Last weekend, I conducted a poll asking this question that has been on my mind for a couple of years:
Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?
The results are in, seen below, and there is an interesting dichotomy that can be observed in the excercise.
I’ve closed the poll with a count of 2701 votes. While there was a clearly decisive result, there were over 440 comments on the thread, many of which argued for “no”. A common reason discussed was that “organizing skeptics is like herding cats” or that “it will provide a target”. While that may be true, I really wasn’t all that interested in herding or target practice, I was thinking about representation. By its nature, all representation of varied viewpoints of a group of people is imperfect, but it does have its advantages if that representation satisfies a common need. The common need I see is getting a slowdown on the freight train of bureaucracy that is growing from CAGW claims and more coverage in media.
Pointman writes about the poll results and that dichotomy in Get real, get organised and finish it.
Anthony Watts recently ran a poll at WUWT that posed the question – “Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?”
I voted “yes” and I’d like to outline my reasons for doing so.
Any scattered and disparate opposition to an unjust law, policy or controversial issue which doesn’t get organised under some umbrella organisation is not only politically naïve but a consequently weak faction which doesn’t need to be taken seriously. More often than not, they’re comfortable in their armchairs living in their own deluded and secluded cloud cuckoo land.
There’s nicer ways of saying it but if want to be a force to be reckoned with, you have to get all ganged up. You seriously want to take on that exploitive employer, get unionised brothers and sisters. You want political change, form a lobby group. You don’t want that wind farm monstrosity blighting your life, start a local campaigning group. You want equal civil rights irrespective of the colour of your ass, start marching en masse. You want women to have the vote, get those bustles out of the drawing rooms and onto the streets as a mob waving placards and make the powers that be listen to you.
There’s simply no other way to get an issue onto the political agenda, and if you happen to think global warming isn’t a political thing, you pop that blue pill brother and dream on.
Give people a standard they can rally to and if the cause has real popular support, they’ll flock to it and become a bigger voice which will be heard despite any attempts to suppress it. Those attempts will just serve to strengthen group identity and make it a much more powerful force.
The deep primordial history of us as a species is all about getting together and cooperation. You might be rubbish at knapping a flint spearhead, but as long as one of the group can do that specialist thing, everyone is happy. Crap at tracking game? No matter, that runty kid over there is somehow brilliant at it. You might just be a spear carrier, but you know you play your part for the good of everyone else. That compulsion to gang up and work together is by now deeply embedded in our DNA. It’s been selected for. Without it, civilisation would fall apart in a day.
The worst thing you can ever do is sit in grumpy isolation doing nothing more than bitching away to a few cronies, and that’s exactly what’s all too common across the skeptic blogosphere. I call it the whinge and dump mentality and in the whole history of the human race, it’s never achieved anything other than being known as a complete bore to be avoided at all costs. Here they come – run away, run away!
As I look at the poll results to date, out of 2,683 votes cast, the response was 63% Yes, 24% No and the rest going for unsure. Scanning through the five hundred comments below the piece, a substantial majority expressed a “No” for various reasons. That’s an interesting dichotomy but an unsurprising one given the web dynamics of such a controversial issue as global warming.
There are just simply too many polarised people on either side who’ve spent years doing nothing more than venting spleen at each other. It’s become a social activity, a recreational pastime, a macho ego trip, a catharsis for a lot of tangential frustrations. Log in quickly, hurl an insult or two and surf onto the next brawl. Underneath the most combative blogs, out of hundreds of comments, barely a single digit percentage of the comments even reference the original blog topic, whatever it was.
Full essay here: http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/get-real-get-organised-and-finish-it/
He’s right, it has become a social spleen venting activity, and that my friends doesn’t get much traction.
This passage:
More often than not, they’re comfortable in their armchairs living in their own deluded and secluded cloud cuckoo land.
There’s nicer ways of saying it but if want to be a force to be reckoned with, you have to get all ganged up.
Could just as easily be used to describe crazy Bill McKibben. Most of us think he’s nuts, and he most likely is. The difference is he got out of his “armchairs living in their own deluded and secluded cloud cuckoo land” and formed 350.org. Now look at what we have, an organization that has successfully lobbied for blocking the Keystone pipeline by affecting the office of presidency. Do you think weepy Bill could do that himself without having organized first?
Think about it, and sound off in comments.
Here is my idea for a group name
Rational Environmental/Energy Action Leaders, focusing on REAL solutions to real environmental/energy problems.
One thing I would like to see is a falsifiability metric. Something that says if X happens the group (or sub group should the group expand), will willingly disband.
ie: a REAL Keystone XL group, once it is over the group disbands or REAL Climate Change once warming hits a rate of X deg C over Y years the groups accepts action is required.
This will up the trust factor considerably and controls the spiraling dogma issue.
It’s been my experience that in any and every group, you get your share of close minded militants as well as people willing to reason with you. I’ve had what I consider reasonable discourse with two major Skeptical Science (of all things!) contributors. I made no secret of my positions or what I call my ‘tribal affiliations’.
On the other hand, the close minded militants are going to cut you out sooner or later no matter what, and good riddance to them I say, anyway.
~shrug~ Just some thoughts.
Lots of really good comments here. FWIW, my suggestions:
– If its objective is to promote accurate climate science, then ..
– .. It shouldn’t start with a position such as ‘the IPCC is wrong’ or ‘CO2 is harmless’ (the point being that by pursuing good science the truth or otherwise of such statements should become clear).
– .. it’s not a sceptical organisation, and shouldn’t have ‘sceptic’ in the title.
– .. it should be open to all opinions [one of WUWT’s strengths]
– Over time, it needs to make a carefully-reviewed sober factual statement about each aspect of climate.
– It needs to get its statements into the MSM and to politicians in every country.
– It needs to become the ‘go-to’ site for scientific climate information. ie, where people go to get arguments to counter extremists.
Name – ‘Open Climate Science’, ‘One Fact’, ‘Weather or Not’ – almost anything without ‘True’, ‘Real’, ‘Sceptical’, etc.
Notwithstanding all the above.
The choice is truth over lies.
Lies kill.
Truth is life.
If formed the org. should seek truth and expose lies no matter who, what, when or where.
I reserve the right to disagree vehemently with the official organization’s “policy statements, press releases, and educational guidance.” Beyond that, I’m in.
@David Longinotti –
How ironic it is that the “green” solutions propounded by climate alarmists are actually more destructive of the environment, in so many ways. There is the damage done by wind turbines and large solar arrays (dead birds and bats and destroyed ground habitats over vast areas), there is the damage done by denying fossil fuel energy to people on poor countries (stripping of vegetation for fuel, killing off of endangered animals for food), there is the damage done by unrestrained governments (like the almost unimaginable pollution in the eastern bloc before the fall of the Soviet Union). And of course the alarmists conflate soot pollution with carbon dioxide and ignore the whole new array of pollutants emanating fro,m “renewable” energy sources.
This sort of contrariness is consistent with the socialist/collective vision under which everyone except a tiny kleptocratic elite is poor – and there is irony here: the maldistribution of wealth is greatest in socialist systems. Some 9,000 individuals, or .003 percent of the country’s populaton, constituting the nomenklatura class in the Soviet Union controlled well over 90 percent of the wealth of the country. Oh, but you have to have that wealthy elite, to know what’s good for the masses.
These contrarian attitudes pervade the AGW cult – Bloody Mess is filthy rich while his followers, apropos sufficient indoctrination, accept that “sustainability” relegates them to poverty.
I also noted the comments leaning negative and votes leaning positive, but I was confident that this would be a net benefit– if weighted more towards disproval of CAGW. If the purpose is to counter overwhelming media bias, it will naturally be directed in large part towards laymen. As a proud, card-carrying member of that society, I recognize the value of a generally Socratic outlook that highlights how little CAGW proponents know.
…although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. –Socrates
That’s certainly not to say that I don’t value the incredible scientific work put forth on this blog. I’m completely engrossed (on a daily basis!) by the new research and ongoing theoretical work. I do see a problem in incorporating all this into any sort of policy statement.
what would be the purpose of such an organisation? i can only think supporters naively believe it would enhance the prospects of getting noticed by the MSM. however, just as lobbyists have bought the US Congress, in the media it is the advertisers who pay the piper and play the tune.
no CAGW sceptic org can possibly compete with the solar & wind interests in this regard. think for a moment how many solar/wind ads u’ve been bombarded with on TV, online and in newspapers over the years. ignore the dinosaur media – the only honest media is online:
VIDEO 24.35: ;25 April: Bill Moyers: Putting the Freeze on Global Warming
This week, Bill talks with two leaders who helped inspire the new fossil fuel divestment movement that Tutu is encouraging. Ellen Dorsey is executive director of the Wallace Global Fund and a catalyst in the coalition of 17 foundations known as Divest-Invest Philanthropy. Thomas Van Dyck is Senior Vice President – Financial Advisor at RBC Wealth Management, and founder of As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy foundation.
They are urging foundations, faith groups, pension funds, municipalities and universities to sell their shares in polluting industries and reinvest in companies committed to climate change solutions…
“The climate crisis is so urgent that if you own fossil fuels, you own climate change,” Dorsey tells Moyers. Van Dyck adds that reinvestment is needed to create “a sustainable economy that’s based on the energy of the future, not on the energy of the past.”
http://billmoyers.com/episode/putting-the-freeze-on-global-warming/
THERE IS ONE COMMENT ONLY by Matt Boys:
Question (and I didn’t have time to view the video so maybe it’s in there, but): I don’t see any mention of Bill McKibben, 350.org, or Fossil Free; am I incorrect that they were the groups that started the divestment movement?
If not, then kudos to these groups, but if 350.org and Bill McKibben spear-headed this movement, all credit should be given to them. Apologies for my skepticism, but social media and the internet has taken it’s toll on proper citation of sources. Simply looking for some clarity.
let them have their foundations & organisations. the strength of WUWT lies in its refusal to conform to the MSM’s left/right framing of the CAGW debate. this is precisely what scares the Stakeholders the most.
Jonathan Abbott says:
April 25, 2014 at 2:07 pm
It just seems Jonathan that there is plenty of liberal skeptic blame (self-hatred) out there that has trouble squaring their honest technical view or honest judgement of their peer extremism yet can’t come clean on the very basic nature driving the core AGW ideology at academic or government levels. Without the media filter of uniformity we would only be exposed to this through letters and blog posts.
This of course is a spineless position that sets back the inevitable refutation of the entire contrived AGW agenda. Millions dead and left needlessly impoverished by forced rations over a an unproven claim regarding co2 and the collective agenda that the talking point masks. Instead of endless focusing on the fraud and hyperbole of alarmism and their “science” step back and consider why the efforts have been made in the first place? This isn’t the “bone wars” between egos or a serious “science” schism. The core parties break down along political lines regardless how obfuscated such reports remain.
If an organization can’t step up to this basic truth it has a pointless purpose as do many skeptics in fact.
David Longinotti says:
April 25, 2014 at 3:12 pm
1+, exactly.
Speaking of organizations that have failed on the topic, the GOP is on the top of the list;
http://spectator.org/articles/58755/greens-are-reds
The national security carbon ration advocates (McCain, Graham etc.) and pro-nuclear exploiters simply should be eliminated. The solution is pro-freedom and market, deregulate carbon and growth both domestically and globally. The Greenshirt fringe should be rejected completely.
It goes far beyond energy production itself. It has to do with the ever growing political indoctrination in academia and public education, media complicity in the advocacy and the decline of professional standards across many fields including “science” in the broadest sense of the word.
“Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again.” — Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd edition, pp. 262-63.
Steven Mosher says: April 25, 2014 at 8:29 am
The biggest danger to setting out a skeptical “position” on the science is that you actually have to
do science. – and then you have to police folks who say crazy stuff.
———————————————————————-
There are some who would say that your example here, shows that when WUWT skeptics question the AGW crazy stuff appearing in papers, you mostly come to their defence. Iow, your objectivity is in question concerning the AGW-Skeptic debate.
WUWT and a few others is where I learned all of my climate science. Blogs have been very effective and are the new technology that bypasses the gatekeepers of the past. I am not ready to personally participate in an organization, I have a few years of extensive daily study I will be doing first to build my credentials.
I will contribute with the worlds best software suite for climate science researchers, amateurs and professionals alike. My climate science curiosity is now turning into work, or a battle that requires tactical as well as strategic plans. Keep in mind that it is the truth that we seek and it will reveal itself in time. But just a couple of days ago, the CBC showed the top climate scientist of Environment Canada declaring that 100 year storms are now taking place 3 times a year, and he used the climate denier derogatory term. I have decided that I had better do what is necessary to combat the junk science sooner than later.
I think it would be helpful to have a separate post somewhat soon that is all about how one goes about organizing and other details rather than the question of if we should or not.
What would it matter if a new organization became a target. It should build a reputation of a solid science background.
BenD,
Objectivity – the quality of being objective.
Objective – (Of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
So if your personal feelings and opinions incline you in a certain direction, who helps you maintain objectivity? The guy who supports your personal feelings and opinions or the guy who challenges them?
Here are my experiences and I would be interested to know if any group can change things.
My city has a newspaper called the Sun which does not believe in global warming and many columnists say things against global warming. However the Journal, on the other hand, seemed to be fair years ago but it seems to have taken a stance that opposes publishing letters against global warming but publishes many letters that agree with global warming or climate change. Over the last 4.5 years, I have written about 20 letters to our Journal against global warming. Of the first 12, about 6 were published. But none of the last 8 made it. I guess my question is this: Can any group force a closed minded Journal to publish more letters against global warming or climate change? And if not, what would be the point of it?
On the other hand, as I mentioned in the first post, if a magazine of say the 10 best articles from WUWT each month were published in a magazine with Lord Monckton’s graph of the 17.67 year pause on the cover, that could be effective. And readers of this blog could buy copies of the magazine and leave them surreptitiously in the staff room or a dentists office, etc, that may have some affect. Perhaps copies could be sent to newspapers as well.
Would you have a chapter of your organization for Lukewarmers?
I am going to mark April 26, 2014 as the date when WUWT decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And sorry, but I will have to wait and see what you do before wishing you luck. Odds are this new hierarchy you plan will will slowly become indistinguishable from the current orthodoxy. I give it 2 years, tops, maybe 3 and you will come to a consensus with the alarmists. You will decide that it is a necessary step toward peace in our time. A formula, if you will, as to just how much poo is acceptable in our ice-cream. Famous last words: “It’s just wafer thin.”
richardscourtney says:
April 25, 2014 at 1:40 pm
“The posts making this assertion are calling for a political organisation to be formed as a tool for right-wingers to attack left-wing AGW-sceptics.”
Tsk. It is obvious to anyone who cares to look at it that the historically atheist left places no faith in religion but replaces this with blind faith in government labcoats, and is therefore generally utterly gullible whenever a scientist opens his pie hole. Starting with Ur Leftist, self proclaimed economic scientist Karl. nWho was an asshole:
The Truth About Karl Marx
Mark Bofill says: April 25, 2014 at 4:36 pm
Objectivity – the quality of being objective.
Objective – (Of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
So if your personal feelings and opinions incline you in a certain direction, who helps you maintain objectivity? The guy who supports your personal feelings and opinions or the guy who challenges them?
————————-
Neither…and both…it’s the facts that count, but to the degree one may lack full understanding of something, one may benefit from both supporters and challengers in learning one’s shortfalls in present understanding.
To those who doubt the value of an organisation, let me give some of the not so obvious reasons for forming an association:
1. Politicians can’t negotiate with a crowd of individuals. Therefore unless the crowd elects representatives, politicians have no one to talk to.
1a To put it bluntly:
… unless there’s a skeptic Association, who are the climate alarmists to surrender to?
2. The press are “institutional” news channels. They publish material from institutions. Therefore, unless you are an institution, they will not (or it is very difficult) to get them to publish a press release.
3. As I understand libel law, individuals, even though they act as a group, can’t sue if the group as a whole is libelled. However, if that group is represented by an association, that association will find it much easier to take those who libel its members to court.
4. A group not only includes people, it also acts to exclude. As such the group sets standards and in itself that tends to raise the respect of the group being represented.
Finally, I own the domains: “SkepticScience.Com” and “TheCitizenScientist.com”. Either of these could make a suitable name for the organisation and I will donate them if appropriate.
BenD,
Well answered, I agree without reservation. My point was poorly expressed. What I really meant to say is, I don’t know that Steven’s objectivity is in question. Rather, I’d think people might question his belief or disbelief in AGW.
Which raises a good point. If lukewarmers are out, a number of people are probably wasting their time here.
I’ve been a follow of this blog for many years. This is my first go at a comment.
This blog is a very good resource to opening up the ways of the world. Not just about climate change but the whole gambit of politics, religion, science, power, etc. and how it relates to my opinion forming and day to day existence.
I believe forming a group will dilute the content as all the traits I’ve mentioned will via for position and I know when that happens I’ll loose interest and a valuable resource.
My twopennyworth.
Press on – what have you got to lose?
cwon14, good point. The GOP has a long history of surrendering after the
first shot is fired. All a progressive has to do is accuse a conservative of
wanting to starve the children or the elderly or that they are for dirty air
or water or call them racists, and the conservatives are predictable in
their response.
They bend over and grab their ankles, swearing to high heaven that they
are not racists, do not hate the children or the elderly and are every bit as
much for clean air and clean water as the most rabid progressive. The moment
this happens, the conservative has lost the argument. It is like asking a man
if he still beats his wife: Whatever the answer, it is wrong. And pity the man
who answers the charge of being a racist by saying “I have lots of black
friends.”
The GOP will never dig themselves out of the hole. And this is also why
the new Institute for Atmospheric Research (or whatever it will be called)
cannot and must not be political. The other side politicized science. If we
do the same, we are no better than they are.
Science is about the dispassionate pursuit of the truth. It is about trial and
error. It is about independent confirmation of ones findings. It is about the
relentless pursuit of discovery. It is about advancing the boundaries of
human knowledge, It is about a bunch of egg-heads with slide rules who
managed to put men on the Moon with on board computers with less
computing power than my first pocket calculator.