who are not skeptics.
Thanks, Anthony. WUWT has really been a breath of fresh air for me – to realize that there are intelligent people out there who are not prepared to go along with the herd mentality.
From the article: “Blogs on genetics, the science of evolution, astrology and astronomy attract fierce postings from staunch believers and disbelievers, but inevitably it is climate change that has provoked the most abuse, especially from climate change deniers or “sceptics”.” – Amy Turner
That is a false statement in my experience. I find that it is those that support the alleged AGW hypothesis are the ones who can’t bite their tongues and keep their fingers from typing all kinds of vitriol. Just asking basic questions about the alleged AGW hypothesis trigger the nastiest ad hominem splatterings leading to censorship and exclusion from particular web sites in question; e.g. pharangula. Certainly living in a “green stronghold” city such as Vancouver one gets this type of caustic vitriol a lot as well when the topic is the alleged AGW hypothesis.
Being “right” at the exclusion of being able to politely discuss the topic at hand isn’t a virtue and most certainly isn’t a virtue on topics of science.
There is also the issue of science education, those that support the alleged AGW hypothesis don’t seem to consider that not everyone understands everything as some of them might think that they do. That is why we have questions built into human languages: for learning. It is much more difficult to learn when everyone or just about everyone you talk with about a topic attack you personally for asking questions on the topic at hand (in this case the alleged climate science of the alleged AGW hypothesis).
Given my interactions with people clearly many people who support the alleged AGW hypothesis are not actually informed at a detailed level about the alleged AGW hypothesis.
It sure makes it much harder to learn the very many complex details when one is attacked for asking questions about it.
Human brains evolved to easily accept “beliefs” since in many cases if you don’t accept the belief you’ll be dead. For example, kids are usually wise to believe their parents when they say there is a monster in the forest… it’s a good thing too since crocodiles like to chomp on humans just as much as they do other animals.
Learning to observe one’s own beliefs so that one can intercept their wayward impact upon you and others is an important skill for every human to develop. It’s also an important protection against being conned in life. It’s part of bringing rationality into your life, and rationality is at the root of the scientific method. By belief I mean thinking something is true or false when you have no evidence for it being so.
Evidence based rational thinking that eliminates belief as much as possible is in many ways alien to many people which is why science education is so important to the survival of our human civilization.
While it’s expedient it’s not enough for the media and others to simply make claims stating their position when it comes to topics of science, they must provide the actual evidence to back up their claims.
Very interesting point. And great to see The Guardian taking these issues very seriously.
I am a denier & proud of it!
I deny CAGW!
I accept that we have some influence on the climate through local influences but that CO2 can have significant effects upon the Earth, that I am sceptical of and catastrophic effects I deny!
The atmosphere just cannot hold that much energy given the current & probable future conditions.
When we can adequately explain the MWP & LIA, maybe we will have enough to contemplate human impacts seriously.
It’s the water stupid!
DaveE.
Richard Feyman: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” Deniers or sceptics – does that matter? Both can be very honorable positions and presumedly more honorable than the believer’s (in AGW). The deniers of Himalaya-glaciers-melting IPCC report were correct, not the sceptics. Who were the deniers? Those who went there an looked, real scientists.
“My position has been that there is no debate that the earth has warmed over the past 100+ years, ….” “Has been” or “is”? GISS is adjusting data (older ones down, younger ones up) every day, CRU are data non existent in the world of science (due to the Royal Scocieties of Physics, Chemistry and Statistica) – and there is no debate?
“No debate”? Really? “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” and therefore the debate should never end – especially not when data and/or code are hidden. The Guardian has to learn a lot about science. They should start with a little Popper … I don’t care what people, who believe in the end of the scientific debate, call me.
Warming or not, CO2 or not – the debate will become a political one. How to argue with believe that there is no debate?