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
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Is there a citation watch facility that will allow us to see the first scientist who cites this paper?
only me says:
June 20, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Jared wrote: “So I guess if we start calling anthropogenic global warming believers ‘satanic worshipers’ more and more increasingly then it would not be offensive?”
From reading the screeds of many of the main NGO’s which push ‘green’ agendas, WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club etc, it seems that one theme they have in common is that of eugenics, reducing the population of Gaia by one means or other, often compelled. Thus, my choice for a name for those who swear by the tenets of these and similar organizations is radical eugenicists.
/sarc
Well what they are calling for is an internationally based communal response based on pooled resources. kind of an International Socialism, hmmm iNazis…….
/sarc off
@Steve Richards
Try setting up a google scholar search and have the result emailed to you – there’s nothing there yet
The bottom line is the difference between AGW and CAGW.
The alarmists believe sceptics/deniers do not believe in either. The truth is that most sceptics/deniers believe AGW is real, but that is not really very important and just a mildly interesting phenomenon. The magnitude (or rather, the lack of it) of AGW is masked by natural climate cycles, a concept most alarmists think is heresy.
Sceptics/deniers recognise CAGW as being a dodgy hysterical theory dreamed up by the Global Warming industry, which is based on bad science, adjusting/cherry picking raw data, highly dubious concepts, ignoring inconvenient facts and occasional outright fraud.
The Global Warming industry is a giant amorphous bureaucracy only found in government organisations and NGOs, which is only interested in its own self-preservation and expansion.
As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of huge feedbacks in the Earth’s climate exaggerating any minor temperature rise caused by an increase in carbon dioxide levels, nevertheless pal-reviewed alarmist papers keep being pumped out trying to perpetuate this myth.
If it was just this, then who cares? But it is not, the problem is the husbanding of huge economic resources to tackle a non-problem. This is what sceptics/deniers object to; an irrational policy which requires the deliberate beggaring of the western world’s economies for no reason whatsoever.
Dr Paul Bain misses the point entirely.
Tom G(ologist) says:
June 20, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Thank you Dr. Bain. A very well-put and noble response. I appreciate being separated from the true ‘denier’ type.
Ugh. That has to be the most weasely comment I have read or heard in a long time. *shudders*
As for Dr. Bain – I find your words completely disingenuous.
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…
OK, so clearly these are the words of an activist, not a scientist. And here:
Actually, the paper is not about changing anyone’s mind on whether anthropogenic climate change is real. […] I am approaching this as a social/societal problem rather than as an “AGW reality” problem.
Activism, pure and simple. And here:
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?
Politics. The question of whether dangerous AGW is happening is apparently not in question – the science must be “settled,” I guess?
Dr. Bain, when did you cease to be a scientist with an enquiring mind, and become a politically-driven activist?
…how do you find a workable solution that at least partly satisfies the most people?
It is not the job of science to “satisfy the most people.” That’s politics (again). I refer you back to Jo Nova’s request: give us empirical evidence. That’s all the sceptics require. THAT is how we are satisfied.
I wonder if he would be equally accepting of our term for climate scientist of “arrogant , ignorant overconfident incompetent [snip . . kbmod]”. We non believers all understand who we are referring to and need no further explanation.
What would ask him is why we should have to put up with this superior attitude from a group with a near 100% failure rate? We have been told for decades the science was proven but in the last few years we have had so many proven cases of natural sources of greenhouse gases like those in the Arctic that were ignored making the original equations clearly utterly wrong. Admit it, we are not deniers we are merely normal people with expectations a decent level of performance from our so called experts.
We can readily be convinced by a clear demonstration that the natural sources and uses of all greenhouse gases have been properly understood. The facile and ignorant comparison of man’s gross emissions with the net remainder of these gases in the air proves to us that the so called scientists of today would never have even passed an “O” level science exam in the previous generation. If this was not enough, when a huge methane source is discovered any engineer would have been all embarrassed and admitted very shame facedly that the equations had been based on an incomplete understanding. Not so this group.They say things will be so much worse.
Sorry but this attempt to justify your attitude makes me despise an already utterly despicable movement all the more.
We are half way to the hundred months runaway temperature rise prediction. This model has clear cut requirements for man’s emissions and CO2 levels. Man’s emissions are lower than the estimates used , CO2 levels are higher and temperatures considerably lower.
Please focus on our message to you.we think you are incompetent bunglers or crooks and want an independent trial of climate scientists for misrepresentation and extortion based on this so called science. If you could stand up in open court and be cleared we could have less contempt for you all. Well you did ask what it needed.
Peer review is for those with a good performance record that engendered trust, not for climate science which has neither. We are half way to the hundred months runaway temperature rises. This model has clear cut requirements for man’s emissions and CO2 levels. Man’s emissions are lower than the estimates used , CO2 levels are higher and temperatures considerably lower. Can we at least agree that in five years any AGW supporters will be put on trial if we do not have runaway temperature rises and that all awards for any AGW climate work will be returned at that time?
This whole matter may deserve being called “Baingate”.
Naively presenting an apology for a naïve but wrong use of a not so difficult to define word, Dr. Bain tries to explain that it is for a just “outcome”: the Nature readership will better understand it, and the proposed actions are anyway doing good for humanity.
Is it so?
Nature readers are supposed to have some higher education, at least in science. They probably know the differences between believers, advocates, skeptics, heretics, or deniers; and if not, they are quite capable to look for definitions. So the use of “denier” could not have been as innocent as Dr. Bain pretends. At least it is patronizing, at worst it orients the reader’s mind to a tribal reference: to be a denier is wrong (reference to the holocaust); you cannot be one of them; you must be one of us.
This was for the part of rhetoric.
Now in regard to “doing good even for a wrong reason”:
Of course it is possible to produce a valuable outcome even if the author’s motivation is unfounded: he or she will have been a useful fool. This happens every time when religious beliefs are used to justify undertaking moral actions: the belief may be controversial, but the actions can prove of high general morality, such as preserving someone’s life, helping the needy, forgiving offences, etc.
But in the climate question, this argument of “usefulness despite the lack of ground” is dangerous because the proposed actions are in competition with others, drawing from the same resources. A heretic view on climate change is that its anthropogenic factor is not that significant that any attempt at correcting it would change the change. Therefore, corrective strategies are bound to misery and adaptive ones are of the order. Such more sober view of human capabilities begins to be reflected in the current Rio summit. The developing countries don’t want to be taken hostage by the hubris developed in the industrial and post-industrial World. They request resources to improve the well-being of their people. This has a higher priority than a costly (therefore juicy) energy transition aiming at reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Of course warmists, as described by Dr. Bain, may become the useful fool: if for example the strategic fuel dependency from Middle-East countries would disappear this would be a great help for peace in this region. But they also can become the ultimate neo-fascists: history is full of examples where totalitarism began with “useful” proposals.
This whole issue smacks of Dr Bain , desperately wanting to be an insider believer in his exclusive version of his club adopting the concern disguise to present a solution. How to sell a pig by applying lipstick , then market as environmental lamb. The important part is selling the agenda not the actual “real” product, an appeal to create a mass deception IPPC style.
The other odious part is the actual recognition that he believes that the insider club actually endorses such language and putdowns? So much better to engage your chosen audience with liberal doses of insider language? i.e. the Gentleman’s club where women are the subject of scorn. The rich person’s club where it is permissible to slate the unwashed poor, the Klan club where blacks can be mocked or slighted, for what? the colour of their skin?. Do I need to cite more stereotypical examples?
This is what happens when you write to the lowest common denominator of the group you believe thinks just like you do, the insiders view, the clubby clique. Then when you are exposed as a bigot or worse, and even those insiders, turn on you for the crass exposure of the inner working of the club, then you try and justify and reframe what you were doing!
This is especially so when your club prides itself in self righteous indignation and on record painting its social opposition as uncultured, deceptive, shills,. Your article exposes your insiders as guilty of the same hypocritical behavior and beliefs, so rightly cops a spray.
That is not science, its social engineering by deception and you have been well and truly caught out.
I’m a sceptic (both on Europe, religion and climate change) and I’m proud of it. To me, scepticism means that you don’t believe something to be true simply because it comes from authority. It means that you demand the evidence and proof. But if the proof is there, then no problem, I would be happy to accept it.
In his execrable BBC program, ‘Science Under Attack’, Paul Nurse comes over as unquestioning and gullible. He allows a senior NASA scientist to tell an outrageous and demonstrable lie (that mankind emits 7 times more CO2 than nature). Repeatedly he lets the scientist make a fool of him. For example, the scientist showed a video sequence of weather imagery and the corresponding computer prediction. Of course, this was nothing to do with climate. The sequence covered just a few days. If you looked carefully, you could see the sequence was looped. It was a few day’s weather, not climate.
But here’s the irony. Paul Nurse is the president of the Royal Society. The Royal Society’s ancient motto is: “Take no one’s word”. In other words, be sceptical.
Of course, the very essence of science is scepticism, or it once was.
I repeat: I’m a sceptic, and proud of it. Show me the proof. If there is proof that withstands analysis then I’ll subscribe to AGW or CAGW, or to Scientology for that matter. However, there is a small problemette: a complete lack of convincing evidence or proof for any of those things.
At least Dr Bain says he will try not to use that word in future. I suppose that’s progress. But a proper apology would have been nice. After all, if he’s a true scientist then he’s also a sceptic.
Chris
I wonder what his rationale for using the ‘N’ word would look like?
temp says:
June 20, 2012 at 9:08 pm
“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?”
Translated:
How can we invent propaganda/focus tested verbiage that will shut skeptics up while we force policies on them that can completely unproven in science but we believe are “correct”.
=======================================================
The poor man, he simply does not wish to go back to calling his “beneficial” proposals what they are. Socialist ,facist, communist, etc. Such rule the world “Blackbeard” proposals of statist of every kind have been rejected. Now they try to cloak their agenda into a facade of “science”, and when that fails, he pleads for us to just go along for some imagined benefit, when in fact every goverment act so far has only created poverty, except for the political elitist involved, and has done virtualy zero to address real enviromental problems. As some commentors have stated, third and fourth generation nuvlear power is the only realistic alternative energy. But, as this does not require utopian fantasy statist one world political actions, it is rejected.
I hope readers of your blog will be able to accept my regret about the label – is all he needed to say. How many times have I pointed out on this blog that an apology which is qualified by an acre of waffle is not an apology at all, it is reasons and justifications. So no – apology not aceptable, your reasons are of no interest to me, I remain deeply insulted.
That does not make it right. In the not too distant past different races of people were called all kinds of names and that did not make it right. Prior to World War II Jews “increasingly” had yellow stars attached to them – that did not make it right and we all now know how it all ended.
What I loath more than anything in this world is someone trying to justify the unjustifiable. Dr. Paul Bain, please re-examine your conscience and do the right thing. If time shows that CAGW was hugely overblown your words will for ever sully your name and reputation and that of many scientific journals. Think continental drift and Lysenkoism and I think you will understand where I’m coming from.
/ END RANT
Not a really sincere or credible response, frankly.
But then the article is deceptive and denigrating, so the long winded e-mail not surprising.
There are two stages here, a science verification stage and a political response stage. the second is ueless if the first is wrong.
The first is wrong.
Names do not matter, truth in science does.
So basically if you can’t win your argument fairly on the big world stage go for local action.
That used to work prior to the internet but I doubt if it will again.
@Mike Bromley the Kurd crossing the Alps June 20, 2012 at 9:49 pm:
Mike, among many on target comments, yours stood out. Anthony said, “Bain, you got some esplainin’ to do,” and Bain esplained his way INTO more trouble AND more insults.
Pardon my lay psychologizing, but Bain is a psychologist because he can’t do hard science, so he got into one of the soft ones, one in which no one has his feet held to the fire. (Until now.) As such he can’t even appreciate the hard sciences, what the requirements are, what constitutes solid work. There IS no solid work in psychology. He is an outsider who has no place in this discussion, except as a lay observer like most of us. But because he has ‘Dr.’ in front of his name, he gets to publish in journals, even when he isn’t qualified. Everything in psychology is squirmy and “social”, so his response to people wanting to address the hard science is to divert the issue over to the soft sciences, which is his bailiwick.
Nobody here should be listening to anything he says – even his squirmy explanations. And all he did was dig himself in deeper. What kind of psychologist would do that?
(BTW, in reading this, I kept asking myself, “WHY does he have to resort to bomfoggery so much?” Everything he says is weasel words and phrases.
Kudos to all who aren’t letting him get away with weaseling.
Steve Garcia
The true believers (those that accept the notion that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is probable) assume that climate change would be a non-issue if it weren’t for human activities and particularly the burning of fossile fuels. What if the “natural course of events” would lead to a cooler, or even a much colder global climate. The anthropogenic influence might even be delaying or preventing a catastrophy. All of this expensive government action might be accomplishing the opposite of their intention. This is of course hypothetical, but it illustrates the point that the true believers are hell bent to achieve a certain outcome without understanding the consequences of their actions. We’d better prepare to adapt to a much colder climate, because it’s inevitable within several hundred years, and these folks are worrying about a few degrees of warming. Wow!
Dr Bain, you commit the climate commie sin of telling the people how they should think. HAVE A NICE DAY, BUDDY
“Similarly, I don’t think skeptics will convince those who endorse AGW that they are wrong anytime soon.”
Sure. Let’s ignore defections from the believers camp of people like James Lovelock.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/23/breaking-james-lovelock-back-down-on-climate-alarm/
Has anyone compiled a list of such people?
Though this is not scientific, nor is the Bain paper which is as he describes, propaganda.
John M Reynolds
But the social/policy issue remains whether you believe in AGW or not.
Dr Bain – this is not the issue. Either this was a deliberate strawman ‘debating ploy’ or you really do not understand.
The social policy issues are:
1. Is the warming that is taking place bad for humanity?
— Crops are increasing deserts are ‘greening’ the grow lines are moving poleward and the accumulated cyclone energy is dropping. It would appear that warming is GOOD for humanity and this has been shown to be the case throughout history. it is cold that is bad.
2. Is there any likelihood of runaway global warming?
— There have been levels of CO2 higher than present there have been global climates even early in the Holocene that were hotter than present, there have been times when the poles were both ice free, there was no runaway. All the symptoms that the modelers claim are indications of potential runaway have failed to appear in reality, such as the tropospheric hotspot. So there is no observational real world evidence to support catastrophic global warming indeed the hypotheses have all so far been falsified.
3. The ‘post normal science or precautionary principle’ We should stop what could contribute to global warming just in case it is catastrophic
— This is obviously what Dr Blain espouses, He argues that it makes sense to pay the climate industry $billions and carry out all the $trillion changes in energy generation that were efficient, to less efficient and kill industries that might contribute to AGW as they might be contributing to what might be catastrophic global warming. This is insurance as Catastrophic AGW might be true. Unfortunately, Dr Bain there are some disasters that are already true like a child dying every 5 seconds and a mother every minute from hunger and related diseases. It is also said that a dollar could save a life. But it is more important for climate scientists to get that huge grant into “AGW that MIGHT be contributing to what MIGHT be catastrophic AGW than to ACTUALLLY save those children and mothers that are ACTUALLY dying as you read this. I think it is this putting of weasel words and the team and funding for what might be ahead of solving disasters that are actually happening that is most upsetting. You may be able to salve your consciences by using curly light bulbs or turning your lights off once a year, but I really don’t understand how you achieve that. It is becoming an inescapable conclusion that you and other non-deniers do not really consider the fact that 10 children and a mother have died just while you are reading this as something important. It is more important to the ‘non-Deniers’ to persuade ‘deniers’ that non-deniers should continue to receive $billions on research into a catastrophe that might happen and that could be adapted for, than to solve a disaster that is actually happening.
“It should also be noted that describing skepticism as denial is a term increasingly used in the social science literature on climate change”
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No! You should have noted it, and wondered to yourself if social science was as irrelevant today
as it was when it was first dreamed up.
Dr Bain’s comments/justifications reminds me of when I first started work at the age of sixteen. My manager in one of the world’s top accounting firm called me a “Bastard” and then tried to soften the remark by calling that statement a “Term of Endearment”
Look, the science is settled, catastrophic man made global warming is a crock,a fraud , a deception, really grand larceny.
Debating the science and motives just will not cut the mustard. Time to act, start indicting and charging the perps, WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Tides, to name a few with Fraud, Criminal deception, extortion and RICO. They are trying it with Chevron, attempting a 30 billion dollar shakedown. Time for them to reap the fruits of their labours.
The fact that Dr. Bain identifies a “target audience” puts the journal, its papers and its societal context firmly into the bin called marketing, not science. Acknowledging a trended readership is one thing; describing it as a “target”, unequivocally raises the flag of bias proudly for all to see. The jurnals are not, in any way, science journals. They are only marketing vehicles for specific agendas to specific audiences.