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
Sorry, I do not buy hogwash. Inaccurate and pejorative terms are used to denigrate, humiliate, and reject out of hand those that you chose not to engage in a debate of ideas. Bain is either a liar, or extremely lazy. Either one does not bode well for him or his publication.
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.
Do we accept warming due to UHI effect? Yup — there’s measurable, empirical *proof*. Do we accept warming due to land-use change? Yup — again, because there’s measurable, empirical *proof*. Do we accept that human-produced CO2 is causing atmospheric warming? Nope — because there’s *no* proof. There are lots of projections from lots of models, but no *proof*.
In this sense, his use of the word “denier” is not simply perjorative: it’s also completely inaccurate.
We are not “climate change deniers” in *any* sense, because we *affirm* that the climate is changing today as it has been changing for the past umpty-hundred-million years — naturally, with no help from us.
ATTN: PAUL BAIN
RE : HUMANS CAN’T CAN’T CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE
Obtain and study a modern atlas of the world. You will come to the following conclusions:
1. There are few humans on the earth.
2. Humans occupy only a small portion of the earth’s surface.
3. Humans have permanently modified from its original form an even smaller fraction of the earth surface by construction of cities, roads, dams, etc.
4. About 50% of humans now live in urban areas.
5. Humans are rapidly abandoning the rural areas and moving to the cities.
6. The vast majority humans live in abject poverty.
Consider Canada which has a population of about 33 million humans. The geograpical surface area is about 2.5 billion acres. The atlas shows most of the humans live in urban areas. In essence, Canada is an unpopulated wilderness. Ditto of Siberia, Mongolia, Australia, etc.
The reason it appears that humans are causing “climate change” is that most daily TV broadcasts orginate from highly-populated urbans areas which experience the Urban Heat Island effect. To humans living in these areas, it appears that “global warming” is taking place.
While it’s nice to see that Dr. Bain acknowledges and understands the issue with the term ‘denier’, I still take issue with the overall thrust of his argument. The gist of it seems to be that ‘action’ along the lines of government policy is inevitable and that the best course of action sociologically would be to find some ‘workable’ compromise. Unfortunately this assertion goes beyond the scope of this website and to fundamental disagreements in ideology. Dr. Bain and others who take a so called ‘pragmatist’ view of such issues would simply like to ignore or marginalize people like myself who simply disagree with the very idea that the government can do anything productive or constructive. For us, the government is something we tolerate to a certain extent, if only because admittedly the majority of the world seems to want it some form or another, but we still fundamentally disagree with the idea of using coercion to force others to do things they would otherwise not rather not do. And, to us, the governments of the world are nothing more than gangs of thieves writ large, squabbling with each other and using the product of the hard work of other to enrich themselves. To us, they are parasites.
We find such courses of action as are being recommended inherently destructive and wasteful. To people of this ideology there is no acceptable compromise with such policies as Dr. Bain is referring to just as there would be no acceptable compromise with a rapist or a mugger. We see at these climate conferences, and rightfully so I would say, masses of parasitic ne’er do wells squabbling over how to best fleece the productive class of citizens. To us, even those of us who agree with AGW and its catastrophic consequences, the solutions presented are anathema to a free and prosperous world. And we come to that conclusion through our ideology and world experience, much as other people come to different conclusions. The difference being now that people of my ideological persuasion, once a diffuse minority, now have better communication abilities and more support and more of a community to draw on, which means you can simply walk over us and marginalize us anymore. Disagree with us all you want, we saw last century how well mass government control over the economy worked with the USSR, and to be blunt their environment was one of the most polluted and disgusting I’ve ever encountered. And our argument is that this wasn’t simply because the wrong people were in charge, but that there is a fundamental systemic problem with centrally planned economies that leads to this very outcome. You can compare East and West Germany and North and South Korea as well to get a look at what giving the government more control accomplishes.
To us, liberty is the ideal and produces the best results. Not perfect results, no one is arguing for utopia, just the best overall. Call us right wing nut jobs, libertarians, anarcho capitalists, or whatever. Dr. Bain, you are not going to sell us on any government action because we find it inherently destructive, wasteful, and morally and ethically flawed to the core. So if you want to convince us, come up with a policy that doesn’t say we should deal with excessive heat by destroying our productive capacity to produce air conditioners. The problem isn’t with your message, it’s with the larger issue of people using AGW as the latest in a long line of excuses to push every left wing boondoggle economic nut case theory that didn’t work last century on us in this new century. And until you realize that there are people in this world who fundamentally disagree with you on certain political, economic, and sociological questions, you’re going to have problems.
The way I read that, it seems the focus is more on policy than on science. Policy is political, right?
I thought this was supposed to be science?
June 20, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Dr Bain;
1. The summation of your article and the email posted above is that having failed to convince skeptics that CAGW exists, the world should turn to alternative reasons for taking the same action…..
___________________________
Thanks for expressing what I wish to say. The only thing I would like to add is Bain is not talking about science at all but about Hegel’s alleged triad: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/dialectic.htm
From his point of view we have the Thesis (CAGW) and the Antithesis (“Deniers”) so it is now time to move on to the Synthesis and thereby advance “The Cause” another step in the direction wanted by getting us to “Compromise.” In a “Compromise” a really nasty option (80% CO2 reduction) is floated so you will agree to the more “Moderate” position which is what was wanted in the first place. (Think Used Car Salesman)
However from our point of view either the conjecture, CAGW, can be backed up with real world experimental data, (not models and tortured proxies with hidden methods and codes) or it is just a Silly WAG. So far CAGW is still sitting in the SWAG category because the classic scientific method is not being followed. Therefore Bain’s Synthesis or “Compromise” is not even on the horizon for most of us. (If you are WRONG you are WRONG so why should I compromise with liars and thieves and agree to pay them even more? )
The worse part of the CAGW Con is more and more people are realizing that “scientists” are greedy liars interested in grant money and self-advancement more than they are science.
I expanded on just how tarnished the name of science has become in my recent comment HERE It is pretty sad when scientists actually admit that 14.12% of their colleagues falsify data, and up to 72% for the others engage in questionable research practices. link
I do not think the trashing of the status of science by the likes of Bain and his buddies is do civilization any good at all. However since their real goal seems to be the complete destruction of western civilization perhaps that is just one more arrow in their quiver.
Bain isn’t trying to mend fences, he’s trying to cover his behind because the skeptics cornered him on the use of nefarious, degrading, insulting terminology. I don’t accept his explanation for his ill advised use of the word denier. He knew what he was doing when he used the word Denier. He just never thought he’d be called on it. As for Nature, they’ve given up doing real science and are shills for the green movement. Any editor approving Bain’s drivel should be fired. The Climate Liars are bullies and thugs because they don’t have any REAL science to back their ridiculous claims.
“Anti-environmental?” This guy is not bright enough to be taken seriously. He is the denier, denying that a rational man, confronted with a 0.7 degree C change in 150 years, and not measured accurately enough to even be sure of that, would conclude that we cannot say with any degree of certainty that anything at all has happened.
Let’s take a different tact:
1) Demand that they refer to to AGW skeptics as “AGW Deniers”!
2) Refer to AGW proponents as “Stupid AGW Gories” or “Gories” for short.
Twenty years from now, “Gories” will be as vile as “deniers” is now.
Bill
[SNIP: Maybe first-time concern trolls should avoid telling blog-owners what they should really be concentrating on and avoidbeing clever with the innuendo. -REP]
climate scientists who read Nature journals, most of whom hold the view that anthropogenic climate change is real.
I’ll bet that in 1912, most geologists held the view that Alfred Wegener was wrong. This observation does nothing to prove that the journal-reading climate scientists are wrong about AGW, but it does say they have not learned from that example, and others, to take well-formulated contrary positions seriously. The unrepentant use of ad hominems says more about the attacker than the attacked.
ATTN: PAUL BAINS
RE: PROF. MICHAEL “THE MANGLER” MANN
Go to the Vancouver Sun’s website and read Prof. Mann’s op-ed article in the June 8 issue. No reputable scientist would use the inflamatory word “denier”. We would never use this word in polite private conversation and in public discourse even against our academic enemies.
Never in my fifty year career as a scientist, researcher and teacher, have I encountered such an arrogant, condensing egomanic such as Prof Michael “The Mangler” Mann, a despicable and scurrilous
white-coated welfare queen and scientific mobster. All mobsters have nicknames. I have given him the nickname “The Mangler” because we all know how he “mangles” empirical data.
>>“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.”<<
So if I'm writing a piece for 'White Supremacists' Weekly', I am at liberty to sprinkle it with the kind of racial epithets that are commonly used by White Supremacists, am I?
I don't think so, somehow.
Weak, Dr. Bain. Very weak.
Good news, Canadian youth not listening to Bain;
Generation Y Carrying Canadian Luxury Market, Boosts Sales In Dining, Travel, And Fashion
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/06/19/generation-y-spending-habit_n_1610122.html
I’d like to propose a counter-paper to Dr. Bain: How do we get people to focus on real environmental problems instead of trying to get them to fight a non-existent boogey man?
BTW: What is the “social problem” Dr. Bain is trying to address? Is the problem the questioning of authority? That people won’t acquiesce to waste their time and treasure solving a problem that nobody can prove actually exists?
Dr. Bain fits one of two descriptions:
1) He knows it’s all a crock but he’s willing to sell his soul to reap the monetary rewards.
2) He has fallen hook, line and sinker for the propaganda. In other words, a fine example of a ‘userful idiot”.
So, Dr Bain, which is it?
“But the social/policy issue remains whether you believe in AGW or not.”
No it does not. If AGW is not happening then there is no social/policy issue at all.
They prepare for warmth which is the opposite of what will really harm us.
The alarmists are actively trying to invoke fear in the population, with the intention to use that fear to further a political agenda. Isn’t there a word out there that means EXACTLY that? Terrorism. If I am a denier, then they are terrorists.
People may take umbrage over the”D” word, but what about the term “temperature anomaly?”
Here’s what anomaly means:
1. Deviation or departure from the normal or common order, form, or rule.
2. One that is peculiar, irregular, abnormal, or difficult to classify:
Climate scientists are using sociology-engineering terms even here. The temperature goes up, it’s anomalous. Temperatures goes down, it’s anomalous. We are living in an abnormal age. Same for sea ice, or whatever else they measure. It also implies there is s “normal.” Is that in evidence? I don’t think so. It’s whatever the Climate Scientists say it is.
“…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…”
He just doesn’t get it. The fact that you have to use ANY labels to discuss those who question the “science” of ANTHROPOGENIC global warming (aGW) is the problem.
True scientists look at both sides of an issue with an open mind. They don’t find ways to label their critics.
[blockquote]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.[/blockquote]
That would be propaganda, not science. Funny how AGW proponents blur the line between science and propaganda then trip over themselves while backpedaling after getting called out on it.
For the record, I love nature. I’m all for conservation and creating systems that allow the human race to continue with a technological society while maintaining a clean and healthy environment indefinitely, but I’m also skeptical of catastrophic AGW. Now there’s a “target audience” you should pay attention to.
mkelly says:
June 21, 2012 at 6:50 am
“But the social/policy issue remains whether you believe in AGW or not.”
The policy issue is global wealth redistribution, and there’s more than enough proof of that.
“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?”
How is this for a workable solution: those who have promoted AGW for their benefit, whether it be for profit by way of Solyndra, sales of CFLs via demise of incandescent bulbs, taxpayer funded research or positions – are arrested and prosecuted under RICO or for fraudulent use of Government funds (taxpayer $)?
Forget this non-sense about meeting in the middle, we so called ‘D’ers are mad as ‘H’ about the AGW scam, Cap-n-Tax, and Greenie Tree-hugging gone inane. People like Gore, Hansen, and Mann need to be held accountable for their crimes against the global mankind.
Dr Bain, you argue that pro-environment policies are desirable in their own right and that we might achieve common ground on such policies. The reduction of CO2 emissions is not a pro-environment policy unless you can show that increased levels of CO2 are bad. But more CO2 is good for plant life, which is at the base of all food chains. The only evil arising from more CO2 is the hypothesised warming of the Earth to dangerous levels. This is why resolution of the scientific debate on the CAGW global warming hypothesis is a necessary precursor to any action.
We should not adopt the reduction of CO2 emissions as a desirable policy “just in case” because it is NOT a cost-free option. I am not just talking about the wasting of resources, the raising of energy costs and the jeopardising of continuity of energy supply in the developed economies. In developing countries, increases in starvation because of the diverting of corn from food to biofuels is real, is new, and is a direct consequence of the policies you evidently support. Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace claims that in underdeveloped countries 2 million people per year die from inhaling smoke as they are forced to heat their homes and cook using wood fires. I would suggest that the amelioration of such poverty is probably impossible without fossil fuel electrification.
By the way, I am not a climate change denier. I am a catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) skeptic with the emphasis on the ‘C’ and the ‘A’.