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.
We most certainly need such an organization but wouldn’t Tom Harris’ ICSC meet the criteria for such an institution?
As for the left/right divide, I’ve tried to say here and at other sites for a long time now that it’s pointless to sound off against warmists as extreme left wing anti-capitalist ideologues because it gives them the chance to characterize skeptics as angry old white rich republicans. Besides not sure the left wing characterization is near accurate. Those big bankers like Goldman Sachs who’d just love to trade on carbon could hardly be called anti-capitalist. Monopoly capitalists maybe. Possibly oligarchist in nature, which would put them in the same league as Putin.
I voted No, because I don’t think some skeptical headquarter will be able to achieve what all single skeptics like yourself and independent organizations like GWPF already have achieved.
And will there be a ‘global consensus’ then, of the skeptical point of view?
I think one doesn’t want to go there.
Skeptics will win the argument in the end.
The scientific world will leave CAGW behind.
The politics will change when they run out of OPM.
“Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?”
No. That would politicize skepticism which is a frame of mind not a political position. The reason skepticism has been successful is that it is individuals expressing opinions, and not group-think which would immediately make it suspect. The warmists are the ones who hang labels. Lets not help them.
Once, the U.S. was noted for individual rights and self-reliance … now, it’s in a mad rush to join a gang … it’s gang-warfare of the kind you’d find in any totalitarian state … join a gang to protect your interests, whether it’s AARP or WWF … so, of course I voted NO … let’s stop joining gangs.
Besides, nobody swallows the alarmist junk any more … which gives them something else about which to be alarmed … and no single entity at which to point.
If we did set up such an organization the climate change people would call it a “Cult”. You know they would and the media would dutifully repeat it.
Anthony,
I have a friend and colleagues in New Zealand on our side and one continues to post the Skeptical side with plenty of links. It is pretty neat. I could forward it to you if you wish, or we could develop our own research link bank on your Website, along with a policy statement and such along with goals. Good PR. I seem to remember Joseph D’Aleo’ site ? Ice age??? Has A link format.
The left Greenfrye.com has almost a Commie manifesto with a hit list. That is why I think it is time. The left is vicious. We need to answer with calm and logic. Hypothesis, theory and natural law.
I hold to Milankovitch Cycles. My server raised my rate a few bucks because of hackers.
Sincerely,
Paul Pierett
I cannot see this working and worse suggests there really is a legitimate position for Global Warming/Climate Change. We had no need to establish organizations to put the other side on plate tectonics, evolution, microbes as disease agents, blood pumped around the body, the brain as more than a device to cool the body, Earth as the centre of the universe, etc etc. Reality eventually becomes established even if the edges remain ragged.
I voted no for several reasons:
1. Such organizations tend to become a thing unto themselves where the survival of the organization becomes paramount and the original mission is either given lip service or changed completely.
2. As noted by many above the diversity of opinion among us who do not believe is vast. Diversity is not a bad thing except when one tries to make coherent statement which satisfy all the view points within an organization. Then your down to POLITICS! And the last thing I want to see is those who now demand honest science and focusing their efforts in the direction wrapped around the axle dealing with internal politics.
3. it seems to me that in a way there is already such an organization being formed. Or am I wrong about the NIPCC as being the nucleus of such a national organization?
4. The very last thing I want to see is the great websites like this one here and Climate Depot and Ice Cap, etc all be saying the exact same things in the exact same way as a coordinated group.
Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change
We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,
Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;
Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;
Recognising that the causes and extent of recently-observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;
Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering;
Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:
Hereby declare:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.
Now, therefore, we recommend –
That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.
Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008
When you are dealing with badly behaved chuzzlewits, it is hard to resist the temptation to fight back. But I think the temptation should be resisted.
Better to leave the bozos to wither away as their dire predictions continue to fail to come to fruition. And remember to poke fun at them in public fora when they embrace something particularly boneheaded like coral reefs dying en masse or an ice free Arctic in 2015.
And if their predictions turn out to be true. Highly unlikely IMHO, but in that case I reckon that case we should have paid more attention to them.
Janice Moore says:
April 19, 2014 at 1:12 pm
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You rock Janice. Thanks!
No. Two things ..firstly, I’m reminded of Animal Farm and secondly, it won’t stop Lewandowsky and his crew from sending diatribes and personal abuse ….that is their “modus operandi” – they are righteous people fighting a righteous cause – their wages and self-importance – don’t believe that by giving them a more defined target you will stop their barbs
I voted “no.” When social architecture or infrastructure begins to develop, it requires/attracts those who need that, along with whatever the real need is.
If it is salary, then the salary/livelihood becomes important. In the world of research, there is much emphasis on grantsmanship, how to transition from doctoral program to fellowship, to early-career, to mid-career, to tenure-ready.
If it is credentials, then the resume-packers will show up. I ran an undergrad college newsletter once upon a time. The most worthless committee members were the “pre-law” people: they were angling themselves for law school apps, and the fraternity and sorority involvement (“networking”) took all their time. This was all volunteer, so I had no power to fire anyone, and I only had one occasion to write a letter of recommendation for someone based on all of that.
There is not much, relative to the career-development stuff, built in to academic research where someone or people work with you to develop a great idea and develop a great research agenda that will change the world – the build-a-better-mousetrap-and-you-will-succeed-in-research idea.
The monster is created, and wants to sustain itself more than it wants to solve problems. The docs, the insurance companies, the hospital organizations, and the pharmaceutical companies were all in the closed-door meetings when Obamacare was developed. When you take a radical idea that would resolve our problem, then engineer it so none of the major players loses, it is destined to not work as intended. In my various involvements, I was able to express this opinion in a lecture. Someone in the audience happened to be in a fellowship-type role at the time, and verified for all in attendance that all kinds of deal-making and skull-duggery was going on in that brief, intense Capitol Hill episode. She stumbled into the middle of it all and saw it all.
I submitted a good study to a good journal regarding how healthcare might work better to detect and address incidental, confounding problems. My analysis showed that the accepted status quo worked to detect the problems, but was inadequate for leading to the next steps of resolving the incidental problem.
My paper was rejected. One reviewer said I had bad outcomes, and so the paper was not worthy. I did not have bad outcomes, the prevailing system had bad outcomes.
That was the point: the status quo does not work; no one had published genuine data at that time. Since then, I have gotten my paper out, and a couple similar papers have come out. I have quickly been cited. This is pushing the issue and people are moving on to ‘what will really work?’
A year after I submitted to that journal, that SAME journal published a paper that was almost the same as mine – including on-the-ground real-world data on how to detect and institute the process to address the confounding problem, but the paper lacked the final part mine had: how well does that path work? They totally ignored that final step.
Had I lopped that final “does-it-actually-yield-any-results” analysis from my paper, I would have been the one to get published in this good journal. By good, I mean they are identified among the top 3-4 in the field.
The reviewers wanted the status quo to be maintained: let’s publish some data on the status quo we have endorsed/accepted, but not go the further step and address its worthlessness.
They did that because moving to the next step would require shucking all the existing folklore, and would require inter-disciplinary collaboration outside of their silo.
I understand and respect the value of some compromise in order to advance things in a certain way, but this social architecture also brings along weaknesses.
Nature will provide. There’s a limit to how much CACA advocates in government can rig current surface station data, however free the felons are to fudge pre-1979 observations. The satellites are watching.
It might take another generation, but eventually CACA will go the way of phlogiston & Ptolemy.
I should have added that your continued work in publishing a diverse collection of opinion and research on climate is greatly appreciated and a far better answer to climate nuttiness than initiating a nasty and pointless firefight.
Jesus talked to plain people. The grass-roots people. He also said, a few times, don’t tell what I did.
By time the establishment got wind of all of this, they could not simply have him disappear. They had to get him legitimately, and in a way that would not inspire riots from his local ground-swell. The one recognized person he worked with – John the Baptist – was outside the establishment.
His message was the same as the message that had already been delivered: there is a God, he loves you, he knows how he designed the world and life and to have the best life you ought to be humble and follow his direction. The architecture of the Law, and other messages, were trans-mogrified into a worldly gravy train for the religious architecture.
Power to the people. Open government. Open media. Open Bible. Sunlight.
@ur momisugly Mark Bofill — You’re welcome! My pleasure.
No – why give the true believers a central target organization to attack vs dedicated individuals in search of the truth.
Nice insight, Last Democrat. True. No one was ever more anti-establishment.
I decline to vote. We could win the CAGW battle and still loose the war. CAGW gets traction because it furthers the goals of UN Agenda 21. Do a search for the map illustrating the Wildlands Project’s goal for America. It is mostly red and yellow. The red covers areas where humans are not allowed, about half the country. See what will be left of your state. Idaho, my state, is mostly red with a little yellow. Most of the rest most of the rest of the country is yellow, areas of very restricted human use. If you look real hard you can find spots of pale green. That’s where humans will be allowed to live, looks like maybe 5%? If you do the research and find you support Agenda 21, then you should join the CAGW alarmist. Support or oppose, either way Agenda 21 is on the way. Our ‘leaders’ sold us down the river decades ago. There will not be an election. It’s all for sustainability.
LOL, (more to mine at 1:49pm) — He, a 1st century Jewish rabbi, even talked with and hung out with and promoted the rights of — women!
[Note: “pyromancer76” is “beckleybud” and “H Grouse”. He is the same sockpuppet. Banned multiple times. ~mod.]
I forgot to add that these guys you are concerned about have less than a pimple on a gnat on the back of an elephant as far as the day-to-day life of most of us…..I can understand your concern because you have the knowledge and experience of science and get your heads kicked at times.
However, what the world doesn’t need is another organisation telling us what we should believe …you will become just as irrelevant as the other organisations trying to tell me what to believe …..Joe Public will figure it out, and has been, without another organisation.
george e. smith says:
April 19, 2014 at 12:13 pm
“””””…..David Ball says:
April 19, 2014 at 11:56 am
george e. smith says:
April 19, 2014 at 11:54 am
“For example it is just plain silly to argue that the physics of CO2 and other GHGs, including H2O, is a fiction, or that 400 ppm of anything couldn’t possibly have an effect.”
With all due respect, George, this is a misrepresentation of the position……”””””
Well David; with all due respect; that is a completely accurate representation OF SOME SKEPTICS position.
So just where in my post did you find I assigned that position to ALL skeptics ?? I did not.
YOU , simply attached YOUR INTERPRETATION to MY WORDS.
That’s YOUR error, not mine.
This is a perfect example of why I should have voted ‘NO’.
I voted ‘YES’ though, thinking of a bloc of realists buying billboards and TV ads showing the RSS satellite temp record since 1979. Upon seeing this, the average Joe can’t deny the truth of it.
personally I think an umbrella “organization” that issues Press Releases to the media on this topic and related topics is a good idea in principle, the media will however ignore the PRs for a long(ish) time until sanity finally breaks out.
However reaching a consensus view among so many different voices will be difficult., Perhaps approaching a PR consultancy or media savvy people for advice on how to get this message out is a good beginning. Then creating an “official” spokesman and creating a “brains trust” of advisers to help create a media friendly message (which is NOT the bald facts but a “media package” suitable for “copy’n’paste” journalism.Also time is required to explain the message to the same media people, this organization could become to “go to” place for quotes as a balance.
This kind of strategy has worked for me in the past and it may be possible to replicate again and again. I have some documents on strategies and pitfalls to avoid…