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.
Solomon Green 6:18am
Sorry, but politicians pay attention to two things, money and voters, probably in that order.
A small organization composed of “professionals” will have little impact. Take the democrats for example — the leftist loonies have a major impact on democrat politicians because there are enough leftist loonies out there to swing an election.
Eugene WR Gallun
Isn’t a “skeptics” organization antithetical to the skeptic’s position that the science should dictate the conclusions? There’s a lot of science left to do. Right now all the evidence points to the alarmist view being a crock, but if we want to take the position that the science should dictate the conclusions, I wouldn’t want to see an organization dedicated to one particular conclusion.
Somehow it seems to me that people are misunderstanding what this organization is to be about.
As I understand it, this is an organization whose purpose would be to increase, in the the main stream media, the exposure given to the skeptic position. It is not about creating a new blog, or internet newspaper, etc.
The entire focus of the organization would be getting media coverage of what skeptics are saying. For example, it would issue press releases about published papers that refute global warming or published papers that point out the dire economic consequences of instituting alarmist laws and taxes.
The organization would be about gaining an increasing amount of media access.
That is what my understanding of what this organization would be about.
Eugene WR Gallun
REPLY: Eugene gets it, Steve O should read this. Visibility and a voice is what it is all about. – Anthony
Steve O says:
Isn’t a “skeptics” organization antithetical to the skeptic’s position that the science should dictate the conclusions?
I don’t think so. What you do is limit debate to what has been shown to be scientific facts and credible hypotheses. For too long the alarmists have framed the argument. Time for us to frame the debate for a change.
===================
Werner Brozek says:
…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…
Not a bad idea. And:
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….
You are not alone, Werner, which points to a very good reason there should be a place to be heard [aside from many skeptics’ sites, which will still be here].
In the mean time, I suggest making your comments where they will be read by different sectors of the public. We are not limited to writing the editor of one newspaper. Pick those with the greatest readership, and write to them. [Word is getting out. For example, when the Yahoo! blog publishes a climate scare article, the skeptical responses have lately been inundating their threads. Alarmist comments are getting clobbered.]
I have had most of my comments to the ScAm blog remain unpublished, and recently I was completely banned there. That seems to be the new tactic that propaganda blogs like ScAm have started using. They cannot refute what skeptics are saying, so they censor those comments that they clearly do not want their readers to see.
But it would be much more difficult to censor a press release issued by an umbrella organization, run by professional and retired scientists, which interviewed Prof. Richard Lindzen, for example. The only thing the alarmist media hates more than skeptics of the carbon scare is losing more readers to outlets that print different points of view.
I believe the organization already exists. It’s called WUWT. It has been expanding in it’s influence on it’s own, but the MSM doesn’t go to it for information. I believe that’s what is needed here, some “legitimacy” in the MSM. The idea that press releases would be picked up by the MSM is a good idea, the trick is how to accomplish that. Anthony has the right idea, and how to do that is the conundrum. Maybe some press conferences would help, if some MSM reporters would show up, and actually report some facts of the climate science etc. How do you get them to show up???
myrightpenguin
I see the success of scepticism being due to a many headed hydra, and indeed the number of “heads” continues to grow. Take out Anthony, and there is still Jo Nova, Judith Curry, Dr. Spencer, Bishop Hill, GWPF, HI, James Delingpole, Chris Booker, Nir Shaviv, Lubos Motl, etc., etc. The more “targets” there are the more frustrated alarmists are as marginalisation is more difficult.
Indeed – why fix it when it isn’t broken? We’re winning – there is no need to copy the losing tactics of our opponents.
To man the political barricades as a means to establish an ideologically subservient science has been a behavior of CAGW activism for decades. A crusading media has supported it.
I will not support a political action group (PAG) to counter it. So I will be one of the first splintering individuals in the face of a PAG.
I will very strongly support forming an Academe focused on critical applied reasoning to evaluate the Earth-Atmosphere System, but only if it has a broad mission / foundation in the philosophy of science.
John
350.org didn’t convince Obama to stall the Keystone Pipeline. $100.000.000 in campaign donations from crony socialist Tom Steyer did.
All the green organizations in the world are not foisting progressive decarbonization on the west, the Democrat Party in the US and the progressive parties in the rest of the western democracies. are.
If you want to help stop the CAGW leviathan, starting a new anti-IPCC is the least effective way to do it. Short term, the only way to fight the political parties driving the government/climate industries is to act politically. Current putatively conservative political parties have to be dragged back to conservatism. Long term, the only way to win the debate finally is to break the progressive strangle hold on western universities, and education in general.
The right has plenty of think tanks like CATO and AEI. There are also already skeptic voices analogous to the IPCC, like Heartland.
CAGW is a political movement. Any organization designed to fight it will have to be political. It would be a mistake to follow the path of the IPCC and form a putative skeptical IPCC, that presented its political arguments as some form of authoritative representation of “skeptical” science.
Heartland Institute’s conferences get the cold shoulder from the media. If covered at all, they’re dismissed as conventions of kooks in the pay of Big Oil. The irony, it burns.
Retired earth & atmospheric scientists are IMO the key, since the young & tenured have been totally corrupted & suborned, regardless of their real feelings, which must be kept hidden if skeptical.
A reputable, international professional organization without taint of “Big Oil” money could do a lot of good in countering anti-“carbon” advocacy disguised as journalism. If hundreds (or better yet, thousands) of scientists in relevant disciplines sign on, then the bogus “97%” scam can be exposed.
The Oregon Petition was a start, but included non-specialists.
Ultimately, however, Mother Nature will rule. Each passing year without “global warming” or even “weirding” is another nail in the coffin of CAGW. There still needs to be someone pointing out that the imperial hypothesis isn’t wearing any clothes. Given enough time, those could be the scientists themselves.
so, in the end, the answeres is
‘naa’.
but never read that much clear names signed.
appearantly a ‘stand that case’.
open questions?
brg, Hans
I’m afraid I disagree with you that you can achieve nothing sitting at home fulminating on the net.
I showed the world that you can overthrow a war leader through nothing more than writing an ascorbic football song, which is rather more humane than bombing the shit out of 1 million people and spending a couple trillion dollars giving a few Washington pols a hard on, isn’t it?? I founded no organisation, I represent no-one but my own views and if my views have any influence, it is because they are also tuning in to more widespread opinion and sentiment.
I have achieved many other things too, mainly through allowing others to take credit for things.
The one thing I haven’t done is got rich.
If you want to get rich, found a skeptic organisation.
If you want to change the world, maybe you found one, maybe you don’t. You decide which method most effectively achieves your goals.
But you won’t make money as an armchair skeptic, that’s for sure………
rtj1211 says:
April 25, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Which war leader did you overthrow with your song?
Sorry, but sounds a little delusional to me, without further explication.
Do you really want to be part of an organization if that organization can be tarred with the actions of one of its members? Here is an example.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2014/04/25/justice-department-expected-to-indict-star-of-tonights-years-of-living-dangerously-episode-3/
I have no idea about this guy. Indicted doesn’t mean convicted, but it sure makes it easy for others to take potshots.
Who thinks our current government isn’t capable of bringing some type of bogus charges against some leader of the organization and dragging it out over several years so the press can have a field day taking potshots?
Why would you think the press would provide any positive coverage when it’s when they have a “if it bleeds, it leads” attitude? Personally I think it is the height of folly to attempt to consolidate and create one big target out of a multitude of smaller ones. The worm is slowly turning, just keep doing things the same way.
Bob Ross, very good point. We’ve already seen an Obama administration prepared to describe anyone who stands up to them as “domestic terrorists”. In Europe, leaders of political movements which challenge the mainstream too effectively have a bad habit of suffering unfortunate fatal car accidents. Better to remain diffuse, difficult to strike.
No thanks. This is a scientific issue. Turning it into a political one will just prolong the current status quo by forming one camp against another. However I take issue with all scientific theories and hypotheses, especially those having to do with drivers of weather and climate trends. Which means I would not fit well into “a” camp that sits in opposition to the other camp.
Anthony, sorry for the delayed response. It has been a frightfully long day ( I know you’ve had those, as well). Thank you for making an effort to include those of us who disagree that Co2 has any effect in our atmosphere. Rather than parse the science in your statement, I will explain my interpretation of the proposed “group”.
I understood the question as being “whether an organization would be effective in bringing the science to bear against the warmists.”
I respond; no it would not. I belong to a number of groups that have done incredible work, but have failed to convince the ardent “believer”. The general public’s view is changing to the skeptic view only because the alarmists have enabled policy that is hitting joe public in the pocketbook. No other reason.
Would I join? Let me use the words of someone whose posts I read faithfully, but do not always agree with, DavidMHoffer; “That said, I would absolutely join anyway and work to make it successful in the fervent hope that my opinion above turns out to be wrong!”
Would I be welcome? Let me use the words of another poster markstoval: “no, your kind would not be welcome and you know it.”
It does not bother me if I am welcome or not. I enjoyed being challenged on the science, and I hope I challenge others here to look very directly at what is actually understood about the science regarding the greenhouse effect. In my view, alarmists should be ignored completely, as they are not even in the ballpark regarding the workings of our atmosphere. The modellers especially have no understanding of the accumulated literature in the discipline. If they had, the models may have had a fighting chance at accurate prediction.
The real scientific discourse is here, amongst the skeptics. Only when we can get an hour long special on prime time television (an hour may still be too short a time to cover pertinent material). Until then, the public will remain unaware that there is another side to the story.
I have had WUWT at the top of my favorites list since 2006. I am not a scientist or engineer but I am some-what educated. I am sure that humans are not responsible for the warming that took place from 1970’s thru late 1990’s. I also know from my extensive readings on here and many other sites that no one knows why it happened, or why it stopped, or what temperatures will do in the future !! There are hundreds of “theories” and “opinions” out there and all will have to be checked at the gate if this is gonna work…PERIOD !! ONLY the science that proves humans are not responsible for “global warming” or “climate change” ect. ect. can be used in this fight. The science is there that proves humans are not at fault and that CO2 is not a pollutant and that is all that can be used. Thank you Anthony!! It’s been a hell of a ride and I look forward to what the future will bring(new discoveries!) and I wish you the best !
dbstealey says:
April 25, 2014 at 7:53 pm
We are not limited to writing the editor of one newspaper.
True. However I only get one paper delivered every day. But even if I did go to the library and found a New York paper, any article that I may read would be old by the time I read it and any reply by me would be out of date. As well, I know things about my own province that would make a reply more relevant here than in another country.
I have looked at the odd blog from elsewhere. Sometimes there are so many responses that mine would just get lost and would not even add much to the clobbering.
J. Philip Peterson says:
April 25, 2014 at 8:02 pm
It’s called WUWT. It has been expanding in it’s influence on it’s own, but the MSM doesn’t go to it for information. …Maybe some press conferences would help, if some MSM reporters would show up
I think the less we expect of any one, the better our chances of getting something published. I have another idea and I would certainly be willing to contribute to this. Namely have a number of topics that may come up and have a potential response to each topic. For example, our Journal asks that responses be a maximum of 150 words. So we could have something similar to Dr. Spencer’s post today with responses of about the same length. Then depending on what comes up, either in a letter to the editor or a separate article, some one could take our canned response as is or modify as they see fit and send it to their paper. Naturally, those contributing canned comments would not expect to be acknowledged in some one else’s letter to their editor.
We could write canned responses from 100 to 150 words for hundreds of topics such as ocean acidification, carbon capture, the pause, accuracy of climate models, etc.
my suggestion is more wide ranging…
a University devoted to critical independent thought
“The International Free Independent University ”
— for free critical thought
with a constitution that sets up a set of rules that embodies the core principles we value most highly
and designed to maintain that value set over time
1 Data availiability for other researchers who wish to criticise us, our methods, our conclusions etc
2 Funding from crowd source, individuals, advertising, business … whoever… no source to contribute more than 1%, to guarantee independence
3 Professors with no or minimal salary with ‘tenure’ and others with short term contracts, guest professors
4 A democratic organisation that is run with the aim of uncovering truth
5 Ability to fund independent research
6 Ability to publish results in an internet non-paywalled, or advertising funded on-line journal
Please suggest core values if you think this is do-able.
cheers
C
A while back someone quoted Patrick Moore and his book: “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout”. I have read the book. I enjoyed it and although I disagree with a lot of what Patrick Moore says, I respect his opinion. I was in BC when Greenpeace was started, I was at the Amchitka protests, and like Patrick Moore, I watched as Greenpeace became diverted/perverted/transformed into something I could no longer identify with … the same as many other organizations and even altruistic politicians that get captured by the bureaucrats and the politicians desire to get re-elected. I have worked in professional, charitable and political organizations. What happened to Greenpeace, happens to most of them.
I like WUWT for all the ideas that are expressed here as divergent as they may be – with huge entertaining discussions such as how a siphon works.
I do fear what an “organization” might morph into.
Someone used the example of 350.org and their power. They make great displays but what have they achieved. Oil but train instead of by pipe? A delay of KXL until the next US Presidential election and perhaps for ever. But the oil will come anyway so what have they really achieved?
I do not fear that the climate will be an issue for my grand children. I do fear for their economic well being, but only some as economics and survival will trump trumped up alarm over a trace gas.
Organizations tend to be captured by a few ideological members and become non-representative of many of their members in fairly short order. I recently resigned from a professional organization because they have drunk too much Kool-Aid for my taste.
I voted no, but I would probably support an organization initially, though not enthusiastically. I think I must be too old and cynical but I wish everyone all the best regardless of the result.
But please keep WUWT as close to what it is now as you can. Perhaps link to whatever may come out of this discussion but be careful not to destroy the best blog site on the web in the process.
Thanks.
whilst i say no to an organisation, that does not mean i believe CAGW sceptics should be passive observers.
best tips i know:
if your electricity bill includes levies for “renewables” with feed-in tariffs, phone your utility & complain & demand a discount. u will most likely get one. i did.
if you have retirement/pension funds or any funds in the hands of institutional investment companies, phone & write to them & demand your funds not be invested in any non-performing CAGW-related stocks.
if we all did those two things, we’d achieve more than any organisation could under the current MSM conditions.
Steve O says: “Isn’t a “skeptics” organization antithetical to the skeptic’s position that the science should dictate the conclusions? … I wouldn’t want to see an organization dedicated to one particular conclusion.
By “science” as a skeptic you will undoubtedly mean “the scientific method”. That is conclusions drawn from the data. (This I call “skeptic science)
By “science” most of society and most of academia, now mean the peer reviewed work of a group of people who join this group by having their work peer reviewed. The scientific (or as I now call it skeptic method) is not necessary. To distinguish this from “skeptic science” in now refer to this “science” as “consensus” or “peer reviewed” science.
Quite rightly, we skeptics are against people who call themselves scientists and write opinion pieces about the climate calling it “science”. Unfortunately, we don’t control that definition, and whilst we might wish “science” to mean “skeptic science”, it is now clear in for example the BBC report on on reporting “science”, that it now means the output from this group.
So, let me rephrase your original statement into two questions:
1. Do you agree that “consensus science” – the peer reviewed views and opinions of a group who have obtained that position by having their work peer reviewed … should now dictate the conclusions.
or
2. Do you agree that “skeptic science” – science based on the data and application of the scientific method …. should now dictate the conclusions.
{no need to answer}
So, an organisation could have as its aim “to promote the use of sceptic science within [climate] science”
And I suppose in addition to the data-based, hypothesis-testing-based nature of skeptic science we also all mean “free and fair discussion based on the data and skeptic science principles”
Friends:
At April 25, 2014 at 1:40 pm I wrote
Subsequently, a series of responses to my post demonstrate the points made in my post are completely right.
The subsequent ignorant, untrue, bigoted and (possibly deliberately) disruptive posts include
cwon14 says at April 25, 2014 at 1:59 pm and several additional posts.
Chad Wozniak says at April 25, 2014 at 2:30 pm
DirkH says at April 25, 2014 at 5:15 pm and subsequent posts.
QED
Richard
Haven’t time this morning to read through the comments – but want to say – if there are any professional ecologists out there in the scepticosphere – I am currently casting around for such to form a small focused response group on issues of biodiversity loss (and gain) and climate change.
contact me: peter.taylor(at)ethos-uk.com.
There is one scientific and one political ‘wing’, and an understandable wariness about trying to fix what isn’t broken.
Maybe unless the political wing would make a point of being a newer also-left-wing version – or of just trying outright angry lobbyism anyway and see if it cuts through somehow.
A scientific wing could make a point of being professional-system-independent, independent of what was just termed the consensus or peer-review system, doing methodology and being a real media resource – and of being more inclusive of those proxy sciences – basically saying to media and politics: get your creature off our scientist backs.
I didn’t sign the Oregon petition only because of its over-reaching second half, the moreover-bit about benefits from CO2.