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.
Zeke says:
It is not total nonsense…
I agree, Zeke is making some very good arguments regarding the UN’s goals. They are certainly not the goals of the average taxpayer, but rather, they are entirely self-serving goals.
@dbstealey
High five day for commenter Zeke. Thank you! (:
I think there is one point missing from this thread. While skeptics are, in our mind, right with the science and pure in our motives, the battle will have to be joined (is currently being fought) on the opponents turf. There are tendrils of gang green everywhere. Our kids are infected in the schools, our government is fully committed, hell, even NASCAR is going green. When you try to talk fuel economy and Sprint cup cars in the same sentence, crazyness has ensued.
But, in the political context, I think talking about the science is tertiary. That train left the station, and the good guys lost. I think most here think that the warmers will collapse of there own folly, but take our power grids and us down with them. If they were small groups trying to prove a point by living off grid they would be amusing and tolerable, but they are performing their experiments on the only infrastructure and economy they’ve got.
A group in ascendency gets a lot of goodies and distributes them to the membership; it provides psychic goodies to the masses sufficient to allow the collection of goodies from the unwilling through taxation. To stop/counter/remove this group they have to exit power and someone of your view has to take power.
In the world where the bad guys are winning, legislators, described by mark twain as our only native criminal class, face two kinds of issues: lobbyable and electoral. lobbyable issues are narrow, and benefit usually by buying votes on specific legislation in return for campaign contributions or other benefits. Elelctoral issues are those perceived to move voters, especially the possibly unicorn=like swing voters.
I don’t sense the stomach or resources to lobby. Its immoral, sort of illegal, definitely distasteful and way to expensive. Those who think good science can compete for the mind and heart of a congressperson have my admiration but I hear “the impossible dream” playing in the background.
So we resolve to : persuading the voters. PACS, and/or popular media. A promotable John Galt of climate science reality might be a way. PACS can advertise, again the expense is daunting.
The additional political reality of the opposition is an alliance with a number of other focused political groups — with the tacit understanding among them that it’s about power, & to hell with the argument. The cult like quest for power is what allows an organization that suffers from high energy cost to nonetheless ally with the greens.
Conventional energy producers will fight in this arena. Others with conflicting political views will as well.
I frankly don’t the population here doing so as a group. We are who we are – and do what we do.
An umbrella for information exchange — to make sure info and good stories are available to those doing the heavy lifting, might be the ticket here. Turning surface stations into something in popular media can be done without working on the dark side. I do think there .is an opportunity.
I don’t see much of a sense of humor on the other side. I do in the electorate. Organize to provide the antidote to the scare from the dark side. The average voter would rather laugh than be scared. Organize to collect and disseminate – science on the back side, fun on the front.
But don’t look fight on the other guy’s turf.
my four cents
Eric Worrall
“Anthony, I think you have some people expressing support, and some people (like me) not so much.
Why don’t you invite people who support the idea to join your new climate organisation, while the rest of us continue as we have?
I have no problem with interacting with and helping organisations whose goals I support, for example I regularly receive and respond to Heartland posts. Its just I don’t think your new organisation is the most effective strategy. Having said that, I’m happy to be proven wrong ;-).”
…. I would also suggest that there is some animosity I have picked up now and again bubbling underneath the surface in terms of certain individuals not wanting Anthony/WUWT to have a monopoly on the voice for “scepticism” (I prefer the term realism nowadays, both in terms of climate and energy policy). To every action there is a reaction, and one has to consider the “sky dragon slayers” because they are always keen to make a point of Anthony not speaking for them as we all know. This is tied in with many comments already talking about rivalries and herding of cats.
Also, if there was to be a new organisation to me there has to be a credible unimpeachable figurehead and that person requires a strong resume that is as near bullet proof for the alarmists as possible. There is only one person suitable for me, and that is Prof. Judith Curry.
However, as mentioned earlier, the strength of scepticism/realism is that it is a many headed hydra. If one head is chopped there are plenty of heads remaining. Centralisation has pros and cons, one of the biggest cons as I see it is that a clear “bullseye” is painted on that one central organisation.
I don’t read WUWT as regularly as I wish, but one idea I could perhaps suggest is that a weekly, monthly, or quarterly bulletin is circulated if that is not happening already. This is basically just a tweak as opposed to something radically new. As also mentioned earlier we already have GWPF and ClimateDepot/EnergyDepot (CFACT) in existence.
Francois GM says:
April 26, 2014 at 6:04 am
“If I’m elected president of this new organization, I promise: . . . ”
In contrast, the first three of my campaign promises are a blast from the past. And the fourth is an original.
1. I do not seek the nomination.
2. If nominated, I will not run.
3. If elected, I will not serve.
4. If impeached, I will not stand down.
How’s that for insurance against being elected? 🙂
Chad Wozniak:
I write to object to your untrue assertions at April 26, 2014 at 2:45 pm saying to me
That is two lies.
First, I do NOT use this forum to justify leftish ideology: I have not, and I do not.
Second, there is connection between the AGW-scare and RIGHTIST ideology; e.g. the scare was created by Margaret Thatcher as a method to promote her personal political objectives.
And those lies are amid the hate-speech of your post which is here.
I have only objected to the promotion of your far-right ideas by your pushing the ‘Big Lie’ that the AGW-scare is a left vs. right issue.
The ridiculous nature of these far-right assertions is clearly displayed by Gary Pearse when he writes to me at April 26, 2014 at 11:05 am saying
.
So, he says, according to the US-right, in Europe and the Americas only the US Republican Party is not left wing!
Therefore, Chad Wozniak, an apology for your trolling this thread would be appreciated.
Richard
A suggestion… rather than a Skeptic organization, I think a Pro-Energy organization would do better overall. Promote cheap energy and its ability to improve the lives of the people world. Along the way you’ll have plenty of opportunity to discredit crap science.
Positives: Show that you care about people, not companies. Short-circuit the arguement that you’re in the pay of “big oil”
That’s an essential concomitant of the broad-based organization whose philosophy would be Progress versus ‘Sustainability’, which I proposed under the rubric of ‘Terra Home’ in my comments earlier in this thread. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much interest.
CFACT does encompass energy in addition to climate, so in the interim, I think they may be the best option. They need a better name, though. . .
/Mr Lynn
i voted yes but then thought about it. What is needed is an ‘Honest Broker’ – not another activist group. The only reason we are ‘winning’ the debate and Keystone is held up is because everyone (except a 30% core constituency driven by belief and ideology) can see the facts as we present them, the continued ‘own goals’ (Gore) and a compliant President with an extremist as a Science Advisor. Even Hillary has distanced herself from these guys in her latest call for policy based upon facts. Unfortunately – she was replaced by ANOTHER elitist nincompoop (Kerry) who has also slowed things down.
Folks like you, Judith Curry, McIntyre, McKittrick, Mosh, GWPF, CFACT act as portals of real information that reveal the insanity of their position. The tide is turning – and you will see the politics of it change over the next 4-6 years…..
Thanks so much for all you do, man. You are my hero.
In the science vs politics debate I would like to point out that this war is best fought using science and logic not ideology. If you want to play the politics game you are playing into the divide and conquer strategy that keeps those running this scam in control.
Nobody likes to be lied to and when believers see the facts that contradict what they have been told they will join the side of truth. Environmental zealots are a lost cause but the bulk of the population only has pervasive propaganda to form opinions around. The science denier meme prevents them from knowing there are empirical facts supporting a skeptical questioning of what the media is presenting. Most of these people think CO2 levels and temperatures are the highest they have ever been and that the science is “settled”. All of which can be debunked with facts.
Because of how ideology becomes entwined in peoples personal identity an attack on their ideology becomes a personal attack. This creates enemy identification and prevents any real communication from taking place. It becomes about survival of the ego’s world view and winning rather than a search for truth. Polarity is the enemy not the left or right. Truth is what can bring us together.
Richard, we get it. You think you’re a socialist. Most people in North America and some elsewhere place socialism on the political left. Get over it.
Skeptics only need to post more often at major MSM internet sites, and at the (sorry Richard) left wing internet sites that are well read. (PREACH LESS TO THE CHOIR, AND MORE TO THOSE WHO ARE SKEPTICAL OF THE SKEPTICS)
Recommended rules
Keep it civil.
Bullet point your main facts, with links.
Anthony and other skeptical folk could have a link to the MSM, and updates on where the major pro CAGW articles are current, with perhaps a brief synopsis with links on effective counter -points.
This alone would be far more effictive, with far less hazard, then a complicated organization.
Chad Wozniak,
FOR THE RECORD: The person on this thread who made a statement about Steve McIntyre’s politics was Eric Worrall. See Eric Worrall’s comment in blockquotes below where he makes a statement about Steve McIntyre’s politics.
I did not make any statement on this thread about Steve McIntyre’s politics. In your below comment in blockquotes you mistakenly attributed to me a statement about Steve McIntyre’s politics. I made no statement about Steve McIntyre’s politics; Eric Worrall did.
– – – – – – – –
Here is Eric Worrall’s comment where he makes a statement about Steve McIntyre’s politics:
– – – – – – – – – – –
Here is Chad Wozniak’s comment where he incorrectly states that I made a statement about Steve McIntyre’s politics: (I made no such statement about Steve McIntyre of this thread. Eric Worrall did make such a statement about Steve McIntyre on this thread – see his comment above where he does it)
John
Chad Wozniak says:
April 26, 2014 at 2:45 pm
1+
People might as well take the “it’s all about science” drivel to the text book review boards across the U.S.. The statement in regard to climate science is devoid of logic. It is the most selectively cherry picked, non-empirical and unsupported by classical hypothesis burdens of proof in history. The glue that hold the movement together is the “consensus” of central planning authoritative “policy” and the core advocacy community is linked in largely Marxist redistribution and control ideology.
Richard Courtney appears clueless as are many of head-in-sand skeptics who want to struggle along in this status quo of abstract spaghetti charts in stalemate and pretend it is something it is not. So declined has the society become it requires a proof to nullify a hypothesis, the very nature of superstition and political corruption in this case. The burden of science is “proof” which none exists.
What we are really dealing with is collective embarrassment among the left at the street level, that might have reasoned the AGW “science” corrupt, unsupported etc. but they can’t accept the motivations of what corrupted it and who those people represent in their peer community. That makes them highly likely to be useful idiots which in fact many left leaning skeptics such as Dr. Curry often are. You can list 500 dots in a row that spell “political motivation of AGW advocates to leftist policy leadership” and they refuse to draw a simple line to connect them. It’s a horrible demand in their minds that they be asked to acknowledge the overwhelming force and coordination of their peers (media, government, academia). Hence a whole language of obfuscation is created about “advocacy and advocates”, “activists”, “true believers” and hundreds of other carefully measured euphemisms that distract from the usual authoritative ideology trying to rule humanity from cradle to grave. It’s complete oblivion to protect their inner “id” and deny political associations that are humiliating to consider. Once again the word “science” is a stage prop even if they are arguing on the correct science side of an issue. The technical conclusion is only a small part of the overall weight involved in the AGW movement and why this brand of clueless skepticism is in the wilderness.
Of some note regarding the above ideas and comments.
It is not just climate science that has been wounded by these tax and spend power mongers.
Take the National Science Labs, Sandia, Los Alamos, Livermore, ect. they too have been compromised by this use of “the cause” to bend the truth of science to provide the power/money cult with more of our production/lives for the cult to spend on its political needs.
Just might be the new org. could find others from other fields to join in and thus enlarge our side together with some of those might have the funds to help matters more along faster.
Notice: Troll Name Calling Alert
Up until the ~380th comment, surprisingly. no commenter on this thread had personally called another individual commenter on this thread a troll. (there was up to that point one or two generalized discussions of troll sources from blogs, but no one had yet specifically called another commenter on this thread a troll).
Not surprising though is that the first person on this thread to call another person commenting on this thread a troll was richardscourtney ( April 27, 2014 at 12:37 am ) calling Chad Wozniak a troll in ~380th comment of the thread.
John
move along faster
Anthony:
I share your frustration. So much has been submitted to the pages of the WUWT that clearly have shown that the predictions about excessive climate change are very uncertain with little real data to corroborate the impact of green house gases on the temperature of the globe. Judging from the contributor comments about the poll, many feel the same way as you and would like to see some push back against the AGW cult. The frustration expressed above by many contributors is that any of the most articulate skeptic’s messages are not being heard because they speak as individuals rather than as a cohesive group. They feel ignored and disparaged. While there are groups such as NIPCC, they have been discredited. Moreover, the skeptics have spoken more about the science of climate, its uncertainties, the erroneous conclusions reached in peer reviewed papers, conspiracies to control the science publications with no immediate reasoned feedback or willingness to debate the science.
The issues of climate science boil down to anthem themes from two unequally sized choirs, the very large eco-socio-political rhetoric choir and the small quest for truth in climate science choir. The rhetoric is trumpeted by the main stream media sources and their “journalists” who hold global warming as a religious tenet that was published and is now controlled by a central religious authority called the IPCC and its religious book of knowledge, AR5. If the proposed skeptic organization aims to take on this organization along with its aligned religious sects such as AAAS, Nature Magazine, EPA, NOAA, NASA, they will feel an even greater sense of utter frustration. Their IPCC beliefs about global warming are not determined by science but are based on faith in its priesthood and their dogma. Moreover these groups will use their political clout to continue to silence doubters and to pump up the media rhetoric to higher levels of fear in order to scare everyone into believing their religious hokum. In short they will add more government sponsored tenors to the choir. Based on what has been spent already in the name of global warming, the financial resources needed to counter this pseudo-religious organization is far greater than even the wealth of both Koch brothers. Competing here is a costly mistake.
The choir of scientific voices has a few off-key members singing who best designated as religious zealots. These few are loosing the war for truth in climate science by being exposed more and more as being liars and who frequently change the science to meet political goals. This loss has been happening because of a cadre of mixed voiced, scientists with sufficient integrity to admit that they are not sure of the magnitude of the extent to which global warming is due to the influx of trace amounts of carbon dioxide as well as from other possible mechanisms for heating the planet. In addition, these climate scientists have pointed out the major scientific errors of these pronouncements of the religious science zealots with the real risk of attack by the media and selected religious government agencies. You and the many WUWT authors who have felt their wrath are major contributors that provide an open forum to discredit the faulty climate science. There are numerous others that are listed on your WUWT supporter list that are additional sources of scientific comment and criticism on climate scientific issues. While we listen to these voices, the religious fanatics are deaf to reason impeded by religious fever and blind faith that they have the only truth. Buying them hearing aids would not help. The off-key singers are being drowned out.
This is a roundabout way of saying I don’t think we need another organization to counter the voices of eco- socio-politico-religious choir. They will ultimately be disregarded as the predictions that the “end of the world in near” fail to materialize along with the many other predictions such as droughts, rising oceans, melting ice caps, dwindling sea ice, disappearing coral reefs. Eventually, the media will stop listening to their off-key voices when no one wants to hear or believe what they are singing. Of course, during their dirge-like concert about the death of the planet, many innocent people will die from lack of resources that will be spent to feed the congregation of the church of climate change in the form of tax dollars in order to fund more expensive forms of energy, increased regulations on fossil fuels, wasted research efforts, larger government oversight agencies and higher food costs to name a few. I vote to keep the discussion on a science plane and stay away from commenting on the IPCC religious cult.
My suggestion is keep WUWT as a forum for scientific debate that WUWT is today. This is probably good enough to keep the truth from being suppressed, but not as satisfying as accelerating the drum beat for truth. Despite the trolls, the pages for WUWT contain honest debate including those who are not very skeptical. The skeptics through WUWT and other skeptical sites have slowed the climate juggernaut. Many countries have already come to the conclusion that taxing people to save the planet from global warming, “climate change”, is a waste of resources. A few countries are not as enlightened, especially, the USA.
It would be good if there was a higher skeptic authority which could keep the general public aware of what the skeptics think are major points that refute the concepts that carbon dioxide is the sole cause of climate changes and the concomitant predictions of catastrophes attributed to climate changes. What should this super-forum’s charter be and how it would be organized? The answer is not clear? It needs more discussion!
Voice # 396
The above rancor shows why my simple suggestion may be most effective.
Skeptics only need to post more often at major MSM internet sites, and at the (sorry Richard) left wing internet sites that are well read. (PREACH LESS TO THE CHOIR, AND MORE TO THOSE WHO ARE SKEPTICAL OF THE SKEPTICS)
Recommended rules
Keep it civil.
Bullet point your main facts, with links.
Anthony and other skeptical folk could have a link to the MSM, and updates on where the major pro CAGW articles are current, with perhaps a brief synopsis with links on effective counter -points.
This alone would be far more effictive, with far less hazard, then a complicated organization.
John Whitman:
re your post at April 27, 2014 at 12:28 pm.
It is incontrovertible fact that Chad Wozniak has been trolling this thread and so has e.g. cwon14 at April 27, 2014 at 11:46 am.
This thread is about a proposal for an anti-AGW-alarmist organisation.
This thread is NOT about a proposal for a far-right- organisation to attack left-wing opponents of AGW-alarmism.
The clear attempt by the trolls to usurp this thread has the sole effect of attempting to induce ‘civil war’ among AGW-sceptics.
Personally, I desire the broadest possible opposition to AGW-alarmism. My desire is shared by genuine opponents of the alarmism from across the political spectrum so, for example, I have shared platforms with the right-wing Lords Monckton and Lawson.
I strongly suspect the motivations of the trolls who have demonstrated in this thread that they desire to reduce opposition to AGW-alarmism.
Richard
– – – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
To me you are wasting energy trying to rationalize your calling other people names and especially in calling other people trolls.
I saw an important discussion to identify political barriers to people being able to cooperate in a skeptic PAG (political action group). And I saw a good discussion how to overcome them. Yes there was disagreement, of course. I saw you try to stop the discussion. You failed to shut it down then initiated troll name calling.
Although I cannot support a PAG, I encourage discussing it at length. Especially dialog on how to make political differences work in a PAG.
John
John Whitman:
At April 27, 2014 at 4:21 pm you make a silly and untrue accusation concerning me when you write
Your comment would be useful if it were true, rational and honest but it is none of those.
The name-calling was entirely by the trolls and I objected to it. Their trolling successfully attempted to deflect the thread from its subject.
Your post is another in your series of posts applauding trolling which you have posted in WUWT threads.
The significant facts in this case are:
1.
Opponents and proponents of AGW exist across the political spectrum. And left-wingers who have made notable contributions to AGW-scepticism include Steve McIntyre, Jo Nova, and me (e.g. my assistance to the Chinese preparations for the Copenhagen CoP which resulted in prevention of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol).
2.
The right-wing trolls in this thread campaigned for AGW-sceptics to attack left-winger AGW-sceptics and for the proposed new AGW-sceptic organisation to adopt such attack as policy.
My objections to the trolls’ activities in this thread are NOT “rationalizing” anything and are NOT “name calling”: my objections are outrage at falsehoods and unprovoked attacks by the trolls!
Richard
– – – – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
You won’t succeed in shutting down a conversation on how to resolve barriers to political collaboration in a PAG (political action group) after first vigorously contesting and identifying such barriers.
Again, although I cannot support a PAG (for broader fundamental philosophical reasons) I encourage rigorous debate on it.
richardscourtney, just as one private human being to another private human being, I ask you to please stop the troll name calling. And stop your name calling in general. In that regard, I ask that all of us remember the exemplary behavior of the wonderful late Robert Phelan who was a mentor to us all here on WUWT.
John
This would not be a good idea. The purpose of this large organisation is to demonstrate unity. It can also demonstrate group think.
Remember, consensus is not Science.