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.
Not necessarily. What if there’s another Sandy-like event to scare the populace? What if the GOP folds, and/or doesn’t do well in 2014? What if China gets talked into agreeing to a new Kyoto treaty, with the sub rosa “understanding” that it wouldn’t be expected to observe it and that its claims of compliance would not be checked?
I think a true sceince based skeptic organization would be a good thing. So many think the science is settled, and a group that truly represents the science against AGW would be helpful.
pochas says:
April 25, 2014 at 3:45 am
Great! Now, what are we going to call ourselves. Here’s one, “Society for Scientific Sanity.” No, too many S’s.
I suppose “Association for Scientific Sanity” is out of the question, too.
🙂
Seriously, I would hope it would be based around this:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” (Oregon Petition Project)
@wws “De Gaulle and the french resistance didn’t overthrow Vichy France by creating an open, public organization and sending all of their supporter’s names to Marshall Petain.”
Uh, I thought the Allies had something to do with it.
In any case, organized action based on sound science applied in a principled way is preferable to a hodge podge approach.
Further to Terra Home:
[In private correspondence, Mike D. and I discussed starting a website, and briefly raised issues of organization, though without coming to a conclusion:]
Mike D.:
[I don’t think Mike will mind my quoting these important points. I responded:]
/Mr Lynn
There are far too many sceptics like myself who might best be described as “enthusiastic amateurs” and who would be prepared to join an official “climate sceptics” organisation. However, what that organisation might gain in numbers it would lose in credibility. If, on the other hand, membership of the organisation was limited to those professionals, such as astronomers, astrophysicists, biologists, botanists, chemists, “climate scientists”,engineers, geographers, geologists, mathematicians, meterologists, oceanographers palaeontologists, physicists, statisticians and zoologists, the “warmist” lobby and their supporters would have difficulty in rubbishing any statements emanating from that organisation.
In other words weed people like myself out and concentrate on those whose credentials, both academic and experience, are irrefutable and even the politicians might have to listen..
OK, the vote is a clear yes, so it should be done. Plenty of comments have pointed out many major potential pitfalls, so they should be taken into account when setting it up. Anthony’s judgement has been exemplary throughout the whole WUWT exercise, in particular the emphasis on science, the provision of access to all possible third-party data (the data is 100% external to and independent of WUWT), and the welcoming of all civil points of view. I trust Anthony’s judgement on this exercise too. It will take a tremendous amount of hard work from better people than me, but any assistance I can give, I will.
I have seen GWPF, Heartland/NIPCC, etc, and none of them does the job the way I think and hope that it will be done. As I see it, this will be the go-to site for an accurate/rational/scientific view of everything to do with climate, and in particular it will explain exactly what is known, what is not known, and everything in between, plus corrections for everything that is often misunderstood. There will be immediate attempts to discredit it, to target individuals, and every other trick in the political book – but they have been doing that for years and it shouldn’t be too hard to prepare for.
I look forward to seeing it rolling off the production line!
Moderator: My previous comment is still in moderation, presumably because I mentioned The Boss. This one should follow the previous one, or it won’t make sense. Thanks. /Mr L
Contrarian Climate Coalition
Pronounced ContClyCoe (?) OR “3C”
londo, you write “Agree, but…. this is already a political issue”
Yes, I agree. One of the problems writing bits on blogs is explaining what one wants to. I took it that the idea was to form a union of scientists. That I am opposed to. If it is a political issue, then some sort of political organization needs to be formed. For me, thanks but no thanks.
The scientific problem, as I have said over and over again, is that the learned scientific societies, led by the RS and APS have endorsed CAGW. They are the problem. The APS is rethinking it’s stance, and a report should be out this year.
I hope scientists can deal with the scientific issues, and I believe that proper science will prevail in the end.
heysuess says:
April 25, 2014 at 5:55 am
“Keep it simple with a straightforward blanket mission statement that allows most nuanced skeptical positions in, something like ‘we don’t support the theory that industrial carbon dioxide emissions can effect the earth’s climate systems.’”
Better yet, how about ‘we only support what good scientific observation and analysis shows.’
‘The Climate Reality Organization’ so sthg similar would be a better name. No science whatsoever supports the greenhouse theory; nor that Co2 has much to do with anything; nor that pre-modern climate was stable; nor that the earth is not a complicated million-variable convection system.
Name it correctly and many will join. Reality is not scepticism.
This article has certainly generated some interesting comments, many quite black and white!
Why does creating a organization preclude the continuance of WUWT and other blogs? Why would an organization intended to fight the politcal nature of CAGW delegitimize the science? How does membership in such an organization preclude making comments to blogs? Does the organization need to be US based, or could it be based in the UK or Europe?
I believe based on my own personal evangelizing that the blogosphere lacks credibility with the population at large. People can’t comprehend long, detailed articles laying out reams of data and complex calculations. They need sound bites and hocky stick graphs. This absolutely is a political battle, and without the masses the governments of the world will continue to dismiss us as nutters off in the corner.
How did envirofacism become so strong: organizations like Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, et al.
I am, in general, in favor of an organization which would articulate my views on climate change. However, be prepared for a withering barrage of negative press from the MSM and snarky/condescending press releases from the CAGW scientists. And be prepared to be ridiculed publicly if you choose to be connected to such an organization.
However, here is the main issue for me. The warmists are gathering HUGE sums of money in an all out effort now to impose their views on society. Be prepared for a multi-MILLION dollar campaign to convince the lay public that climate change is a problem and that we must change our ways of life or else. If we do nothing they win. And trust me, this battle is NOT about climate change (it never was) – it is about our freedom.
I’m mixed on this (but not on the name…PLEASE DO NOT ((if formed)) include anything in the title to suggest they are skeptical of climate) because if you have an organized group to counter the alarmists, I fear it will descend into a group willing to use the same discredited tactics of the Manns and Jones of the world.
I would rather that PEOPLE PRACTICING REAL SCIENCE would be the counter group to this scam. They need not be organized and when they publish/announce it will not be seen as a concerted effort but just a scientist doing his/her job in an open and upright manner.
The momentum is so far skewed to the alarmist cause I fear such an organisation would be little more than straw against the wind (Straw wasn’t my first word of choice!). The Skeptical view will prevail only if Mother Earth continues not to play along for long enough and/or the sheeple rail loudly enough that rising energy costs and economic hardship are not worth the candle and politicians start not getting their votes. In my view the only way to speed things up is for the emergence of a skeptical spokesperson of such charisma, media skill and scientific integrity to emerge who can shoot the whole thing down for what it is. If Feynman where with us he would have been ‘da man’ I’m sure…..not sure theres another of his ilk right now….
I’m retired, old, with a body slowly fading away, but I can still smell a rat. Count me in as a supporter of the effort to bring common sense and civility to the climate discussion.
The Moral Minority?
Three-Percenters United?
pochas says:
April 25, 2014 at 3:45 am
Great! Now, what are we going to call ourselves. Here’s one, “Society for Scientific Sanity.” No, too many S’s.
====
DEE-nier Central , of course. What else?
Lets say we do this, what then?. Do we put on boiler suits and chain ourselves to offshore wind turbines?. I’m not convinced it would get us very far. We’d just be labelled yet another “right wing thinktank” and marginalized. If we were to organize it should be for the specific purpose of holding to account the media that has failed us dismally. They hold themselves above reason and seem to be accountable to no one. They are traitors to their own raison d’etre. Where is the scrutiny?. Where would we be without the blogosphere and the genuine people who go there. Up sh1t creek is where.
I’ve resisted joining organizations all my life except those I’m obliged to for professional reasons (to be able to practice as a professional engineer, for example). Even this lofty organization is a pain as its governance ends up attracting those who go more for real hands-on governing and less for engineering itself, expanding rules and bureaucracy ever farther away from the domain of engineering.
Formalizing an organization eventually leads to a stifling degree of dogmatism. They even learn how to herd cats. Individualists (non-team players!) ultimately tend to get marginalized, no matter what contributions they are making.
Frankly, Pointman scared me a bit – it was too EU for me. If it were to be headed up by Anthony Watts, I would go along, but the first sign of a mission statement with PC doggerel would do it for me.
Politics is politics, its tools are different and inherently corrupted by its very tools. Politics and science don’t mix as the science will always lose. That is what has happened to the CAGW bunch. Join them in character, politics, and condemn the science, prove to everyone that science is not what matters, politics is what matters, and how skillful and well funded your gang is… Big Mistake.
Your first job will be to marginalize those that are not “mainstream” luke-warmers. Right? The character of your blog will immediately change, watch the drop out rate and those with the “biggest” voice dominate, not the science. Make the CAGW crowd proud.
“Cooler Heads Coalition”?
I think the word sceptic (that’s how it’s spelt where I come from) is unhelpful, it’s too easily associated with ‘naysayer’, ‘denier’ etc. It sounds like a group of grumpy old men that just like to oppose stuff for the sake of it 😐