Guest post by Dr. Tim Ball
A common fallback position when losing an argument is to assault your adversary personally. Known as ad hominem, it involves “attacking an opponent’s motives or character rather than the policy or position they maintain.”
In climate science, those who employ this rhetorical tactic attack individuals who ask probing scientific questions. The attacks indicate that they know how inadequate their science is. It often works because of a deliberate campaign to exploit basic sensitivities: fear the sky is falling, guilt about not protecting the environment, guilt about the damage already done, fear and embarrassment of showing ignorance.
People who challenge the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are often labeled “global warming skeptics”. Skeptics do not deny that warming occurred in modern times, but, sensibly, questioned the cause. The IPCC said it was due to human production of CO2. This is driven by a political agenda, not science, so any opposition is considered troublesome and requires silencing.
The IPCC claim is an unproven hypothesis. Science advances by proposing hypotheses that other scientists challenge in their proper role as skeptics. The word skeptic has markedly different public and scientific connotation; negative for the former and positive for the latter. Scientists act as skeptics by trying to disprove the hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are acting appropriately.
The IPCC hypothesis was untested. Professor Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that consensus was claimed before the research even began. The IPCC tried to prove the hypothesis, putting them in the untenable position of eliminating, ignoring, or manipulating anything that showed the hypothesis was wrong. They had to shoot the skeptics who were the messengers of the problems.
Evidence showing that the hypothesis was wrong continued to emerge. But the IPCC and the vast majority of mainstream media simply ignored it. IPCC projections were wrong because the hypothesis was wrong. That the skeptics were correct was verified as CO2 levels continued to rise, while temperatures leveled and declined. But instead of amending the science, as is proper science, alarmists simply changed the terminology. They stopped talking about global warming and started talking about climate change. Leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit for 2004 explained:
Asher Minns, Communication and Centre Manager at the Tyndall Centre: “In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media.”
Bo Kjellén, former Chief Climate Negotiator, Sweden; senior research fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute: “I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labeling than global warming.”
Climate change was an ideal label because activist scientists could use it to explain any weather event; hotter, colder, wetter, drier, it was all climate change. The public would not know that such events are normal, so alarmists would have an endless supply of frightening examples. The public also does not know that climate change in general is normal. It has often occurred more quickly and with greater magnitude than most people are aware. Current conditions are well within normal.
Those who knew how much climate changes naturally were those previously called global warming skeptics. They now became climate change deniers with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The fallacy is that they were anything but deniers. Indeed, they spend their careers educating people about the amount of climate change that has and is occurring.
Next time you witness personal attacks on scientists, call the attacker to answer for this despicable tactic. Ask them to address the outstanding science questions only. A hand wave toward the IPCC in response is insufficient.
Soon, when someone calls a person a global warming skeptic or climate change denier, informed observers will come to see it as conclusive proof that the abuser knows nothing about climate or scientific method. Then, the attacker, not the scientist being attacked, will be shunned
RobW says:
December 19, 2012 at 9:31 am
…Not only is it safe but after 16 years(interesting number coincidence) there has not been a single documented case of harm by any world food safety authority. That after three trillion meals. Ergo SAFE food….
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Don’t bet on that.
From the International Journal of Biological Sciences
In other words humans in the USA have been guinea pigs in a nation wide trial with “nonexistent traceability or epidemiological studies” we have absolutely no idea of what GMOS have done to the US population so you get stuff like US babies mysteriously shrinking and no method to determine the cause.
As a chemist I am neutral on the subject of GMOs. As a Quality Engineer I want them subjected to the same exacting standards that drugs are in the USA before they are released for general use. That was not done thanks to Monsanto’s pet Lawyer Michael Taylor who while at the FDA ruled GMOs were safe based on the idea of “substantial equivalence” and no testing was needed.
Climate change denier, the Green Ahnenerbe are calling me a Nazi.
Thanks Dr Ball great post, 2nd paragraph says it all.
Behaviour of climatology as defined by IPCC team, is not rational, its emotive.
Hence I believe, dominates the conversation as opposed to, the data suggests this hypothesis and we can test the hypothesis by..
Motives, intentions? Actions speak louder.
For me the give-away behaviour is that, it is identical to that of a true-believer, when they start to realize their religion has flaws and the high priests are just men.
Naturally the messenger is an agent of the (faiths) dark forces, so they shoot the messenger.
DaveG says:
December 19, 2012 at 9:41 am
TomRude says:
December 18, 2012 at 10:30 pm
As if to confirm Tim Ball’s column, the Vancouver Sun daily dose of global warming agitprop used King Tides to offer some UBC University Oceanographer a “global warming” tribune…
What do you expect when David Suzuki has a water front mansion here and Green Peace was born here.
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Even Green Peace cofounder,Patrick Moore, can’t stomach the spin anymore.
Seems he agrees with Dr Ball.
@izen
“if the overwhelming majority of the knowledge that science has collected on the climate over the last century all points conclusively to AGW ”
But it doesn’t, it points the other way, and it is STUPID to ignore this fact.
Thanks, Dr. Ball.
Climate has always been changing, it will keep on changing till the end of our planet. There is nothing we can do about it.
The trouble that I have with climatologists is that they are experts. That is to say that they are in the main, people who know a tremendous amount about a very narrow section of some wider field, and in the case of climate almost no field is wider. It is a weakness that all disciplines suffer from to some degree and from which economics and the soft disciplines in general tend to be vulnerable. As I see it, experts tend to be loath to descend to the level of bare basics and apply raw logic to any given problem within their field.
When it comes to climate, I am sceptical. Not sceptical of just the AGW promoters, but equally sceptical of the position of the majority of the sceptics. Not having any worthwhile scientific knowledge I have been obliged to study over a few years the roots of physics to apply my mind in a logical manner. What I found, from nought but common sense, a much underrated commodity, is that to accept the position of either side, I had to reject the second law of thermodynamics. Not being myself an expert (not in climatology that is) I am not wedded to the law. I am prepared to accept some other mantra in its place, but if I am to do that I am entitled to some authoritative and logical explanation from at least one highly regarded physicist. I have found none and thus I continue to believe that the transfer of thermal energy from colder to warmer is impossible. Without even proceeding to the first law of thermodynamics which puts the matter beyond all reasonable doubt, I can say that a greenhouse gas, as is commonly understood by that term, cannot exist. Water vapour is said to be the “most powerful of greenhouse gases”. To accept that, I have to ignore the fact that any non transparent molecule placed between a heat source and a cooler target, has a cooling effect. Were it not for the water vapour we would all have cooked long ago – ask any dweller in a particularly humid summer area as is the one that I happen to live in currently. In summer Arizona is less uncomfortable than Florida but only while there is power for the air conditioning.
What climatologists have failed to do, is to ask the physicists for two new laws of thermodynamics to replace those which are presently totally ignored by almost one and all.
Maybe we should also change terminology and instead of calling them alarmists, we should call them Climate Change Terrorists. I can’t think of more fitting name for someone who’s trying to hold the whole world hostage.
Tim Ball,
Here are a few more quotes for ya.
At least he acknowledges the temperature standstill since 1998.
Mark Bofill says:
December 19, 2012 at 10:27 am
🙂
It’s a wonderful evening (here already). We could listen to the crickets while we await izen’s no doubt comprehensive citations.
“But you all go believing that the science of reading peoples motives is settled.
Guess what? The theory that AGW is all about politics? as a theory? falsified by this libertarian.”
Its a political agenda, and “left” oriented people seem to be the ones falling most for the spin.
I thought the IPCC was set up on the assumption that CO2 was going to cause lots of horrible greenhouse effects and they were going to provide guidance on how to deal with this obvious problem i.e. it was assumed the science was settled. It wasn’t set up to prove that CO2 was a greenhouse gas. It seems that there’s been a lot of confusion caused by this leap from a hypothesis to a settled conclusion without much action in between. I think the scientists who have made their fortunes out of talking up climate change have been pretty savvy, like lots of other people who have made money out of the ignorance of stupid politicians who just don’t know enough or really care enough to ask hard questions of their government advisers. But the biggest leeches of all have been the lazy media.
Ken Harvey says:
“The trouble that I have with climatologists is that they are experts.”
Many are self-named only. they are mostly NOT experts !!!
Take Mann for instance…. Very little knowledge of climate, very little knowledge of dendrochronology, very little knowledge of statistical procedures….. Yet he throws these inadequacies together and comes out as a climate scientist.
And the “attribution” programmers, basically zero knowledge about how the atmosphere works, or about climate in general, no wonder the climate models don’t get anything anywhere near reality !!
TRM says:
December 19, 2012 at 10:02 am
[‘There is hope. My son’s school had to watch Gore’s movie but the science teacher actually told the kids to find the errors so some quick googling and at least the smart kids don’t buy it anymore.”]
“So shines a good deed – in a weary world.” Willy Wonka, 1971
You are right, TRM, there is hope.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on Warmists. After all, they do pretend to practice science very well, just as Milli Vanilli were very good at pretending to be actually singing. For that, they should get a round of applause.
Kasuha says:
December 19, 2012 at 11:50 am
Maybe we should also change terminology and instead of calling them alarmists, we should call them Climate Change Terrorists. I can’t think of more fitting name for someone who’s trying to hold the whole world hostage.
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The FBI already labels the more violent ones eco-terrorists.
Ken Harvey says:
December 19, 2012 at 11:47 am
The trouble that I have with climatologists is that they are experts….
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Try reading a very simple real world set of observations.
It is three comments
comment 1
expanded in comment 2 and in comment 3
Actually the whole thread may be of interest.
AndyG55 says:
December 19, 2012 at 12:31 pm
“And the “attribution” programmers, basically zero knowledge about how the atmosphere works, or about climate in general, no wonder the climate models don’t get anything anywhere near reality !!”
Maybe not even knowldege about the limitations of modeling. It’s possible. Maybe they are not liars but that incompetent.
Bruce Cobb says:
December 19, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on Warmists. After all, they do pretend to practice science very well, just as Milli Vanilli were very good at pretending to be actually singing. For that, they should get a round of applause.
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For that you should be forced to listen to this. (My husbands favorite for driving me nuts.)
“The IPCC hypothesis was untested.”
In the beginning, true for all sides. The warmists say it was untested but now has been tested and is no longer a hypothesis. The skeptic says either the hypothesis has not been tested OR is untestable because it is unfalsifiable.
No common grounds. This is why there is no skeptic-warmist discussion.
GCMs in the warmist camp are accurate, proven models. You can’t have a discussion on probable outcome if you can’t agree on the factors that go into creating your scenarios.
A slyer term would be “deviationist,” suggesting that the belief we are opposing has Stalinoid characteristics.
The near-synonym for “dissident” that has caught on more is “contrarian,” which I use because it is the most neutral + accurate (I think) term. (We’re not merely “skeptical”–we’re not just doubtful.)
Stefan (sic) wasn’t questioning the safety of GM food himself, he was pinning enviro-nuts with their subjectivism in choosing to believe or disbelieve in a scientific consensus.
He Stefan, good to see you back again. We’re old-timers now!
Check out Brian Martin’s wonderful online booklet Strip the Experts,
At least we do not need to put up with a bunch of new Kuhn inspired foolishness. This is out and out get down and dirty politics. Reminds you of the recent elections in the US. The political types believe with some justification that simply labeling something with a loaded word or phase and keep repeating it often enough and people will believe. Well some of them anyway. No this kind of labeling demonstrates ignorance to rational science types. It is part of a well through out, if sometimes poorly articulated, approach to shutting down debate and bolstering the orthodoxy. Hum, does the inquisitions of middle ages come to mind?
Dear moderators, one comment of mine has been probably lost or swallow by the spam filter. if it is lost, here it is again, please, publish it:
Guest post by Dr. Tim Ball: “Skeptics do not deny that warming occurred in modern times, “
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Really? OK, let us put aside the question, why you in fact indirectly call the skeptics, who are skeptical about the alleged “warming occurred in modern times” deniers. I just would like to know, what scientific reason you personally have to consider the alleged “warming occurred in modern times” to be a scientific fact. Let me guess: consensus? IPCC? What else?
Is it possible that you just do not know anything about the “methods” to calculate the so called “global temperature”? Do you know anything about “extracting temperatures for large areas” from a single or a few weather stations, or about “temperature reconstructions” etc.?
Doug Proctor: ‘GCMs in the warmist camp are accurate, proven models.’
Simply not true.The apparent agreement is because the models are calibrated against the past. however, they are built on fundamental mistakes in the physics so cannot predict climate.
The reason is that climate science makes the dreadful mistake of imagining that the temperature signal of the lower atmosphere and of the Earth’s surface in the other direction obtained by pyrgeometers are real energy fluxes.
This is not and can never be the case; the signals are artefacts of the construction of the pyrgeometer. You MUST use the difference to give net flux, as specified by the manufacturers: http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx
Subtraacting the thermal GHG IR spectral power from the black body surface IR spectrum, it’s easy to show there is virtually no 15 micron CO2 band IR to be absorbed. The attenuation at TOA of that same band is nothing to do with lower atmosphere attenuation – it’s the self absorption of TOA thermal emission.
There is an unknown bit of physics here so the story is not complete. However, CO2-AGW and the positive feedback are artefacts of incorrect modelling and no competent professional can consider the heat transfer in the models to be correct.