I would not have believed this if I didn’t see it in print. It’s another example of the playbook pioneered by the late Dr. Steven Schneider. Bolding mine.
“This is a Sophie’s Choice: If we respond to the moral imperative to raise public awareness and alarm about climate, we have to be deceptive.
If we are committed to truth and scientific accuracy, we have to talk in hedged, caveat-filled, probabilistic language that is utterly ineffectual in reaching and activating a tuned-out public.” -David Roberts, Grist
http://grist.org/climate-energy/hawks-vs-scolds-how-reverse-tribalism-affects-climate-communication/
h/t to Tom Fuller
UPDATE: 11/2/12 On Twitter, David Roberts is claiming that I’ve misrepresented his position, and called me a “hack” for printing this.
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David Roberts | |
| @drgrist | ||
| @wattsupwiththat I called it a “false dichotomy.” You presented it as my view. Don’t blame your hackery on me. | ||
I replied that the article was misleading:
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Watts Up With That @wattsupwiththat | 01 Nov | |
| @drgrist then learn not to write misleading articles | |||
| |
Watts Up With That @wattsupwiththat | 01 Nov | |
| @drgrist if you have a disclaimer, such as should have been with original, happy to add it. Post stays because your wrote those words, notme | |||
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David Roberts | |
| @drgrist | ||
| @wattsupwiththat I didn’t do enough to prevent your misunderstanding, so you’re sticking with it? | ||
| |
Watts Up With That @wattsupwiththat | 01 Nov | |
| @drgrist just add disclaimer that you don’t endorse what u wrote in that para to ur article, assuming isn’t insult re: this, I’ll add it. | |||
| |
David Roberts | |
| @drgrist | ||
| @wattsupwiththat It’s not my job to correct your posts. You know it’s wrong & misleading. You can choose to leave it up or not. | ||
From my perspective, it looks more like he’s embarrassed about it after the fact, maybe because he was getting some flak. The problem with his argument is that his “false dichotomy” statement is three paragraphs above the one where he talks about the “Sophie’s Choice” and to me there’s not an obvious statement that he doesn’t believe what he wrote.
My offer is that if he wants to distance himself from that paragraph, he can add a disclaimer or clarification, and I’ll be happy to follow up with that here. I think it is a fair offer.
Why don’t I believe him about his “Sophie’s Choice” paragraph as not being his view? it has a lot to do with statements like this:
Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.”
Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.” (http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/1106?show_comments=no )
Source: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568
When a person has tendency to make such hateful and outlandish claims, one tends to believe that he’d make another similar claim, especially since he has not retracted his Nuremberg claim.
If Mr. Roberts does not believe what he wrote about “Sophie’s Choice” I’ll happily issue a correction here if he makes a caveat, disclaimer, or clarification to that effect on his own article.
I nominate Tom Fuller for the Prize of Noble Cause Redemption. He finds these gems because he reads the dreck, muck and mire of the Alarmist Narrative from the Machine. Purple Hearts, Distinguishing Crosses, Wisdom Stars, Tax Exemptions, nothing’s too much to honor his valor. Tom Nelson’s another one who doesn’t get enough credit. Listen to the Tom-Toms.
======================
er, missed the main point in all the adulation. Knowing what he knows, wading through the cries of catastrophe must be a bitter and horror-filled journey. Godspeed!
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The problem with propaganda is that it is most effective on your OWN supporters. They absorb all the lies, all of them, then start broadcasting every one as if it were truth. This marks them out as fools to their opponents until the day the supporters realise they have indeed been spouting lies. Then quite suddenly they stop believing EVERYTHING, including that which they were told that may have been truth. It is, therefore, a rather dangerous game to play.
“The overall weight of evidence” of global warming “is so clear that one begins to feel angry toward those who exaggerate the uncertainty.”
-Stephen H Schneider 1992-
Twenty years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, and the “overall weight of evidence” has hardly changed at all. And we all know just how little weight that it to begin with.
“If we respond to the moral imperative to raise public awareness and alarm about climate, we have to be deceptive.”
Translation: The End justifies the Means.
If you cannot advance your agenda honestly on its own merits without resorting to deception, then your objective and your motives are suspect.
Should the debate (now apparently over) about CAGW be about being open and honest with the public?
Let me re-edit this for ya.
Day by Day says:
October 31, 2012 at 9:36 pm
What S Mark says is very important and I think we should pay attention if we don’t want to make the same mistakes as our antagonists.
David Roberts is asking a question. Here is the full quote:
This is a Sophie’s Choice: If we respond to the moral imperative to raise public awareness and alarm about climate, we have to be deceptive. If we are committed to truth and scientific accuracy, we have to talk in hedged, caveat-filled, probabilistic language that is utterly ineffectual in reaching and activating a tuned-out public. Dishonest or ineffectual. Alarmist or concern troll. Those are our choices?
He then shows how it is possible to communicate a third way, to convey a ‘moral imperative’ without being ‘scientifically inaccurate’.
Roberts thinks it is a “moral imperative” and I don’t. Roberts undoubtedly believes many things I don’t, yet he is not saying he will lie to a “tuned out pulbic.” Roberts is offerring a third choice.
Surely you must realize there are ways of being dishonest without actually lying. The current election is a prime example of that, with plenty of dishonesty on both sides.
What Roberts wants to do, and thinks is perfectly ok (because to him and his ilk, the ends justify the means) is to manipulate people’s emotions in order to bypass the whole messy process of examining where the truth lies, and get them to act on those emotions.
“Hurricane” Sandy is a prime example of this.
_Jim says:
It’s not; 24 hours would give MORE than 360 degrees, as the actual rotational period is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds and that is a complete 360 degree rotation.
Right – that’s what I thought. So it seems to me that the “ridiculous” statement (according to Gerald) by NASA is not so ridiculous after all – right? It’s the number of sideral rotations they’re talking about vs the number of solar rotations.
Wild predictions of doom that have not come true:
Hansen in 1980: 2 deg temp rise by 2000
Club of Rome and Ehrlich,Holder et al in late 1970s: China, India, Africa simply doomed, 1/2 of mankind will starve by 2000, England will return to dark ages, no way to continue feeding the world.
E.O. Wilson in 1990 or so: thousands of species going extinct every year, ecosystem collapse imminent
to take only a few. And they wonder why no one is listening?
Let’s remember the movie “Sophie’s Choice”. Poor Sophie was forced to choose which of her children would live. It was jack-booted Nazis that forced her into this quandary.
Yes, the analogy In this article seems correct.
Let’s remember the movie “Sophie’s Choice”. Poor Sophie was forced to choose which of her children would be allowed to live. It was jack-booted Nazis who were forcing this decision.
Yep, the analogy used above by these alarmist is apt.
TonyG
The ‘solar vs sidereal’ concoction is fiction- an attempt to bundle daily rotation and its orientation in space with the separate orbital motion and they wreck themselves trying to make something work that doesn’t. If anyone here imagines that one 24 hour day falls out of step with one rotation ,and the solar vs sidereal junk requires it,then why bother with climate or even science as daily temperature fluctuations within a 24 hour period respond to one rotation of the Earth and never fall out of step.
The 1461 day calendar system was created first and the 1461 natural noon AM/PM cycles formatted into 3 years of 365 days and 1 year of 366 days.The averaging process which creates the average 24 hour day,known as the Equation of Time,is based on the return of the Sun to noon 1461 times for 4 orbital circuits.There are no fractions involved,the great astronomers in antiquity recognized that there are 1461`days in 4 annual cycles and converting days/years into rotations/orbital circuits reduces this to the fact that we don’t observe and falls out of the main fact as trivia that for each orbital circuit of the Earth,it turns 365 1/4 times.
What the late 17th century idiotic ‘solar vs sidereal’ junk does is block the appreciation that the polar coordinates turn in a 360 degree cycle/circle to the central Sun like so –
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Earth_precession.svg&page=1
A planet with zero degree inclination has an equatorial climate,it has nothing to do with heat per se but rather the conditions that exist at the Earth’s equator spread over all latitudes in that there is no discernible swings in daylight/darkness nor swings in temperatures while a polar climate like Uranus would have wild swings across latitudes in both temperatures and daylight/darkness asymmetries.The Earth’s inclination tends towards the equatorial end of the spectrum with a minor polar influence.
Perhaps it is because people are not interested in climate that they can’t see a different approach and it is far away from issues of oil/gas or global warming,it is more or less adjusting to better information we get from making planetary comparisons and then starting anew.If Sandy proved anything is that people will listen to the story of how it formed ,why it grew in strength and why it took the path it did,it is a pity that the astronomical inputs are given scant treatment and that is the what is being rectified here.
Gerald,
You’re going on about all sorts of stuff unrelated to anything I’ve said. I’m responding only to what you said about the rotation of the earth. So let’s go for a simple answer to a simple question:
From noon to noon, does the earth rotate exactly 360 degrees or not?
I would have liked to avoid a monologue and concentrated on one of many components to work on but the chances of encountering the type of individual who can step outside the routine arguments is fairly small.
A theory such as ‘global warming’ in its current format was not the first of its kind as a type of conclusion that is meant to explain and encompass almost all observations from hurricanes to effects in biology to geology.When a theory comes along that explains so much with so little people become naturally wary of it and while many contend and object to gross distortions of observations that are forced into supporting global warming,there were and are precious few people who handle another theory that explained so much without any visible trace of the method used to reach a conclusion or indeed the vagueness of the conclusion.
Perhaps Edgar Allan Poe’s commentary would fit comfortably in with the aggressive theory of global warming in that it shares the same traits as another all-encompassing theory –
“To explain: — The Newtonian Gravity — a law of Nature — a law whose existence as such no one out of Bedlam questions — a law whose admission as such enables us to account for nine-tenths of the Universal phænomena — a law which, merely because it does so enable us to account for these phænomena, we are perfectly willing, without reference to any other considerations, to admit, and cannot help admitting, as a law — a law, nevertheless, of which neither the principle nor the modus operandi of the principle, has ever yet been traced by the human analysis — a law, in short, which, neither in its detail nor in its generality, has been found susceptible of explanation at all — is at length seen to be at every point thoroughly
explicable, provided we only yield our assent to —— what? To an hypothesis? Why if an hypothesis — if the merest hypothesis — if an hypothesis for whose assumption — as in the case of that pure hypothesis the Newtonian law itself — no shadow of à priori reason could be assigned — if an hypothesis, even so absolute as all this implies, would enable us to perceive a principle for the Newtonian law — would enable us to understand as satisfied, conditions so
miraculously — so ineffably complex and seemingly irreconcileable as those involved in the relations of which Gravity tells us, — what rational being could so expose his fatuity as to call even this absolute hypothesis an hypothesis any longer — unless, indeed, he were to persist in so calling it, with the understanding that he did so, simply for the sake of consistency in words?” Edgar Allan Poe
Newton used a form of double modeling that displaced the original approach and methods of the great astronomers and particularly Copernicus and Kepler – the audacity is breathtaking for the shortcuts and distortions Newton applied in order to use the predictive convenience of the Ra/Dec system as a bridge to experimental sciences and I take no satisfaction whatsoever from seeing what he tried to do.
The sad part is not the validity of climate models but the actual validity of modeling itself with the core problems originating back a few centuries ago where not even the correlation between one 24 hour day and one rotation survives as a fact along with its terrestrial effects.Without some sort of recovery at this juncture ,climate change is the least of our problems.
@ur momisugly Day by Day
Read the examples he gives of his “third way”:
http://grist.org/climate-energy/hawks-vs-scolds-how-reverse-tribalism-affects-climate-communication/
David Roberts’ “third way” is scientifically inaccurate drivel designed to mislead the public, in other words, the same as “Dishonest” or “Alarmist”. He can call it a “third way” all he likes but really it’s just dishonest, alarmist, and scientifically inaccurate.
@ur momisugly Gerald Kelleher
I think a better historical fit to CAGW would be the phlogiston theory.
No. Because the Earth has moved about 1 degree further around in its annual orbit, and so the sun’s position in the sky has changed at noon(s) by about that amount.
TonyG
For goodness sake man ,look at what we are discussing – why temperatures go up and down within a 24 hour period and why these fluctuations keep in step with the rotation of the Earth.This issue is not directed at validating a junk 17th century ‘solar vs sidereal’ ideology but holding ground on the most basic science fact of them all where NASA themselves have altered course and partly recovered the 24 hour/360 degree correlation.
The proper question is how many times does natural noon occur within a period of 4 orbital circuits of the Earth and the answer is 1461 times insofar as AM/PM denote the rotation of the Earth to noon and also corresponds to the number of days in 4 annual cycles.The ‘solar vs sidereal’ junk doesn’t even get this far and insists on 1465 rotations in 1461 days so that you can’t even ask the question about the difference between natural variations in noon as opposed to the regular 24 hour AM/PM cycle which is extracted as an average from natural noon via the equation of time.
I could tell you as a man that there is no external reference for daily rotation as an independent motion but that the constant 24 hour AM/PM cycle and how each day elapses into the next day substitute for constant rotation at a rate of 15 degrees per hour but to get to that point requires removing conceptual junk and putting the development of the timekeeping systems in order with all the proper references attached.It is not a daunting task but it does take time and it is an amazing story involving the recovery of science at a juncture where planetary dynamics and terrestrial effects meet – climate,geology and biology specifically.
Gerald Kelleher says:
For goodness sake man ,look at what we are discussing – why temperatures go up and down within a 24 hour period and why these fluctuations keep in step with the rotation of the Earth.This issue is not directed at validating a junk 17th century ‘solar vs sidereal’ ideology but holding ground on the most basic science fact of them all where NASA themselves have altered course and partly recovered the 24 hour/360 degree correlation.
So you are either unable or unwilling to provide a simple answer to a simple question. I’m happy to discuss things, but you seem intent on taking things 100 steps at a time rather than 1 step at a time, or making any attempt to agree on even a small fact.
You say “the proper question”, but that’s not *MY* question. And you continue to provide non-answers to MY question, while telling me what I should be talking about. If your intent is to educate, then you’re taking a very bad approach. It’s difficult to pay much attention at all to anything you say when you can’t address a simple question simply.
John West
Having the benefit of many years investigating the matter with the new tool of the internet which provides instant access to works I would otherwise not have – there is an equal amount of satisfaction and a dismay watching events play out over the centuries the way they did and the rise of speculative sciences over interpretative sciences and particularly now with computer modeling,The intelligent person knows the limitations of conclusions drawn from devices,a meteorologist may say that when models put Sandy out to sea while human judgments intervened and directed it towards the continental USA,likewise,when John Flamsteed concluded that the daily return of a star using a watch and the 24 hour day correlates directly to constant rotation,human judgement should intervene and refer rotation to the AM/PM cycle and the Lat/Long system.
Because the error was allowed to stand and Newton built his agenda on Ra/Dec,the whole mechanical modeling thing has snowballed to ridiculous proportions so modeled global warming and Newton’s theory are directly related in a technical way.
Brian H says:
No. Because the Earth has moved about 1 degree further around in its annual orbit, and so the sun’s position in the sky has changed at noon(s) by about that amount.
Yes, I know. I’m trying to reach an agreement with Gerald about that, but it appears to be a futile endeavor.
TonyG
Any person who imagines that those who are locked into a worldview of modeled global warming can take a wider view in order to diffuse a ridiculous situation need only to look at this matter to see that they literally can’t.Have you clearly understood that NASA themselves have altered their views on the 360 degree/24 hour correlation hence my objection is that while they did listen,the adoption of the proper principles was not done in a transparent way.
Your question did not reach the standard where a reply can be given,when you apply the 1461 natural noon AM/PM cycles across 4 orbital periods,then and only then can you consider the averaging process which smooths out the variations in length of the natural noon cycles to a 24 hour average.You cannot even explain the seasons which shares the same dynamics with the variations in the natural noon cycle but first it means holding ground on the most basic scientific fact of all – the temperature rise and fall within a 24 hour period keeps in step with one rotation of the Earth while the awful error we inherited from the late 17th century via the ‘solar vs sidereal junk’ insists days and rotations fall out of step thereby losing cause and effect between daily temperature fluctuations and daily rotation.
You are not dealing with a single problem,you are dealing with multiple ingredients that go into creating this present unsightly modeling mess and some of the components of this mess have their roots many centuries ago in the technical divisions of astronomy –
“To set down in books the apparent paths of the planets and the record of their motions is especially the task of the practical and mechanical part of astronomy; to discover their true and genuine path is . . .the task of interpretative astronomy; while to say by what circle and lines correct images of those true motions may be depicted on paper is the concern of the inferior tribunal of geometers” Kepler
If history tells contemporaries anything is that unless we take a wider view of these matters, we condemn ourselves to a war of attrition that actually supports the ridiculous precepts of modeled global warming by human activity.
” I have heard such things put forth as I should blush to repeat–not so much to avoid discrediting their authors (whose names could always be withheld) as to refrain from detracting so greatly from the honor of the human race. In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion In their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea as they hit upon themselves or hear set forth by others, no matter how simple and stupid these may be, gain
their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage–if indeed it does not make them ill ” Galileo
I could tell you that it is not the models that are the problem but modeling itself and why long term weather does not shade into climate but that requires the type of people who can get away from the personalities and graphs supporting what is effectively a cult.
I am naturally cursed with a talent for astronomy and the type of spacial awareness that does not mix up celestial references with dynamics or rather sets the references in order so that people do not take wrong turns and end up with something like the mess in front of us today.It is not boasting and modesty is not appropriate right now as make no mistake about it,the recent storm is going to be used one way or another to break the inertia caused by climategate and when you own the education system and most of the media it does not take a genius to figure out that the balance has shifted back in the wrong direction.
Gerald,
Since you don’t seem to want to simplify what you’re saying for an obvious dunderhead like me, I find any further pursuit of this discussion to be pointless. Don’t bother responding, I’m unsubscribing and won’t check back.
Brian H says:
“No. Because the Earth has moved about 1 degree further around in its annual orbit, and so the sun’s position in the sky has changed at noon(s) by about that amount.”
Is there any chance and I mean any chance whatsoever that you can come to terms with the fact that daily and orbital motions do not share the same axis,if not by direct observation of Uranus where daily rotation runs South to North with respect to the central Sun while the polar coordinates,acting like a beacon for the orbital behavior of the planet turn East to West to the central Sun –
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/11/video/b/
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn12529/dn12529-1_800.jpg
The temptation to contend with the cult of global warming through human activity may be far too inviting as opposed to the initial difficulty experienced with a new approach to weather, climate, planetary dynamics and multiple other issues that need addressing and that is why I am required to keep these issues front and center for as long as I can.It will be a victory but it will not be done by proving people wrong,it will be done because the standard of climate studies is raised to a level where the doom merchants are no longer relevant.
TonyG
Modeled global warming through human activity is not just a tragedy in itself ,it is merely the symptom of a bigger tragedy at another historical and technical level so while you may walk away and are probably encouraged to do so,I cannot because this is not just serious,it is also quite dangerous by virtue of a dysfunctional education system.Children eventually become adults and must sometimes unlearn doctrines which were inherently self-serving,a doctorate receives his stamp of approval for not rocking the boat or following a particular bandwagon and has no incentive to fight against a system that will eventually pay him and give him a reputation even though it comes at the price of originality and genuine creativity,it wasn’t always like that but it is now.
I am affiliated with no organization,I receive no pay nor have I social standing,in fact probably one below that of a criminal as the astronomical viewpoints ,insights and methods I represent no longer exist due to the emergence in the late 17th century of a vicious strain of empiricism that distorted methods and insights to suit modeling via the clockwork Ra/Dec system.
Sure,you can get away with pointing out the desperation of this cult in clinging to every weather event but ultimately that answers nothing,the long term view is a raising of standards above a level which doesn’t even exist presently – to hold the central fact that within one 24 hour day, temperature fluctuations respond to one rotation of the Earth and keep in step.
You can’t fault the global warming modelers if you yourselves fail to see the relevance of losing the most basic planetary fact of them all – why daylight turns to darkness once in 24 hours ,why the sun rises and sets and all the tidal effects,biological cycles and weather related effects that hinge on a rotating Earth.The tragedy is not that the unfortunate Ra/Dec junk is allowed to stand,it is the inability to handle the correct principles and move forward to new ground.