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.
As a former member of a political party, joining an organisation means you think someone else will do the work. As individuals who associate with each other as and when we choose, we know it is all down to us. That is why we are winning – we are enterprising when our opponents are lazy.
Trying to be open-minded. First thought is “aren’t there already anti-CAGW organizations”. Or, at least, organizations producing “skeptical” point of view reports. How would this new organization be different? What would it add?
Since this is a Skeptic site, we should be skeptical of saying “yes” to any major undertaking until a thoughtful, agreed plan is in place.
Perhaps there needs to be a roughed-out yet somewhat detailed plan “published” on this site. A plan including, among other things, how the “organization” might be organized, who it would include, what it specific activities and actions it would initiate, and a thoughtful analysis of pros and cons (by the author). That plan can be commented by the readers. See if something “gels”. Merely a suggestion.
Books could no doubt be written on this topic, but few would want to read them in this hair-trigger intellectual climate. I can think of scientific reasons why you and the mass of “lukewarm skeptics” are not the ones to raise the banner against the forces of tyranny now besetting us all. But I am feeling my way through what I have long now deemed an insane intellectual situation, so I will just say for now, you all should think about instituting a principle analogous to “separation of church and state”, to wit, separation of the current political dogmas (and all political argument) vs. the factual truths about climate science. Most especially, in other words, don’t pretend you know that any part of current climate science is “settled”–that there is, in your hubristic opinion (as you have made plain, for a long time now), a real greenhouse effect due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, only it’s “just not catastrophic”. Because you won’t get any sympathy from those of us who know, based on definitive evidence, that there is no such thing, and that to believe in it is scientifically indefensible, i.e., incompetent. To me, you are like the ineffective Republicans, and the climate alarmists are like the Democrats, who follow an insane agenda now. (For example, you overrate Bill McKibben and 350.org, in the above, as a causative force rather than just one symptom out of many of the present insanity. Why is there such a knee-jerk desire in the world now to do that, to reverse cause and effect, and thus aim only for failure in the end? Well, I think I can tell you, it’s avoidance behavior, of the true depth and breadth of the problems we face now.) The bottom line, for me, is that I don’t have all the answers either, so I will refrain, as far as possible, from merely exacerbating the emotional atmosphere. But of course, I won’t go silent, either–and you should take that seriously.
I have a lot of time for Pointman. I was no/unsure. Now I’m yes/unsure.
Anthony are you up for writing a constitution?
What Pointman fails to grasp is that that the MSM has already signed a Treaty with the alarmist faction. There is no safe platform for Skeptical or even Sensible science to be aired.
In the last decades of the 20th century there was a remarkable conjunction of ‘millennial panic’ on the part of the public who displayed a kind of yearning for ‘end times”.
This was exploited by minor, second rate ‘scientists’ like Michael Mann and James Hansen who quickly realised that their doom laden stories would be instantly disseminated by the Media bringing them enhanced status and financial gain.
When wily politicians (like Blair in the UK and Gore in the US) realised that Global Warming was a vote winning issue, (well nearly, in Gore’s case) the final piece of the infernal machine was in place.
Media, the scientific establishment and Government in lock step moving relentlessly forward with a program of research spending (remember Carbon Capture and storage ha-ha!) followed by taxation and legislation. Carbon Tax, wind farm, solar subsidies etc etc.The whole crappy edifice is now a self serving, bureaucratic, tax generating entity and the media to their eternal shame cannot and will not admit that they were duped and complicit in the hoax.
Going head to head with this monster will get us nowhere. In this battle we are out gunned.
We’ve got to think of ourselves as ‘the insurgency’ detonating horrid little facts in unexpected places. Sniping at them when ever they move out of their secure zones.
I make it a personal point to express my skepticism to friends, family and acquaintances, I don’t imagine I have made many converts but it all of us stand up in our daily lives and let it be known that we simply do not believe in CAGW…for very sound reasons, then we will undermine the scam from the grass roots up.
Eventually real science will prevail…it always does. The true loonies always reveal themselves eventually…think Mc Kibben, Suzuki, Flannery and Gore, each time they stand up they sound more shrill and irrational…even their followers aren’t quite as certain and convicted as they used to be.
Some crazy woman journalist in the Guardian the other day began her article with an open admission of the ‘pause in global temperatures’…that is unimaginable progress from even a year ago when I was banned from commenting because I insisted that the pause was real and had been mentioned in Climategate emails.
Ah Climategate…where would we be without Climategate?
It depends upon the goal you are seeking. If it is to promote the KXL, then yes organization is a must. If it is the pursuit of knowledge in a scientific method, then no. An organization will inhibit that (merely look at the “team”). I understand and sympathize with the frustration that leads to a yes. But that is all.
Organization = Corruption. You just end up with dogma.
“They are recognized as the world’s leading think tank in global warming skepticism. http://www.heartland.org
Somehow I missed the poll, but why not support Heartland by becoming an advisor or donor?”
I think the main problem with that is that by endorsing Heartland you turn this into a a R vs D issue, rather than than an issue organization that is open to all. I can see a lot of blue-leaning voters not wishing to strengthen an organization that also operates against a person’s other political inclinations.
Answer to Patrick says:
April 25, 2014 at 3:24 am
It’s never to late for truth to be told and discussed. Truth is that there never been a CO2-threat other in the world of alarmists who haven’t understood that ALL factors, not only chosen ones, needs to be taken into consideration when a computer-model’s fiction (it’s always fiction not reality) of predicting the future is on the table. As we said in 1970’s bad or corrected data in = bad unreliable figures out.
“… 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. …”
It seems to me that sites like WUWT and many others are educating the public everyday. Many different voices pointing out the fallacies and wrong predictions of the “sky-is-falling” crowd is far better than one organization.
However, if we are talking about a call to form another voice in the crowd and all of us support it (if we can), then that can be a useful idea as long as we know that this is a political fight and not a scientific one. It only looks like a scientific fight — it is a political fight were the state is using the “scientists” to scare the population so they will demand that the state do something.
Friends, the fact is that as long as the state funds science (and academia) we will continue to get false results. The scientific method is no match for the power and money of the state.
A great read on what you are up against is given by T. Colin Campbell in his latest book “Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition”. Read as he talks about how one can not advance his career in science if he goes against the prevailing paradigm. Even though the book is about nutrition, and you don’t have to agree with Campbell’s views, it is ultimately about the forces that control all “debates” in science.
I’ve already left a comment at Pointman’s, setting out my doubts about the idea of forming a sceptic organisation. These can be summarised as 1) splintering 2) funding and 3) bureaucratic capture. If it could be done well though, it would be a great idea.
I think the most interesting comment to the original poll thread on WUWT was by Steven Mosher (link: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/19/open-thread-with-an-important-question/#comment-1617522), that we should all make clear exactly what we do and don’t believe. It’s all too easy to assume others agree/disagree with one’s own viewpoint. I’ve put a post up at my own blog to do just this (link: http://jonathanabbott99.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/global-warming-what-i-believe/). I suspect I am a ‘mainstream sceptic’ and would appreciate others’ views on this.
Reminds me of this…
The problem with organizing AGW skeptics is that, while most of us agree that the conclusions of the believers are wrong, we lack their religious like passion for that position. We are more passionate about the economic fallout that would arise from their solutions and that would require a more political organization. Since there are a wide variety of political positions among skeptics, it would be a most difficult task to keep the organization glued together as a political force.
Maybe Heartland, GWPF ,”Bloggers United” “engineers united” ” sceptical scientists united”
“economists united” et al can come up with a statement that reflects the issue. Which people can rally round and push collectively and individually. And then repeat the process until it gains momentum.
If the weather keeps on cooling like this skeptics will morph to what???. Although I would be part of such an organization (skeptic etc) I don’t think it will be required within 5 years or so as the climate will not change…… Most will lose interest, even skeptics, warmist and yes even deniers. The whole issue of climate will revert to what is was 30 years ago…. daily meteorological reports… LOL
I’ll repeat my earlier suggestion … ClimateFactCheck.org … If we can counter alarmist press releases quickly it would take a lot of steam out of their propaganda. However, we need to have a set of scientists in fields related to topics used by the propagandists to give credibility to the statements. We may be able to see the truth but many others will only accept credentialed responses.
Agree with Peter Whale. There already are organizations around.
I was unsure originally. But now, if it comes to pass, count me out. I visit WUWT almost every day and appreciate the articles and comments greatly but if it becomes too political, I want no part of it.
I propose we call ourselves “Union of Concerned Skeptics”.
No dogs allowed.
Anthony, as you stated in your original question – a problem arises if such an organization is centred in one country. The organization required needs to be both a central resource and an umbrella organization for disseminating the necessary scientific information worldwide. The Climate AGW agenda is worldwide and needs to be counteracted on a worldwide stage. If an organization is merely American it will be sneered at for being parochial. To combat the current global scam you need an organization that is fully global.
To me the big question is: How to create a global organization that carries automatic accreditation in the eyes of scientists, academics and politicians so that it cannot be easily poo-poohed by the sneering progressive media?
A formal skeptical organization is like communism. It seemed like a good idea to the poor…
These things always get high-jacked by a few people who have more energy, less brains and little else to do than the rest of us.
The Power of an organization is really in the size of its membership. The NRA is very powerful, because it has a LOT OF MEMBERS that vote. It makes perfect sense that a very large organization of Skeptics, would carry a lot of clout
After reading this I realized I will post to WUWT but when amoungst my liberal cohorts, I fear to say anything. My conservative friends and I have always remarked how they have the upper hand in public debate because they will freely spout their rhetoric and the rest of us keep quiet lest we are marginalized. Enough is enough.
You’ve convinced me. We need to “unionize”. What are the next steps and where do I sign up?
I’m in.