Like what Judith Curry saw recently at NCAR’s seminar, he seems to think it is all about communication.
Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
Yet sceptics are the ones without any MSM support. So where do they get this idea? Full story here
A few things come to mind that he didn’t cover as other possible reasons skeptics are winning:
1. We don’t hide behind FOIA laws, then circumvent them when we lose. If you’d shared the data when asked, Climategate would never have happened.
2. We don’t rewrite history, either by deleting>morphing commentary like Skepicalscience does, or by creating questionable paleostatistical methods to enable pretending the trees tell us last 900 years were flat without any possible natural variance.
3. We don’t call people on the other side of the debate ugly denigrating names like deniers and flat earthers.
4. We don’t keep trying to link weather patterns/weather events to climate in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Burning issue: Hansen’s evidence that the world is hotting up
Moscow, August 2010
Russia experienced its hottest-ever summer last year – for weeks, a large portion of European Russia was more than 7 °C (12.6 °F) warmer than normal, and a new national record was set of 44 °C (111 °F). Raging forest fires filled Moscow with smoke, forcing the cancellation of air services and obliging people to don face masks.
Jim, get a clue, the Moscow heat wave had NOTHING TO DO with global warming. It was a blocking high weather pattern. NOAA’s own work concludes this:
NOAA finds”climate change” blameless in 2010 Russian heat wave
We mentioned this previously on WUWT, now it is officially peer reviewed and accepted.
NOAA: Natural Variability Main Culprit of Deadly Russian Heat Wave That Killed Thousands
Source here
Daily Moscow temperature record from November 1 2009 to October 31 2010. Red and blue shaded areas represent departures from the long-term average (smooth curve) in Moscow. Temperatures significantly above the long-term average scorched Moscow for much of July and August. NOAA credit. – click to enlargeThe deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new NOAA study. And while the scientists could not attribute the intensity of this particular heat wave to climate change, they found that extreme heat waves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the region in coming decades.
So Jim, when you try to tell us that the 2010 Russian heat wave was caused by global warming, people who know better have no choice but to call post normal science BS on you.
h/t to Kevin Hearle
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“…it is time they go to Asia now”: The result might be that they construct DESERTEC in Tajikistan…
Scorle says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:04 am
….. However no one will succeed to get that news on this website,…..
You just have. So you’ve just contradicted yourself.
Now trying getting record cold/snow comments on some of the CAGW sites. That’s the difference -we aren’t averse to the occasional warm evidence. It isn’t novel and it’s not a trend.
These guys have more excuses for their failures than Obama and Biden combined.
Hansen and Obama are also using plays from the same playbook as well. Remember when Obama claimed the public didn’t like ObamaCare because he wasn’t able to get his message out to the public?
The era of the ‘Big Lie’ has not ended.
“Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals”
As usual for CAGW proponents, accuse the other side of doing what you do in spectacular failure.
But, they’re sorry ….. for damaging the cause.
http://www.1010global.org/no-pressure
One fundamental problem is that the whole issue has become completely binary and polarized in its presentation. As long as the questions and the communication of the fundamental issues is presented in a tone of ‘extremism’…. us vs. them, winning vs losing, denier vs warmer, etc. it will become ever harder to find common ground (if there is any to find), it entrenches ideas and makes it difficult to present nuanced interpretations (e.g. ‘the debate is over’) and it leads rapidly to unscientific thought (see ‘debate’).
Those that speak the loudest unfortunately also speak mostly in extremes (as seen by article on Hansen) and effectively paint themselves into an ideological corner from which one cannot retreat without losing face. The strategy then becomes about maintaining a reputation or position for fear of losing credibility…. the science becomes secondary and the communication of the science quickly ceases to be about the science and more about a ‘unified’ message. All this is bad for the scientific process, since it fundamentally is not scientific. The biggest casualties in all this are 1) the notions of doubt and uncertainty in the scientific process (they seem to have disappeared from the communication of the science for fear tha it somehow weakens a scientific argument, when in fact it is the opposite and anyone should be suspicious of any result without some discussion of the uncertainty), 2) the overall communication of science which has become reductionist and so overly simplified that it can only exist as a presenter of binary ideas (boiled down to yes-no answers, etc), and 3) open-mindedness and debate.
There is no side-taking in this comment. This applies to varying degrees to everyone working in the scientific research fields.
“Current public opinion may be turning but U.S. public schools have been inculcating the concepts of climate change for a while now. We’re likely to have a generation that believes in doing whatever it takes to rescue the earth from climate change. Children are still being educated in this world view, along with the other collectivist issues.”
Whatever the kids hear in schools, they hear much, much more through their social and other media. As they get older and more skeptical in general, they are just as likely to conclude the opposite of what they were taught. I heard a piece on, I think, This American Life, about how kids who uncritically accepted the AGW education doctrine, once exposed to the doubts which were never mentioned in the classroom, became skeptics, made more hard-core by the fact that they realized that they had been deceived in school.
Once you catch an “authority” in one lie, you can never again trust anything that they say/said. Once IPCC lies about glaciers melting, can you ever again take at face value anything that they say? Same goes for teachers.
This has never been about science. AGW has been about politics and wealth distribution from day one – follow the money and the power grab. It’s the only reason it every progressed beyond a few academics, AGW was a vehicle to bigger things.
The public gets fooled about many things, but one thing that it has a great nose for is when its being sold a bill of goods.
Hey! Look on the bright side. He’s admitting sceptics are winning. Would that have happened before climategate?
Excellent article, Anthony. Of course, a complete list of Hansen’s sins against science would be much longer.
Apparently, the PR firm “hired” by the pro-AGW position (a/k/a mainstream media) is listening to the insightful lamenting of Dr. Hansen and is refining its message to the unwashed masses. Take for instance the article posted yesterday (October 10, 2011) at Forbes.com entitled, “The Case for Climate-Change Alarmism.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/10/10/the-case-for-climate-change-alarmism/?partner=contextstory .
The article’s gist has a subtle twist on the “even if we’re wrong, there’s no harm in promoting cleaner energy” group-think. The author, William Pentland, references a March 2011 report issued by Sandia National Laboratory, which asserts that fat tails in power law curves… matter. The author seizes upon something apparently… noteworthy, “In complex systems, the slightest variation in initial conditions can create large deviations in future system conditions over time and not necessarily in predictable ways.” While this is a point long argued by AGW skeptics, to the alarmists, it’s manna from heaven.
Why? In Pentland’s own words, “Uncertainty is intrinsic to complex systems like Earth’s climate, but in the context of catastrophic climate change, this uncertainty is so severe that it is difficult to draw basic conclusions about how fat the fat tail is.” So, by pairing the terms “catastrophic” with “severe,” the PR firm is subtlety promoting the slogan, “even if we’re wrong, the risk is too great” and lending credence to Hansen’s notion that all things extreme are evidence of AGW.
That’s why the author (and by extension the PR firm or mainstream media) is totally comfortable penning the words, “All things considered, alarmism seems like common sense to me.” And where has something analogous been written previously? “…[H]e was not troubled by the fact that every word he murmured into the speakwrite, every stroke of his ink-pencil, was a deliberate lie. He was as anxious as anyone else in the Department that the forgery should be perfect… “
“Andrew McRae says:
October 11, 2011 at 5:57 am”
Interesting aye? The misinformation is stunning here in Aus this week. I am confident current Aussie pollies will end their future vote winning potential today Wednesday 12/11/11 (Or in US speak 11/12/11) when they vote in the carbon tax.
Actually Dr. Hansen knows that there are always droughts somewhere. This time it was in Texas. And actually we really don’t know that this drought was worse than occurred in some states during the “Dust Bowl.” On December 4, 2009, we had the earliest snow every recorded in Houston. In 2004, we had the first “White Christmas” in Houston since record keeping began. Hansen points to Northern Europe in 2003 without mentioning that there has been exceptionally cold weather in parts of Northern Europe since then.
.
The fact is that Hansen’s GISS temperature record is the only one that is still showing a significant warming trend. HadCRUT and NOAA Land & Oceans data are both based on the same NCDC data that GISS is based on. Neither of those show any significant warming trend since 2001. The UAH satellite temperature record does not show a significant warming trend either since around 2001.
.
Hansen laments climate scientists lack of skill as propagandists. He didn’t put it quite that way. 🙂 Obviously he believes is own propaganda. The fact is that folks are not stupid. And they resent someone like Hansen treating them as though they are. After a while, we start to see contradictions, exaggerations, name-calling, obfuscation, misrepresentation and such. And we are very uncomfortable to see people claiming to be scientists doing that sort of thing. They have destroyed their own credibility and shouldn’t attempt to blame anyone else for it. Hansen and his ilk have not been at a disadvantage in terms of getting their message out. The national media has been an unpaid public relations arm of the climate hysteria movement from the start. It is the climate crisis skeptics that have been at a disadvantage. We are prevailing with Mother Nature’s help and because our point of view can stand the test of reason.
It’s not “skeptics winning”, Jim. It’s climate fact prevailing over computer generated climate narratives. Skeptics are merely reporting the facts.
I agree with those who have already mentioned the indoctrination of young people over this issue – the next generation will be far less sceptical. Just 2 examples: take a look at the general studies A level papers (UK) or go into any library and check out picture books for young children. The left-wing/pro AGW bias is worse than anything the MSM have offered to date. I’m all for sustainable living because apart from any ethical issues,it just makes very good economic sense but our children are being brainwashed, blackmailed and frightened by some dangerous and yet subtle propaganda and their parents on the whole don’t realise.
kelly liddle writes “Not winning in Australia. Carbon (dioxide) Tax expected to pass parliament tomorrow.”
Please correct me if I am wrong; I am a Canadian not an Australian. It is my understanding that the Carbon Tax bill may pass in the House of Representatives tomorrow; NOT Parliament. It will still have to pass in the Senate.
Father of the Green movement? More like crazy corrupt prophet of the modern fake Green movement.
The real father of the real green movement was Norman Borlaug.
Slight fraudian slip there, “the earth is in increasing danger from rising temperatures”, which is a different thing than actually showing that there are rising temperatures. If there actually were rising temperatures, we would be in the exact same danger today as we were in formerly. He is admitting that what he is doing is making the possibility of rising temperatures look more frightening, not showing that temperatures actually are rising.
In other words, he is admitting that he is spouting pure propaganda.
Ooops! I guess November has meaning for me. YAY! Debt free…oh wait, carbon tax coming! Thanks Gillard.
Jim C, unfortunately they have the the numbers in the senate too, so it’s just a matter of time (next election)
Richard M questions my comment on whether the skeptics in the USA matter, and notes “Did he miss out on the positions of China, Canada and India? How about Russia and Brazil?”
Richard: I think you’re conflating strategic positioning for advantage in the political game of climate negotiations with the idea that these nations deny the reality of climate change. The USA is unique in that it’s motivations for resisting response to climate change is rooted in denial of the importance of the issue, whereas the nations you cite are trying to work the situation to their advantage. Neither are ethically responsible in my mind, but the point I made is that the USA is progressively being overtaken by the international strategic manipulations, and becoming less relevant in providing leadership. Perhaps you need to take a more nuanced reading of my “silly” idea, or come and sit in on some of the international negotiations, as I have.
Maybe I missed one, but I didn’t see any complaints about AGW in the Occupy Wall Street mobs.
It must be losing in the streets too.
Yet another fruadian slip, the skeptics are employing “communications professionals”. What is the chief difference between professionals and amatures? Simple, professionals get paid. I need to go out and start my own skeptics website, apperently, there is a lot of money in it. Oh, and Hansen doesn’t get paid.
Skeptics have data on their side – as in, the significant divergence between CAGW models & the reality of the satellite temp data over the last 10-15 years and that is the main reason they are “winning”the debate. How can any one say the science is settled looking at the data – it simply doesn’t support that conclusion. It’s not a matter of “winning” or “losing” or proper communicating, it’s a matter of data.
Supporters of AGW say the science is settled yet any one who looks into the issue even briefly will see that science is far from settled & that there are many qualified scientists doing research which suggest that CAGW is still just a hypothesis that is not proven. Even citizen scientists routinely poke legitimate holes in the hypothesis , as we see on WUWT & other similar skeptical websites.
Anyone trained in science knows that skepticism is supposed to be a core value to moving science ahead – you must continually question. So, when a group says “you must not question”, this is a red flag to anyone with scientific training that the science is not settled. A strong hypothesis stands up to questioning, a weak one falls down. The “you must not question” approach tells anyone with scientific training the hypothesis is weak.
The bottom line is the reason CAGW is “losing” has nothing to do with communication – it has to do only with the fact that it is a weak hypothesis with poor data support. It also because the public is not as ignorant as Jim Hansen , Al Gore et al believes – we can think for ourselves & what we see tells us there is way more to climate than just the CAGW hypothesis.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create and maintain blocking highs. We are talking about a pressure system that stays put in the midst of different neighboring pressure systems. These competing systems want to create winds that sweep them away. To stay put is really something. The key to any teleconnections with global warming is to determine what kind of energy is necessary to build and maintain more blocking highs than usual in that region.
And that is the sticky wicket. The miniscule amount of AGW energy in the “alarming” temperature anomaly change cannot be traced back into weather pattern systems mathematically to create evidence for this very thin global warming weather pattern driving hypothesis. That Hansen says it does makes him a snake oil salesman.
Oh! Dear, signs of anxiety that pinko bandwagon wavers are starting to look for another canticle to chant and politically gyrate around. Look at it this way Jim, 99% of bugger all doesn’t amount to much. Funny that. Nothing ever changes much except perhaps the gullible in evidence when the Sun is active. Now there’s a correlation worth chasing for grant money. See, there’s always something on the borderline between credibility and lunacy with which to turn a fast buck.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shriek;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop did speak.