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.
once you go into advocacy then you leave the world of science and enter the world of lawyers who end up debating the meaning of words like ‘the’ and ‘a’. Does it advance the search for truth?
If people want to get into politics of it then they should be harassing their elected representatives and naming and shaming and picketing and organising boycotts and staking out universities and all the things the warmers do.
The controversy may be about the climate but the underlying philosophy is about scientific honesty and critical thinking. And journalists always need good stories but they tend to ignore blogs which are seen as competition. There have been many posts here which some of the media would have taken seriously had they been issued as press releases from an organisation.
One of the main advantages the skeptic insurgency enjoys is we are net native. “Organisations” are anchored in the pre-net world of newspapers, hand written letters, dead tree journals and Washington based lobbyists.
The “alarmist” cause has prevailed to date because it has an inherited mastery of the pre-internet world. Where the skeptics have been winning is where we have used the net as a force multiplier.
On the one hand we have easy blog publishing – not for nothing does the climate establishment hate WUWT, Climate Depot, Bishop Hill – which the establishment cannot match for depth or traffic. On another, we have a self organising rapid reaction capacity – Steve MacIntyre, Judith Curry, the Blackboard, Lord Monkton, Willis – to expose and question bad science.
Self organising and distributed with a lot of flexibility. Now, compare that to the alarmist establishment. Here you have inflexibility and rigid conformity. Dissent is not tolerated – disagree with any particular and Dana and Mikey will give you a severe ankle biting.
Plus, the alamists are blessed with a Prussian sense of humour. They are SAVING THE WORLD and there is nothing funny about that. The happy warriorism of Mark Steyn, Steve MacIntyre’s Scots irony, Anthony’s nearly limitless good humour and Momford’s deadpan makes the earnest few at SkS livid. It has been so devastating that Real Climate has almost ceased publishing.
These are qualities which are amplified by the ‘net but which could all too easily be destroyed by a serious attempt to organise.
< AGW_Skeptic says:
April 25, 2014 at 3:50 am …
What he says. Let Heartland take up the political onus. The true issue is the formation of policy in a vacuum of genuine knowledge. There is a fundamental absence of working knowledge at the very base of the scientific side of the debate. If you set aside the “faith” that you know how climate “really” works, then the evidence is overwhelming that no party has a viable hypothesis of climate, much less a well supported theory.
It is important to remember that absolutely any hypothesis with delusions of theoryhood must account for any climatic effects over any geological time span and for climates operating anywhere in the solar system or beyond. Simply constraining the analysis to the satellite period, or the historically collected temperature record of one planet will not serve anyone’s genuine need for a viable general theory of climate. Nor will massaging data until it “looks” right aid in the construction of a scientifically-useful hypothesis. That, at worst, could lead to conflicting massage jobs and data sets that are tailored to suit the needs of given hypotheses. At present it appears that there is a general agreement on the energy source that drives climate and the storage bodies where that energy abides until it achieves some work in the physical sense. That appears to be the outer limits of what everyone agrees is known. Ideally, politicians should be bound, gagged, and kept in a dark closet until the people studying clime at any time scale and at any time depth can say, “you know? That really works?” As long as we lack a theory of climate that is not at least as reliable as Newtonian gravity or Boyle’s Law we do not have a theory of climate at all. The assertions in circulation barely qualify as hypotheses.
Any new organisation would need to be rooted in science and concern for the environment, in order to encourage more scientists and other involved professionals (e.g. economists) to be comfortable with being associated with it.
It would take only a few “oddballs” to be involved to scare off a lot of key people.
I’ve recently read Mann’s book about the hockey stick, a very long book because every mention of an opponent contains the phrase “with links to the fossil fuel industry”.
In reply to DirkH
“I would discourage the ISIS idea as the name is likely to get you an appearance in front of a FISA court, given the general competency of the state.”
Unlikely Dirk; it’s just an acronym. I can think of several others that have different attributions. Why on Earth would the use of said term cause arrest, trial, even in absentia and presumably subsequent imprisonment? Especially by a secret Federal court whose only jurisdiction is in the USA. Explain please.
The problem with ‘climate science’, as we all well know is keeping the ‘climate scientists’ honest.
I suggest a simple check list should be devised for every alarmist paper:
1. Is the original data available? If not, or behind a paywall, then F
2. Is the original code and the methodology of processing data freely available? If not, then F.
3. Has the paper been peer or pal reviewed? If the latter then F.
4. Does the paper use industry accepted statistical analysis? If Mannian, or other, then F.
5. The ‘if, could, might, maybe, perhaps’ factor – a count of >10 will result in an F.
6. If the paper produces a conclusion that more research is needed, then this is incomplete research and is thus unacceptable, and consequently an F.
7. Are all the input variables, and how they are used, for any model produced freely available and has the model’s accuracy been tested in hindcast? If not, then F.
8. If the sponsor for the research paper is a known activist group with its own biased agenda, then F.
A more comprehensive list is obviously needed, but that should be enough to scare the poo out of the average ‘climate scientist’.
“Contrarian Climate Clique”?
The overwhelming “No” comments compared to the overwhelming “Yes” poll results are suspect, imo.
That said, go for it An-tho-ny — if you feel the need to do this, you should.
I will not join. I stand by what I wrote in my comments on the original poll thread.
I see CFACT and several other organizations already doing a fine job of fighting AGW propaganda. Another organization is not necessary and the potential costs outweigh the benefits.
I still support YOU, though, An-tho-ny.
(Just not your new venture.)
I would like to see:
1. One paragraph charter
2. Statement of beliefs (short version & long version).
I would like to see the charter focused on education, not lobbying. After voting no, I realized I like the idea of a group for courageous college kids to organize under.
I would like the statement of beliefs to focus purely on the science with no mention of new world order etc. I would like it to unambiguously exclude skydragons.
At the core levels of activism Alarmist/Warmers are linked by collectivist ideology, it’s a liberal to extreme left-wing subculture. That binds organizations since they agree on many core solutions to almost anything. Skeptics are diverse politically and will fracture over degrees of Green compromising very quickly.
While the left-wing Greenshirt community is despicable it has the tactical benefit of any other fanatical movement in history among it’s peers. What strikes me in the comments is the naive belief that logic and “science” are going to win and the even more ridiculous sentiment that the debate really is over “science” at this ancient phase of the debate. The left in the U.S. and aligned global organizations such as the U.N. are operating in the post-normal science arena for decades now, the scientific method requiring actual proof has long faded in importance. Consider what is turned out in public schools and ideological academia today and project where we are and where it is going even another generation from now. Orwell wasn’t off by many years in “1984” when you are objective.
I don’t think enough skeptics have grown up to accept the totalitarian undercurrent of what the actual AGW movement represents. Any organization opposing AGW Alarmism but minimizing the political agenda driving it is likely to fail.
There were in the end only a handful of actual Bolsheviks in 1917 in Moscow itself but who won at the time and why? Many skeptics find a thousand reasons to play ball on Alarmist terms and seek to avoid political identification of the issue at all cost. Either as a personal preference or for fear of losing. Exactly like 1917. The political failure lies in the hands of those who generally oppose collectivist leftism in general and surrendered to 60’s Greenshirt “Idealism” as a campus backwater at the time. Now it’s a monster ready to destroy the Republic in its own way. Corrupting every public policy you can think of in the name of “Green” which really coded word for “Marxist Solutions”.
Many skeptics aren’t going to accept what it really is,many never have and have thousand absurd rationalizations for the persistency of the movement. If you do start one you should start with James Delingpole as President, someone who really does have the big picture of the debate down pat and really as large and long as it is it remains a very standards man-as-god, statism first agenda better understood by prior and less socially rotted generations.
The hate I’ll get from other “skeptics” here is a true indicator that we are no “band of brothers” simply because we dissent from climate change orthodoxy at numerous levels. In fact, as is often the case in sweeping conflict I’ve grown to despise whimpering middle of the road skepticism as much as any Michael Mann image in a “Che” tee-shirt lecturing about “science”. Greenshirt success was inversely proportional to skeptic cluelessness in my lifetime and I’ve seen the fiasco actively since the 70’s and Ehrlich crowd and the “Zero Growthers” as they proudly called themselves in that form.
“Just the Facts”?
Although that might be copyrighted, as would be “The Cold, Hard Truth”& “It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas!”. “How I Quit Worrying & Learned to Love CO2” might not present the same problem.
But seriously, folks…
How about emulating the ploy of SkepticalScience & calling such an organization “Green the Earth” with a beneficial greenhouse gas of which plants need more?
crosspatch says:
April 25, 2014 at 9:38 am
If I might toss out some suggestions:
…
==========
These are great suggestions crosspatch!
A “watch dog” organization focused on public awareness would be a great benefit to the media and residents. It could include all groups associated with the climate debate if it solely focused on public policy and taxpayer interests. Note, taxpayer in this sense would include business, industry, and the general public.
Something on the order of a consumer protection agency makes sense?
I’d want to say ‘no’ but only because being disorganized makes me feel like the plucky underdog fighting an uphill battle against a lot larger force (funny enough I bet this is how Mann and other CAGW activists feel). Fortunately my cooler head prevails. I agree with Pointman on this one.
Yes.
Understand the shorter term benefits noted for an “Organization”. Remember some of the longer term downsides to Organizations –
Successful Organizations are targets to be co-opted. Look at the co-opting of various green groups by Big Crony Money and more nefarious political movements under the facade of Green. Scientists must be Very weary of all Politicians, especially those who “appear” to be skeptical. Many Politicians are fickle pathological liars and change with the changing tides.
Organizations can and will be infiltrated – top middle bottom. Distract, disarm, embarrass.
Organizations have issues with leadership and cult of personality – i.e. Algorism. Many a group/company/organization has had an admirable set of founders only to be replaced by sociopaths in the next generation.
Power corrupts. Power attracts sociopaths.
To succeed, there needs to be constant continued skeptical alternative competition to skepticism – to keep discourse healthy and alive. Claiming “one voice” undermines. Key to develop multiple alternative, skeptical voices.
There are a growing number of credible, influential skeptical sources. Maybe energy should be devoted to increasing awareness of the existing sources and nurturing additional new voices.
I also think as much as possible you should use language that a layman can understand. Keep the message simple. When I first visited this site (as a layman with an interest in Science and Technology) I was overwhelmed with the jargon and acronyms.
And perhaps have a section called Climate Science for Dummies, where you explain in easy to understand terms things like: What is Global Temperature? How is it measured and by what methods? How was it measured in the past? How do satellites measure temperature? A brief History of Science and the Scientific Method. etc.
dbstealey says:
April 25, 2014 at 9:12 am
CACA adherents would claim their rigged, GIGO models falsify your hypothesis. They don’t of course, & can’t, but that doesn’t matter to the propagandistic media & susceptible politicians.
WUWT says, “Could just as easily be used to describe crazy Bill McKibben….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?”
I would like to suggest that it was not the organization but the number of signatures on the petition. I believe the roles of petitions in putting enormous amounts of pressure on companies and politicians is not recognized. For example, Change dot org sets up world wide signatures to demand companies do green and costly things. The number of petition signatures also gives the politicians the cover to say that they are representing the public will.
It is possible that WUWT is misattributing the power and funding of the 350 dot org organization for the petition process. I see this as a potential problem. Personally, I do sign petitions, but on a grand, world wide scale, petitions of this size are actually a threat to local rule and democracy. I do not know if all of those signatories were from the USA, for one thing. And I do not think that global petition drives are anything close to representative government. The main point is, petitioning was used in the process of claiming the people of the US do not want the pipeline. If it was 350 dot org as an organization that did not want it, I do not think there would be any legitimacy to caving in to the pressure. So please consider the petition process – it seems to be an omitted variable in your analysis.
I missed the poll and my first thought would have been the ‘target’ issue, but wuwt is already a target so that does not matter.
The fallacy of the ManBearPig scam has real consequences and negative impact in real life.
Getting organized makes sense. Let’s go for it!
Green Earth Team (or Project, although that doesn’t spell anything).
GAIA: Green All Intergovernmental Air
WARM: Warning Against Rigged Models.
PLOUGH CACA: Pull Legs Out Under GIGO Harmful CACA (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism).
Citizens & Scientists for Climate Science. Also doesn’t spell anything but CSCS is close to Union of Concerned Scientists.
Also, there is a saying that if the whole body were a hand, where would the seeing be? If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? The role of WUWT in the whole body of skeptics is that of the eyes. Things come into sharp focus and clarity, that otherwise would go undetected and unremarked upon. This role of bringing sunlight is obviously vital to the survival of all the different people working on these issues.
In the post, I found this remark to be startling:
“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.”
Open society and rational criticism can sometimes be rough; but the dismissive attitude and the lack of appreciation for the success of simply discussing and highlighting issues (as reflected in the above remark) is not helpful and not an accurate appraisal.
But….but wait just a minute! What’s the point of going to all that trouble:
“Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?”
Isn’t the tide with the truth? Isn’t this the year that the global warming scam is going to implode? And once the (overdue) Great Global Cooling kicks in, then it’ll be game over anyway 🙂
How about “SINS and CAGW”?
Of course SINS stands for something most of us would agree with, namely “Science Is Never Settled”. What did you think it meant? ☺
A true skeptics organization would state up front that we should continue to learn from climate data that comes in, as Anthony has said. A skeptics organization would not have a “denier” platform, where a position is taken on the issue of climate change and we stick with that position no matter what new information comes in. That is what bugs the hell out of me with pro-global warmists, they look at the issue as if the debate is a contest can be won or lost like a baseball game. They want to “win the debate” by having prominent scientist pick their side like a judge with a scorecard at a boxing match. As a skeptic myself I do not think global warming is an issue that warrants costly global policies to try and influence climate, but I do think pollution is a health problem. I am NOT pro oil company, I do think humans need to move away from petroleum energy sources, but not because of climate issues. Hopefully a skeptic organization would make it clear that world wide pollution is a problem, and it is a problem now, and that the skeptic organization is not at all in favor of continued increase of usage of fossil fuels, we just don’t think the climate impacts of greenhouse gases from burning carbon fuels have been significant enough to force global mandates on greenhouse gas emissions. But we will continue to learn from new data.