Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study suggests that if people are psychologically “inoculated” with deliberately “weakened” versions of climate skeptic arguments, they are more likely to reject real skeptic positions.
The Press Release;
Psychological ‘vaccine’ could help immunize public against ‘fake news’ on climate change
Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz,Seth Rosenthal, Edward Maibach
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
In medicine, vaccinating against a virus involves exposing a body to a weakened version of the threat, enough to build a tolerance.
Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help “inoculate” the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of ‘fake news’ websites propagating myths about climate change.
A new study compared reactions to a well-known climate change fact with those to a popular misinformation campaign. When presented consecutively, the false material completely cancelled out the accurate statement in people’s minds – opinions ended up back where they started.
Researchers then added a small dose of misinformation to delivery of the climate change fact, by briefly introducing people to distortion tactics used by certain groups. This “inoculation” helped shift and hold opinions closer to the truth – despite the follow-up exposure to ‘fake news’.
The study on US attitudes found the inoculation technique shifted the climate change opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike.
Published in the journal Global Challenges, the study was conducted by researchers from the universities of Cambridge, UK, Yale and George Mason, US. It is one of the first on ‘inoculation theory’ to try and replicate a ‘real world’ scenario of conflicting information on a highly politicised subject.
“Misinformation can be sticky, spreading and replicating like a virus,” says lead author Dr Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist from the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.
“We wanted to see if we could find a ‘vaccine’ by pre-emptively exposing people to a small amount of the type of misinformation they might experience. A warning that helps preserve the facts.
“The idea is to provide a cognitive repertoire that helps build up resistance to misinformation, so the next time people come across it they are less susceptible.”
To find the most compelling climate change falsehood currently influencing public opinion, van der Linden and colleagues tested popular statements from corners of the internet on a nationally representative sample of US citizens, with each one rated for familiarity and persuasiveness.
The winner: the assertion that there is no consensus among scientists, apparently supported by the Oregon Global Warming Petition Project. This website claims to hold a petition signed by “over 31,000 American scientists” stating there is no evidence that human CO2 release will cause climate change.
The study also used the accurate statement that “97% of scientists agree on manmade climate change”. Prior work by van der Linden has shown this fact about scientific consensus is an effective ‘gateway’ for public acceptance of climate change.
In a disguised experiment, researchers tested the opposing statements on over 2,000 participants across the US spectrum of age, education, gender and politics using the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk.
In order to gauge shifts in opinion, each participant was asked to estimate current levels of scientific agreement on climate change throughout the study.
Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement – an average of 20 percentage points. Those shown only misinformation (a screenshot of the Oregon petition website) dropped their belief in a scientific consensus by 9 percentage points.
Some participants were shown the accurate pie chart followed by the erroneous Oregon petition. The researchers were surprised to find the two neutralised each other (a tiny difference of 0.5 percentage points).
“It’s uncomfortable to think that misinformation is so potent in our society,” says van der Linden. “A lot of people’s attitudes toward climate change aren’t very firm. They are aware there is a debate going on, but aren’t necessarily sure what to believe. Conflicting messages can leave them feeling back at square one.”
Alongside the consensus fact, two groups in the study were randomly given ‘vaccines’:
A general inoculation, consisting of a warning that “some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try and convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists”.
A detailed inoculation that picks apart the Oregon petition specifically. For example, by highlighting some of the signatories are fraudulent, such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls, and less than 1% of signatories have backgrounds in climate science.
For those ‘inoculated’ with this extra data, the misinformation that followed did not cancel out the accurate message.
The general inoculation saw an average opinion shift of 6.5 percentage points towards acceptance of the climate science consensus, despite exposure to fake news.
When the detailed inoculation was added to the general, it was almost 13 percentage points – two-thirds of the effect seen when participants were just given the consensus fact.
The research team point out that tobacco and fossil fuel companies have used psychological inoculation in the past to sow seeds of doubt, and to undermine scientific consensus in the public consciousness.
They say the latest study demonstrates that such techniques can be partially “reversed” to promote scientific consensus, and work in favour of the public good.
The researchers also analysed the results in terms of political parties. Before inoculation, the fake negated the factual for both Democrats and Independents. For Republicans, the fake actually overrode the facts by 9 percentage points.
However, following inoculation, the positive effects of the accurate information were preserved across all parties to match the average findings (around a third with just general inoculation; two-thirds with detailed).
“We found that inoculation messages were equally effective in shifting the opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats in a direction consistent with the conclusions of climate science,” says van der Linden.
“What’s striking is that, on average, we found no backfire effect to inoculation messages among groups predisposed to reject climate science, they didn’t seem to retreat into conspiracy theories.
“There will always be people completely resistant to change, but we tend to find there is room for most people to change their minds, even just a little.”
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/uoc-pc011917.php
The Abstract of the study;
Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision-making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested-interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized ādisinformation campaigns,ā identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement (āconsensusā) among experts about the reality of human-caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre-emptively protect (āinoculateā) public attitudes about climate change against real-world misinformation.
Read more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gch2.201600008/full
I was curious about exactly how the inoculation is performed, the following from the full study is revealing;
… The rate of cultural transmission, or infection, may be slowed through a process known as attitudinal inoculation. In medicine, resistance to a virus can be conferred by exposing someone to a weakened version of the virus (a vaccine)āstrong enough to trigger a response (i.e., the production of antibodies), but not so strong as to overwhelm the body’s immune system. The socialāpsychological theory of attitudinal inoculation[56] follows a similar logic: A threat is introduced by forewarning people that they may be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs or behaviors. Then, one or more (weakened) examples of that information are presented and directly refuted in a process called ārefutational pre-emptionā or āprebunking.ā[14] In short, attitudinal resistance is conferred by pre-emptively highlighting false claims and refuting potential counterarguments. …
Read more: Same link as above
In the supplemental information document, the study authors provide an example of inoculation. They authors present the Oregon Petition claim “31,487 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs“, along with an image of Physics Giant Edward Teller’s Oregon Petition signature (see image at the top of this post), followed by the following “counterargument”.
General (In1) and Detailed (In2) Inoculation Messages
General: Nearly all climate scientistsā97%āhave concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. Some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try to convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists. However, scientific research has found that among climate scientists āthere is virtually no disagreement that humans are causing climate changeā.
Detailed: One such politically motivated group claims to have collected signatures from over 31,000 āscientistsā (including over 9,000 who hold Ph.D.ās) on a petition urging the U.S. government to reject any limits on greenhouse gas emissions because; āthere 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 Earthās atmosphere and disruption of Earthās climate.ā They claim that these signatures prove that there is no scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
This may sound convincing at first. However, several independent investigations have concluded that the āPetition Projectā is extremely misleading. For instance, many of the signatures on the petition are fake (for example, past signatories have included the long- deceased Charles Darwin, members of the Spice Girls, and fictional characters from Star Wars). Also, although 31,000 may seem like a large number, it actually represents less than 0.3% of all US science graduates (a tiny fraction). Further, nearly all of the legitimate signers have no expertise in climate science at all. In fact, less than 1% of those who signed the petition claim to have any background in Climate or Atmospheric Science. Simply calling yourself a āscientistā does not make someone an expert in climate science. By contrast, 97% of actual climate scientists, agree that human-caused climate change is happening.
In my opinion this counter argument is deeply misleading.
- There is no mention that the 97% consensus claim is based on a disputed study.
- There is no mention of who Edward Teller is. As a skeptic I don’t defer to anyone’s authority, even Edward Teller doesn’t get a free pass. But having someone like Teller onboard surely means that the position he supports is worthy of closer examination.
- Suggesting that people from fields related to climate science have no right to criticise how climate science is conducted is ridiculous. For example, excluding input from non-climate scientists would exclude criticism from statisticians, who frequently object to the sloppy use of statistics by non-statisticians. Statistics matters – in scientific studies which rely on statistical analysis, sloppy use of statistics can lead to erroneous conclusions.
Are the authors aware of these flaws in their counterargument? Quite possibly – but their intention with their study was to test the impact of deliberately weakened skeptic positions, to test their “inoculation” theory, not to educate people about climate change.
The moral premise of this study is my most serious concern – it is not OK to play increasingly devious psychological tricks on people to win support. Of course it is possible to convince more people by providing them with a distorted, “weakened” version of your opponent’s position, which is what “inoculation” theory seems to be about – but that doesn’t make it right.
Well done Eric, a much better version than I just submitted today! I also had a issue with using psychological tools to do harm. As a recent psych graduate I am fully aware of the benefits good practice can bring people trying to cope with hard times, however, I am also aware of the utility in these tools being used for disingenuous ends.
Voltron, love to read your take as a psych graduate on why climate alarmists are so blind to counter-evidence for their belief system. If you can get your position published in a peer reviewed journal, it would attract a lot of attention.
It would probably be career suicide too haha. I found in my 4 years that there were a number of teaching staff who were very much invested in climate change and its psychological impact on the great unwashed. There is a lot of money to be made there, as I can guess in the current political climate that attracting funding for CAGW is far easier than say trying to get ethical approval for some sort of neurocognitive trial involving at-risk groups like individuals with PTSD or acquired brain injury. The power imbalance was obvious – I believe one student mentioned some dissenting opinion about climate change in a lecture and received a withering comment to silence the matter for all time. Very touchy topic. You would have to be mad to publicly question the authority whilst studying. The large personalities grade your work, remember. Better to have friends than enemies, thus regurgitate what you have been given and all is well.
The staggering thing is that these people pride themselves on being fantastic statisticians and the most critical, sceptical and clear-thinking individuals in academia. In most instances, they ARE very gifted, but at the end of the day, they are human and just as susceptible to inherent biases as the rest of us.
Perhaps with a bit of distance from graduating I will endeavour to make some strides into the study you’ve mentioned. No doubt I’ll be lumped in with the other heretics and frozen at the stake (burning releases CO2).
Please don’t do anything which would harm your career.
This is exactly why some people find it necessary to use pseudos on the internet rather than to accept being cowered into silence for fear of reprisal for AGW zealots at work or elsewhere.
Oh my ! We would not want anyone to be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs do we. That may involve something unhealthy, like SCIENCE.
“A threat is introduced by forewarning people that they may be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs or behaviors.”
Have you noticed that nobody ever expects the very next statement to be a falsehood. And yet in this study it was. Like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the nice man says “Trust nobody.” So why are we surprised when he turns out to be the villain?
“The staggering thing is that these people pride themselves on being fantastic statisticians and the most critical, sceptical and clear-thinking individuals in academia.”
Sorry Voltron, but I have to laugh at that… The head of the psychology department where I went to school back in the ’60s once told the class that: “all psychology majors are either alcoholics, schizophrenics or sex maniacs.” And, I’m afraid I have met very few exceptions in the 50 some odd years since then.
We need increased funding for study of Cluster B, which we are seeing everywhere on the left.
Voltron, I apologize for being too lazy to look up the exact quote, but I recall Milton Friedman observing that the only people with true freedom of speech are tenured professors on the verge of retirement. IIRC that was in the ’80’s, so nothing has really changed.
Has anyone filed an ethics complaint? Seems to me they harmed the subjects of this experiment.
Yes, thinking kills! Save the children.
If they NEED to use “psyops” for convincing, it’s obvious their “argument” won’t stand the light of Truth. This is headed for last-gasp land–fast!
It’s more like it’s headed for the “last gasp landfill.”
The effect is known as “anchoring” and was explored by psychologist Daniel Kahneman (Nobel prize winner in Economics) and his late colleague, Amos Tversky. They found that decision-making is not always rational (exclusively fact-based) but can be influenced by a planted suggestion, even suggestions that have little or nothing to do with the issue in question. People tend to substitute their impressions about things for facts when making a judgement. If the impressions are inaccurate, it can lead to a bad decision. They will vote for a politician, for example, who looks trustworthy or telegenic, even thought the policies he advocates are disadvantageous to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
Several Republican senators came to mind when I read your post. Your last statement completely explains why rhinos keep getting elected despite their progressivism.
Hope and Change.
I recognised that one from day one. I was screaming at the television asking “what does he hope for, and what does he want to change?”.
They are definitely on to something here. Unfortunately, when presented with wild warmist claims the inoculation is usually in the other direction.
The problem with this statement is the use of the word “caused”
97% of the scientists agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that additional anthropogenic greenhouse gasses will tend to warm the atmosphere to some extent but its a leap from that to “caused” the observed warming/change and 97% of scientists (eg from Cook et al) dont say that.
My thoughts too,
Did the researchers deploy the innoculation that the 97% discarded the volume of papers that ignored climate change and then used bait and switch to apply the results for “Humans may have a theoretical impact on climate EG like UHI – That even I would agree with” and then presented THAT statistical manipulation as if all those people also agreed that the warming was Manmade, substantial and dangerous. Did they present the innoculation that when properly accounted against the conventional thesis that climate change is Human Caused, substantial, and dangerous the percentage consensus found in the cook study was only 0.3%. Did they present the innoculation that a number of authors accounted as agreeing with the concensus disputed that assertion. Did they present the innoculating fact that science doesn’t care about consensus on facts, but only about the observed facts themselves.
It’s very interesting that people can be innoculated from the 97% consensus lie by the truth of how that consensus was fabricated – the truth will out and all.
This “Study” leaves out all the confounding factors and fails to assess innoculation in context. The context of the fact that there are a dozen “prebunking” truths about the 97% consensus that the “Public” need to know before they can assert that they have countered defection from the consensus.
What is more difficult to understand is that the designers of this psychological experiment were obviously
unable to see the problems in the 97% methodology.
They probably took it straight from the Democrats and Obama, who swallowed it in droves.
This then raises the question’How robust is the statistical analysis of their data?’
It’s a pity they screwed with so many people to test them on dubious ‘facts’.
The creator of this fake study is a German named Professor van der Linden and he runs the Center For Climate Change Communication. Ergo: he is a fraud.
the 97% narrative was an enormous success.
as we can see, people are still discussing it – so it is still working.
http://imgur.com/N7bB2np
but the cleverest trick lew pulled was the ‘conspiracy ideation’ gambit.
it was similar to poking someone with sharp sticks to see if they show hostility- so they can squeal about how hostile.
that’s some major league trolling.
97% – it could have just as easily have been 100% if they’d wanted but….
100% no-one would have believed it as it is the province of dictators.
99% has the same problem dressed up.
98% something about even numbers doesn’t quite work.
97% is perfect!
It’s all manipulation of the unwary.
Obama upped it to 99% but that was not repeated.
anybody know off hand which paper was the other 3% ?
The problem arises from restricting trusted “expertise” on climate only to those who identify as “Climate Scientists”.
Climate Scientists have chosen that career becasue they think the field is importabnt. If they thought Climate Change was of low impact then they would not have chosen that career. They would have done something they thought important. Therefore, Climate Scientists will have a bias towards an extreme view. Other expertise is required to assess their bias. Other expertise and assessment of physical evidence, of course.
The 97% line is exactly the same argument as “God exists because most Priests say so”. Priests spend far more time studying theology than lay people – they are relatively expert. But if they didn’t believe in God, why would they have become Priests?
This doesn’t mean that God does not exist or that Anthropogenc Global Warming is harmless.
It just means that the argument for those positions is rubbish.
+10
This is a better argument against the Consensus than saying that science is not a democracy. It ought to be used more often.
If you look at where the “97% are in agreement” on climate came from, there’s actually a far greater percent that believe in UFO’s.
All depends on how you define “god”. When someone asks me if I “believe in god” I always ask “god as defined how?” and they are stumped.
John, why is it necessary to define God? I can be wrong about my preferred revelation with atheists being right. If they disproved the existence of Genesha, or found a signed confession from Yeshua Ben Yusuf of Galillee that he made the whole thing up, so? Conversely, if God confirmed that he is the same around the world but revealed himself through culturally applicable fables through hand picked story tellers, that doesn’t make them less interesting.
God for all practical purposes is defined as a steering intelligence of the solar system of sufficient development as to be indistinguishable from omniscient and all powerful to a casual human observer. He may be Captain Picard or he may be genuinely the creator of the universe, as long as he’s actively influencing events.
I presume that the ‘argument’ about priests and God is a figment of M Courtney’s imagination.
Alba. Yes.
I take credit for this argument.
Can you find a flaw in it?
John Boles,
“When someone asks me if I ābelieve in godā I always ask āgod as defined how?ā and they are stumped.”
Oh . . perhaps that’s because they don’t feel like being jerked around by some lightweight playing rhetorical games. If you believe in any god, you’d be the logical one to define it, not them . . Seriously, I wouldn’t be bragging about ducking people around for kicks, kid.
M Courtney,
I think it’s a fine analogy, but I’d be careful about this sort of thing;
“But if they didnāt believe in God, why would they have become Priests?”
There are other potential reasons for espousing something than actual belief. I seriously doubt that all those who espouse the CAGW actually believe in it . . and I seriously doubt that all those who claim to believe in God actually do . .
John Knight, So true.
But the majority of people, in any line, do not dedicate their lives to hypocrisy.
Some do, true.
But about 97% are sincere.
In days gone by, the warmists would buttress their 97% argument by drawing a comparison with the medical profession.
Theyād say āif 97% of doctors diagnosed you with cancer, the chances are pretty high that you had cancer.ā
Theyād buttress the āClimate Scientist are expertsā angle by saying āif you want advice on plumbing, talk to a plumber; if you want advice on the climate, talk to a climate scientistā.
Theyād buttress the causation uncertainty issue with a long winded comparison to the link between smoking and cancer. This results in their justification for saying that man is causing the warming.
Itās also the reasoning that underpins the notion that sceptics use ātobacco industry tactics to undermine science,ā and hence the demonisation of the oil/coal industry as well as sceptics – a twofer.
I havenāt seen it done but I expect theyād buttress the biased scientist issue by saying that doctors go into medicine because they have an aptitude as well as a calling to do something positive for community health or some such . . perhaps even a rise to a specialist within the field.
Itās all sophistry, of course, but to the untrained eye and when printed in a newspaper article, it carried some weight – still does.
no the problem is 97% because its BS , a little maths tells you to know what percentage a sub-group is of a whole group you must have an idea of the size of the whole group .
Now even if you ignore the fact that climate ‘scientists’ is a term used as a label for people with no scientific training such has fail politicians and pop-psychologists. The reality is there is no known value for this whole group , so its impossible to any level of accuracy worth a dam to give a percentage for a sub-group .
Cooks great ‘trick ‘ was to sell this claim when in reality all he hand to offer it was a hand full of papers ‘carefully selected ‘ , given the number in the area in really was a hand full, based on poor research methodology from people who boasted about ‘fixing ‘ the results .
In all it was the type of research that is any decent science would have been thrown out , if handing in as essay by an undergraduate, but then this is not by any means a decent science its an area where the PR value of your work means you really can dump all over good academic practice and be well rewarded for doing so.
The whole 97% is a pile of dug , that even AGW skeptics give it value sadly shows how good a snow job Cook and friends did .
Indeed and the emphasis should be on the sell aspect
The SkS kidz were talking about the proposed marketing/promotion tactics on their forum prior to the āstudyā even being undertaken. i.e. the result was a foregone conclusion.
Of course, how a study like this would require, let alone pass, peer review is another question, but pass it did.
Iād have thought thereās ample grounds to see it retracted.
“The problem with this statement is the use of the word ’caused'”
The other problem is “of scientists”, including computer scientists, geologists, and so on.
To arrive at 97 percent you remove all but 3 percent of the dissenters by carefully defining what constitutes a scientist.
You have to realise that the 97% concensus claim can be restated as: “73 out of 75 scientists who met Lew’s criteria agreed ……” It is part of the dishonesty of warmists to misrepresent the 97% of Lewandovsky’s so-called study as 97% of all scientists.
Or review what questions they were asked and the answers they were lead into.
Just the questions and responses.
Using Cook et al.2013 , Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 & AMS survey Stenhouse et al., 2014 as basis to the 97%.
So answering the questions –
1) most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic?
2) When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
3) Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
4) Regardless of the cause, do you think that global warming is happening?
5) How sure are you that global warming (a. is /b. is not) happening?
Answers and questions use generalized words of most, think, significant, contributing and no values or significance is asked for. No where is proof or dates or amounts or data of +/- estimates required and did you see CO2 anywhere?
Do these questions really provide the answer that; stopping man-made, catastrophizing, CO2 control knob, ever increasing (global warming / climate change / disruption / weirding ) [pick 1 or more], which can only be prevented by higher taxes, more regulations and a loss of personal freedom will actually keep us all from floating down the River Styx in a handbasket?
Isn’t the problem that they substituted “climate change” for “some uncertain amount of warming”? When did the climate ever not change?
No the problem with the statement is “climate scientists”. The factoid begins by defining climate scientists as those who have got5ten on the CAGW gravy train, and defining them as climate scientists. It excludes skeptics with relevant skills who do not drink the kool-aid. A Roger Pilek, Jr. who has been driven from the camp, will not be deemed to be a climate scientist.
A further problem is that 97% of people who believe anything do not make the object of their belief true or science.
As Einstein famously said about the Nazi tract titled “Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)”, they would have only needed one if he were correct.
Human-caused climate change is happening and it’s measured in the thousands of nanodegrees since 1900.
They might be psychologically “innoculated” … that is until they get their electric, oil heat, or nat gas utility bills and realize the econutters are coming for their wallet.
I was about to write something similar. The sort of scam that nudges a person’s opinion slightly are never going to work against the massive costs involved.
TinyCO2: Right on! Just ask the residents of Ontario who are faced with peak hour electricity rates that are double those of neighbouring Quebec. I’m sure they are gladly accepting them while lying awake nights worrying about what will happen 100 years from now if the temperature creeps up 2 degrees.
The alarmist arguments have been nothing but weak, and it doesn’t appear to be helping CAGW acceptance any…
One simple truth undermines van der Linden, et al, 2017 and the entire concept of climate doom:
if facts and data pointed to the catastrophe they claim, there would be no need for indoctrination, or inoculation.
If the alarmists really believed their own predictions there would be a Plan B, for basic survival in case China or India kept on emitting greenhous gases. I have seen no mention of funding of any work to mitigate the effects of continued warming. Either they are totally confident they will stop climate change, or they do not expect the change to be catastrophic. Neither option aligns with their public warnings.
Goebbels would have been impressed.
+1,000 More Klimat Propaganda.
Yes, I think so. He would have asked for their card and a meeting to hear more about their insights. Such expertise cannot be overlooked.
This is Goebbels.
My 1st thought too Ian.
Glad I read down the comments a bit to see it has also occurred to you.
š
You’re not even mentioning the greatest stupidity in this study. The claim of the Oregon Petition of a lack of “convincing scientific evidence” of “catastrophic warming” is wholly consistent with the bland and irrelevant scientific consensus that “manmade warming” is real. I’m sick of this bait and switch argument. Either the authors of the study are incredibly stupid individuals or they are incredibly deceitful individuals.
Kurt correctly stated:
“Either the authors of the study are incredibly stupid individuals or they are incredibly deceitful individuals.”
I agree with Kurt:
“In reality, the truly diabolical forces were the scoundrels who promoted global warming hysteria, and the many imbeciles who followed them.”
Notes:
1. Full quote below.
2. The terms “scoundrels” and “imbeciles” are not mutually exclusive.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/22/climate-and-popular-revolution/comment-page-1/#comment-2350795
In reality, the truly diabolical forces were the scoundrels who promoted global warming hysteria, and the many imbeciles who followed them.
These warmist scam artists have:
– created mass hysteria among their under-educated minions
– driven up the cost of energy and the cost of food
– increased poverty, hunger and winter mortality
– increased human suffering especially among the elderly and the poor.
– squandered many trillions of dollars of scarce global resources that could have been devoted to solving real humanitarian and environmental problems.
For far less money, we could have installed clean water and sanitation systems in every village on Earth. In the decades that the world has obsessed over the false global warming crisis, over 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated drinking water. Yes, really!
That is the about same number of people who died in WW2, and about the same number killed by Stalin. Only Mao killed more, during his Great Leap Backward. That is the warmists’ legacy. Only their fellow-travelers who opposed the use of DDT to fight malaria can compete with their death toll ā another group of green fanatics.
None of this was ever justified. It was a classic case of āextraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowdsā.
We need a return to common decency and common sense, and we need it now.
Regards, Allan
Now that’s unfair!
Why the either/or?
Why not both?
HI Mike – you are correct- as per my Note 2 above”
“2. The terms āscoundrelsā and āimbecilesā are not mutually exclusive.”
when you go fishing for research grant you use ‘bait ‘ which gets them to bite .
That the whole AGW thign is very much alive is show by such ‘research’ has it indicates there is lots of money around for those that get the ‘right results ‘
They are from Europe. Being left wingers, they probably also believe that letting in millions of angry Muslim males has no downside.
The liberal brain has no ability to resist – “Resistance is futile”
Thank God for Trumpism, even the Borg can’t resist that!
That reminds, one of my favourite scenes.
“Thank God for Trumpism, even the Borg canāt resist that!”
Really! Trump had the union leaders calling their meeting with him yesterday “incredible”. When’s the last time you saw union leaders praising a Republican? Everyone of them voted for Hillary, and now they are calling Trump incredible. And he is. š
“Whenās the last time you saw union leaders praising a Republican? ”
Reagan.
In other words, it’s been a *long* time.
This is just the “Strawman Argument” in disguise.
Stephen Rasey, precisely. They are trying to scientifically quantify the most effective dosage of misrepresentation. They understand skeptics to be uninformed, unthinking, malleable and gullible (and probably heavily inbred). They think that all they need to do is to frame their propaganda in some particular way, so that it seeps into our tiny brains, and we will give up our resistance to their climate cause – If they could just figure out how!!!!
Fallacy wrapped in nonsense inside cluelessness.
And still believing their own propaganda nonsense. Even if “97% of scientists agree” that human activities are causing dangerous climate change, it would still be MEANINGLESS. Science isn’t done by popular vote. Present SCIENTIFIC PROOF, or STFU already!
but it’s fun
watching them
trying to figure
us out
A cranio-rectal TurDuckin!
That was my first reaction. Manipulating people using lies is generally considered propaganda, which is ultimately self defeating. This is nothing new. How did this dreck get published?
So this is what it’s come to. I’m flabbergasted that a a purported scientific study would advocate out right lies to advance a position. Trump couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
….not when the basis of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming (or whatever they call it at the moment) is ONE BIG LIE. There is no measureable evidence, and the practitioners in the movement know it.
“There is no measureable evidence, and the [CAGW] practitioners in the movement know it.”
That’s right. If they had any evidence, they would have presented it already.
The only “evidence” they have is a “Hockey stick” chart, and skeptics are not buying it.
The Hockey Stick chart is a dishonest attempt to manipulate humanity by changing the historical temperature record to make it appear that the weather is getting hotter and hotter, year after year, when, in reality, it is not.
Ethics, what is that? I don’t think these people can properly answer that. In a system that claims to support the sanctity of freedom of thought, this bangs us between the eyes and belies that in the highest levels of research and teaching. I have always considered the psych types to have an inherent defect, which they are aware of but uncertain of it’s nature, and therefore busy themselves with ways to manipulate other people for the sake of protecting their own self image. Devising ways to re-frame thoughts to influence opinion, beliefs, or life views is the product of the psychologist’s work shop so I am not surprised by the inoculation theory. Is that kind of thing right? Well it might be if someone is disturbed by their own thoughts, opinion, belief, etc. but not when the subject is politics and the recipient of the “treatment” is unknowing, unsuspecting, and operating under their free will. That kind of behavior outside a therapeutic setting is the equivalent of attack, and should be considered a criminal act. It is also quite audacious to consider there is even a need for such things as it is for people to work things out on their own by considering the competing ideas. A government of, by, and for the people is founded on that idea. We are free people, don’t you know! Or is that a lesson that needs to be revisited?
Apparently the contributors from GMU never bothered reading anything he wrote.
three words . ‘the greater good ‘ often heard before something that is far from ‘good ‘
Ethics?
I’ve gotten most of my ethics training from people in legitimate ethics positions.
Peter Gleick is my boy.
These folks are rookies.
“Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help āinoculateā the public against misinformation…”
A better summary of the desire for control of the populace has never been given. Orwell would be horrified that they are using 1984 as an instruction manual.
Owell indeed. Just who is responsible for deciding what is “misinformation” and what is “approved information”? Why the same people promoting the “approved information”, of course! It boggles the mind that there are people who don’t see the problem with this.
Quite regardless of the rights and wrongs of the issue, this is just morally sick.
John H
Agreed. The swap from ‘97%’ agree with ‘mankind has an influence’ on the ‘pro’ side and the 31,000 signatures with the ‘leading to catastrophe’ side doesn’t even pass the smell test.
One says ‘everyone believes apples exist’ and the other is ‘apples make you sick’.
It has occurred to me that the ‘psychological test’ taking place, the experiment, is the paper itself, planted in a journal with such obvious defects. They 97% is taken as a given, with no evaluation of its veracity. That is the ‘trick’ part. The test will be to see it that disinformation serves to affect people’s perception of a completely different claim about the catastrophic nature (or not) of human influence.
“Vaccination” – you mean deliberate propaganda or disinformation that is really an attack on the integrity of ‘skeptics’. A bit like slipping into the public doman ‘suggestions’ that a certain person is a fraudster, into a bit of bestiality or even better a ‘kiddy fiddler’ and see how their credibility takes a hit. Better still watch them squirm as the like of questioning turns hard left to ‘GOTCHA’ now scumbag/denier.
Tels you all you need to know about the grubs who came up with this. I wonder how the paper ‘rated’ in the academic scorecard. How much funding would it equate to? That’s a large part of what this whole fraud is about.
Social psychologists know what about climate change?
“Do not listen to them, they are not *cue angelic choir* CLIMATE scientists. Listen to us, the also not-climate scientists…”
They don’t know very much about climate change or statistics, which is why Lew had to rely on Cookie to help him fudge the 97%.
It took a creative cartoonist like Cookie to get there.
That mentioning it makes gaining research grants easy and 97% of the Establishment support it.
I’m ashamed that this disgusting poisonous nonsense should emerge from the university that gave us Newton, Maxwell, Rutherford, Keynes, Babbage, Wordsworth and Tennyson
Absolutely – Well said.
Plus one.
You can also add Turing and Dirac.
This is just another attempt to ācancelā the debate, which in actuality has never really happened. (The debate between scientists hasnāt happened). This is what they are still trying to avoid by using another sneaky/deceitful/deceptive tactic.
+0.97
There are many ways to advocate for and try to put into place yet another sick version of a supreme race. This is one of them.
Research into propaganda techniques. Dishonest ones, at that.
Over time the social response to climate alarmism is that they have become inoculated. So the authors need anti-inoculation theory to keep the alarm response active. In general interest in any topic follows a normal distribution with an inception, rise, peak,and decline. This is what the authors are reacting to with a blame theory rather than an understanding of basic behavioral principles. That is, with no counter-argument at all to climate alarmism, interest must peak and will decline at some point.
Any real progressive can always find someone or something eles to explain their failures.
Just ask Hillary and our Barack.
Somehow, it’s never their ideals that are in question.
There inoculation theory also assumes that the person is only subject to this one inoculation (screed).
As soon as the person reads other sites, sees conflicting reported studies spoken of on news articles, talks with their friends and family ect. The inoculation becomes null and void. It simply adds to the overall mistrust of authority figures.
And don’t people get really pi$$ed off when they know they have been manipulated.
‘discover’ is better than ‘know’, in this case
Remember, it’s much easier to con someone than it is to convince them they’ve been conned.
I think Abraham Lincoln or PT Barnum or someone else said that.
If I understand them correctly they are saying that if you use a strawman argument you can sway their opinion.
Revolutionary.
āā¦ it is possible to convince more people by providing them with a distorted, āweakenedā version of your opponentās position, which is what āinoculationā theory seems to be about ā but that doesnāt make it right ā¦ā.
==================================
Of course not, the whole rotten Climate Changeā¢ edifice is built from half-truths, exaggerations and straight-out lies.
The oregon petition is actually consistent with the 97% consensus… Note the use of the word “catastrophic” in the oregon petition. Of the 97% consensus, less than one percent considered climate change to be catastrophic. The rest (96+%) did not adhere to the “catastrophic” meme. (the 97% consensus actually includes prominent skeptics such as doctors lindzen, curry, and spencer) i think the word “inoculation” is a bit loaded; “clarification” is perhaps a better choice of words. AND all points made are most always in need of some clarification not just those that confirm a personal bias. The authors of this study are saying nothing new. (nothing to see here, folks, move along)…
Actually, “clarification” is the exact opposite of what they are proposing. They suggest taking someone’s argument, then remove some of the clarifying detail so that it appears “weak” (sloppy, incomplete) to make it easy to see that it is “wrong”. This is a basic strawman technique and a very dishonest form of propaganda. Shame on them.
Tell small lies about a truth, and the people will believe the bigger lie. George Orwell was an amateur.
So have 90% (?) of contrarians and 100% of lukewarmers.
So this is a strawman. The debate is about climate sensitivity and positive feedbacks.
“The debate is about climate sensitivity and positive feedbacks.”
Exactly, and the IPCC’s self serving consensus is demonstrably wrong on both counts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/07/how-climate-feedback-is-fubar/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/05/physical-constraints-on-the-climate-sensitivity/
These UOVs (“universities of vomit”) really know how to shove their snouts in the grant money gravy train.
Their game is up. It’s a lovely day, so it is !
What we are seeing is mere sophistry. And the point of sophistry is NOT to find truth, but to deceive the unwary.
+1
And the subversive warfare against the public wages on…
Good video. I put this on my Facebook. The full interview is even better, but over an hour…too long for Facebook.
“Lukewarmers” have a lot to answer for.
There is no mechanism that allows for CO2 to cause warming in a convective atmosphere..
There is no warming in the satellite temperature data apart from NON-CO2 El Nino events and AMO, PDO ocean oscillations.
There is NO CO2 SIGNAL in the ocean tide-gauge sea level data.
The is NO CO2 SIGNAL in any data.. NONE WHAT SO EVER !!!
It is a FANTASY, held together by junk science.
Nice example of weakening the skeptical cause by presenting half truths AndyG55.
Go on then Hunter – rebut the points made by AndyG55 with cites to research showing that the points are incorrect.
As soon as Andy posts up some links himself.
@hunter
Nice try, trying to make CAGW the null hypothesis. It is up to the affirmative team to present evidence that climate is now deviating from the status quo ante. Until that happens, the negative team has met its burden by simply saying “prove it”. As the proponent of the position “now is different”, it is up to you to provide support for your claim. AndyG55 kind of jumped the gun on the 1st Negative Constructive, but you still need to present the 1st Affirmative Constructive before we can proceed.
The honest title would be: Deliberate Careful Lies Can Fool More People. What is it about Soft Sciences like psychology and the need to rabidly push climate hype? This study shows the banality of evil on full display. What a shameful study. Apparently its authors gave had their sense of shame surgically removed.
I’m not really sure why “science” is in this discussion.
There is no science in psychology.
From what I was taught, no null hypotheses and failed predictions means no science.
If someone loses their life savings or walks in on a cheating spouse there is no science that will predict everyone’s response…no science.
Drop an object from up high or boil water and science will explain the response.
I am encouraged by the number of people who know when they are being lied to. Not just “olds” but younger generations, including kids. I think bs detection is hard-wired in enough humans to ensure that the race continues to progress.
I am proud to say that my son (age now 22) has been a rabid “denier” for at least the last 8 years. He tolerated the alarmist tosh at school because he had exercised his intelligence and curiosity and could see for himself that the CAGW narrative was a dishonest construct. His contemporaries likewise, even the friend with both parents in the environmental industry camp. See, there is hope for the future!
“I think bs detection is hard-wired in enough humans to ensure that the race continues to progress.”
I think you are right. I asked a 12-year-old the other day about what he thought about climate change (we had never discussed the subject before), and he told me he didn’t believe in it! I was so excited to hear it. š
I personally, got my first contrarian viewpoint at about age 10, in church, when the preacher said something that didn’t make sense to me. I had never discussed this particular subject with anyone, so had no pre-concieved bias, but when I heard what he said, I said to myself, “that can’t be right; it doesn’t make sense”. Our church didn’t believe in using musical instruments to praise God, only the human voice was acceptable, and this preacher said that anyone who used a musical instrument to praise God, was going to Hell. And I couldn’t see how a merciful God would condenm someone to Eternity in Hell for playing a musical instrument, especially when it was in praise of God. So I had to dissent from this opinion at the age of 10, and I still dissent, although I no longer attend that church. That was a case of man speaking for God, and I’m not a fan of such presumption.
Not wishing to hijack the thread, but how did that preacher square his position with Psalm 150? Or any number of other Psalms encouraging the use of musical instruments to praise the Lord?
I don’t really know where he got the idea that people would go to Hell if they played a musical instrument in church. And we were the only denomination that looked at it that way. All the other churches and denominations used musical instruments, so our congregtion was definitely going against the grain of general acceptance. This interpretation of the Bible was restricted to my church, and didn’t make any sense to a 10-year-old.
As a kid, I knew it was our church’s practice to not use musical instrument, and I didn’t really question the rule, and it was never really explained to me in detail, but this one time the preacher used it as part of the subject of his sermon, and said people would go to Hell if they used musical instruments. Well, I had never heard that version of the rule, and was a little shocked at such an enormous punishment for such a trivial thing. It wasn’t that I disbelieved the Bible, I disbelieved the preacher’s interpretation.
I never discussed or argued this particular teaching, but I definitely wasn’t onboard with it. That’s when I realized that adults aren’t necessarily correct all the time, and I’ve been questioning just about everything ever since. I should have been born in Missouri: The “Show-Me” State.
Btw, D.J., there was at least one Bible verse that was used to support the “no musical instrumets” rule, but I can’t recall what it was. I do know they had what they thought was Biblical justification for what they said, but I can’t tell you what it was.
“That was a case of man speaking for God, and I’m not a fan of such presumption.”
Most emphatically, me neither. For that matter, I’d think God would be rather annoyed by it, to say the least. But when has God spoken for Himself? Before anyone says “the Bible” (or any other so-called “revelation”) let me point out that surely He would realize any man’s account of such revelation is indistinguishable from a man presuming to speak for Him. Being omnipotent and all, there can’t be any difficulty for God to provide unambiguous and irrefutable confirmation, totally independent of the veracity of any particular witness. For instance, by having a pulsar blink Morse code of essential portions of the text of His chosen spokesman. I have never seen an explanation (apart from my own, which grants for sake of argument that there IS a God) of why God would not do something like that – to validate His message – that doesn’t make the clumsiest 419 email look credible by comparison.
This isn’t, by any chance, the same Edward Maibach as this one?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/27/bazinga-edward-maibach-and-his-foi-emergency-stay-for-the-rico20-emails-gets-slapped-down-by-the-court/
Yes, the same one.
“Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement ā an average of 20 percentage points. Those shown only misinformation (a screenshot of the Oregon petition website) dropped their belief in a scientific consensus by 9 percentage points.”
Social psychologist at Cambridge tell us they tested the Oregon Global Warming Petition Project for persuasiveness on a wide spectrum of U.S. citizens and found the Project to be persuasive in turning people to the skeptic side. I can believe that was new information to most, because the MSM hasn’t wanted to talk about arguments counter to the warmist hysteria, but where did they find find people who had never heard the “97% consensus” claim?
I wonder if their test subjects might have been freshmen liberal arts students? – a group most likely to have never looked into the climate debate and also very predisposed to go with a consensus.
SR
And also a group eager to please the professors.
SR
The professors point makes sense.
Otherwise, freshmen liberal arts students would be expected to be counter-cultural. And as catastrophic climate change is the mainstream consensus you would expect them to be scornful and go against that consensus.
But they do not. Which is strange.
The very left-wing transvestite artist Grason Perry (the UK’s top potter) has recently embraced the Brexit vote. Not because he wants Brexit, he doesn’t. But becausee he wants to engage with people outside of the narrow world that modern artists live in.
Surely, that love of adventure is what universities are meant to instill and enable?
This leftist woman that was kicked off plane for her crazy antics is the textbook example of how NOT to inoculate a crowd against climate skepticism:
[FULL] Woman berating Trump supporter is kicked off plane, then passangers cheer:
I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
Until you sit next to her.
That video I posted was “made private” so doesn’t work anymore. But here’s a link to another video of the same thing that still works: Woman Kicked off Plane Berating Trump Supporter Crowd Cheers USA At Feminist Liberal Crazy Woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suhQFt7Z_RM
They really should read the climategate emails to get a sense of how ridiculous this approach is.
Include the harry_read_me file.
You won’t believe what Phil Jones said and did to whatever real data they had.
What is the real skeptic position?
It’s not warming?
It’s warming but it’s not a problem?
It’s not warming because NASA faked the data…. it’s a scam/plot?
CO2 is not a greenhouse gas/not the greenhouse gas?
We’re seeing cooling/the ice age has started?
Really most skeptic statements are incompatible with each other.
Should not this site have an official statement on what is going on and have people adopt it, challenging (weak?) skeptic arguments posted as comments?
[No. Why? . . . This isn’t a place of homogenous thinking, it never was and is intended as a place where divergent opinions and ideas can be articulated, even yours. There are plenty of intolerant people out there in the world but WUWT is not a place for groupthink. The fact that you can present your thoughts and labors here should be indicative of that. . . . mod]
“What is the real skeptic position?”
The Real Skeptic position = Prove It
TA: +97
Skankhunt42, ….. , er, I mean Griff, you are so completely sucked into the vortex of the False Church of CAGW, it is truly amazing. And as a cult religion follower, you would rather perish with the cult than accept the reality that the entire CAGW is fictitious and fabricated by devious individuals whose ONLY intent is to become incredibly wealthy on the backs of millions who cannot afford it. Those devious and intelligent individuals saw an opening and they exploited it – the true nature of some of our species.
Which is very unfortunate.
As Bones said to Spock when James Tiberious Kirk had to win a fight to prove that good was better than evil: “In the fight between good and evil, for good to win, good has to be very, very good.”
Therein lies the issue, Skank. Substitute truth for good, evil can stay exactly where it is. For the truth to eventually come to the forefront, it will require (IMHO) the vocal majority; probably overwhelming majority at that.
President Trump is the start of the process, and I certainly do hope that momentum towards the truth continues.
How can you defend all of the scientific work that has been done over the past two decades, let alone 100 years, that unconditionally contradicts the CAGW position? How can you defend the very obvious lies and deceit of the CAGW promoters?
Were you a Heaven’s Gate follower who got cold feet just before allowing your spirit to fly off with the comet, only now to realize that it was a mistake to “jump ship”, so it is time to follow another cult religion?
Your entire focus, since I have joined this site, is the reduction in ice in the Arctic. I will reiterate that the one body of ice that contains 90% of the global ice mass is increasing in size by 82 billion tonnes/year. And Greenland is also increasing in mass, yet you continue to focus on a single, and relatively small, ice mass.
Greenland got the name because it was land used for growing crops by the Vikings in the not too distant past (in geologic terms). The Arctic was ice free in the not too distant past and polar bears survived quite nicely. Glaciers grow and shrink all of the time, it is called climate change, which has been happening for, give or take, 4 billion years.
I respect your privilege to access this site, I certainly do not respect your opinion on CAGW.
YES! Prove it or go fish!
Griff
Didn’t you get eaten by a polar bear.
Since you brought it up, I’ll take my shot at it:
1. The planet has been warming since the little ice age (well before the CO2 emissions of the modern industrial era).
2. In the laboratory, CO2 is shown to be a greenhouse gas but the earth’s climate is a complex, chaotic, nonlinear system so we don’t know how that laboratory finding translates to the real world (if it translated perfectly – with no feedbacks – perhaps 0.8C to 1.2C per doubling).
3. Everything else is modeling (with the GCMs tuned to noisy, late 20th century data that includes the rebound from the little ice age).
YMMV
You have no idea what I believe. You are an apparent rookie at this. You are committing the same fallacy- probably inadvertently- as the one the critiques of this article highlights. There is not enough energy moved by convection to overcome the radiant property of CO2. The climatocracy fails because they misrepresent sensitivity and have distorted the record. Apocalyptic prophecies always fail.
All skeptics have to do is point bout the failures of the consensus. Think Tibetan glaciers, polar bears, world sea ice, etc etc etc
The real skeptic position is that you’re a posing fraud who’s never worked in atmospheric chemistry or atmospheric radiation a day in your life: don’t have a degree in atmospheric chemistry/energy/radiation,
and have never really shadowed a seat in a dedicated atmospherics class.
If you weren’t, you’d be able to answer basic questions like what’s the name of the law of thermodynamics to solve the temperature of some atmospheric air, gas, or vapor.
This place isn’t a university. It’s not even owned by a working atmospheric chemist, he’s an instrumentation man. It’s not his job to sum up all atmospheric physics for you, you’re supposed to have an education and be able to discuss all this.
What’s the name,
of the law of thermodynamics,
for checking the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere?
What is the equation? What do the factors in it stand for? Which one do you assert indicates to you, plausibility of the story you’re in here trying – and failing – to competently shill for?
Which one of those factors, proves to you AGW is real?
Because there is in fact a factor in that equation that directly points to whether it’s possible or not.
You’re in here casting aspersions at the general readership: I say you’re a posing bullshitting fake who hasn’t got the FIRST CLUE how temperature of some air is even CALCULATED.
When you give me the CORRECT answer of course you KNOW what question is NEXT.
I suggest you get busy. Because regardless of what others feel about you, I’ll show them all myself just what an incompetent, bumbling, posing bullshitter you are.
For MY sense of whether you’ve been properly checked on to see if you’re even competent enough to let post here. I can’t stop them from letting you post,
but I can damned sure check your competency in about a minute.
You tell me
the name of the law of thermodynamics for solving temperature of atmospheric air,
or you’re a posing fake.
“or youāre a posing fake.”
I think you’ll find he’s paid to be.
My apologies for the very late response.
Very eloquently and accurately stated, Graham H.
Personally I prefer the “real” version, but since the pressure of the system ranges from very low (approaching zero) to 1 atmosphere, the “ideal” version is a very reasonable approximation, IMO.
: )
This is the sort of crap that infuriates me to the point of incoherence. The fact that these “researchers” are putting out misleading, incomplete, and false information and claiming it is true is appalling. Their accusations apply to their own “side”, because EVERY petition has fake entries by people who think they are funny, both viewpoints have scientists of all kinds as supporters, and the pro-AGW crowd is even MORE politicized. These fake news claims are just another way to shut down legitimate debate by casting disagreement as lies. After all, if someone is telling you lies, you shouldn’t bother listening to anything they say, right?
WELL IN THAT CASE, SHUT DOWN THE STUDY BECAUSE THE “INOCULATION” MESSAGE IS ONE BIG MISLEADING FALSEHOOD.
It is shameful that anyone is pulling this kind of underhanded perfidy, but the fact that GMU, a school named for George Mason*, is so eager to lead the charge, disgusts me. I would love to see the whole climate change center scam shut down, but there are too many millions tied up for anyone to fight. Pretty much everyone has drunk the Kool-aid, and the ones who have not are keeping their heads down. Professors show “documentaries” like Gaslight, and Algore’s anti-opus, and never once mention the discrepancies and outright falsehoods they contain. Students are used/forced to preach the fake gospel. It is propaganda, pure and simple.
If GMU really believes AGW is soooo dangerous, why do they keep trying to make the university even bigger, cutting down more trees and converting more green space into buildings and plazas? Why are they employing groundskeepers to use leaf blowers and riding lawn mowers to keep their pretty grass expanses pristine? Why do so many newer buildings have large atria that increase heating and cooling costs? I could go on…
I have a lot of rage. š
*Google him if you do not understand why this is so appalling. You’ll thank me later.
Short paraphrase.. how to prepare someone to believe YOUR lies.
This is a reaction to the publicās apathy towards the climate change issue. It repeatedly comes out bottom of public concerns at local, national and even in a Global UN survey.
Why is that? The end of the world is quite exciting news.
The reason being that no-one believes it. Not in the newsworthy way that the Green lobby pushes. And the reason for that is that most people get influenced on every subject by their own expert in their immediate social network. They go to Alice for the tip on good food and to Bob for the tip on the football and to Charlie for advice on the next great thing to read.
And they go to that person who has technical expertise to find out about science news.
That person will have researched and foundā¦ that The AGW Team wonāt debate. They have conceded the technical argument to the Sceptics because they say it wonāt help them. The end of the world is too important to allow alternative views to be aired. Any person who has technical expertise will not give that a ringing endorsement.
So now, with policy in the US set by Trump and the public not worried about it, there is no longer any justification for not debating the Sceptics. They have lost every other form of argument, political, economic and (perhaps) even moral. But every time they debate on the science they lose. Thus the only way out is to try and rig the coming debate.
Because the science is about to be debated, publically.
M Courtney January 24, 2017 at 1:48 am
Fine post. Once Trump dumps the climate agenda there’s gonna be some irony overload listening to the green blob indignantly demanding the very debate they’ve been refusing to engage in these past 10 years or so!
Once the money goes away, they will look for another cow to milk.
They won’t debate because they will have to explain each and every change to the different data sets with a detailed scientific and mathematical explanation of why. They will need to show that each individual model is capable of hindcasting or using past data forecast forward accurately over a long period of time.
Public apathy goes beyond where it resides “on the list” – it’s only ON “the list” because the surveyors put it there. If you took a survey where people made a list of x number of issues they are concerned about, and presented the x issues with the greatest number that came out of such a survey, “climate change” wouldn’t even make the list. And rightly so.
“Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help āinoculateā the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of āfake newsā websites propagating myths about climate change.”
I agree absolutely!
Now where do we start … mmm Al Gore, David Suzuki (give him double dose), IPCC reviewers, John Cook, Whats that manns name? – So many to choose from!
Anyone want to add a few names?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
+ and more +
Yes, not that we need any help in order to dissuade us from believing “climate change” alarmist claptrap, but they do just keep firing cannonballs through their own hull below the water line, don’t they. But then the perpetrators of this “study” get the application completely backwards, by accepting the nonsense as the truth and attempting to paint the truth as the nonsense.
Hitler and his team were able to make the Germans believe not aryans were ‘untermenschen’ and therefore useless eaters, There was an at least 99% consensus in the german scientific community. But even more important is taking over the education system. Get them when they are young to create a fanatic group of believers.
If it is true that only climate scientists can critique climate science, then only climate scientists can defend it, by the “logic” of the authors of this bit of propaganda.
There are many alarmists, so called climate scientists, who did not major in climate science in college so on the basis of their education their opinions concerning climate change must be rejected and the papers they have published concerning climate science should be withdrawn. Maybe our constitution should be changed so that only those with PHD’s in political science to include a minimum number of “peer reviewed” publications should be allowed to vote or to express any sort of political opinion.
āThere will always be people completely resistant to change, but we tend to find there is room for most people to change their minds, even just a little.ā
you can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time…….
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time
In the Notorious Lewandowsky’s own work, he showed that people who believed in “global warming” (I forget the term used) were most susceptible to suggestion). In other words, sceptics didn’t change their belief when told a graph was global warming rather than a graph of stock market prices.
This however, was portrayed as “sceptics being less willing to take the advice of experts” – well it was the reverse: sceptics less willing to “go with the flow” of the rest of society.
So, in reality scepticism versus alarmism boils down to a simple choice: do you base your views on the facts, or do you go along with the views of everyone else. And that may seem a simple choice, until you realise that those who “go along with the views of society” tend to make it to the top, tend to be in charge, tend to get better paid, tend to have more friends … and then it doesn’t seem such a clear cut choice.
I should have put “friends” in quotes – as I doubt they have more friends – just more backstabbing people who’ll call themself a “friend”.
“I was just following orders.” did not work after WW2 . I doubt it will work in the future either.
Scientists never registered and voted on the AGW conjecture so there is no 97% consensus. Such is meaningless anyway because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some form of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated through a voting process. This concept of a scientific consensus is politics and not science.
The AGW conjecture seems plausable at first until one realizes that it is based on only partial science. One researcher found that the original calculations of the Plank effect climate sensivity of CO2 were too great by more than a factor of 20 because the original calculations failed to take into consideration that doubling the CO2 in our atmosphere will cause a slight decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere which is a cooling effect. Then there is the issue of H2O feedback. For the Earth’s climate to have been stable enough for life to evolve the net feedback has to be negative. Yes, H2O is the primary so called greenhouse gas but it is also a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the surface which is mostly some form of H2O to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. The cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate in the troposphere.
The AGW conjecture is based on the concept of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by LWIR absorption by so called greenhouse gases. Such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, on Earth, on Venus, or anywhere in the solar system. The surface of the Earth is on average 33 degrees C warmer because of the atmosphere due to a convective greenhouse effect caused by the heat capacity of the atmosphere and gravity. 33 degrees C has been derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been observed. There is no additional radiant greenhouse effect. Because the basis of the AGW conjecture is fiction the AGW conjecture itself is at best science fiction. If CO2 did affect climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened.
In the IPCC’s first report they published a wide range of guessed for the climate sensivity of CO2. Only one value can be correct. In their last report they published the exact same range of values. So after more than two decades of study they have learned nothing that would have enabled them to narrow their range of guesses one Iota. They refuse to consider that the climate sensivity of CO2 may be well below their published range for fear of losing their funding. For the IPCC it is all a matter of politics and not science.
I just have to wonder what comments Robert Heinlein would make on this. The progressives look at him as an icon. One of his stories was finished with the blame being laid upon the younger Bush for laying the groundwork leading to Nehemiah Scudder. Apparently, they never figured out what Heinlein thought of communism.
I always hoped Heinlein was wrong. You see, he believed the USA was very likely to become a theocracy. Here we are living in his “Crazy Years.” I don’t know who may yet play the role of Nehemiah Scudder, the Infallible Prophet of God. We are well along the way to his theocracy, though. The nutty Greens have, for all practical purposes, established the First Universal One World Internationalist Church of Mother Gaia, not that most of them would admit to anything but atheism. Gore and Hansen both lacked the charisma to become Scudder. I don’t see anyone who fits the role at this point. I just hope and pray that the forces of rationality and reason can drive back the forces of the ends justify the means.
Those of you not familiar with Heinlein, I urge you to read some of his works. A good non-fiction starter would be “Pravda means Truth.”
http://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/73047/40/Heinlein_-_Expanded_Universe.html
Other scrience fiction writers believed in free people, also. Please don’t knock the genre as “woo-woo” stuff. The best writers understood human nature very well and used outlandish settings to illustrate our behaviors.
This may not make sense to anyone other than myself. That’s ok. I’m tired, it’s late, and I just wanted to put it out there. Make of it what you will. Or don’t. It’s a free country. I’m just looking for analogies to what I see in the world around me. Trends. Patterns. What do you see? I’m curious, but hopeful.
Because, when all Hope is lost, Bill Clinton no longer has a birthplace. (That one is just a bad joke, for which I will not apologize.) š
I liked the description of how the resistance movement slipped their message past the censors, for example by publishing slightly too lavish descriptions of the prophet’s palace, full of justifications of why he deserved such luxury, in desperately poor regions of the country.
RAH was born in 1907, and died in 1988. He predicted many things but never predicted that the son of newly inaugurated President HW Bush would become President some day. Much less that he would start a theocratic dictatorship. That said, I hope that RAH would have seen through the green miasma the left wants to impose on us and would have spoken out loudly and eloquently against it. Sadly few SF writers of today see the religious and collectivist anti-human dangers the climatocracy and big green represents.
Good job Moderator!! It’s amazing the breadth of thought and talent on this website.
Heinlein understood how “people” in general think. From one of the entries in his posthumous Grumbles from the Grave he wrote about deliberately writing stories to challenge how and what people thought. If he’d been alive the last 40 years he’d have written some blockbuster stories. T’was unfortunate some of his later work was affected by circulatory problems to the brain.
Kurt Vonnegut’s story Harrison Bergeron may also have something useful to offer. If they want people to accept catastrophic anthropogenic climate change as reality, perhaps they should fit everyone with headsets to dial down their intelligence.
Propaganda wins again, Herr Geobbels.
This could lead to a new bumper sticker: “Climate Change: It’s All In Your Headā¢”
But only when the red light is on.
Perfect example of liberal fascism the should stand the test of time as the updated 21st Century “scientific” version of Goebbels Propaganda of Ministry theories. How great is that?
+
I recall some articles from mid-2016 that referred the a “major problem” in the AGW community regarding the need to “improve their communication”. There were references to the field being “too complicated” for lay people to understand, or that the communication of the skeptics was too difficult to refute (facts are stubborn). When I read the articles on this topic yesterday, my thoughts were about a new communication technique is being explored by the AGW proponents in an attempt to “improve” their message. It will be interesting to see how this develops. I cannot see how anyone can be fooled for too long by an inoculation, since these so-called subtle messages or warnings will be nothing more than toned-down versions of their arguments. Maybe a new game…identify the inoculations. Shouldn’t be too difficult as even my dog knows when he is going to the vet for shots.
They are hard at work already: the new storyline is, CO2 causes global cooling.
AKA “attacking a straw-man”; misrepresent your opponents position to then attack the phony position. The whole concept of “climate change” (as a substitute for the “global warming moniker) was advanced as a straw-man argument to discredit skeptics, as if skeptics were arguing that the climate never changes, but that’s the implication. I’ve never seen this whole issue boiled down to just one sentence in the American media: How sensitive is the climate to increases in CO2? NOooooooooo, it’s far to complex for a mere layman to understand.
From the Article: “Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help āinoculateā the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of āfake newsā websites propagating myths about climate change.”
What fake news sites would they be? Probably those that do not agree with CAGW. If you don’t agree with me, then you are fake news.
From the Article: “The study also used the accurate statement that ā97% of scientists agree on manmade climate changeā. Prior work by van der Linden has shown this fact about scientific consensus is an effective āgatewayā for public acceptance of climate change.”
Calling the “97 percent” lie “accurate” is a Big Lie in itself.
From the Article: “Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus [the 97 percent] (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement ā an average of 20 percentage points.”
Appeals to authority *are* effective with those who do not have much background or knowledge in a particular scientific field. That’s why the “97 percent” lie is so insidious and needs to be debunked at every opportunity. The alarmists are getting a lot of mileage out of this lie, as is demonstrated here in this study.
From the Article: “A detailed inoculation that picks apart the Oregon petition specifically. For example, by highlighting some of the signatories are fraudulent, such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls, and less than 1% of signatories have backgrounds in climate science.”
We need an “inoculation of the “97 percent” lie.
Psychological āvaccineā = how to fashion the propaganda properly
inoculation technique = brainwashing
Yes, fellow skeptics, the CAGW alarmists are studying how to brainwash the population into believing their lies. They can’t get it done on the facts, so they have to psychologically manipulate people to reach their goal.
I find it interesting that warmists feel the need to try to convert skeptics to their view. I don’t know if my experience is unique. I have never met a skeptic who has become a warmists but I have met many warmists that have become skeptic or at the very least ambivalent. There is only one side of this discussion that distorts and lies constantly and it isn’t the skeptics.
And here we see the rot of civilisation – just one tiny example but how many more can you recognise?
Why.
Have we now got a system/society/civilisation where (these) folks have been brought up in a perfect liberal world. They were and are constantly praised, constantly told how clever and bright they were (as children) and now in an environment that continues that belief. They’ve probably never played competitive sports (basically= had to learn what losing is) or even been in a playground fight and probably never done any sort of real practical work/problem solving.
As a result, they are utterly convinced the they are right about everything.
So, if someone disagrees with them, they can only conclude that said person is dysfunctional and/or has some sort of mental abnormality.
Further, this precludes them from seeing that the very solution they believe would work is exactly what is causing their perceived problem. (Cause and effect go through the blender *yet* again)
People are being immunised by the climate alarm message. They’ve run out of superlatives to describe the 10 year storm, the 100/500/1000 year storm is now a weekly occurrence. Likewise, the *unprecedented* droughts, hurricanes, rainfall, floods etc etc etc are on the evening news at 6 o’clock or on tyhe rolling 24 hour news channel.
So, like the old sooth-sayer paddling up and down the side-walk every day proclaiming ‘The End Is Nigh’ (do you still get them?) – at first he’s a peculiarity, slightly interesting but eventually some day, somebody is gonna say to him:
“Look Busta, your end will be nigh in 60 seconds from now if you don’t get outta my way, I’ve got work to do, bills to pay, groceries to buy and then take the kids to school. Go Forth And Multiply”
And Civilisational Rot happens because fewer and fewer people have the guts, self-confidence or lack of political correctness to say that. The Cancer is allowed to grow.
Hello Donald, got a scalpel with you by any chance?
Only Liberals would say that a little lie is OK to cover their bigger truth, which is a lie. And put it in a journal! This is beyond sad. AND, they have entire programs dedicated to how to best lie. It’s called climate communication!!!!
From the CAGW dictionary – “communication” (noun) – propaganda
It is scary that a journal actually chose to publish this how-to on brain washing.
The Climatists’ desperation is showing in these tactics, which are simply more devious ways of lying to people. But without 100% control over all avenues of information, including the internet, lies can only hold sway for a while. The jig is up, but that doesn’t stop the Gravy-Trainers from attempting to keep things going for just a little while longer.
This uses the common tactic of claiming that being skeptical about ‘catastrophic climate change’ is equivalent to being skeptical about ‘climate change’.
The academics I have met who actually work in the field dodge characterizing “climate change” as catastrophic. And refuse to discuss it. Now that their wild claims are under actual critical review, One wonders if they might regret the arrogant snti-science position they took.
Many are. Many are changing to actually point out limited impact. Many aren’t.
Having delved into the Guardian’s report on this ‘study’ it’s fair to say it’s yet another contrived piece of AGW-promoting activist fluff and entirely in-keeping with their tactic of releasing a stream of propaganda designed to cover as many bases as possible. In this case it’s just another thinly-veiled ad hom attack to undermine sceptical voices. Balance? Counter-views? Nowhere to be seen. Without an agenda to promote or a pay cheque in the post who the heck would write up this sort of stuff?
Perhaps an academic could raise a stink with the journal and demand the article be withdrawn for ethical reasons. After all encouraging scientists to lie has been traditionally frowned down upon.
The professor of this study about ‘inoculating people so they will believe in global warming’ is this man: Professor van der Linden is from Europe and teaches psychology at Princeton in NJ. He runs the Center For Climate Change Communicationā which means he is the Pravda truth guy for the commies. And yes, he comes from Germany. This āprofessorā is young enough to be my kid. He obviously has no memories of the Ice Age 1970ās. I had to shovel a ton of snow back then and wonāt forget that!
This young puppy has no degrees in climate and grew up in a 30 year warming cycle. He cannot imagine a cooling cycle ever happening again. But lo and behold, it is beginning its grip. The sun spot activity is dropping. We will rediscover the 1970ās Ice Age scares again.
This stupid fake scientist should know to never use biased information to study something, if he wanted to prove his point about āpropagandaā he shouldnāt use his favorite propaganda materials. He would have to pick something āneutralā and then craft it well to see how it works.
We all know how propaganda works. It works only so long as it has a connection to reality. I note this last year that anti-warm demonstrations are fading fast, it is hard even for true believers to yell about roasting to death while buried in deep snow!
2017 will become the year that a plurality will figure out that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a RESOURCE, not a problem. If you take a look at the amount of CO2 pulled out of the atmosphere by Russ George’s iron seeding experiment in a very small area of ocean off the west coast Canada, and the greening of the planet (two continental US areas of additional leaves), if others industrialize Mr. George’s method, there could be a net loss of CO2 annually. At that point, the globalist elite will set up a different kind of carbon exchange, where you have to buy it on a market they set up and control.
“Suggesting that people from fields related to climate science have no right to criticise how climate science is conducted is ridiculous.” It does not seem to me that this is suggested anywhere in the paper, which would make it a straw man. Can someone show me where this is suggested?
seaice1, These social scientists have no basis to judge the truth of climate science, according to the common believer argument….which I am pretty certain you or one of your troll clones has used on multiple occasions. I tossed the argument out there as a throw away, however, to demonstrate how putrid I find their call to lie for the climatocracy really is.
The disgusting aspect of this paper is that they call on people to lie to advance cliamte science belief. But I will be surprised if you don’t defend it and even more surprised if you condemn it openly as it deserves.
hunter, do you want to address my point? It seems amid accusations of straw men that abound in this thread it was quite reasonable to point them out. But I am open to argument.
seaice, your (lack) of reading comprehension is not my problem. Their lie was specific regarding the way they seek to deceitfully manipulate people by discrediting the entire Oregon petition. Yet they are explicitly making decisions on climate without any more expertise- and in many cases much less- qualifications.
seaice1. It is reported in the article. Read the last quotation box.
So I think you can see that you made a bit of a mistake there.
The paper explicitly says that only climate scientists can critique climate science.
Other scientists are dismissed.
So what they uncovered in this study is the way a used car salesman works.
They would in fact be used car salesmen if academic standards had held up. This is a testament to institutional decay.
The exact opposite is true as well. When the IPCC reduced their expectations of warming in successive assessment reports, they make people less willing to believe the catastrophic prophesies. They helped people become more skeptical of their position simply by adding a bit of reality into their assessments. — John M Reynolds
jmrsudbury So if I got this right…, lie to make people more believing of alarmism, tell the truth to make people more skeptical of alarmism. Sounds about right!
Propaganda still reigns. Tell lies. Tell lots of them. Tell them loud. Never respond to the truth.
The paper presented is like virtually all research in the social sciences. On most of its topics it is impossible to do valid research because human variability is so high one cannot ever get solid evidence. 2000 people is an hysterically small sample for what they are trying to do and the possibilities of contamination of the sample from factoids and bits of stories on the internet is very high. They completely neglect all the possible biases, including their own, that affected the results.
Psychology, neurology, and sociology have managed to tease out some useful results over the years- psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, and a few others. But the best practitioners of psychology, politicians, have never formalized what they do. Perhaps because they don’t study what they do but just do it.
The worrying thing here is not that people are ‘innoculated’ against genuinely fake news, or specifically climate sceptisism, but that those in control of ‘innoculation’ get to determine what news they want you to believe. Need to cover something up? Then just innoculate people against it
And this is a job? No self respecting academic institution would allow axe grinding on this scale to go out under its flag. That is the point of climate communications though isn’t it. Faux science funded by special interests under a fancy letterhead.
Nomination for Climate Ghoul of the month: Google
Funding climate extemism at the behest of Special Advisor Al Gore Google opens an electricity intensive data center in the corpse of a former coal fired TVA generation plant at Widows Creek Alabama.
TVA ratepayers (without thier knowledge) agree to a seceret subsidized price for the massive amount of electricity needed to heat and cool the servers. They also agree to buy expensive wind power from the Midwest to offset Google’s usage.
The local community lost 300 plus good jobs in return for about 30 lesser subsidized positions. Many of those being security jobs.
Sounds like science fiction but quite true.
Classic ‘straw man’ argument: If you can’t beat your opponents directly, create a facsimile that you CAN beat. The problem occurs when the REAL adversary shows up.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive! “.
Global Warming “Science” uses just about every known logical fallacy. Here again we have The Straw Man – misrepresent the skeptics position then attack it.
And this was published in a peer-reviewed manner. No shame. NONE Liberals are actually SCAREY!
When it comes to science, everyone should understand that it only takes one scientist to prove all the others wrong. As an example, in 1905, it was Albert Einstein who stood against the entire classical physics world with his idea on relativity.
I also think that when Einstein said, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”, his words are 100% relevant to today’s science on climate change.
+10
Social “science” is so far from science as to be running joke in informed circles. Here we see a group of prominent social psychologists testing a truth from the climate skeptic side against a falsehood from the consensus side — yet in their own minds, having the true/false designations reversed!
Incredible.
We see the phenomena of otherwise very smart guys and gals fail at the most basic level — they fail to check to see if their own per-conceived ideas are in fact correct — the use the assumption of the 97% as fact. To be fair-ish, the 97% is a particular type of truth as viewed by Social Psychologists and other social scientists — social science has no way to show if things are really true — almost all of it is untestable in a pragmatic way. So things that most social scientists believe are true to them. That’s their only test. Read Kahan, he is the same way — never questions “accepted beliefs” propagated by other fields — just grants them the big T Truth without inspection.
Their study is a demonstration of the use of propaganda. It is a time tested technique. You find out something that the people know that you don’t want them to know. You find what authority they base their idea on — then attack that authority with MISinformation — intentionally slanted, slightly shifted, negative — to erode the value of the source. We see this is CliSci — a perfectly good study with a counter-IPCC conclusion, attacked without mercy because an image caption was in error.
Podesta engaged Romm to do this to Pielke Jr. very effectively drove him out of writing about climate altogether, to protect his career.
Remember, Social Psychology is the basis of all Propaganda — it is the tool created to control the minds of society — is has most often been used for evil purposes (I cna’t think of a single instance in which it has been used for good…).
If the inoculation process involves a steady deluge of crap, it might spark an auto-immune response from the test subjects. Remember the part about Do No Harm.
In a rather ironic way, he is a victim of “climate change”.
Apologies – wrong forum.
/frown
lol. These guys just missed their best opportunity in decades. I read that the Clinton cause just spent ~$1.3 Billion on a marketing campaign, and still lost.
Many people here have scientific / engineering minds that come to conclusions based on data, facts, logic and common sense.
That is to be celebrated.
Rational people are also very reluctant to use character attacks and ridicule to put the warmunists on defense.
That’s normally good behavior, but is counterproductive when dealing with the global warming cult.
If President Trump has taught us one thing, it should be that you can only fight leftist character attacks on you … by simultaneously making character attacks on them.
You can not win a debate with a leftist by being calm, polite, and rational … and that’s assuming they would be willing to debate you — debating their positions is something they avoid.
Unfortunately, few skeptics seem to realize the global warming scare is a false boogeyman with the goal of increased political power … and has almost nothing to do with real science.
Even fewer skeptics seem to realize leftists can not be reasoned out of their global warming beliefs because they were never reasoned into them in the first place.
The leftists (aka warmunists) that created the global warming scare are different than scientists and engineers.
They start with a conclusion, and then cherry pick random facts and data that superficially appear to support their conclusion.
If they can’t find data, they create it out of thin air:
— The 97% Consensus, the Mann Hockey Stick Chart, the wild guess climate model predictions (actually, they are simple personal opinions of a small subset of scientists (modelers) disguised as science, by the use of complicated math and computer processing).
If a skeptic wants to debate the global warming cult, he is ridiculed and character attacked — allowing a debate would imply the skeptic was actually worthy to debate (read Saul Alinsky’s books to understand that tactic)
I can not recall any political positions where leftists have been convinced to join conservatives or Republicans (leftists will change their positions, but only to move further left).
Skeptics will get nowhere with weak arguments or strong arguments.
Skeptics need to character attack the climate scaremongers to get attention.
And those skeptics on the attack must include lots of high level people, such as President Trump and Vice President Pence, who are willing to take a tremendous amount of abuse in response.
Trump is a tough guy and I hope he has the __alls to do this (the leftists are going to hate him whether he condemns the climate change scaremongers or not — so what does he have to lose?)
This is all Trump has to say:
(1) Today’s climate is wonderful
(2) The average temperature barely changed in the past 150 years.
(3) The average temperature did not change from 1998 to 2015.
(4) CO2 has never been the climate “controller”
(5) Real pollution is important — CO2 is not pollution.
(6) I am not taking any questions today
My free climate blog for non-scientists
No ads. No money for me. A public service.
Leftists should stay away
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
“We must distort the truth in order to learn the truth”
Distorted Pelosi science.
For now, they talk about innoculating people against skeptical positions as if information that contradicted the government’s position was a disease that had to be eradicated. How long till they start talking of killing the disease at it’s source?
Such is the misinformation about climate change that it is amusing to find psychologists doing experimental work with so-called truth and misinformation when it is clear that their own ability to differentiate between the two is seriously flawed.
Yes, that is the obvious conclusion here. But then the obvious does not generate publications and promotions.
While this approach may inoculate some, more likely it will ‘prepare the ground’ so that when they hear a real argument from one of us, it will ring true, not coming out of left field.
So presenting people with weaken warmists ideas will strengthen the skeptic position, as will usign photos of snowstorms and other misleading information like Al Gore loves. Problem: skeptics have morals and scruples. They are scientists, not bullies out to win at any cost. It’s tough for science to fight the religious zealots of climate change because zealots lie, cheat, steal, whatever it takes. As we certainly see here in their desperate attempt to hang on to the lie.
Sheri = Smart
“Itās tough for science to fight the religious zealots of climate change because zealots lie, cheat, steal, whatever it takes. As we certainly see here in their desperate attempt to hang on to the lie”
I would change your word “tough” to “almost impossible”.
There is no real science on the warmunist side — wrong wild guesses of the future climate, when the causes of climate change are still unknown, are not real science!
Making wrong climate predictions for the past 40 years — starting with global cooling — has nothing to do with real science.
In real science the predictions have to be right.
In cimate science the coming climate catastrophe is always coming but never arrives.
It’s just a false boogeyman and the PhD scientists and their computers are bought and paid for props to make the predictions seem “professional”.
Funny thing is a global warming catastrophe never has to come — if enough people FEAR a catastrophe is coming they will empower their government to control corporate and personal energy use and tell them how to live … which was the leftists goal from the beginning — sell socialism by claiming strong governments are needed to “save the Earth”..
Leftism is a “secular religion’ with many similarities to traditional religions.
Indeed, the source of the disease resides in the mind. The young mush filled brains, that attend our institutions of higher learning are provided no, or very little, means to think critically. This is the nexus, that in most cases separates the warmist from the skeptic. My son, whilst in university, shared with me in his final that he was unaware of critical thinking; until that fortuitous economics class. He shared with me, ” If only I would have known how the methods and results of critical thinking better prepare students for all studies and life choices in general.” I asked him to write the president of the university about his discovery and admonish accordingly, but he demurred.
It has been my experience in daily life, that the warmists are almost always led by their emotions (heart), whereas the skeptics are led by their critical thinking (brain). In the general, coincidence; that the former are Democrats and the latter Republicans????????????
In other news, strawmen are easy to beat.
Is this a post about surveys concerning psychology? These are not scientific at all, pointless meaningless blather. Why bother? Why this post?
No. Try reading again, but this time with your Reading Comprehension cap on.
Reading is fundamental.
“the assertion that there is no consensus among scientists,”
That depends on the question doesn’t it. As we know from the 2014 Heartland CC conference, 100% of skeptics agreed with “the consensus” as it actually exists. The problem is that warmists change the question and then claim that the 97% consensus agree.
100% agree that anthropogenic CC is real, they don’t agree that it is dangerous and it is the dangerous part that warmists slip into the question.
How do we inoculate the gullible masses against the lies and disinformation coming from the IPCC? Their arguments are already so weak they can’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Not sure you can. Since time eternal the gullible have bought perpetual motion machines, tonics that cure everything, believed the government hid the free energy sources, etc. Gullible people are not really easily trained. They love fairy tales and will believe any charming person who tells them whatever they want to hear. The best we can do is reach those who aren’t quite sure, those who have not heard the opposing arguments, and so forth. Plus, the young in schools need to be told the truth, not the propaganda.
Come on man. There is 24/7 fake CAGW news. The public needs to be inoculated against CAGW/AGW fake news.
What we need is some in your face global cooling to help speed the painfully slow end of CAGW and AGW.
Observations and analysis do not support CAGW. Observations and analysis do not support even support AGW:
1.No tropical tropospheric hot spot. The IPPCās general circulation models (GCMs) predict that the most amount of warming due to the increase in all greenhouse gases on the planet should have occurred in the tropical troposphere at roughly 8km above the surface of the planet. This has not occurred which explains why there has been almost no warming in the tropical region.
2. The latitudinal warming paradox. Almost all of the warming in the last 150 years has been in high latitude regions. As greenhouse gases are eventually distributed in the atmosphere the warming due to increase in atmospheric CO2 should have been global not high latitude. This paradox is related to the tropical tropospheric hot spot paradox.
3. The 19-year period with almost no warming.
4. Recent warming correlates with the highest solar activity in the last 8000 years. The number of geomagnetic field disturbances has increased by a factor of four. Solar wind bursts cause a space charge differential in the ionosphere which in turn causes an electric current to flow from 40 to 60-degree latitude both hemispheres (same region that has experienced the most amount of warming in the last 150 years) to the equatorial region. The electric current flow in the atmosphere with the return path being in the ocean changes cloud amounts and cloud properties in both regions. The observed change in planetary albedo is roughly 7 watts/meter^2 as compared to the 3.5 watts/meter^2 for the incorrectly calculated warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2.
5. Paleo record shows high latitude regions cyclically warm and cooling correlating with changes in the solar cycle.
6. Phase paradox. Phase analysis shows planet warms and then CO2 increases. As cause, must lead affect, this finding indicates changes in atmospheric CO2 has a small effect on planetary temperature.
7. No correlation paradox. There are periods of millions of years in the paleo when atmospheric CO2 was high and the planet was cold and vice versa.
8. The so called 1-dimensional calculation to determine the warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 was done without water. As the planet is 70% covered with water there is a great deal of water vapour in the atmosphere. The absorption of water vapour and CO2 overlap. If the calculation is redone with the known amount of water vapour in the atmosphere the warming due to a doubling of CO2 is reduced from 1.2C by a factor of three to 0.4C. The same 1-dimensional no feedback calculation froze the lapse rate.
It is a physical fact that an increase in greenhouse gases decreases the lapse rate in the atmosphere which in turn reduces the surface warming (due to the increased convection cooling in the atmosphere, hot gases rise and cold gases fall) due to an increase in greenhouse gases. This second āerrorā reduces the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 by an additional factor of two, from 0.4C corrected for water vapour to 0.2C.
9. And so on.
Climate alarmists like to compare “denialists” to tobacco industry “shills” who represent a tiny minority opposing a broad and well-educated consensus.
Perhaps the public should be reminded about other industry “shills” and “consensus” stories.
Remember Enron? Remember a guy in Houston named John Olson?
Probably not. You remember, instead, a guy in New York named Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize, and was a spot-lit spokesman for the glorious green energy, information-centric, and progressive energy trading company (formerly a pipeline company) called Enron. Dr Krugman was just one of any number of great and good analysts telling us all how wonderful Enron, and Enron-like, brokerages and data companies were at finding, and making available, and profiting from the sale of, hitherto under-exploited sources of energy. (This, to the extent that anybody at all understood what Enron claimed to be doing. Some promoters of Enron’s activities didn’t know or care what Enron was doing but wanted to be on the right side of history (and the markets) regardless. )
Stock analysts generally bought the story, and “shilled” for the stock. The Houston papers reported that 16 out of 17 energy analysts, all of long experience in the pipe, oil, refining, and energy industry, all advised buying Enron.
One guy in Houston “denied” the consensus. Olson.
He lost his job.
The CEO of Enron called the brokerage Merril Lynch and demanded Olson be fired. The CEO of Merril Lynch bought the consensus, took the “advice” , and let his independently-minded analyst hit the street.
Which of the expert opinions turned out to be right? The “Consensus” — or the “denialist”?
Who were the “Shills”?
When we talk about what to add to or take away from the story of the Consensus regarding Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, we need to talk about “heretics” more recent than Galileo.
The skeptics with facts must be erased out of an abundance of caution….don’t ya know.
Electric shock therapy is also said to be good for the subjects.
Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal and Edward Maibach would have made Heinrich Kramer proud.
Eric,
You said, “Suggesting that people from fields related to climate science have no right to criticise how climate science is conducted is ridiculous.”
Should self-described climatologists recuse themselves from criticizing geological studies of past climate?
Felflames January 23, 2017 at 11:57 pm.
Interesting association or comparison between the Borg collective in Star Trek and the climate alarmist faith movement. To wit:
The Borg-Climate Collective is all-knowing and all-powerful. You must cease resistance and submit to it without question. The collective is correct, it cannot be wrong. Any attempt to think independently outside the Borg-Climate collective is unacceptable and threatening to the health of the collective. It is Orwellian thought-crime. Please note those like Griff and other so-called “trolls” of his type here have already wisely seen the light and have submitted to the Borg-Climate collective without question.
This latest study on psychological inoculation will help you to understand the foolishness of attempting to resist the Borg-Climate collective any further. It demonstrates how psychological mind tools must and will be used as necessary to ensure that your thoughts are in union with the collective. This is a just and necessary step because, as said before, the collective cannot be wrong. It is perfect.
Any attempt to the threaten the financial health of the Borg-Climate collective by the withholding of climate change research funding is unacceptable and an abomination. It will be fiercely resisted, and the Borg-Climate collective will take all necessary steps to ensure that its financial well-being is protected. Any U.S. laws or presidential executive actions which pertain to the withholding of said funding are of no consequence to the Borg-Climate collective and have no meaning to it. Any other U.S. laws which negatively affect the collective are also declared null and void by the collective.
Defiance of the Borg-Climate collective will result in the the frying of the Earth and all life on it. It would be merely a matter of when it happens. The health of the Earth and the health of the collective are one. Of that there WILL be no dispute.
You WILL be one with the Borg-Climate collective. Resistance is futile. (Do I really need a sarc tag here?)
Better term: The Borg-Climate-97% collective.
Forest,
The one I like is, “You can lead a donkey to water, but you can’t make it think.”
Their whole approach suggests they are not interested in scientific answers. They know it is a matter of finding the best way to fool the most people. In reality, this is a truly unscientific way to accomplish their goal.
1 – ” LOGIN PUBLIC RELEASE: 22-JAN-2017
Psychological ‘vaccine’ could help immunize public against ‘fake news’ on climate change
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE”
2 – “Disclaimer:
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.”
_____________________________________________
3 – Who believes in UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
This stream of psychobabble justifies the way our current media lies to us, by deleting context, by deliberate omission of narrative conflicting information, by adding words to “quotes” cause thats what the person meant to say.
For sure “Liberalism” is a progressive disease.
The above “paper” says, faking the argument is OK.
Just like those blogs that edit critical comments to allow the home team to “win”.
Never mind what your opponent says, respond only to what you can easily refute..
Or when you cannot justify your position,lie repeatedly and loudly about your opponent..
Rules for radicals once again.
The farce is strong in these idiots.
Thou shall not lie.
Mighty fine advice if you expect to survive in a civil society.
Video editing to fake the results of an experiment for high schoolers is okay too, right Al?
You were being “inoculated”? …
‘climate acceptance’
A declaration of orthodoxy.
Stop writing things like “carbon dioxide is a colourless gas”. I know its only written as an aside but I have seen it use as a summary of why sceptics think that there is no GHE, even though few are that sceptical.
To chip in here, it’s first worth noting that a term already exists for this (and this study is merely reinventing the wheel) called a ‘strawman argument fallacy’, as noted in critical thinking.
What’s particularly disturbing about this study is, it goes off on this tangent about ‘false information’ whilst it proposes delivering weakened (IE misleading, IE false) arguments of the opposition, making it basically the very monster that it seeks to slay. Basically it’s saying ‘if we lie, we can expose lies!’.
As a seasoned debater who could swing people to one side or another, I can remark several things about this naive propaganda study: yes, people are swayed more by emotions in a debate than facts per se (my saying is ‘half of an argument is PR’), BUT, and here’s a big one: strawman arguments can very quickly collapse, especially if the strawman argument is exposed.
So whilst a person might have seen the weakened (IE distorted) version, which emotionally polarises them against it, if they are already informed about the definition/existence of a strawman or have been shown that XYZ source has a tendency to omit key facts or distort them, it very quickly *backfires*.
That is to say, giving them an exaggerated, misleading or altered version of a claim only makes them polarised against *just* that claim. If the exaggerated, misleading or altered version is pointed out, it polarises them the other way: *against* the exaggerator.
For example, I think most you picked up on the fact the study avoids going into depth on the 97% (how many scientists? What division? How many years worth of experience? What was the distribution of their political stance?) survey claim by calling it ‘accepted’ (by who? When? Based on what?). By then extrapolating and exposing the weakened, misleading argument, distrust of the argument’s author builds.
Of course, those in favour of global warming then try another approach: they try to minimise or silence dissent (either by censoring comments, lawsuits or just not permitting commentary to begin with, or using automated response tools or withholding key data).
Essentially the study boils down into: ‘we can win the argument if we’re the only ones providing the argument!’.
Well, duh!
Here’s a really good antidote to the inoculation: A CARBON TAX WILL RAISE THE COST OF FUEL 300-500% HIGHER THAN CURRENT PRICE LEVELS. And all for nothing except to pick your pocket under the guise of “Saving the Planet”
Here is link to the Oregon petition. Note: no Charles Darwin:
http://www.petitionproject.org/signers_by_last_name.php?run=D
and no Spice, Solo or Skywalker:
http://www.petitionproject.org/signers_by_last_name.php?run=S
What would be people’s opinion of this paper if they were inoculated beforehand with knowledge that the authors used fake news as fact, and facts as fake?