Jo Nova has taken on the ridiculous “Map of Organized Climate Change Denial” promoted by Andy Revkin at the NYT with a map of her own and writes:
Two professors of sociology think they can explain why “Climate Deniers” are winning. But Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright start from the wrong assumption and miss the bleeding obvious: the theory was wrong, the evidence has changed, and thousands of volunteers have exposed it.
The real question sociologists will be studying for years to come is: how was an exaggerated scare, based on so little evidence, poor reasoning and petty namecalling, kept alive for two whole decades?
Climate Change Scare Machine Cycle: see how your tax dollars are converted into alarming messages:
The key points
1. The money and vested interests on the pro-scare side is vastly larger, more influential, and more powerful than that on the skeptical side. Fossil fuel and conservative-think-tanks are competing against most of the world financial houses, the nuclear and renewable energy industry, large well financed green activists (WWF revenue was $700m last year), not to mention whole government departments, major political parties, universities dependent on government funding, the BBC (there is no debate), the EU, and the entire UN.
2. Despite this highly asymmetrical arrangement, the skeptics are winning simply because they’re more convincing — they have the evidence. The other team avoid debate, try to shut down discussion (only their experts count), they imply the audience is too stupid to judge for themselves, and then call everyone who disagrees rude names. The dumb punters are figuring them out. Vale free speech.
The evidence changed, but who wanted to know?
When the evidence began rolling in showing how the assumptions were wrong, the graphs were flawed, the thermometers were biased, and the “expert” scientists were behaving badly — who exactly would benefit from risking their career, cutting off the cash cow, being exiled from friends and colleagues, and being called a “Denier” for speaking the truth?
Read more here
The Revkin “map” (really just a flow diagram) is beyond ridiculous. How much did ANY of the organizations affect the debate, either before or after Climategate?
The ONLY effective effort against warming have been three (and a half):
1.0.) Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit
2.0.) Anthony Watt’s WattsUpWithThat
3.0.) The Climategate files
3.5.) Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
NONE of the listings on Revkin’s “map” have made one jot or tittle of effect on the public debate at all. They have all been spinning their wheels for two decades, with doing one tiny spec of good (or bad, depending on your POV). All they have been is lightning rods for warmers to point at and speculate on links to some imagined network of climate holocaust deniers.
The bottom line? All of what Revkin (and the denial deniers) have is a list of non-powerful organizations, at least non-powerful in the climate debate.
The skeptics would be better off if those organizations just got the hell out of the way and shut their doors, because all they do is enable warming shills/dupes like Revkin to pretend that the organizations have had some effect on the debate – which they haven’t had.
Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts – on their own (combined) dime – have had 100 times the effect of those organizations. Judith Curry’s blog has had an effect on the dialogue, but no effect on the science. (Since she came over to the middle of the aisle, no other warmers have joined her.)
And even with Steve and Anthony’s effect, those results pale in comparison to the anonymous person who brought the world Climategate.
Only Climategate has made any substantial difference, Mr. Revkin. Why don’t you address yourself to THAT? Only Climategate has won people over in droves. And why are you, Mr. Revkin, not addressing the whys and the wherefores of the fact that the best evidence against global warming is THE CENTRAL GROUP OF GLOBAL WARMING SCIENTISTS THEMSELVES?
A humble suggestion for an added box to the chart:
“Poor People of The World; Need infrastructure, affordable energy, capital, and practical solutions to improve their situation”
This box to be placed off to the side with no arrows going to or fro, or printed in invisible ink, to represent the current set of priorities.
By labeling the 97% of scientists who describe climate realities around the globe as the “pro scare side, you contribute to a false impression which makes it difficult for your readers to learn the truth. When unpleasant news is made public in an objective fashion (“the Earth is warming”) it will frighten some and mobilize others to take corrective action. In the same vein, if your doctor informs you of a cancer, you can be very frightened (normal) and later motivated to “fight” the disease. If you stay paralyzed in fear, and locked in denial, you will probably die sooner than you would otherwise.
No serious scientist that I am aware of “implies” that the “audience” is “stupid”. Scientists publish their work and it is up to us, the general public to process their findings. The implications of climate science as it is emerging from the vast mainstream of working researchers, (as opposed to journalists, engineers, educated commentators who do no research and an army of others who have clearly observable biases), are potentially frightening to anyone. But the scientists are not calling anyone “names” as you assert, or denigrating those who disagree with them. They do debunk the disagreers in clear, but nonprovocative language. Monckton, Singer, Michaels, and the others have been soundly debunked by several scientists in the accepted protocol of the scientific community.
Climate science is physics Anthony. NO one disputes the basics anymore. The planet is warming. The warming is caused by greenhouse gases, including CO2. Humans, all 6.5 billion of us, burn plants and fuel,(dead plants) thereby greatly adding to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Who can argue with this in the face of overwhelming evidence? The implications of this phenomenon are debatable, but there continue to be distressing observations. The polar regions are warming faster than others areas, and the ice is melting with obvious implications for ocean levels, and currents. Some regions of the world are warming more than others and evaporation rates are increasing everywhere, depleting moisture from soils and available surface water. Accordingly, fresh water availability is diminishing in many areas of the world, a problem which is exacerbated by drought conditions, and other extreme weather events.
The problems we are collectively facing around the world are challenging, and you do everyone a disservice by distorting the situation with inaccurate and inflammatory language.
frederik wisse says:
October 7, 2011 at 12:35 am
The science of sociology was inspired by communism .
I don’t know where you get this stuff from, but it is comparable to the worst rubbish sprouted by proponents of AGW.
Hugh Pepper says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:00 pm
……………………………………….
/sarc
@Hugh Pepper:
Do you just copy and paste this into random replies when you can’t come up with something else to say?
I don’t know many people who believe that 97% of scientists crap. It’s completely bogus. There’s never been a survey of 100% of scientists, or even 100% of the climatologists on any topic.
You have no credibility when you repeat an assertion that’s been thoroughly debunked. The rest of your post isn’t worth responding too, either.
I like how on the original chart, they listed in the “echo chamber” entities such as “blogs” and “media”.
Considering the majority of the MSM agrees and defends the CAGW lies, and that blogs such as RealClimate (paid for by NASA, IIRC) constantly refuse to debate the subject, then maybe they should reconsider their chart.
One needs to follow the money – like Hansen did.
America is the leader in Climate Research. We have the best scientists money can buy.
Somewhat related
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/DownWithEvilCorporations.jpg
Hugh Pepper says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:00 pm
“In the same vein, if your doctor informs you of a cancer, you can be very frightened (normal) and later motivated to “fight” the disease. If you stay paralyzed in fear, and locked in denial, you will probably die sooner than you would otherwise.”
The analogy is false. It compares climate scientists to cancer specialists. However, unlike the case of cancer medicine, there are no competent practitioners of climate science at this time because climate science is in its infancy. All of the billions spent on climate science in the last 40 years has not produced one reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis which goes beyond Arrhenius’ 19th Century work and can be used to explain and predict some climate phenomenon.
There is your challenge, Hugh. Consider what a kind player I am. All you have to do is produce that one reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis about climate and I will agree that I am wrong. How easy can something be? But you, Hugh, like all others I have challenged will prove unable to produce even one. You will be unable to show that your climate scientists are not copies of Al Gore, the World’s Greatest Snake Oil Salesman. You cannot produce one. You cannot do it. Why? Because there are none. Your climate heroes have contributed nothing to climate science.
JPeden says:
October 7, 2011 at 8:19 am
“The last info I received as to the content of current Sociology “thinking” came from a recent graduate of an elite University and involved such things as her lesbian Sociology teacher advocating in class that all her female students should become lesbians and saying that the poor were becoming fat from having to eat at McDonalds and not having any opportunity to exercise. My source was in fact poor, not fat, and had eaten at McDonalds quite a lot because she’d been very active in high school sports, requiring a lot of travel to away-games from her down-trodden rural school. So things got pretty hot in class when she asked her teacher, “Are you calling me fat?” I don’t think she mentioned to her teacher that she is also part American Indian. The brave new Sociologists wouldn’t have believed that either.”
Nailed it, J. What you describe, very politely, is what I have observed for forty years now in elite and near-elite graduate departments. But it is not limited to Sociology. It is rampant.
(Of course, when authorities allowed creation of something called a “Feminist Studies Department,” what the H*ll did they expect? For fear of being labelled a “conspiracy theorist,” I will not point out that the main thrust of communism is to create as many divisions within society and institutions as possible and to make each as dependent on government handouts as possible.)
And another 7.5 million down the drain…… And this is the 7th one?
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/10/07/umass_to_host_federal_climate_center/
Follow the money.
To all contributors here who are going on about Sociology being a left-wing, communist discipline: the ‘Father of Sociology’ was Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), the man who coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’ and is considered the first Social Darwinist. He shared with August Comte (1798 – 1857) the desire to apply the principles derived from Darwinian evolution to the analysis of human society and the evolution of morality and social institutions. His motivations were to promote utilitarian liberalism and self-sufficiency and to promote human evolution: he regarded the poor and weak as having arrived at that state due to congenital weaknesses in intelligence or other qualities. He therefore opposed public education and welfare reform as these were a waste of money and were a charity coerced by the state from the public. He was anti-Christian and sought to implement a new morality, but was also staunchly anti-socialist.
Sociology may since have become predominantly left-wing, but this is because the anti-Christian, pro-evolutionary new morality meshed well with the leftist agenda to destroy the Christian institutions underlying Western society. To do this, the left had to argue for the ‘natural’ evolutionary foundations of society and morality, which is what sociologists also were seeking to understand.
Spencer was also in early years very much an advocate for women (and even children) getting the vote, and was anti-marriage because of his own mother’s unhappy marriage and his perception that marriage subjugated women and was not a partnership of equals, but rather bound couples together even if their natural passions died.
clipe says:
October 7, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Somewhat related
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/DownWithEvilCorporations.jpg
_____________________________________________________________________
GEE, I thought it was down with the evil bankers who create debt out of fairy dust and then expect us to pay Interest for the rest of our lives. Money Is Created by Banks Evidence Given by Graham Towers, Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, before the Canadian Government’s Committee on Banking and Commerce…
Should be a contest to create the best Rube Goldberg illustration of how CAGW works. I’d pitch in a few bucks for the prize.
http://www.rubegoldberg.com/
The above was the only “fact” that I could find in your entire comment. Try harder! GK
If the Fossil Fuel Industry and Corporate America are passing out big bucks, I want to know how to get my share. I am perfectly willing to be a denier for them, because I think AGW theory is a three layer cake of horse dejecta. It’s hard to make money these days. I will deny for food.