UPDATE: Dr. Robert G. Brown of Duke University, the commenter rgbatduke, made a response that was commented on by several here. It is eloquent, insightful and worthy of consideration. See below.
Dr. Paul Bain, the lead and corresponding author of the letter Promoting Pro-Environmental Action In Climate Change Deniers in Nature Climate Change which was first discussed at WUWT here: Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature and later here: Lord Leach of Fairford weighs in on Nature’s ‘denier’ gaffe has been busy responding to critics. Wattsupwiththat asked permission to reprint the e-mail he was sending. He has asked us, instead, to post the following statement:
Thank you for your email and the courtesy of requesting permission to post my email to one of your commenters who contacted me by email about the paper. My response is on the record already on Judith Curry’s blog, and the responses to that have pointed to some necessary clarifications (e.g., including the term “anthropogenic” where necessary), and areas where further explanation seems useful. So rather than rehash some of the same debates by posting the original email, I think it would be more productive to post the following which includes clarifications/extensions (many of which I also make in Judith Curry’s blog, but spread across different comments)…
Comments about the use of the “denier” label are a fair criticism. We were focused on the main readership of this journal – climate scientists who read Nature journals, most of whom hold the view that anthropogenic climate change is real. It should also be noted that describing skepticism as denial is a term increasingly used in the social science literature on climate change (e.g. in Global Environmental Change, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society), and is used informally by some within the climate science community. So we were using a term that is known, used, and understood in the target audience, but which we thought involved a stronger negative stereotype (e.g. being anti-environmental, contrarian) than skeptic. My thought was this would highlight the contrast with the data, which suggests that you need not believe in AGW to support pro-environmental action, especially when it had certain types of (non-climate) outcomes (demonstrating a non-contrarian position). So in my mind we were ultimately challenging such “denier” stereotypes. But because we were focused on our target audience, it is true that I naively didn’t pay enough attention to the effect the label would have on other audiences, notably skeptics. Although I hope this helps explain our rationale for using the term, I regret the negative effects it has had and I intend to use alternative labels in the future.
Beyond the negative reaction to “denier”, what has been interesting in many skeptics’ responses (in emails and on blogs) is that our research is propaganda designed to change (or “re-educate”) their mind about whether AGW is real, and I’ve received many long emails about the state of climate science and how AGW has been disproven (or the lack of findings to prove it, including Joanne Nova’s email to me which she posted/linked in your blog). Actually, the paper is not about changing anyone’s mind on whether anthropogenic climate change is real. There are also skeptics insisting that the issue is ONLY about the state of the science – whether AGW is real – but on this point I disagree. I am approaching this as a social/societal problem rather than as an “AGW reality” problem. That is, two sizeable groups have different views on a social issue with major policy implications – how do you find a workable solution that at least partly satisfies the most people?
Some climate scientists who endorse AGW seem to have assumed that the way to promote action is to convince skeptics that in fact AGW is occurring, and this has not been effective. Similarly, I don’t think skeptics will convince those who endorse AGW that they are wrong anytime soon. But the social/policy issue remains whether you believe in AGW or not. So if policies are going to be put in place (as many governments are proposing), what kinds of outcomes would make it at least barely acceptable for the most people? For our skeptic samples, actions that promoted warmth and economic/technological development were the outcomes of taking action that mattered to them (even if they thought taking action would have no effect on the climate). So our studies showed that these dimensions mattered for skeptics to support action taken in the name of addressing anthropogenic climate change. The might also be other positive outcomes of taking action we didn’t study where some common ground might be found, such as reducing pollution or reliance on foreign oil. Overall, the findings suggest that if there was closer attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than continuing with seemingly intractable debates on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where there could be agreement on some action – some might think the action is pointless with regard to the climate (but many other people think it will), but if it produces some other good outcomes it might be ok. Hence, if governments were able to design policies that plausibly achieved these “non-climate” goals, then this might achieve an acceptable overall outcome that satisfies the most people (although admittedly not everybody will agree).
This is the message of our paper, and I hope readers of your blog will be able to accept my regret about the label and focus on the main message. Some have described this message as naïve, but a real-world example (noted by one of our reviewers) illustrates the general point: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?pagewanted=all
Kind regards
Paul.
For those interested in getting up to speed, the HTML page for the article is here and the .pdf version with the cited works page, can be downloaded from the options box to the right of the article. The discussion at Judith Curry’s blog is here and Dr. Bain is commenting under the screen name “Paul”. He is more likely to respond to comments there than here.
UPDATE:
Dr. Robert G. Brown of Duke University, the commenter rgbatduke, made a response that was commented on by several here. It is eloquent, insightful and worthy of consideration. Dr Bain and Dr. Brown are approaching this from different perspectives.
It is pointless to point this out as I doubt Paul will read it (but I’ll do it anyway).
The tragic thing about the thoughtless use of a stereotype is that it reveals that you really think of people in terms of its projected meaning. In particular, even in your response you seem to equate the term “skeptic” with “denier of AGW”.
This is silly. On WUWT most of the skeptics do not “deny” AGW, certainly not the scientists or professional weather people (I myself am a physicist) and honestly, most of the non-scientist skeptics have learned better than that. What they challenge is the catastrophic label and the alleged magnitude of the projected warming on a doubling of CO_2. They challenge this on rather solid empirical grounds and with physical arguments and data analysis that is every bit as scientifically valid as that used to support larger estimates, often obtaining numbers that are in better agreement with observation. For this honest doubt and skepticism that the highly complex global climate models are correct you have the temerity to socially stigmatize them in a scientific journal with a catch-all term that implies that they are as morally reprehensible as those that “deny” that the Nazi Holocaust of genocide against the Jews?
For shame.
Seriously, for shame. You should openly apologize for the use of the term, in Nature, and explain why it was wrong. But you won’t, will you… although I will try to explain why you should.
By your use of this term, you directly imply that I am a “denier”, as I am highly skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (not just “anthropogenic global warming”, which is plausible if not measurable, although there are honest grounds to doubt even this associated with the details of the Carbon Cycle that remain unresolved by model or experiment). Since I am a theoretical physicist, I find this enormously offensive. I might as well label you an idiot for using it, when you’ve never met me, have no idea of my competence or the strength of my arguments for or against any aspect of climate dynamics (because on this list I argue both points of view as the science demands and am just as vigorous in smacking down bullshit physics used to challenge some aspect of CAGW as I am to question the physics or statistical analysis or modelling used to “prove” it). But honestly, you probably aren’t an idiot (are you?) and no useful purpose is served by ad hominem or emotionally loaded human descriptors in a rational discussion of an objective scientific question, is there.
Please understand that by creating a catch-all label like this, you quite literally are moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science, where evidence and arguments are considered and weighed independent of the humans that advance them, where our desire to see one or another result proven are (or should be) irrelevant, where people weigh the difficulty of the problem being addressed as an important contributor (in a Bayesian sense) to how much we should believe any answer proposed — so far, into the realm where people do not think at all! They simply use a dismissive label such as “denier” and hence avoid any direct confrontation with the issues being challenged.
The issue of difficulty is key. Let me tell you in a few short words why I am a skeptic. First of all, if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the last billion years — one learns that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures! Seriously. Not one human being on the planet would look at that complete record — or even the complete record of temperatures during the Holocene, or the Pliestocene — and stab down their finger at the present and go “Oh no!”. Quite the contrary. It isn’t the warmest. It isn’t close to the warmest. It isn’t the warmest in the last 2 or 3 thousand years. It isn’t warming the fastest. It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with the LIA and MWP restored, it isn’t even remarkable in the last thousand years!
Furthermore, examination of this record over the last 5 million years reveals a sobering fact. We are in an ice age, where the Earth spends 80 to 90% of its geological time in the grip of vast ice sheets that cover the polar latitudes well down into what is currently the temperate zone. We are at the (probable) end of the Holocene, the interglacial in which humans emerged all the way from tribal hunter-gatherers to modern civilization. The Earth’s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable, with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely and more stable. As a physicist who has extensively studied bistable open systems, this empirical result clearly visible in the data has profound implications. The fact that the LIA was the coldest point in the entire Holocene (which has been systematically cooling from the Holocene Optimum on) is also worrisome. Decades are irrelevant on the scale of these changes. Centuries are barely relevant. We are nowhere near the warmest, but the coldest century in the last 10,000 years ended a mere 300 years ago, and corresponded almost perfectly with the Maunder minimum in solar activity.
There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third stable warm phase that might be associated with a “tipping point” and hence “catastrophe” (in the specific mathematical sense of catastrophe, a first order phase transition to a new stable phase). It has been far warmer in the past without tipping into this phase. If anything, we are geologically approaching the point where the Earth is likely to tip the other way, into the phase that we know is there — the cold phase. A cold phase transition, which the historical record indicates can occur quite rapidly with large secular temperature changes on a decadal time scale, would truly be a catastrophe. Even if “catastrophic” AGW is correct and we do warm another 3 C over the next century, if it stabilized the Earth in warm phase and prevented or delayed the Earth’s transition into cold phase it would be worth it because the cold phase transition would kill billions of people, quite rapidly, as crops failed throughout the temperate breadbasket of the world.
Now let us try to analyze the modern era bearing in mind the evidence of an utterly unremarkable present. To begin with, we need a model that predicts the swings of glaciation and interglacials. Lacking this, we cannot predict the temperature that we should have outside for any given baseline concentration of CO_2, nor can we resolve variations in this baseline due to things other than CO_2 from that due to CO_2. We don’t have any such thing. We don’t have anything close to this. We cannot predict, or explain after the fact, the huge (by comparison with the present) secular variations in temperature observed over the last 20,000 years, let alone the last 5 million or 25 million or billion. We do not understand the forces that set the baseline “thermostat” for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2, and hence we have no idea if those forces are naturally warming or cooling the Earth as a trend that has to be accounted for before assigning the “anthropogenic” component of any warming.
This is a hard problem. Not settled science, not well understood, not understood. There are theories and models (and as a theorist, I just love to tell stories) but there aren’t any particularly successful theories or models and there is a lot of competition between the stories (none of which agree with or predict the empirical data particularly well, at best agreeing with some gross features but not others). One part of the difficulty is that the Earth is a highly multivariate and chaotic driven/open system with complex nonlinear coupling between all of its many drivers, and with anything but a regular surface. If one tried to actually write “the” partial differential equation for the global climate system, it would be a set of coupled Navier-Stokes equations with unbelievably nasty nonlinear coupling terms — if one can actually include the physics of the water and carbon cycles in the N-S equations at all. It is, quite literally, the most difficult problem in mathematical physics we have ever attempted to solve or understand! Global Climate Models are children’s toys in comparison to the actual underlying complexity, especially when (as noted) the major drivers setting the baseline behavior are not well understood or quantitatively available.
The truth of this is revealed in the lack of skill in the GCMs. They utterly failed to predict the last 13 or 14 years of flat to descending global temperatures, for example, although naturally one can go back and tweak parameters and make them fit it now, after the fact. And every year that passes without significant warming should be rigorously lowering the climate sensitivity and projected AGW, making the probability of the “C” increasinginly remote.
These are all (in my opinion) good reasons to be skeptical of the often egregious claims of CAGW. Another reason is the exact opposite of the reason you used “denier” in your article. The actual scientific question has long since been co-opted by the social and political one. The real reason you used the term is revealed even in your response — we all “should” be doing this and that whether or not there is a real risk of “catastrophe”. In particular, we “should” be using less fossil fuel, working to preserve the environment, and so on.
The problem with this “end justifies the means” argument — where the means involved is the abhorrent use of a pejorative descriptor to devalue the arguers of alternative points of view rather than their arguments at the political and social level — is that it is as close to absolute evil in social and public discourse as it is possible to get. I strongly suggest that you read Feynman’s rather famous “Cargo Cult” talk:
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
In particular, I quote:
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology
and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the
applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.”
He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of
this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re
representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to
the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you
under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind
to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should
always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only
publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look
good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government
advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether
drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it
would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a
result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re
being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the
government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument
in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish
it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
Time for a bit of soul-searching, Dr. Bain. Have you come even close to living up to the standards laid out by Richard Feynman? Is this sort of honesty apparent anywhere in the global climate debate? Did the “Hockey Team” embrace this sort of honesty in the infamous Climategate emails? Do the IPCC reports ever seem to present the counter arguments, or do they carefully avoid showing pictures of the 20,000 year thermal record, preferring instead Mann’s hockey stick because it increases the alarmism (and hence political impact of the report)? Does the term “denier” have any place in any scientific paper ever published given Feynman’s rather simple criterion for scientific honesty?
And finally, how dare you presume to make choices for me, for my relatives, for my friends, for all of the people of the world, but concealing information from them so that they make a choice to allocate resources the way you think they should be allocated, just like the dishonest astronomer of his example. Yes, the price of honesty might be that people don’t choose to support your work. Tough. It is their money, and their choice!
Sadly, it is all too likely that this is precisely what is at stake in climate research. If there is no threat of catastrophe — and as I said, prior to the hockey stick nobody had the slightest bit of luck convincing anyone that the sky was falling because global climate today is geologically unremarkable in every single way except that we happen to be living in it instead of analyzing it in a geological record — then there is little incentive to fund the enormous amount of work being done on climate science. There is even less incentive to spend trillions of dollars of other people’s money (and some of our own) to ameliorate a “threat” that might well be pure moonshine, quite possibly ignoring an even greater threat of movement in the exact opposite direction to the one the IPCC anticipates.
Why am I a skeptic? Because I recognize the true degree of our ignorance in addressing this supremely difficult problem, while at the same time as a mere citizen I weigh civilization and its benefits against draconian energy austerity on the basis of no actual evidence that global climate is in any way behaving unusually on a geological time scale.
For shame.
rgb
I would ask Dr Bain to come up with a list of actions to reduce CO2 that are beneficial to society.
1. Increased fuel efficiency. Done. The car and truck companies spend billions every year trying to build more fuel efficient vehicles than their competitors.
2. Biofuels. I love this one. In a world where people are hungry, let’s burn the food.
3. Wind mills. They produce electricity at three to four times the cost of conventional sources. that helps people stay warm in the winter and afford food as well…. how? Not to mention that to deal with the intermittent nature of the wind, once has to provision the same conventional capacity to back up the wind mills anyway, and that running conventional plants intermittantly cuts their lifespan by 60% or more which costs even MORE money. Will this help the poor?
4. Solar. See wind mills above.
Shall I go on Dr Bain? The problem you fail to see is that the policies that would reduce CO2 cost money which hurts the poor more than everyone else. It raises food costs, it raises living costs. Does it create jobs? No, for every job created building wind mills three more are destroyed because of the real cost to the economy reducing employment over all. C’mon Dr Bain, produce just one example of a policy that reduces CO2 emissions and is also good for humanity over all.
Just one.
This is a backtrack. Whatever way he ‘means’ the word, it is not an acceptable term. It’s original intent was likening AGW skeptics to holocaust denial that is already known. It would seem that Bain is jumping on the gravy train using terms to appeal to those he hopes to impress.
If the paper remains in the journal as-is, then the precedent has been set.
Given that this paper is an Australian production, and the Australian government is about to introduce a Carbon Tax which is proving very difficult indeed to sell to the electorate, I can’t help wondering if the authors are simply putting forward their claim to be considered for key positions in the Ministry for Climate Propaganda. Frankly, anyone who can come up with a way to save the Prime Minister’s job and/or retain a few seats for Labor at the next election can pretty much name their price in government honours and rewards. Maybe this is all just a way of saying “Pick me, Prime Minister! Pick me!!”
Dr Bain,
10,000,000,000 flies eat sh!t, but that don’t make it right and I ain’t doing that either
I subscribe to Hanlon’s Razer: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon)
I am willing to accept that Dr Bain was thoughtless, rather than malicious.
“It should also be noted that describing skepticism as denial is a term increasingly used in the social science literature on climate change”
If you follow the scientific method, you are a denier. If you believe in the message, you are a believer. Got it.
Wow!
Mr. Bain is saying that AGW is a “social societal” (political) issue, not so much science. Isn’t that what the skeptics have been arguing all along? We now agree. Did I read it wrong?
The argument is over.
The use of ‘denier’ is justified because they are writing for climate scientists. By that logic is would also be acceptable [SNIP: Those terms are offensive even in this context. Let’s not do this. -REP].
Well, Dr. Paul Bain helps to establish the term “denier” in the literature. Maybe he should reconsider whether it is a smart move of him to establish the term “believer” for warmists. It may not achieve what he wants it to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True-believer_syndrome
Why didn’t he go the whole hog and use the word ‘Flat-earthers’ instead ?
Saaad says:
June 20, 2012 at 8:28 pm
What he still doesn’t seem to grasp is that the vast majority of sceptics accept the notion of AGW, including Jo Nova. The argument is about the size of any warming and how catastrophic – or otherwise – the effects will be. In this sense, his use of the word “denier” is not simply perjorative: it’s also completely inaccurate.
I do not thinks your first sentence is true.
I think most sceptics accept that the climate has warmed, it would be surprising if it hadn’t over the last ~150 years as we have come out of the LIA. The argument is mostly about the causes of the warming and to what extent there is or may be an anthropogenic element.
There is little warming that cannot be adequately explained by repetition of past observed natural causes. It therefore follows that there is little amelioration to be expected from human attempts to “change the climate!”
The use of the term “denier” is all part of the sloppy, shorthand thinking that so many of the “left” use when thinking of those who do not agree with their views.
“I am approaching this as a social/societal problem rather than as an “AGW reality” problem.
That is, two sizeable groups have different views on a social issue with major policy implications – how do you find a workable solution that at least partly satisfies the most people? ”
I wonder if any social scientist would look at the corresponding questions directed at alarmist:
“If they learned that CO2 abatement led to a society where people were poorer, more competitive and less cooperative would they reconsider their advocacy of such measures?”
I suspect that such a study is outside of the cognitive framework of today’s social scientist. If conceivable, it would not be funded nor published.
Dr Bain – You have not understood anything. I recommend that you do two things: One, apologise. Two, go back and analyse the situation properly. That involves understanding what each ‘side’ is saying and testing it. I don’t mean scientific laboratory testing, I mean an unbiased assessment to see how credible it is. ‘Unbiased’ of course means not assuming that one ‘side’ is right and the other wrong.
Yeah well I’m not falling for this one. Here’s a bloke who pretends he didn’t know what effect the term denier has on the debate, suggests that we go past the science and do what the pinko lefto greenies want us to do anyway.
Pull the other one Bain, it’s got bells on it.
p.s. We are too soft and too accomodating.
much ado about nothing…an article written by some moron psychologists in a journal that caters exclusively to true believer…who cares
Careful everyone: there is obviously a paper under way discussing in what circumstances the words “sceptic” and “denier” are more apposite to the discussion, dissertation, etc, at hand.
This only awaits a half-credible finding that the correct discipline for the study is science rather than social sciences/politics – but I don’t think that will give much difficulty in pal review.
“But because we were focused on our target audience, it is true that I naively didn’t pay enough attention to the effect the label would have on other audiences, notably skeptics. Although I hope this helps explain our rationale for using the term, I regret the negative effects it has had and I intend to use alternative labels in the future.”
Dear Dr. Bain,
it just shows how sick is your target audience (and how politically driven, that is, un-scientific is the social science literature on climate change). If your current post means you have honestly quit identifying yourself with this target audience (as opposed to only focusing on them), a feeble sorry would never suffice.
The least you should do at this point is
1. Have the editors of Nature Climate Change publish an opinion piece of yours ASAP about your change of stance as expressed above
2. Start fighting actively to eradicate the d-word from both social science publications and the public discourse on climate issues
In other words, give hell to those climate chauvinist pigs.
Please imagine, just for the sake of the argument try to imagine for a moment what would happen, if in the long run climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere turns out to be much lower than implicated by some current computational climate models. On face value this is a cool, purely scientific question and at this point in history it is an entirely possible outcome, as it does not depend on basic physics, but on the relative strength of various feedback processes that are admittedly poorly represented in such models. But then consider the case the d-word is still in use and is accepted in this context when it happens.
What collateral damage would it entail by re-fueling specifically the Holocaust Denial industry and revisionist history in general? Would not they say look, here is a field of eminent political importance where the denialist approach was well justified from the beginning, even against overwhelming opposition at times, so please consider the possibility of our cause also being a just one. Don’t you feel how offensive is this nasty business with the d-word to the offspring of holocaust survivors?
So my advice is that if you are serious, don’t wait, take action immediately.
The man is an idiot. I am highly critical of the statistical methods, suspect most enviro-nuts are better off left on a small island to fend for themselves since they are ideologically motivated rather than interested in the truth, but will also physically intervene underwater if I see someone damaging coral whilst I’m scuba diving, and have other behaviours which are generally supportive of the natural environment.
Apologies to all for posting this before reading the comments. I take exception to the author on these points below. I’d LIKE to address the science of it, but his arguments are all about the social science, the ‘get-along’ factor, the politics, and the appeals to authority that politics and social aspects rely on, so here goes:
First of all, he is basically doing a song and dance here to get out from under the repercussions of his bad judgment. Gleick, Bain – who is going to be next? (And yes, we have had our bad judgment folks, too.)
“Most of whom”? A.) What he means to say (when he is not dancing out of the line of fire) is that all of those he will let himself discuss the subject with think AGW is real; i.e., they feed off each other, eventually coming up with derogatory terms for those who disagree. B.) He doesn’t understand that this is not normal in the history of science. C.) The term “Most of whom” is thrown in so that he does not sound like an Us-vs-Them kind of guy. D.) Does anyone think that the Darwinists of 140 years ago called the non-Darwinists “deniers”? Or vice versa?
“Social science literature”? He clearly left out the WWF and RealClimate. There’s no social science in climatology. Those are advocacy groups, plain and simple. Plainly, Bain cannot separate the politics from the science – and is confusing the social science of it with real science. What does social science have to do with whether AGW is real or not? He is stating that the social aspect is more important than the science. …Mother of God…
No. Those who argue the data and the science are not contrarians; they are scientists. When skeptical scientists are the ones arguing the technical aspects of AGW and the non-skeptics are instead talking about the social science of it, he is saying, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. If you do, we will label you and marginalize you with ad hoc insults.” This is like labeling us dweebs and nerds – by a scientist of all things… He is saying, “Don’t be uncool! Don’t be unpopular. Just go with the flow, ya dorks!”
In saying this he is pouring gasoline on the fire. This is to generalize us, and add other insults. He unilaterally states that the data argues FOR environmental action, even if we disagree with the data. This is pretty much 180° from what we think, actually. We think that the data specifically argues AGAINST environmental action of the kind proposed. He clearly does not perceive his opposition objectively – but has fooled himself into thinking he does. He also states his opinion – evidently – that all of us are against ANYTHING pro-environmental. This is not the case at all. We all are in favor of clean water and air free from legitimate pollutants. We are all in favor of not releasing carcinogens where they can get into the ground water. We are NOT in favor of doing useless things (Kyoto) just so we can say we can socially brag that we are doing something.
What the bleep does this mean???? That non-climate stuff demonstrates a non-contrarian position??? What do non-climate outcomes have to do with anything?
Not even close. He had not anywhere above stated what a denier stereotype was, other than ones who disagreed on AGW (apparently as a social science, rather than as an earth science subject of inquiry).
Which is why he failed to use the label “skeptics” and chose “deniers” instead. IOW, he meant to call skeptics “deniers”, but when the sh** hit the fan he says he was really talking about skeptics, not deniers. AS IF THERE IS A DIFFERENCE, either in our minds or his. We are skeptics. To those on his side, the term “skeptic” has been increasingly abandoned in favor of “denier”, but he simply forgot to be even the slightest bit polite and catch himself before it went to the publisher. He slipped and used the term that has become rampant in the social science clique of AGW – i.e., the alarmist politico-social-science, non-technical side of climatology – the one that doesn’t care about the hard science, evidently. At least that is what he seems to be saying in this post.
Climatology is an earth science, like geology, oceanography, glaciology, and volcanology. Can anyone tell us all what social science has to do with any of those other earth sciences? Of course, it has nothing to do with them. Climatology, though (since government MONEY has become central to it), is – evidently – all about social and political ‘stuff’ and no longer about the hard science.
Wow. He is even admitting it. And adding insults all the way to the bank.
Steve Garcia
Dr Bain,
Please stop perverting the meaning of words in the language to serve only your argument.
The antonym of believer is infidel (or unbeliever).
Why use the term “denier” when there are thousands of alternative words which are not inextricably linked to an outrageous insult?
Of course its intended to insult!
Of course its meant to imply that if you have doubts about the causal link between increasing atmospheric CO2 and significant temperature increase you are a racist NAZI.
Why debate with anyone who peddles such mendacious nonsense.
They are the enemies of rational debate.
Doctor Bain and othersof that ilk are the real inheritors of Doctor Goebbels propaganda machine.
“For our skeptic samples, actions that promoted warmth and economic/technological development were the outcomes of taking action that mattered to them (even if they thought taking action would have no effect on the climate)”
I do not understand this sentence.
Doctor, the gist of your article seems to be that the science does not matter, what is important is to manipulate people into doing what you want them to.
Exactly the ethics and methods of Goebbels, Doctor?
You’d expect a psychologist would understand the impact of his own rhetoric, especially one who’d authored a paper in 2006 with the citation:
“Conceptual beliefs about human values and their implications: Human nature beliefs predict value importance, value trade-offs, and responses to value-laden rhetoric.”
See http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/91/2/351/
I’m glad to see Dr Bain’s response, which is measured, suitably contrite and perfectly reasonable. However, there is one issue which, although it has not raised anyone’s ire, is just as concerning. This is the paper’s description of those convinced by the current evidence of the need to take action to mitigate human-caused warming as “believers”. If I were one of that group, I’d be just as insulted as anyone who has been called a denier.
Similarly, I don’t think skeptics will convince those who endorse AGW that they are wrong anytime soon.
Does this say it all?
He believes that there can be no new evidence of proof that CAGW is true!
Worse, he dismisses all of the recently reported statistical failings in many, many papers!