Guest opinion: Prof Richard Betts, Dr Tamsin Edwards
Dr Tim Ball’s blog post “People Starting To Ask About Motive For Massive IPCC Deception” – drawing parallels between climate scientists and Hitler – doesn’t do anyone in the climate change debate any favours: in fact it seems a big (goose) step backwards. It’s especially frustrating to see him write this so soon after the productive dinner at Nic Lewis’s place, where the attendees agreed on the need to depolarise and detoxify the climate discussion. Anthony Watts wrote an extremely positive blog post about the evening, and there were many favourable comments from WUWT readers saying how great it was to have a more civilised conversation.
But here we see Tim sink to a new low, with Mein Kampf quotes and snide misrepresentation of the IPCC reports. Perhaps Tim hasn’t yet heard that many people on both sides of the discussion have moved on from the simple name calling of the past…. We were also disappointed that so few commenters below the post distanced themselves from his views. We hope this is merely selection bias, and that many of you are simply sighing and moving on to the next post.
For those that do endorse Tim’s views: we often see people who are sceptical of climate science and/or policy object to the term ‘Deniers’ (a phrase neither of us use). But it’s hard to see how anyone could justify taking offence at being called a Denier if they were happy to call other people Nazis. Especially when those people – professional climate scientists like us – are trying to engage in good faith discussions with Anthony and many others in the sceptical community.
We do understand that Anthony does not read all WUWT guest posts. We’re pleased that when we contacted him he added a disclaimer (albeit a somewhat ambiguous one) and offered us this chance to respond. We see this as a positive outcome of meeting in person at dinner. Certainly we would not be writing this without it.
As we understand it, Tim’s post does not at all reflect Anthony’s views.We therefore hope future WUWT guest writers adopt the civil and rational tone of the conversations we had that evening and do not remain stuck in the pointless, playground insults that do not help either climate science or its discussion.We invite our dinner companions from the 21st September (including Anthony) to add their views below. Personally, we think they will agree that Tim’s view is an out-of-touch relic.
Richard and Tamsin
Professor Richard Betts
Chair in Climate Impacts, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter – Head of Climate Impacts Research, Met Office Hadley Centre
Dr Tamsin Edwards
Lecturer in Environmental Sciences, Department of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems, The Open University
Note from Anthony:
I agree that Dr. Ball’s post had some “over the top” rhetoric in it, and it is my error that the post was published without benefit of editorial actions. It does not reflect my views. My excuse is simply that I was distracted by an extreme challenge in my life at the time, and I didn’t get to vet the guest post as I normally would have. That won’t happen again. On the plus side, this issue illustrates why one of the most common ugly claims about WUWT, the claim of being in the pay of “big oil” or some NGO, can’t possibly be true. If that were true, I could have long ago hired an assistant editor and such missteps would not occur. While there are many things that the IPCC can be validly criticized for, some of which were in Dr. Balls post, parallels with Nazism is not one of them.
While there remain wildly disparate views about climate science, I see that there are people on both sides that are gravitating towards a more central and in my opinion, more reasonable view. Climate skeptics and climate advocates should do everything possible to help facilitate such dialog, otherwise all we have is just noise. – Anthony Watts
Wow. Tim Ball gets to post a controversial posting; Tamsin and Betts get to reply. This is an example of why this blog is so much better than others, such as Re*lClim*te.
Tamsin and Betts. Thank you for trying to tone down the rhetoric on both sides. Sincerely.
However, Ball’s posting didn’t call anyone a Nazi. That simply didn’t happen, and you won’t be able to provide a quote where it did.
Yes, Ball quoted Hitler; yes, Hitler described the “Big Lie”, and he and the Nazis used it effectively. However, the reverse is not logically correct; because Hitler and the Nazis used the Big Lie does not mean that anyone who uses The Big Lie is Hitler or a Nazi. Reading it as if the reverse where implied says more about what is going on in your heads than what is going on in Tim’s.
That said, I think anyone who quotes Hitler should be prepared to explicitly state the limits of what they are trying to say. Tim should have said something like “My using a Hitler quote should not be construed as comparing Climatologists with Hitler or the Nazis”.
THAT said, the cynical part of me notes that focusing only on what you believe is a Nazi comparison could be a way of trying to make it impossible to discuss the propaganda technique of the Big Lie wrt to the politics of Climatology, because any reference to the Big Lie would be a comparison to Nazism. If this was not your intention,you two should ALSO have explicitly said something along the lines of “We believe that comparing climatologists to Nazis is counterproductive; however, this does not mean that it’s not worthwhile to pursue the question of the usage of the Big Lie in the politics of Climatology.”
I would love to hear your opinions on this topic. For instance, over on BH right now is a posting called “Bob Misrepresents the Science Again”, where Bob Ward is quoted as saying “…if we go above global warming of more than 2 degrees we will be facing very severe risks” (see BH for the full quote). Betts has already said that most climate scientists do not subscribe to this meme. Is this Bob Ward attempting to implement the “Big Lie”, and if so, should it be labeled as such?
Similarly, we should all know that the latest IPCC report does not support the concept that we are currently experiencing global-warming induced “extreme weather”, and that attribution studies consistently fail to find a connection between individual weather events and global warming. Yet, newspapers are full of stories that say that we ARE experiencing this; Obama has said so, numerous scientists have said so…yet it clearly is not part of the “consensus” (whatever that is), and there is simply no explanation how, if the surface temp hasn’t warmed in umpteen years, we would suddenly be experiencing Extreme Weather. Is this an example of the Big Lie at work, and if so, should it be called out as such?
Neither Richard Betts nor Tamsin Edwards will answer these questions.
Prostitutes do not want to upset their clients.
You cannot appease the climate warmists fanatics. This is very like Chamberlain in 1938 giving in to the nazis and later paying very very dearly for it. Basically you should probably not be even talking to these people as this site has now given a certain “respect” to these people. Good luck with that!
We have piece in our time. A little piece of Poland, a little piece of France.
http://ww2gravestone.com/sites/default/files/uploads/Neville%20Chamberlain.jpg
I also note that all of a sudden my postings go into moderation.You’ve definitely lost me as a poster here.
[Reply: We know who is on moderation and who isn’t. You are not. If you feel the need to go elsewhere that is up to you. But please don’t blame others. ~mod.]
Eliza, it’s nothing personal. It happened to me 5 minutes ago, then my comments stopped going into moderation. It happens from time to time. I have been at WUWT since before 2008 I think.
“drawing parallels between climate scientists and Hitler” He did no such thing, he used Hitler’s example of the Big Lie” as an illustration of how the “Big Lie” that is AGW has been created. It is a sociological concept, confirmed by the number of attempts by Sociologists to try and understand why so many people don’t believe it. Tim Ball simply told it as it is and the extreme reactions demonstrate how close to the truth he is.
It would be unfortunate if Anthony chose not to publish any more guest opinions from Dr Ball, because of the unwarranted flack he has had from the warming protagonists.
I have just re-read Dr.Tim Ball’s article and think it is excellent. I think Prof Betts and Dr Edwards need to put a teaspoon of concrete in their tea and harden up a bit.
Read it again and stop being silly. It was a stupid ill conceived and poorly written article. It played exactly into the narrative of Lewandowsky. It makes skeptics look like the kooks, not the climate obsessed.
Nonsense.
Mark
Really, here is one example of a leading proponent of CAGW, in his own words affirming everything Dr Ball stated,
Otmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC, is very direct:
“The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. . . . But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
George.. What they need is a reading comprehension course. This might be a clue to the reason that they believe in CAGW.. It seems that either they didn’t read the article or they are mentally impaired.
I am all for keeping debate civil etc.
But I am still for Ms Hayhoe and Mr Betts to get a bit more honest and frank with the Climoscientificindustrial complex.
The “oh so reasonable” presentation comes at times that it appears advantageous to their interests – which I never see them admit are deeply conflicted.
It’s easy to be led astray regarding motive. It’s easier to decipher result.
If one reads the books by Shrirer (Rise and Fall), Speer (inside), Hitler (Kampf), Borman (Table Talk), Goebbels (his diaries) and others Hitler believed individual dictatorship (his) was the perfect form of government. Of all the categories one can fit Hitler into such as genocide, socialist/statist, conqueror, etc., the broadest one is totalitarian. What some find fascinating is how democracies morph into totalitarian states. Germany, in the last free elections held of the Weimar Republic, saw the Nazis seize power having gained only about 2/5ths of the vote. And that was the Nazis controlling the news and arresting opponents.
The roots of “generic” totallitarian have been discussed for centuries. See 1 Samual Chapter 8, Plato’s works, etc. Every King, Khan, Stalin, etc., AND their supporters are simply totalitarianists. The motive matters little. The result is always totalitarianism in all it’s many forms. A person desiring totalitarian rule is best left to the soft sciences like psychiatry.
Bell seems to seek motive where he might have restricted his discussion to democracies evolving into totalitarian states. The similarity of methods imposing totalitarianism on a population, without war and conquest, almost always follows the techniques the Nazis proved worked in democracies. Thus the comparisons. They’re all under the same hat.
Passing note.
It has been almost universally reported by those who met Hitler that he had a “magnetic” personality – especially while dining. The fact that he frequently ordered the execution of those he charmed might be a caution for those sitting down with totalitarianists. Just saying.
Seems to me that the central matter arriving from all the above is that whilst it is good that such as Betts and Tamsin are engaged in dialogue with us heretics, that they refuse in public to condemn those of their colleagues in climate science who have done such damage to the notion of scientific research and progress, we still have a huge problem.
Why will they not speak out against the Manns and Lewandowskys? Why?
This is one of the posts that Sou (Miriam O’Brien) has chosen to comment on at HotWhopper. See my post at MoreOnMiriamO’Brien’sHotWhopper:
http://moreonmiriamobrien.wordpress.com/2014/11/28/miriam-obrien-says-disgusting-deniers-anthony-watts-exploits-the-publicity-he-got-from-tim-ball/
Miriam O’Brien (Sou) takes on Tamsin Edwards and Richard Bett’s guest opinion, Anthony Watts’s concluding note, and comments on the thread, including one from me.
Bob – why are you constantly advertising Sou’s anti-WUWT site?
Albedo bits, I’m advertising my website, not Sou’s. And I’m providing links to archived versions of Sou’s blog posts that show how low warmists will stoop. Can’t get much lower than Sou.
meant to add … the policies invoked by CAGW attack the poor and have done huge damage to the Third World. What’s worse? That, or what Tim Ball wrote, and what he quoted?
This is grossly out of proportion, and a total side show.
I think there needs to be more heated rhetoric on the skeptic side, to offset the constant drumbeat of heated rhetoric pouring out of the other side. When every single alarmist article cites a 97% consensus, that is heated political rhetoric designed solely to impugn the credibility of anyone that disagrees. When the term denier has been fully adopted by alarmist and their coconspirators in the media, that again is a solely rhetorical attack used to paint people as ideologically motivated and impervious to all attempts at reason. I am shocked that these two rhetorical weapons have become standard fare, and even more shocked that scientists have allowed this to be done with their credibility on the line. Scientists should reject this stuff and rebuke anyone that attempts to use it while discussing their work.
It’s a bit ironic that one article on wuwt elicits an immediate rebuke from people who have ignored hundreds or thousands of -more- vicious rhetoric from others on their side and coconspirators in the media. If you really don’t like this, then follow Anthony’s lead by getting your own house in order. As far as I’m concerned, this just shows that alarmists are sensitive to the same types of rhetorical attacks they dish out routinely, and makes me think that more might finally impress upon them that they are the aggressors that need to reverse course.
Some people proudly announced that they didn’t read Tim Ball’s piece, and yet still were happy to comment on it. Shame on you.
I went back and re-read it. Yes, maybe it wasn’t a great idea to quote Hitler. But in no way did Ball call anyone ‘Nazis’. Pretty well everything he said about the IPCC is almost certainly true. It is very, very important that people understand the true nature of the IPCC, whether it is a paragon of scientific integrity or hopelessly corrupted by money, politics and green extremism. If we follow the IPCC’s advice to the bitter end, it will literally cost the earth. And, in my opinion, it will achieve absolutely nothing except human misery.
I would love to see these two scientists, and many more, engage in proper scientific debate with serious sceptics. But it probably won’t happen as the sceptics usually win easily when there is true debate.
I still have great respect for Anthony and WUWT, but his response to Tim’s piece has reduced it by a few notches. And, please, give Tim an opportunity to reply. And maybe start a useful debate with him and the two scientists. I would love to see that!
Chris
I had intended to comment on Tim Ball’s original article that it went over the top, with its immediate appeal to Hitler and the Nazis. Its a fair comment to invoke Godwin’s law.
Tim Ball has enough intellectual firepower to be able to find alternative ways of effective communication.
But there are double standards at work here of course. It is easier to be casually discriminatory and defammatory when you hold a mainstream establishment position. Thus use of the grossly defamatory term “deny-er” raises little reaction from any other than skeptical groups. This explains Roy Spencer’s frustration leading him to counterlabel users of the “d” word as “climate Na3is”.
The “warmists” are a large and very mixed population. There are the extremists who are actual fascists and even willing to admit this. But there is a much larger group for whom AGW support is a part of genuinely well-meaning environmental positivism. In attempting to win hearts and minds for climate skepticism / rationalism, we should aim at the second larger, moderate group, and ignore as far as possible the first. This means we need to moderate our language and approach.
“The “warmists” are a large and very mixed population.”
Indeed. Warmists: They enemy of my enemy is my warming brother.
The Warmists mix ranges from people desiring Power, to Climate (Alarmists) Scientists wanting more funding, to Eco Terrorists, to going Green corporate profiteers, to countries looking for grievance dollars, to actual foreign powers looking to take down their enemies (U.S., U.K., etc.), to control by One World government of U.N.
You forgot the largest group. Well meaning and intentioned people who sincerely want to “do the right thing” for the environment and their kids/grandkids. How do you politely tell someone they’ve been had, used and will be discarded along with all their efforts by those they trusted? It is like telling someone their skin color is turquoise. .
Tim did not use the words Naz! or Naz!sm rather he used a quote from a book to illustrate a point. Invoking Godwins law would be inaccurate in Tim’s case…however Betts, Edwards and Watts have started “the small lie” of claiming Tim maligned climate scientists by calling them the N word.
“This means we need to moderate our language and approach.”
Why? This is a war. Total war means you use whatever you have to beat down the enemy.
In this case, their junk science has been trashed, observations vs computer models – dead, the political agenda needs to be completely destroyed.
Cuddling up to the alarmunists will only allow them to continue down the path they are on. You need to stop the needless deaths associated with the stupid policy, stop the waste of funds feeding the beast. Expose the rot.
People are waking up and now is not the time to give in to the two-faced alarmists.
Kudo’s to Dr Tim Ball for writing about this cancer.
We need more open and honest dialogue and if it hurts, too bad.
Dr. Ball’s post in question will be remembered far longer than his other many good posts.
It was an own goal. It happens. Get over it.
So pick up, move in the right direction and keep on winning.
It is not the worst thing that could have been said, and if compared to the nastiness of unremarked climate obsessed claims about skeptics was not such a big deal.
But skeptics are the good guys in the social madness of climate obsession.
Good guys win by doing things the right way.
It was not an own goal It was an accurate portrayal of the political motivation of the statist proponents of CAGW.
Otmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC, is very direct:
“The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. . . . But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
“we often see people who are sceptical of climate science”
This is an arrogant statement because it assumes ownership of “climate science” by one group. Sceptics are not sceptical of “climate science”; how could they be, when a great number of climate scientists are themselves sceptical, as all proper scientists are? How could they be when climate science encompasses a wide array of theories involving the sea, the atmosphere, the sun, cosmic rays, clouds… But you conflate the term “climate science” with the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming. Sceptics are sceptical of certain THEORIES, not of climate science. Learn to accept that fact then you may start to understand the various sceptical positions a bit better.
I have always felt that the real climate scientists are the sceptics.
Thanks David and well put., i dont think anthony realised that that bridge built between establishment climate scientists and the lukewarmers at Tony B’s little get together was actualy a draw bridge controlled by the those who live in the manmade warming castle. Didnt Betts after that little party say disingenuously that sceptics there had begun to accept that the greenhouse effect was real and is this article an excuse to firmly shut the drawbridge in sceptics faces. If Betts and Edwards chose instead to come to watts up and show us their work i would have more respect for them
–“we often see people who are sceptical of climate science”
This is an arrogant statement because it assumes ownership of “climate science” by one group.–
I think it’s creative writing. They didn’t want to say “we often see people who are not believers of climate science.”
So when there a picture of herd walrus on beach- according to the climate science, these walrus are on the beach because of human emission of CO2- which is warming the world.
To be a believer is to believe that this is the climate science.
I have not read Prof. Ball’s post, but I personally would not trust people with titles like ‘Chair in Climate Impacts’. LOL!
Let me repeat here, if I may, a comment I made at Bishop Hill (Unthreaded) a few moments ago:
Got round to reading the post by Tim Ball at last: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/23/people-starting-to-ask-about-motive-for-massive-ipcc-deception/
I think Richard Betts and Tamsin Edwards have over-reacted to it. I think they are two people who bring some grace and decency to the climate ‘establishment’, and I admire them for that. But I do believe I admire Tim Ball a great deal more. His post makes what I think is a worthwhile contribution to the greatest puzzle of this horrible period of overblown alarmism about carbon dioxide we have been living through: how on earth did a handful of people, perhaps most notably Maurice Strong and his chums in the Club of Rome but no doubt there are others, have such a massive political success with their campaigning to demonise CO2 and, by association, industrial progress itself? That Tim Ball quotes one of the most evil socialists of the 20th century is not out of order. He and his small group also had dramatic political success, and in that case it has been one which has received a great deal of subsequent study, not least of the propaganda techniques used. The quote used reveals a basic contempt for ‘the masses’, noting our vulnerability. I hope that the Great Climate Scares of the last quarter of the 20th century will also receive a great deal of study, since they too have caused appreciable harm and may yet do a great deal more.
I’ve long wondered if MS is in China rightly advising or being advised of his rights.
==================
Oh, was that was the question.
I think the answer is media always want a cheap story.
Those guys are always complaining about the high costs of running news organization
So it’s sort of like you don’t know what to talk about, so you talk about the weather-
but of course it must bleed so it’s *scary* weather.
Billions of people are going to die and it’s the end of life as we know.
There things real scientists could twist to make them scary- climate scientist
as group tend to be more useless and therefore more desperate.
And all the past success with pseudo science of past scares indicated a way to get famous and rich
I suppose they also wanted the dashing Al Gore elected as US president,
so they wrote a book for him.
Thatcher wanted to end coal union strangle hold, so nuclear power was a way
to make electrical without CO2 emission. More nuclear power less monopoly
for coal electrical power generation. She later stated her regret of her part in this.
US Farmer wanted more government subsidies so we got the ethanol subsidies- which were
sold as way of reducing CO2 [which they don’t]. Also tried to sell that makes less dependent
on foreign oil [which is also a lie].
President Carter [the great idiot] started subsidizing solar power [again as solution to
energy imports- again, wrong and stupid].
Not sure about wind energy, but probably sold as it was better than solar energy- and that is almost plausible- but only because solar energy sucks badly. Particularly in most of the States in United States.
One thing about wind energy is it does blows in the winter, when you need the most power.
A context of solar and wind energy was the delusion that we were running out of fossil fuel,
so obviously the idiots didn’t want to support nuclear, and wanted the dream of natural and “free”
energy [idiocy squared].
As I said before, stupidity- tons of it, stacked
But as scam/religion the preachers were making a lots money. Al Gore made sizable
amount money for the cause [his bank account].
Though none of this could have happened without some help by the earth itself- 30 year warming [and 1998 El Nino] and following after the very cold Little Ice Age. I also think the defeat of idea that we entering into a Ice age [more pseudo science] helped the cause of “global warming”- a term once used to refer to the current 10,000 year warming trend [or the current interglacial or other past interglacial periods].
And the consumption of vast quality of various drugs also helped.
Now for sum of money we wasted that probably could paid to send starship to another star [not that this is a good idea]. What did we get?
Answer, vast corruption. And climate science halted. But it was a huge distraction if you value distracting the public attention from other matters they might imagine is important.
It seems that most of the angst is about Tim Ball’s use of the Nazi analogy, with people on both sides crying “Godwin’s law! Godwin’s Law!” (To paraphrase Captain Barbossa, it’s not really a law, it’s more of a guideline)
I think, if we’re honest with ourselves, we can all see one way in which this analogy is perfectly appropriate – just like WW2, this conflict can only end with complete victory on one side and total defeat on the other. Some individuals may defect from one side to the other (especially as the end approaches), but just as there was no negotiated settlement possible in 1945, there is no chance of any negotiated settlement between the two sides today. I think that reality is what scares people the most.
Pretty difficult to invoke Godwins Law when ‘Hitler or Nazism’ is mentioned at the start!
Wws. Sounds like you may be a WW2 buff. I read somewhere that one of the top German scientist that was working on the atomic bomb claimed ( after the war was over) that he was secretly working to disrupt it. He tried to restore his reputation but I don’t think it worked.
As to underlying motives, I think our society is displaying the return of a primitive belief that we humans by making sacrifices can assure ourselves of more favorable weather.
“… primitive belief that we humans by making sacrifices can assure ourselves of more favorable weather”
What AGW agenda wants it’s sheep to believe, while they Elitely sheer us of Green$.
As there is an illustration to this post with John Cleese, you might be interested in his view on political correctness. It is not about climate change but …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2851888/John-Cleese-blasts-political-correctness-protecting-select-groups-ridicule.html
There have always been three separate streams of consciousness in any discussion of climate. One stream deals with anything that could be scientifically related, and contains actual facts and numbers. The proxies belong in this stream, along with actual measurements. The second stream is the obvious political/monetary/power that is being deliberately channeled to or from various places and peoples. The third stream is the PlayStation modeling, and data manipulation, which may (or may not) refer over to the data stream, and is the interface through which the second stream justifies their actions.
It is very possible, if referring to the political/monetary/power stream, to discuss the stratagems of Hitler, Stalin, or even Roosevelt, as relevant comparisons to manipulating this stream. The other streams are similar. I would suggest that comments on climate should always be prefaced by which stream they are addressing, and should remain within that stream, thus simplifying discussion.
The matter seems simple enough to me. What profit for skeptics to prevent a civilized discussion? You will never defeat the hachet men and smear artists at their own game. Besides being impractical it is the moral low ground, why take that tact to no advantage or benefit?
For some of us maybe the answer is, because we’re still pissed off. That’s perfectly reasonable. I don’t intend to forget any of this; although I may forgive the more honest mainstream scientists who didn’t indulge in the PR, their professional credibility will always remain diminished in my eyes as a result. But so what, right? I’m still pissed off. I’ve seriously been labeled a conspiracy theorist, a science denier, a ‘big oil operative’, all that. I’ve been censored and spat on for standing by my convictions. I don’t want to let that go, I’d like for somebody to pay for that.
Yeah. Sweet dreams, it isn’t going to happen. Eventually, we have to figure out how to move forward and what we realistically hope to accomplish. As Anthony said,
We can move on or just continue to produce noise.
Unless and until the lies stop, there can be no dialog.
So, as long as any hatchetman or any smear artist; any John Cook or any Stephen Lewandowski anywhere elects to ‘lie’, there can be no dialog.
This is an utterly unrealistic condition to hold out for. If you accept this then for all intents and purposes you accept defeat, that you can accomplish nothing. Okay, fine. Why post here? To make noise?
It borders on the insane to add a comment to a thread of this length, but I’m not going to let that stop me….
The Alarmist propaganda ploy to describe sceptics as ‘Deniers’ seems to me to have two clear purposes.
The first is that of a schoolboy bully: “Anyone who disagrees with me is an XXXX”. Choose your epithet. The purpose is to shut down debate, to persuade the weak minded to stay quiet because they don’t want to be called an ‘XXXX’. This serves their purpose because a rational look at the facts shows that, accepting the science, the policies being advocated are wildly extreme. The reason they are extreme is that the underlying environmentalist agenda is against growth and consumption, not CO2 – but reducing CO2 requires reducing energy consumption, so it will do as a pretext. A rational view will show that we have decades to solve the technical problems, during which time we don’t need to make people poor.
The use of the term ‘Denier’ has a second purpose. It pisses people off, rather mightily and justifiably. As a result, the sceptic becomes as mad as hell. No matter the virtue of her arguments, she seems like a crazy eccentric, with the alarmist on the side of mainstream, sweet reason, holocaust-affirming sanity. In other words, this is a device designed to make us behave badly to put us in a poor light.
Bottom line: to combat this, quietly expose the tactic as a device to stifle debate, and above all, don’t rise to the bait. They can’t win the argument, but a name-calling contest is always going to be a toss-up.
R.
The topic reflects a frustration I’ve been having with the skeptic blogs. The recent election results should have signaled an end to non-stop advocacy and the beginning of the execution phase of the skeptic movement. Enough minds have been swayed – that effort can go into maintenance mode. The fresh energy has to be to help define policy going forward.
There are but two precious years before the next congressional elections and there will also be a presidential election at that time and here we are wasting our time still trying to sway public opinion. Stop it! The public has spoken. We won the hearts and minds of the voters. Turn quickly to policy issues – you all surely must realize the CAGW crowd is retrenching and fortifying not only their agenda but will use the remaining influence until the last grant dollar is spent. It is well past time to think and act politically. Because their job is done and damn well done at that this will probably mean less will be heard or needed from Tim Ball and Bob Tisdale and others from the pure science community and more will be heard from the people at GWPF and other blogs from the political category seen in the right sidebar. Dr. Curry is already out front with this.
WUWT is in the best possible position to retool and focus on reshaping policy, defining funding targets, and getting the message to the MSM if the right politically trained leadership steps forward. This is not the time to continue playing ‘got your nose’ with Mann and the boyz and it would be a travesty if that continues at the expense of influencing policy.
A Grand New Skeptic Party was not on my ballot. Or on anybody else’s ballot.
When Big Governments lie, the lies that come out are… Big by nature. I’m not sure what else there is to discuss about it. That’s what they do.
Andrew