Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Our old friend John Cook thinks climate skeptics have to be psychologically “inoculated”, to help reeducate us into accepting climate science, without triggering a reflexive “denial” response.
The science for climate change only feeds the denial: how do you beat that?
As the scientific consensus for climate change has strengthened over the past decade, the arguments against the science of climate change have been on the increase.
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How to get the right message out
There’s a great deal of research into how to communicate science more effectively and science communication should be evidence-based. But scientists and science communicators cannot afford to ignore the potential of misinformation to undermine good science communication.
One way to reduce the influence of misinformation is inoculation: we can stop the spread of science denial by exposing people to a weak form of science denial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3YngyVdyrI
The findings of psychology underscore the importance of this new study into the production of misinformation by conservative think-tanks. To paraphrase the authors, the era of science denial is not over. Climate science communicators would be prudent not to start waving a “mission accomplished” banner just yet.
One question John – have you tried looking in the mirror?
Climate models have demonstrated no skill whatsoever at predicting the climate. There has been no improvement in the embarrassingly broad range of climate sensitivity predictions, which strongly suggests models are very incomplete, that scientists are having a hard time reconciling models with reality.
John, what is the source of your overwhelming confidence in your position? Why do you ignore the growing discrepancy between models and observations? Could it be, that you are the one who is clinging desperately to climate fallacies, in the face of a growing body of adverse evidence?
John Cook, neo-Nazi:
Does he really want to re-introduce reeducation camps? Concentration camps?
Photo is shopped.
cephus0 on January 27, 2016 at 11:03 am
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cephus0,
Indeed the photo of John Cook all dressed up like that was photo-shopped. It was photo-shopped by some of Cook’s inner circle of SkS supporters and contributors. Maybe John Cook was aware they did it and he did not stop them.
Apparently they thought it was funny. They have a sense of humor that is, well …. uhm . . . . noir/kinky . . .
John
Really? Might it qualify as an editorial cartoon?
Awe, comments are closed on Mr Cook’s cute little videos. I guess laymen shouldn’t be expected to be open to criticism, just scientists.
joelobryan wrote “My understanding of AGW CO2 GHG theory is that is predicts to warm the LTL faster than the surface as pCO2 increases. Which of course is not observed in any measurement data set.”
Every time I take my eye off the ball for a nanosecond or so I find that some wunderkind modeler has written a brand new model which turns data sets contrary to the party line on their heads. For some time I was under the impression that the LT data from satellites and radiosondes showed no ‘hot spot’ contrary to the predictions of the agw hypothesis. Now people tell me that there is indeed such confirmatory data and the hot spot is right where it was predicted to be and at exactly the right temperature to confirm the hypothesis. Could someone here confirm or otherwise what the position is wrt LT hot spots. TIA
I haven’t seen that announced around here. Quite the contrary, it has been debunked.
Thanks Ernest and I’ll dig around some more …
There was a paper a few years ago that claimed to have found the missing hot spot using balloon data. It didn’t however use the actual temperatures measured with those balloons (which don’t show the hot spot) but instead modeled the hot spot using adjusted temperature proxies based on wind speed.
Imagine if you wanted to know how fast a car was going and you made up a model based on the engine temperature gauge. Now imagine that your temp gauge model gives you a figure 15 mph lower then your speedometer but you use the model instead because it fits better with your opinion. Finally imagine trying to argue with the cop who pulled you over for speeding that his radar gun, which showed a speed very close to your speedometer, is wrong because your temp gauge model better matches your assumptions.
That’s what that paper was like. And no, most climate skeptics didn’t fall for it. But an amazing number of the Climate Faithful sure did.
Thanks for that and a small wager on there being yet another model at the bottom of it wouldn’t have been unreasonable. I use FE modeling extensively in my own work but these jokers have turned the whole concept of modeling into an art form for propagating lies. Too disgusting for words really.
“Our old friend John Cook thinks climate sceptics have to be psychologically “inoculated”, to help re-educate us into accepting climate science, without triggering a reflexive “denial” response.”
Cue a Doctor Who Dalek voice:
“YOU. WILL. BELIEVE!”
Problem: The lies aren’t working.
Solution: Tell smaller lies, and work your way up.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
+10
John Cook is way too late with epistemological inoculation recommendations.
I have long been inoculated epistemologically in the area of science by Feynman, Roger Bacon** and Einstein in order of lessening inoculation potency. They inoculated me against your pre-science epistemology. Pre-science epistemology is the necessary and sufficient basis of pseudo-science.
So, I am a fundamental skeptic of the hypothesis of the existence of independent objectively corroborated and unambiguously significant global warming from burning fossil fuels. (see Note below)
Sayonara.
** 13th century Roger Bacon heavily influenced by Aristotle & Alhazen
Note: I leave aside for another discussion, but just for the moment, the irrational accompanying hypothesis that global warming, per se, on the whole causes net harm.
John
Well said! Worth copying and posting on the wall. Thanks. /Mr Lynn
L. E. Joiner on January 27, 2016 at 2:08 pm
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L.E.Joiner,
You are kind to say that. I try, but always could use a good editor prior to posting. Don’t a lot of us?
John
John— Didn’t notice any problems with your post. I really like your point that some of us have been “inoculated epistemologically” with the Scientific Method, which will naturally make us skeptics of any empirical claim, and immune to the blandishments of dogma—of any kind. That is exactly the counter to the propaganda techniques that this Cook person wants to inflict upon our youth.
And of course, that’s the solution: if we teach the principles of scientific inquiry, the young will be immune to the purveyors of pseudo-science and the ideology of True Believers.
The only caveat is that scientific inoculation seems to have failed the current generation, too many of whom zealously and uncritically accept the claims of the CAGW Climatists. We need to ask how they have come to be so uncritical—peer pressure? job pressure? It is a mystery.
/Mr Lynn
If the consensus is growing, why do these people feel the need to do all kinds of things to skeptics? The truth is they have thrown so much crap at the public that if the wanna be puppet masters could make skeptics see the light we would simply add them to the list of scientists and politicians we distrust immensely.
If the U.S. public were allowed to see how winter is progressing in the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps it might become outraged at the governments CAGW claim that it is getting hotter.
Wait! Isn’t this “inoculation” business just another marketing ploy?
Dear Mr Cook,
My skepticism has nothing to do with you and your peers “message.” I am skeptical because evidence shows there have been many past natural warming periods identical to the current one. Logic demands I wonder if the current warming is natural too. Given that there is no increasing weather disasters, I’m not even sure if some amount of warming is bad in the first place. The best global temp data from satellites shows very little warming while ever increasing emission occur. At the very least, direct observation by satellites is telling us the climate is not very sensitive to CO2. Given the quality of the data, this observation, is hardly even controversial to those being honest with the facts.
If you want to convince skeptics, address these issues rather than trying to con us.
Dave in Canmore
Not so sure satellites are a direct measurement of temperature, but I get your point. They cover more area and match balloon data.
Thermometers don’t provide direct measurement of liquid or gaz temp either. They provide a measurement of their own temp, which is assumed to be the same as the one of the fluid, cause equilibrium cause slow change, few measurement.
It is a good indirect measurement of the fluid.
It is a proxy for the region of air around the station.
“One way to reduce the influence of misinformation is inoculation: we can stop the spread of science denial by exposing people to a weak form of science denial.”
Whazzat? I went to the original article, and it still doesn’t make any sense. The thinking is hopelessly muddled. It just looks to me like an application of Goebbels’ old adage that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
Maybe that article gives us a peek inside the thought processes of people who believe in AGW, i.e. the people who believe in it have no ability for rational thought.
My interpretation is if they present people with a deliberately broken (“weak”) version of skeptic arguments, they can train them to instinctively reject the real argument, without considering it in detail.
+100
Thanks for the article!
Eric,
“My interpretation is if they present people with a deliberately broken (“weak”) version of skeptic arguments, they can train them to instinctively reject the real argument, without considering it in detail.”
I suspect it goes beyond that particular tactic, to include just about any form denying the infallibility of establishment science. (as in Siants, which is to say anything at all that the mass media presents as “the science”). Note the phrasing please;
“One way to reduce the influence of misinformation is inoculation: we can stop the spread of science denial by exposing people to a weak form of science denial.”
It’s “Siants” denial he is trying to help contain, essentially, I believe, as there is a danger the powers that be are aware of, involving people losing blind faith in whatever the mass media presents as “the science”. I am quite sure that a good deal of what has become generally accepted as scientific fact, is actually just the take on scientific evidence that the “powers that be” want us to believe is “settled science”.
That’s why it’s not made clear in the full article, I suspect. It’s not what he (they) want you (us) to think about carefully . . As in; What else has been presented to me by the PTB as “settled science”: which might actually be nothing of the kind?
“One way to reduce the influence of misinformation is inoculation: we can stop the spread of science denial by exposing people to a weak form of science denial.”
Here’s another problem with that whole idea. He THINKS skeptics are “infected” with “science denial”. But we aren’t. We LOVE science. Embrace science. Trust actual science. It’s the crap HE and other “experts” keep trying to sell us as if it were science, that we refuse to accept.
HE and his co-monkeys have declared that we have a disease we do not have in the first place, and now want to “innoculate” others against getting that imaginary disease! It’s literally as stupid as claiming that only people with purple polka dot disease would ignore him and everything that he and his “cohorts” are saying! And, because it seems like more and more people are catching purple polka dot disease, he’s come up with a method to “prevent” other people from getting it, by giving them a small exposure to it.
It is absolutely and utterly staggering that someone who claims to be a scientist, AND a psychologist can be that bat crap crazy and get published by actual academic journals. We are living in the Emerald City.
I think we need more NHS treatment for people who suffer from climate anxiety syndrome. This is a psychological phenomenon has become more widespread in recent years, and now there are large numbers of people who are convinced that the world will soon come to an end and that humans are the cause. In extreme cases they demand that people who don’t share their delusions should be jailed, branded with tattoos, or even shot as traitors. This syndrome takes no account of class or background, but afflicts people from office clerks and teachers right up to top politicians and academics. The one thing they have in common is a sense of impending doom which you can not dispel however much you reason with them. This feature also applies to paranoics, so it is obviously a closely related syndrome. Maybe the same treatments would help these poor lost souls.
But of course the CAGW/CACC fanatics won’t want to treat the poor victims of climate fear. That’s what they’re trying to create: anxiety, fear, despair—and hatred of the heretics who don’t believe as they do.
/Mr Lynn
Re-education camps here we come.
Watch the whole series of the UQx DENIAL 101 videos on youtube and replace ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Climate Change Deniers’ with Flat Earth and Flat Earth Deniers, then they’re even more fun to watch.
“[W]e can stop the spread of science denial by exposing people to a weak form of science denial.”
It sound like Mr. Cook wants the Warmists to promulgate a skeptic straw man which they can knock down and claim victory over for the benefit of people at the margins. Uncharitably describing one’s opponents’ position and refusing to engage with their strongest arguments is not the most honest way to go about a debate, nor does it indicate much confidence in one’s own position. It is, however, an apt description of what goes on at Skeptical Science.
well, and that is the fallacy of the cook book, saying
‘A typical response of scientists to science denial is to teach more science.’
when it’s
‘A typical response of green believers to reality is to ever more makebelieve.’
ghastly read, anyway.
Should repair my mistake with postmodern
well, and that is the fallacy of the cook book, saying
‘A typical response of scientists to science denial is to teach more science.’
when it’s
‘A typical response of green believers to reality is coccuning in ever more makebelieve.’
mod, Inoculation Theory,
a wasp’s nest !
Tough Standing !
Cheers – Hans