I have some important work to do today, and so I’m going to put my interaction with WUWT on hold for a bit. However, I see here an opportunity to ask a question I have been pondering for quite some time. Please help me out by answering the question and discussing it. Of course other things within site policy are fair game too.
As of late, we have seen climate skepticism portrayed in many derogatory ways. The juvenile sliming by Stephan Lewandowsky, Mike Marriott, and John Cook is a good example: they tried to use science as a bully pulpit to paint climate skeptics as crazy people, much like what happened with politcal dissent in Soviet Russia. In the Soviet Union, a systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place and was based on the interpretation of political dissent as a psychiatric problem.
Except, Lew and company were caught out, and called out by Frontiers.
Why did this happen? Well, I think part of it has to do with the loose-knit nature of climate skepticism. While the climate debate is often along political lines, climate skepticism is something that crosses those lines. I find that skepticism can be just as strong with some people on the left side of the political spectrum once they allow themselves to be open to the facts, rather than just accepting agitprop fed to them.
There’s no official position or representative body for climate skepticism. While players like Dr. Mann and the criminal actor Peter Glieck would like to argue that the Heartland Institute, “Big Oil, Big Coal”, and the #Kochmachine are the unifying forces behind climate skepticsm, nothing could be further from the truth. Mostly, climate skepticism is about a personal journey, not one that came from an organization.
I’m a good example. I used to be fully engaged with the idea that we had to do something about CO2, and Dr. James Hansen in 1988 was the impetus for that. I remember vividly watching his testimony on the sat feed at the TV station and thinking to myself that this really is serious. It wasn’t until later that I realized his science was so weak he and his sponsor had to resort to stagecraft by turning off the air conditioner and opening windows to make people sweat. It was the original sin of noble cause corruption. Now with my own work on the surfacestations project and what I’ve learned about climate sensitivity via the WUWT experience, and witnessing the IPPC and its foibles and how Climategate showed dissension behind the scenes, I no longer see climate change as the threat I once did back in 1988.
But, that’s my journey, others may differ.
People like Lewandowsky were able to make their claims stick because with climate skepticsm, it is all about that personal journey, there’s no organization, no policy statement, no cohesiveness of opinion that anyone can point to and say “this is what climate skeptics endorse”. While there’s strength in that heterogeneity, there’s also a weakness in that it allows people like Lewandowsky to brand climate skeptics as he sees fit.
So after some years of thinking about this, I’d like to ask this simple question:
Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?
In the UK, The Global Warming Policy Foundation provides much of that, and they have been successful in those areas, but it is UK centric.
So please answer the poll and let me know.
Oops, edit to my comment above (John Whitman says:
April 21, 2014 at 11:45 am)
It should read,
“
ThanksThank you.”Sorry.
John
Half the population or more employs magical thinking on a daily basis. It is no stretch at all to believe that tiny, tiny amounts of a gas essential for life on earth can cause extreme weather and planetary overheating. These people also believe a single butterfly beating it’s wings in, say, South America, can cause a hurricane on the US east coast.
Yes, it is long past time when at least one foundation would put out the truth. The world is flooded
with foundations and NGO’s spewing out propaganda. Someone needs to endow at least one chair at a university and get the anti warming message out there. The Carnegie foundation and the Rockerfellers and Bill Gates have pushed some dangerous agendas such as fluoridation and population reduction and eugenics to name a few. It’s time for someone with money to fight back.
Anthony
I endorse your proposal for such an association.
Reasons:
1) To provide a collective voice to “climate realists”.
2) To improve climate science by holding it to the scientific method.
E.g. to provide the public service of a “red team” to challenge, verify and validate existing climate models, and to develop climate models with better skill.
3) To add public voice to other policy options.
E.g. to compare adaptation with mitigation.
“Skeptics” is often used in contrast to “alarmists”.
However, ALL scientists by definition should be skeptical of models and require that they be independently verified and validated. Thus prefer “Realists”.
Possible names:
Association for Studying Climate ASC
Association for Climate Realists ACR
(Benefit – begin with A)
Federation of Climate Realists
Compare some existing climate associations
Almost daily reader but non-contributor to WUWT as I come here to learn from those more educated and articulate than myself. I voted ‘yes’ but what I’d really love to see is a place where all the relevant facts are on display and easy to find. Things such as sea levels, temperature, hurricane/tornado numbers, Antarctic ice levels, the long term temperature history of the planet etc. are all findable, but I’d love somewhere to go where I can click on a button saying ‘Hurricane stats’ and find the updated numbers.
Why? Because I get into discussions with friends who are CAGW believers and often end up saying something like ‘I know there is a graph of it somewhere.. let me find it for you.’ I’d love to say ‘Go to this website and all the data will be there.’ When your eleven-year-old nephew tells you that Antarctica is melting and he says it with sadness and conviction because his father works at a university well known for its CAGWism and his school teachers tell him so, it’s hard to refute without trawling for the latest stats and thinking ‘I know it was on this website somewhere, but in which thread?’. I’d love to say ‘Go to justhefacts.com and it’ll be there’. It is fun though when the father can’t refute my arguments and his mother takes my side. 😉 I’d also love to send links to journos who espouse mistruths and other nonsense.
If there was such a place, its motto should be ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. No one is entitled to their own facts.’
It is a great discussion here, as usual, and very convincing on either side. Policy statements are problematic.
I support Sen Inhofe in giving states both the power and the political will to keep our coal and hydro power on, and to reject the regulations of the EPA. These are local decisions. I am not interested in top-down policy statements from another group. These decisions belong to the states. It was always axiomatic in the United States of America that those who raised our taxes had to come home and look us all in the eye. Distant bureaucracies shutting down power is the root of the problem. We need to simply keep our lights on and our manufacturing and farming profitable and productive. No one will have any money to donate to another group sending emails and asking for donations if these coal plants are shut down.
ref:
The planners of the CAGW crusade prepared by hijacking the scientific organizations, before they even started the CAGW ball rolling. It’s not clear to me how they did it, but the results speak for themselves. Agitation from within the ranks, to retract or at least to tone down alarmist position statements, is effectively quashed. A few brave souls with rock-solid reputations have resigned in protest, and that has NOT led to any mass exodus of members. Nor do the members seem able to vote their apparatchic leaders out of office.
If sceptics were to establish a formal organization dedicated to maintaining scientific scepticism, experience suggests that sooner or later it would go the way of previously hard-headed organizations from the Royal Society, through university science departments and “investigative” journalist organizations down to SCICOP; people we thought we knew and trusted, would be using the organization as just one more platform preaching scepticism of us “antiscience deniers”.
Figure out how they hijack these organizations, and hammer out a set of bylaws that make the organization immune. Until you can do that I vote NO.
This is a bit late, but I’ve been busy pushing a similar idea for us Brits at
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2014/4/19/order-of-battle.html
with near zero success.
Note that the GWPF is not membership-based, and has no blog interaction with the public. It’s got a distinguished panel of scientific advisors, but its basically two or three members of the House of Lords (read: unelected Senate) which allows them to get interviewed on the BBC. (The BBC has interviewed Judith Curry and I think Roy Spencer, but claim they can’t find a suitably qualified sceptical scientist in Britain). In the colonies you’ve got political parties and a media free-for-all that allows space for differing views. In Britain the BBC and the five big serious daily papers are rigidly pro-consensus. Only an organisation with a popular base could break in.
I see the “herding cats” argument used a lot. From what I’ve seen of organisations like Rotary Clubs, they make an effort to attract / co-opt members from different walks of life and with varied political opinions. Why shouldn’t we be able to live with our differences? We’re not proposing a political party with a manifesto.
I’m surprised that you use Lewandowsky as an example of how it could be useful. His hold on the liberal media environmental mafia hasn’t been shifted an inch by the retraction of his paper. See Salon, Huffington Post, Chris Mooney’s, the Conversation, the Guardian etc. They’ve been told hundreds of times by me, Barry Woods, Foxgoose and others that Lew is a naughty fibber, but our comments just sit there, unchallenged and ignored. I don’t see how any organisation can cure that.
Still, I’ll vote yes. Time to turn Groucho round and insist on joining an organisation, even if it’s just to annoy the people you don’t agree with.
My feeling is that the yes majority in the poll is not reflected in the comments. I might do a quick count when I get back to the hotel tonight.
I guess the yesses are just not as vocal as the noes and maybes? Or is there something else going on here?
The word week as in what day of the week it is…Like the English language test is Thursday …Weak as in physically or mentally weak…Like a progressive idiot is for believing in the sky is falling progressive modern day soft gloved commie way to further tax, regulate, and control human and business endeavors…
An interesting read, I do get a strong sense of “we must be better than”, “purer than”, “more ethical”, “above politics” “scientific” “untainted by organisational ties” “free scientific spirits” or whatever. I also note Rud Istvan, a strong and blunt recommendation to organise and in my own backyard Australian Ted O’Brien sets out the things that have been set in train over many years and basically we stood back and allowed politics to wreak havoc with pure scientific organisations. It is clear we can no longer afford the ethical luxury of ignoring the implications by turning a blind eye, or turning the other cheek!.
The point is, do we maintain our own “pure amateur ethical self image” while allowing other insidious organised subversion of the scientific method? Many have pointed out the main proponents of climate disinformation are highly organised with well developed PR affiliations and few scruples.
That says to me, there is a crying need to challenge disinformation, to correct and set the record straight. My feeling is that we do not need to create a monolithic organisational structure, A simple hard hitting media response is the way to go.
Perhaps a luncheon between the main sceptical bloggers leading to a small executive steering group, to quickly explore media disinformation and supply timely corrections delivered professionally in a media release on the subject.
Additionally backed by a “fact check” grouping of patrons with suitable qualifications and expertise and able to be contacted for instant response and back up. I suggest this would become am automatic go to route for reporters that want impeccable sources and hard hitting confirmation of the story they are writing.
So the simple message is get organised and get on with it. The most effective organisations are simple in structure, tightly organised, and effective communicators tasked to deliver timely media announcements.
With the backing of internet blogs, the extended reach and the patronage from credible scientists these are valuable assets. Most media organisations would pay to have access to such a credible set-up and expertise.
================================================================
What you describe is a lot like SEPP before there were “blogs”.
Perhaps someone could put together a “the best of” the blogs (but closed to comments)? Maybe the blog hosts could submit a link to the post and the “best of” hosts could put up a brief description? That’s much like SEPP but this would be limited to CAGW topics rather than environmental topics in general. Is that what you mean?
I voted “yes” and I’d like to outline my reasons for doing so.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/get-real-get-organised-and-finish-it/
Pointman
Of course. There have been easily avertable losses. Why are some skeptics so proud of the absence of organization? Do we like being losers? As a Delingpole regular I have asked him why there isn’t a modicum of organization among the handful of skeptic bloggers/writers. A simple mailing list so that when one of you spots something where skeptics might help in the real world, you might alert the others on the mailing list – a simple email – and they in turn might alert their readers. Nate Silver was left hung out to dry. That was a loss of informing a whole new set of people, as opposed to preaching to the choir, and it has a chilling effect which will stop any other new and unexpected mainstream blogger from daring to put his toe in skeptic waters. The skeptic bloggers all could have put a skeptic post on his blog to offset the foreseeable warmist onslaught and alerted their readers and readers who chose to could have put a skeptic post on that blog.That simple effort by skeptic bloggers would have been more valuable than a month of articles. After all, your articles are read mostly by the already skeptic.
I was slammed on both the Delingpole blog and also the Booker blog, where I said the same thing. People called my suggestion a suggestion for some sort of fascist efforts or organization like the warmists/leftists use. Huh? I suggested nothing of the sort. There are other losses that could have been easily averted with a little coordination among the skeptic bloggers/writers and an alert to their readers. We are being outplayed and I don’t understand skeptics taking PRIDE in that. I think it just makes us losers. And I don’t want to lose this war.
Steven Mosher
“Is the rise in C02 since 1850 due to man? Stop entertaining and promoting the nonsense that say no to this question.”
Actually while it is virtually certain that some (even most) of the rise in CO2 since 1850 is due to man – although there is no proof that this is true – it is not possible to say that all the rise in CO2 since 1850 is due to man, since there is no conclusive evidence. In fact therefore to say no to the question that Mr. Mosher poses is no more nonsense than to say yes.
If Mr. really believes that all the rise in CO2 since 1850 is due to man then he has crossed the boundary from science to religion.
I think physics in particular and science in general have to win the battle. The more Scientists that examine the information and become contrarian to the “consensus” ,then the more papers we are likely to see refuting the stance of the IPCC and the geniuses who have gorged on this man made paranoia.
The more information we get out to the public the better, the more we can demonstrate via items like the CRU emails ,the duplicity and mendacity of the leading Authors ,the more the public will turn and when the public turns the politicians turn, it really is that simple.Education ,Education ,Education.