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.
I think the national organisations – GWPF, Heartland, WUWT, JoNova – are doing a good job of focussing opposition to climate madness. What is more important, they are genuine grass roots movements, and are obviously such. To try to create a supranational organisation would be to pander to the paranoia of our opponents – they would instantly brand such an organisation a Koch funded menace to democracy. And given how well we are doing, on many fronts – it seems unnecessary.
ossqss,
Thanks for the alternate perspective. You’ve given me things to think about.
I think Anthony gave the major reasons for not having one central point of information dissemination – (1) it will not have the authority of all climate sceptics and (2) it gives a single target for the alarmist side to aim at and try to discredit. The amorphous nature of the climate realists, each with their own individual expertise and journey to their present understanding provides a sort of hydra for those saying the science is settled – for every argument they try to make, two counter-arguments are put forward.
1. george e. smith says on April 19, 2014 at 12:06 pm:
“””””……O H Dahlsveen says:
April 19, 2014 at 11:33 am:
“Well that little word there; “theoretical”, sets off alarm bells.”
============
The “theoretical” little word hangs together with the fact that Mathematicians/Physicists have worked out what the temperature (T) of our planet would be if there was no atmosphere to insulate it and they worked it out to be 255 Kelvin (K). But as you probably know the Earth does have an atmosphere. Therefore an airless planet’s T must be theoretical. This has not been worked out by me and I do believe it was Hansen & al doing this mathematics back in the 1980s. So in my epistle of April 19, 2014 at 11:33 am I am only using the CAGW people’s own numbers and formulas to prove mathematically that there has been no enhancement of the GH effect between the years 1980 – 2 010. –
A 30 year gap or strech should be long enough, even for the CAGW crowd.
Excellent points above about needing to COMMUNICATE MORE EFFECTIVELY.
Ad hoc seems the way to go.
*************************
And… Hi, Tom J! Hope all is well. Keep warm!
J.
The alarmist’s have many well defined beliefs and projections. The tactic has to been to put forth the same catastrophic projections with higher and higher confidence levels, presenting the illusion that the science is settled and the debate should be over……….even as the empirical evidence goes in the complete opposite direction.
Our position is and always has been, that we are following the empirical evidence with open minds. This means there MUST be uncertainty in order to prevent the human emotions related to cognitive bias from causing us to interpret the evidence in a way that lines up with our defined belief system vs what the truth is.
The downside is that the public and media get a message from one side that assigns 95% confidence and 97% agreement vs the other side that states they disagree(and are easy targets because their marketing scheme is not as effective) can actually show why they disagree but don’t have this powerful appealing mission to save the world.
They have the far superior marketing scheme.
Marketing is everything in politics, advertising, entertainment and many other fields.
Science is about physical laws, discovery, empirical data, observations, applications, adjustments, proof and things like that. Truth should be the only thing that matters!
But the question is……….can we maintain integrity as authentic scientists and incorporate a united front as a marketing scheme, to compete with those that base everything on their marketing scheme and fraudulently use science as part of it?
In other news: The drug companies are using our legally-demanded immunization compliance architecture (cf: Jacobson vs. Mass) to make money. In this case, not only is the vaccination unnecessary, it likely yields no long-term benefit, and has terrible negatives for a few.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mercks-former-doctor-predicts-that-gardasil-will-become-the-greatest-medical-scandal-of-all-time/
Someone sought my input as they were developing a term paper on how great Gardasil was, and how terrible it was that the religious, ignorant, stuck-in-the-1950s non-scientific Christians were balking at mandatory delivery for all schoolgirls.
I pointed out how the vaccination would in the long run have little or no impact. My thinking went like this: HPV is fairly prevalent – nearly ubiquitous among the younger adults who are sexually active; Gardasil guards against a couple of the several HPV strains recognized to lead to cervical cancer; the sexually active will eventually contract a strain against which they have no protection, and so will be at ground zero as far as vulnerability to HPV-induced cervical cancer goes.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation noted a few years delay of getting hit with a cervical-cancer-causing HPV strain. That would be fine if the typical trend was for someone to become modestly sexually active in high school, date a few years, and get married by age 25.
This paper-writer looked at me like I had monkey crawling out of my ears. She had bought the propaganda: Gardasil is good, and don’t listen to those pesky Christian, anti-science Leave-It-To-Beaver / Father-Knows-Best un-hip hold-outs.
Gardasil lobbied each and every state, including governors, to require Gardasil to be given to all schoolgirls. It worked in many states.
We are just now beginning to figure out what a mistake this has been.
Jacobson vs. Mass had to do with compulsory vaccinations for disease transmitted simply by begin in the vicinity of an infected person – not having genital contact with them. Mandatory vacc for MMR makes sense. Flu shots make sense (to a certain degree).
Gardasil might be wise for some. But mandatory? No.
This is what The Machine does to you. It makes you go along with prevailing thoughts, and heaps scorn on you when you threaten to not swim along.
I have a pseudonym because I see this thought-control a lot, but could not be frank about all of it in my professional life. In the long run, I have a better chance of being correct than many because I don’t have a problem with myself questioning the prevailing wisdom, or having a contrary opinion.
What to do once I detect yet another scam riding on the architecture of our existing institutions? That is a different matter and I don’t have good answers. Except know your stuff and be prepared to run arguments and analyses to their full conclusions.
With the possible exception of our host, no one has done more for climate scientific truth than Steve McIntyre and his Climate Audit site. He is apolitical, polite, professional, competent and completely devastates those works of poor science, statistics and behavior that catch his attention. Again and again he reminds us that climate science standards are far below what is acceptable in his area of expertise, mining and other business.
He is but one man who may decide to, or be forced to stop his efforts at any time.
Far more than a political organization, we need an organization that works to raise the standard of the science. One that reviews climate work and reporting according to a set of rock-hard standards and reports the results in an apolitical manner. Think of it as a group of experts dedicated to extending Steve’s work, and communicating results to the media and academia. The group would not be sceptics, but scientific and statistical auditors who are not afraid to say, ‘this is wrong and here’s why’, ‘this is how this work can be improved’, and ‘this is an example of a work that meets our standards’.
The IPCC and peer review are obviously not doing what is necessary in this respect. We need a chorus of Steves.
The guerrilla phase is long over, time to work together. We’d be so much more effective.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/working-together/
Pointman
I vote “No” only because there was no “Hell, no” option.
By the way, “politcal dissent” and “I realized his science was so week”!
Janice Moore says:
April 19, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Cheers Janice 🙂
Yeah what the world needs is an organization of wackos, bipolar street entertainers, and media flakes/failed scientists,
who actually believed the atmosphere’s thermal profile is based on chemical composition, i.e. ”magic gases”
rather than the real law that governs the atmospheric thermal profile, Ideal Gas Law,
Barking that ludicrous Magic Gas story as if they represent working science, trying to make claim to represent another consensus:
a consensus still so stupid it thought magic gas rules the atmospheric thermal regime, and refuses to let scientists who are actually atmospheric experts remind them the magic gas is what led them all to utter, humiliated defeat,
referring to it’s own cherished GCMs as “junk”.
How’s it been working trying to pass that voodoo you thought was science off on everybody for the past ten years?
Go ahead and incorporate yourselves into a second consensus of magical gas believers and see if anybody in the actual scientific world has any more respect for your constantly being wrong, and character assassination as a way of life.
Ideal Gas Law.
It is what rules you.
Until you face that you are going to be the Concensus Clown Circus Network.
The people who didn’t know Ideal Gas Law rules over the atmosphere.
Not Magic Gas Law.
[Reply to all: See? We publish all comments, so long as they don’t violate Policy. No censorship here! ~mod.]
I voted ‘yes’ but for different reasons than have been presented earlier. I don’t think it worthwhile to form a ‘skeptic organization’ (hate that name) to promote policy, but rather to coordinate skeptical climate studies and communicate the results of those studies.
(1) I believe that WUWT would be more effective if it harnessed expert members collaboratively to carryout more comprehensive and coordinated studies that reveal the shortcomings of institutional AGW research and findings. It strikes me that while WUWT posters generally have done fine work; that work often could be even better if the work were done in collaboration with other experts. This could be accomplished with small action groups (maybe even self organized) who could correspond via web-meeting or by using web collaboration tools (similar to what done daily in industry and probably by the AGW crowd). Result could be posted or webinars could be used to allow other WUWTers to watch the proceedings.
(2) Similarly, groups could be formed to provide educational materials that highlight the skeptical viewpoint (I know there’s probably many) and showcase the problems, uncertainties, and misrepresentations of the CAGW perspective.
There’s probably other opportunities for organizing the WUWT community (maybe with other like-mined blogs) but this comment is probably too long already.
Dan
Cheers, James. #(:)) Thanks for bothering to say so.
I voted no. As indicated some time ago a better strategy is guerrilla tactics rather than an obvious BIG target. The top sceptic blogs and NIPCC are sufficient but the NIPPC needs to develop better strategies and employ an experienced PR person and not to put up any more of those silly and counter-productive billboards of the past. For example they should put up a billboard using the 17 years global no-temperature-rise graph and text “ NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR MORE THAN 17 YEARS” would be a good start.
Dan
Agree with your comments, but I have always thought that sceptics should have help to produce material capable of being peer reviewed in leading journals. Peer reviewed articles are what changes scientific viewpoints, not good blog posts, no matter how interesting or well written.
Sceptics often also need help with producing better articles, as you suggest, with notable weaknesses being lack of editing by a third party and amateur graphics. By that I mean graphics produced by writers who often have limited graphics skill. A good graph can put over a point more effectively than a long article.
tonyb
I thought quite seriously about Anthony’s idea. Of course the sceptical front has many ‘cells’ all fighting CAGW orthodoxy in different (and sometimes contradictory) ways. There are also more than a few well organised groups who have taken up the banner for their own ideological/spiritual/personal reasons. I may not agree with everything they say but (to paraphrase), I completely support their right to say it. Most of these groups and associations also seem to have access to some limited resource and funding (bought a coffee cup lately anyone?). They all do well in their own specific forums. The blogs, of course, fall into a similar space, with specific zones of influence.
So do we need (or even want) a well funded centralised North American organisation to stream-line, lobby for and disseminate information on our behalf? This idea poses some subtle questions/issues;
Would we fight a better fight if we had a bigger ‘home base’. I don’t think so – The neo-liberal and socialist MSM have always had a bit of a ‘hate on’ for any non-government body which appears to have access to money or power. On the contrary, they seem to go gushy over any group that touts a socialist agenda or supports bigger government (regardless of it’s size or funding). I think a big ‘home base’ would just provide a big, juicy target for the MSM. Such an big organisation would naturally have bureaucratic, financial and ideological weaknesses – the same weaknesses that Anthony and others continually expose in the IPCC, EPA etc. They investigative vultures would soon start hovering, looking for a quick and dirty feed. Normal decent people may be persuaded by MSM attacks that such a large ‘anti CAGW’ org has a devious secret agenda (or is just plain crazy). It would be be easy game for propaganda attacks to undermine the ‘contrarians’ and to marginalise our views.
Secondly, The smart people on our side have nicely framed the debate around the scientific data and observations. They produce awesome work in researching, analysing, and rebutting screeds of papers and studies. My hat goes off to them This is obviously a great place for us to be, because most of the data and observations support us and make warmists look like foolish soothsayers. That is what wins battles in public forums: bashing out the (IMO often boring) but very valid and often compelling research. Arguing about the ideology or politics of CAGW just drags us away from the high ground. While there is a valid time and place to apply political pressure, it should not be while you are purporting to be searching for ‘the truth’ – after all, politics has noting to do with truth.
In short, I think we do a better service for ‘the cause’ by remaining ad-hoc, decentralised and somewhat disorganised. In general people aren’t dumb, they are completely turned off by the diatribe that is being used by the warmists. We don’t need a lobby group to throw around more political muck – I am absolutely certain that the IPCC’s stupid theory will come apart in time if we focus on the facts and keep nibbling at the end of the thread. I vote NO.
As was said above, I don’t think skepticism is a right or left issue, I’m way out in left field chuckling at anarcho-primitivists as they’re the only ones crazier than I am.
“Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?”
I voted no.
I have no use for it.
I don’t think it serves a public good.
And it’s reactionary in construction.
We could need organization for science.
That would be a refreshing idea.
We need an organization for dialogue, and it seems WUWT [and others] aredoing fine with that.
And if someone can provide a good argument for the religion of global warming, I want to
hear it, I might even become a believer.
I sort lacking in area of being involved in an organized religion, so always looking
for some good cult to be member but I tend want to do something and rather be
against something.
So far I have found many good cults, though there are lots idiotic ones
are out there.
climatereason says:
April 19, 2014 at 2:23 pm
I agree with all of your points. . . given the calibre of many WUWT posters and commenters, it strikes me that at least some collaborative WUWT studies could be publishable in a climate journal. Folks on WUWT should think about it. . . how many AGW published papers have only one author. I’m no climate expert, but I suspect many have more than 3.
Dan
It’s getting towards bedtime. But I feel I need to respond to three comments – two positively, one not so much.
And a further thought… could the poll results be, at least partly, due to many people’s immediate, emotional reaction being “yes,” but those who count to 10 (or 1,000), and try to look at the matter more objectively before voting, tend to end up saying “no?”
@LiberalSkeptic
You can’t discredit a movement that disagrees with you one person at a time.
With a little cleaning up, I think that will deserve Quote of the Week.
@dbstealey
Feynman Society? A world-wide organization of “ordinary” people, devoted to replacing the nonscience that today passes for “science” by real, objective science, and ensuring that science is kept honest? Yes, excellent idea. …but that isn’t what the poll proposes.
@Ossqss
I worry that you may take this much as Willis took Janice Moore’s comment on the previous thread. But here goes…
Wow, you really are mired in our enemies’ way of thinking, aren’t you?
I was also going to say something about guerrilla warfare and Afghanistan, but I thought that even Anthony might find that OTT.
I voted “unsure” as regards an “official” climate skeptics organization. Second choice is No.
If there ever is such a thing I would take the Groucho Marx (?) approach: ‘I sent the Club a note stating, Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.’
The notion of using CAGW (a false hypothesis) as a tactic to impoverish 100s of millions of people is appalling and where, I think, skeptics share a bond. Within this commonality I sense there is considerable disagreement on many things.
RE Dahlsveen calculations on the Greenhouse effect.
Hasen’s greenhouse efffect difference calculation only applies to one set of surface and OLR conditions. But rather than a difference in temperatures, it is more correct to use a ratio of radiations leaving the surface and that leaving the planet and get a “greenhouse multiplier”. From the surface one must first subtract that going directly to space through the “atmospheric window” (where there is no greenhouse action except a little from ozone). This is about 23% with clear skies down to 10% with average cloudiness. From this one can get a change in surface temperature per change in OLR. The IPCC seems to ignore that through the window and uses a value 1/3.2 or 0.3125 C / Wm^2. (My models show about 0.26). For the 2 W change in OLR you mention, IPCC gets a surface temperature change of 2 x 0.3125 or 0.625C. Since only 0.4C was observed, this indicates a net negative feedback with a feedback multiplier of 0.40 / 0.625 or 0.64, This compares with the IPCC positive feedback multiplier of about 2.6, an overall difference factor of 4.6.
Of course minor changes in the OLR measurements could change the 2 W difference a large amount. And we still do not know what caused the 2 W OLR or 0.4 C surface temperature changes.
So what would be the party line of a skeptical organization? Clearly there must be a party line if there is to be such an organization.
I can think of at least two planks I could see in the party platform:
1. There must be a return to the fundamental precepts of the scientific method. Post Modern science, the precautionary principal, the bleat, “We have got to do something!” all that must be done away with in favor of experimental design that has falsification as the touchstone.
2. The Warmists must make clear to the world the consequences of their vision. What does it mean to ordinary people the if their “Carbon footprint” must return to that of 1990 or 1950 or 1900. Is the warmist world view anti humanist? Tell us then, no more Polar Bears as canaries in the coal mine nonsense.
There have been some attempts to organise something previously. They havent got anywhere. Regrettably the anwer is no, as is clear from all the comments here. We can’t agree with each other about anything.