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.
You’re welcome, Mark. Thanks for saying so.
#(:))
I add to my comment at 12:21. The GWPF does not have an official, or dominant or even well known position in the climate debate. It does not have much influence. It is known to, and appreciated by sceptics, but probably the man in the street has never heard of it.
I value it highly, because I agree with the messages it posts on its site. I doubt if the rest of the UK population has the site bookmarked.
So, maybe my second message is that if you wish to emulate the GWPF, then make sure you understand its level of influence and not see it as an opposition party to the alarmist movement, more an opposition newsletter.
I think that the newsletter status I have described almost gives it more credibility than if it were a fully fledged, highly funded, high profile sceptical party. In this respect, I agree with those above who would vote against your proposal.
The aim in my view is to provide a scientifically accurate assessment of climate news, regardless of its implications. This would involve drawing attention to uncertainties in a manner that cannot be faulted by either side of the argument. That would be a public service and a service to respect and celebrate.
Let’s face it, if our sceptical position is justified, then presenting the data without bias should support our cause.
I voted no.
If there is a specific project with a specific goal, don’t we already come together anyways when asked?
ie: recent support for Jo Nova.
The alternate question – should there be more projects with specific aims?
To give one example, what’s the cost for one month of one good location billboard in the top 10 US markets? And what would the message be?
I would kick in money for this.
To have an organisation issue press releases etc. means having to adopt one line of thinking, which trends to be narrow or become narrow over time. The whole point of the sceptic movement is to be united by scepticism and nothing else.
If it also means you are the gatekeeper, then no thanks, as you have amply demonstrated that you have a narrow mind as much as many warmists.
The GWPF’s success is that it operates without the baggage of an organisation and just publishes the reports it chooses to, a course open to anyone.
Having an ‘official’ organisation will also allow warmists to focus their efforts. As it is, there is a wide spread of sceptics that can challenge them from many sides but without offering a central point of return attack.
The one organising that we do have is the group that goes under the moniker of NIPCC, but they should be left to publish scientific assessment reports and not become political.
I’ve already said that you need a media organization for all science / tech news to counter the leftist media. Global warming is only one portion of the BS that goes down every day. And if you run a media organization, you will make money & political friends.
If you look at the BS climate & lefty papers placed in Nature, Science, PNAS… they are mixed in with some very nice research papers. I’m sure that’s why these journals sold for such a high price. They need the truth in which to dilute the lie.
Places like Breitbart.com are right wing organizations that do news, not news places. You go there if you want right wing stuff. When I read slashdot or tech crunch, I’m not looking for politics, but I sure get it mixed in with the other stuff. Something popular and centrist would be nice.
I have a better, more efficient way to alter the debate in a fundamental way. Hire a respected, neutral, national known polling firm to design a statistically valid survey of credentialed scientists to once and for all come up with what percentage actually buy the CAGW case. I have yet to read an alarmist screed which doesn’t appeal to the so-called “overwhelming consensus.” That the “science is settled,” the beating heart of the alarmist case.
Every time I bring this up I either get ignored or ridiculed. The only problem I see is the expense. But how many skeptics are there who’d be willing to donate to get something like this done? I don’t know, honestly. A million? Two million?
It would take some clever PR to put it over in a convincing, well publicized way. We’d have to get some coverage in the MSM. What might do it is a wager. If we could find a well known alarmist dumb enough to put his money where his mouth is. Bet’s always attract attention, and they make a good story which the media would have a hard time ignoring.
First if there were an organization, good luck getting a majority to agree on a set of positions.
But the real problem with an organization is, the main thing that the Progressive Project has succeeded in doing over the last 100 years is getting control of what it calls the Centers of Influence, the newspapers, the Universities, the “Arts” (mainly Hollywood, but also writers, poets, etc.) the BPOMs (Big Pots of Money, by which I mean the foundations).
If you set up an organization the only real question is how long it will take the Progressives/Socialists/Communists/Alenskyites to seize control of it. An amusing recent example is Greenpeace from which the founder was recently made a non-person in true 1030s Bolshevik style, by the progressive activists who have seized control. Then they would use the organization to demonize any “Skeptic” who didn’t toe their propaganda line.
I voted ‘yes’ because I think that some organization supporting the contention that CAGW is highly improbable is better than no organization taking that stand. I would hope such an organization would restrict itself to refuting the arguments of those contending CAGW is real and established science. It could provide a forum for those who can make such refutations much like WUWT only a bit more formal and dedicated.
Mike says: “NO… consolidating your forces is never a winning strategy. It simply allows the enemy to focus their fire. Having a diverse and dispersed opposition to this Redistribution Scheme is the best way to fight.”
Quite wrong. Obviously you’ve never taken any military strategy courses, Mike. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was lost precisely because Custer split his forces. Classic mistake that all the books warn about.
I’m wondering how many of the commenters who are against the idea are people we’ve never seen here before…
I voted yes, but now I’ve read the comments I’m less certain it’s necessary.
Being organised gives them something to attack and discredit and smear.
Right now they are losing because at worse they can smear individuals and by doing so, they often get it very wrong.
You can’t discredit a movement that disagrees with you one person at a time. You’ll run out of time before you get found out..
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And to you.
PS II Corinthians 2:14-17
I think alarmists are voting yes.
Many friends and acquaintances are interested in climate change and human influence and they read Climate Scientist press releases that are often alarming and sometimes quite terrifying. Most of these people firmly believe humans are surely destroying our planet and our children will suffer. They are uninformed about the data and so their views are simply based on ignorance and propaganda. I’m a sceptic and do my best to counteract their views by digging out – mostly from WUWT – simple graphs that indicate planet Earth is existing well within its normal variation. And that increasing CO2 isn’t a threat. Once they see this data they inevitably say something like – “well I wish I had been shown this stuff earlier”. Based on my own experiences I suggest that a website is produced that displays simple graphs and data that laymen would easily understand. Laymen sceptics, and there are many of us, could then point to this one source of “irrefutable data” that shows them the earth is behaving completely normally and they needn’t be alarmed or scared. The website should only contain empirical data without projections or predictions as this would encourage criticism from Alarmists.
This is a very interesting discussion to be having just before Easter. As an atheist, I have always regarded the divinity of Christ as a myth, but many of the messages in the bible do have application to our lives. The crucifixion is probably the most dramatic example of the forceful submission of individual thought to the prejudice of mob consensus.
You don’t stop a mob by forming another mob. The reason that skeptics are so hated by the authoritarians and academic group-thinkers is that we speak as individuals. The global warming panic is finally starting to fade, and its proponents are beginning to sound shrill and silly. The last thing we need to do is to set up a fresh target.
I think it should be loose organization under one slogan: there is no evidence that the increase in CO2 causes a significant increase in temperature. They should belong into it primarily scientists. Zbigniew Jaworowski ( deceased) for me is an example of a man who against all preached the truth. This is important mainly for the media.
What is the definition of “official” what what keeps existing organizations from being considered “official”? It sounds like you mean “credible” and capable of wide appeal and most of all, trust. Those are characteristics that come from without. The GWPF doesn’t have these characteristics. Why? Probably because they are seen as activist, political, and just a little bit stupid for some of the things they’ve done.
Finally, as with the IPCC, any credible organization has to have the endorsement of an even more credible organization and while I may think the UN is the most corrupt thing since Stalin’s apparatchik, the freeloading nations that seek the largess of such an organization are fully behind it. If a proper “official” skeptic organization were possible it would already exist.
That the so called alarmists never learnt what the teachers taught back in the early years in school doesn’t give them the rights calling those who did for Climate Sceptics…..
Strong>Facts about our Earth
diameter 12 756 km
In other words
Jordens radie är 6 378 km
if you use a rope where one centimeter represent 10 km as an instrument to draw a circle the rope will be 6 meter 37.8 cm.
[caption id="attachment_21755" align="aligncenter" width="256"] Röd prick = skalenlig illustration av Mt Everest.Blå prick = skalenlig illustration av Marinergraven.Observera att människan förvisso varit i rymden, men vi har inte full kontroll av allt ens där vi skickat mätinstrument. Än mindre vet vi detaljfakta om jordens inre. Vi utgår från mätningar inom prickarnas ramar.[/caption]
Red dot than represent Mt Everest. Blue dot the Mariner Grave. Please observe that while it’s true man have been in space anda that we know some re. first microsecunds after Big Bang, it’s also true that no man ever been deeper than Mariner Grave and that we humans don’t know all factors and facts within our Earth. What we have is measured figures and observations within the limits up and down represented by the dots….
I found these, Mark Bofill (re: Q at 12:18pm):
1. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/01/climate-proxies
2. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/03/proxy-science-and-proxy-pseudo-science/
3. “A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable?” By Blakeley B. McShane and Abraham J. Wyner”:
http://www.e-publications.org/ims/submission/index.php/AOAS/user/submissionFile/6695?confirm=63ebfddf
Hope you find them helpful.
Janice
I voted ‘yes’ but I do have to say that sometimes organizations have a nasty way metamorphosizeing into something different than the founders intended.
Skepticism is all about non-conformism.
There is no point in trying to “tame” it or organize it.
Creating it will demand concensus, the mere phrase gives me the creeps.
The “skeptic cloud” does it best. Do not fall in that trap.
Thanks for that, Gunga Din. Amen.
Your sister,
Janice
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@ur momisugly Edim (1:02pm) — I was thinking along the same lines…. (probably because I want the “No’s” to win, LOL)…
or, at least, the “Yes’s” are less likely to write a comment about their vote.
It appears that more commentors are expounding on their “No” votes, … .
Hm.
SanityP says:
I voted “yes”, but I don’t think that “climate skeptics” is the proper name for it.
I think “climate skeptic” is nonsensical and doesn’t actually say what we stand for or why we object to the alarmism that is CAGW.
Maybe something like ‘the Feynman Society‘? Emphasis on objective science and the Scientific Method: every honest scientist must be a skeptic, first and foremost. “If it disagrees with experiment, if it disagrees with observation, it’s wrong.” [Or maybe, the Eisenhower Report?]
There is no Scientific Method on the alarmist side. It has been 16 years since Michael Mann issued MBH98. Sixteen years of constant stonewalling; refusing all requests for the complete data, methodologies, code, metadata, which went into fabricating that scare. And the IPCC has no skeptical scientist in any position of authority; there is scarcely a university anywhere that has an honest skeptic in authority.
When you take away all the arbitrary assumptions, and all the baseless assertions, and the evidence-free conjectures, and then apply Occam’s Razor and the null hypothesis to the CAGW narrative, what you are left with is… nothing. There is no runaway global warming threat. It simply does not exist. The Null Hypothesis remains standing, despite constant attempts to falsify it.
There are very good arguments on both sides of this question. I agree with just about all of them. There is a real need for a strong organization to counter the misinformation being fed to the public. OTOH, there is strength in not presenting a big target to be attacked. At this point, I’m unsure of the best course of action. Will have to give it more thought.
[PS: some of the comments about a magazine are interesting. My subscription to Nature Climate Change was terminated when they asked me to start paying. As if! Too bad publications like that are so expensive. I’d love to see a WUWT mag…]
jorgekafkazar (April 19, 2014 at 12:40 pm) makes some good points above:
Creating an aimless organization just to have something to join is makes no sense. Given good well-defined reasons for its existence would be a useful starting point.
I voted “unsure”.
EYAL PORAT! I was just wondering how you were doing last week (since it was Passover, you came to mind). It’s been a looong time since I noticed your name on WUWT. Glad you posted! Hope all is well. Yes, yes, I know, you told me that Israel is a perfectly safe place to live, but, I can’t help but feel some concern for you.
Take care and SHALOM!
Janice
I am astonished at the number of no votes. I suppose it could be related to the level of freedom one actually has in their country that can position such a view.
This Global Warming movement is not about science anylonger. It is pure politics and power grabs. Nobody is successful at politics at an individual level. Nobody!
Hence my amazment of the no votes. Those of you who voted no gave a variety of reasons for such. I found none of them valid. The, it is a waste of time, nobody will listen, they already exist, excuse is nothing but BS and being lazy in your comfy chair as you gaze at pixels in your privacy using cheap energy.
The warmists are very well organized and have repositories with prepared responses to virtually any sceptical postion. Most of which use character assasination as opposed to scientific rebuttal.
The skeptics have a handful of good sites, no organization on a large scale, no easy to reference material access for quick rebuttals, few non-profit status oranizational structured environments.
Need I go on?
Without organization, you are powerless to impact policy. The “Policy” that is currently being set by the alarmists erodes your freedom more everyday. Look at what the POTUS has done through the EPA! Did you vote for that? No, but 4 million missing republican votes that did not come to the polls did by vitue of the same excuses. Now we all pay the price for their inaction.
To give up is cowardly in my book. Perhaps most folks just don’t realize their freedom is what is at stake here. If the AGW group had their way you would be living on energy rations and in the dark ages. Their way is not far off folks. December 2015 will be a big hurdle to jump for them. All it takes is a vote into the UN CO2 constraints and your life as you know it will never be the same again.
So yes, you can stand by and watch your future be determined by others or you can do something about it yourself and take ownership of your own future.
The voice of thousands can silence the indivudual quickly, efficiently, and permanently.
Wake up dissenters! Your time is here, and your voice needs heard in mass or it will disappear in the regulations being positioned in your own backyard and living room.
I for one will not stand idly by and watch our society disintegrate in to the socialist abyss that has failed time after time in history.
Think about it>
Back to your regularly scheduled program if you have a TV and electricity allowances available