Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” Lee Iacocca
In his essay, “Reflections on Mark Steyn’s ‘A Disgrace to the Profession’ about Dr. Michael Mann” Rick Wallace wrote,
Tim Ball, Fred Singer and others have been countering the AGW meme for a few decades, but to little avail.
He is correct. Yes, there is a slight increase in the number of skeptics as evidenced by the increased readership at WUWT, but it is a fraction of even total Internet users. Even those who read and comment on WUWT articles on the site often say they are not scientists or don’t fully understand the topic. Others demonstrate their lack of knowledge and understanding without the caveats.
Wallace continues,
But why is this? Why haven’t their voices carried? And, conversely, why was The Team so successful in getting their message out? Was it because, possibly for quite other reasons, there was already a receptive audience at hand? That there was an existing matrix of attitudes and beliefs to which the AGW belief system could adhere? And this matrix served to amplify some messages while it filtered out other, conflicting messages.
In a preface to the essay, Anthony Watts wrote,
“Given what happened today in live testimony before the House Science Committee where Dr. Mann was testifying, this review seems germane and timely.”
We can add to the timeliness the recent Washington D.C Heartland Climate Conference held (March 23-24, 2017). The conference was held with the opt
imism created by the election of President Trump and appointment of Scott Pruitt as head of EPA. By some accounts, it was a successful conference that spoke primarily to the science issues and some of the economic ramifications. In doing so, it overlooked, as skeptics have consistently, Iacocca’s challenge. These events will have little impact on effectively slowing the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) juggernaut. It will join the list of events, which I and others expected would crash the vehicle. Just a few key examples
· The 1988 claim by James Hansen before Senator Timothy Wirth’s orchestrated piece of theatre that he was 99 percent certain that humans were causing global warming.
· The 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution asked US Senators whether they wanted to vote to ratify Kyoto Protocol. They voted 95-0 not to vote on ratification.
· The 2009 Heartland Institute Climate Conference was presenting skeptical views on a world stage.
· The 2009 leak of 1000 emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). These emails were clearly carefully selected to provide evidence of wrongdoing that the public would likely understand. It didn’t help.
· The 2010 release of 6000 more CRU emails further documented the malfeasance, which Mosher and Fuller summarized in their book Climategate: The Crutape Letters;
“The Team, led by Phil Jones and Michael Mann, in attempts to shape the debate and influence public policy:
Actively worked to evade (Steve) Mcintyre’s Freedom of information requests, deleting emails, documents and even climate data
Tried to corrupt the peer-review principles that are the mainstay of modern science, reviewing each other’s’ work, sabotaging efforts of opponents trying to publish their own work, and threatening editors of journals who didn’t bow to their demands
Changed the shape of their own data in materials shown to politicians charged with changing the shape of our world, ‘hiding the decline’ that showed their data could not be trusted.”
The juggernaut survived these charges that would have shut down completely any other program. The CRU and the IPCC are still operating. This was the same Michael Mann who appeared before a US Congressional House Committee on Science and Technology Hearing titled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method along with Judith Curry, John Christy and Roger Pielke Jr. The event received praise from skeptics and people who know and understand what has been going on. They focused on Mann’s character, manner, methods. Julie Kelly wrote a National Review article titled “Michael Mann Embarrasses Himself before Congress” that summarizes most of the skeptic’s perspective. She observes,
‘If the climate-change evangelist can’t be bothered to take a House hearing seriously, why should anyone take him seriously?”
This is incorrect. Mann took it very seriously, was well prepared and exploited it for every political opportunity – he dominated the entire proceedings. He had the advantage of not caring or having to care about the truth. His performance was designed for most of the public who have no idea about what is true. He knows this works because that assumption has driven the juggernaut from the start.
Mann also understood the political and manipulative nature of Congressional hearings. They are charades supposedly seeking the truth, but are really designed to make the politicians look good. They use the opportunity to put material on the official record that supposedly supports their position in the form of appeal to higher and wider or popular authority. Often, the politician simply read their staff-written position paper and don’t even bother with the expert.
My challenge to skeptics is to view the hearing as an uninformed citizen. From that perspective, I would argue that Mann was the most effective and persuasive. He was assertive, apparently provided hard evidence, had the backing of most scientists and scientific societies. He turned the minority status role the organizers gave him into the base for his victimization role. It wasn’t a debate, but he turned it into one and clearly believed, as would most uninformed observers, that he won.
He also believes he won because he marginalized his three opponents by calling them deniers in the pay of corporate entities. They believed they deflected this challenge with the help of the Chair, but that added to his victimization because it placed the Chair against him. The deniers said he was wrong, but because of time constraint offered no alternate explanations. They said the computer models were wrong but didn’t explain how or why. Their answers were properly vague because there are few definitive answers, but that contrasted with Mann’s confident assertiveness. Their vague answers underscored that they were a fringe group, thus justifying their denier label. They said Mann’s claim of increasing severe weather was incorrect but offered no graphs to prove it. They clearly had personal animosity to Mann but denied it when challenged. They provided no motive or even an explanation for why all these thousands of scientists would present false material and information and offered no explanation for their inferred claim that Mann was cheating.
Mann presented his latest research relating changes in the changes in the Jet Stream with severe weather. Nobody at the hearing pointed out that his claims were scientifically incorrect and the result of false computer model simulations. It is evident that Mann and his fellow authors did little historical research on the vast amount of data and literature beginning with the discovery of the Jet Stream during WWII and the work of Carl-Gustaf Rossby. The format of the hearings prevented any cross examination of Mann’s material, so it again made him more authoritative that the “deniers.” Overall, by trying to control the hearings and achieve their result the organizers played right into the hands of a person determined to disrupt the proceedings.
A major reason it appeared to the uninformed observer that Mann ‘won’ was the inability of the “deniers” to provide definitive answers. They are correct but think of the contradiction this creates for the uninformed. This small group of deniers is saying we don’t know the answers, but Mann is wrong.
The sad part is most skeptics would not have done any better. I watched another group of skeptics make a similar disastrous, unable to see the forest for the trees performance, before the Canadian parliament. They were asked questions that none of them could answer all the questions. The answers they gave were scientific jargon that few in the room understood. Worse, their answers indicated bad science by the AGW proponents. If so, was it bad because of incompetence or deliberate malfeasance? Either way, it raises several questions that if left unanswered or unexplained only give Mann credibility. If the science was wrong why and how did it pass peer review and go unchallenged? If it was deliberate malfeasance, how could so few people fool the entire world? Either way, if you make or infer the charge, you must provide an explanation and a motive. I did not hear that in the Ottawa or Washington hearings.
I did not attend the Washington Conference, partly for lack of funding, but primarily because I saw nothing to slow the political juggernaut that is global warming. I offered to make a presentation bringing everybody up to date with my legal situation, but also providing the political context for the lawsuits. Why did three prominent IPCC members, Gordon McBean, Andrew Weaver, and Michael Mann, bring, what amount to SLAPP lawsuits against me. I think there are two fundamental reasons. They could not say I wasn’t qualified, although they tried. I also had an ability to explain the complexities of climate and climate change in a way most could understand. I honed these skills by
- Instructing basic weather knowledge and forecast skills as an operations officer in Atlantic Canada and sub-Arctic and Arctic Canada.
- Teaching a first-year university climatology course for 25 years.
- Teaching a required Science credit university course for Arts students for 25 years.
- Teaching a non-credit university course for Seniors titled “The Way the Earth Works” for 25 years.
- Giving hundreds of public presentations to professional groups in primary industry like farmers, foresters and fishermen whose economies are directly impacted by weather and climate over 40 years.
- Writing a monthly column, Weather Talk” for Canada’s largest circulation farm magazine Country Guide. I was fired after 17 years because of action by a single Board member.
- Writing a monthly column for The Landowner for the last seven years.
- Giving hundreds of open forum public presentations over 40 years.
- Publishing a first-year university textbook on climatology.
A good example of the latter is important because it illustrates the challenge and explains why groups have been so ineffective, as Wallace identifies, in “countering the AGW meme.” Recently, I gave a public presentation in Mount Vernon in Washington State. The organizer warned me that people were in attendance who planned to disrupt the proceedings. There was no disruption, and when I asked what happened, the organizer told me that they left with one person commenting, we have never heard any of this before.
The solution to breaking the AGW meme is not in the science, good or bad because the public doesn’t know the difference. It is in showing how the science was created to achieve a predetermined result, namely the demonization of CO2. Then you must provide a motive. Why would scientists pervert science as David Deming identified in his letter to Science and congressional testimony?
“With the publication of the article in Science [in 1995], I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So, one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said, we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. “
I made this challenge to explain climate in a way the public can understand the main theme of my presentation at the First Heartland Climate Conference in New York in 2009. I know from many discussions during the conference that few understood. Those that did were already in the education and communication business; people like Marita Noon who is now working for the Heartland Institute. A major point in my presentation was to accept that whether you like it or not Al Gore’s movie was a remarkably effective piece of propaganda. His latest effort is not even that, but most of the public won’t know. It is ineffective because Gore’s motives and hypocrisy have been exposed, not because public understanding of the science has improved.
Wallace’s charge that Tim Ball, Fred Singer, and others have challenged the AGW meme to no avail is correct. This, despite all the scientific evidence presented over the years up to and including Heartland’s 12th Conference and the recent Congressional Hearing. Little or nothing has changed. What is the solution?
Trump won in the minds of working and middle-class people, which is where the climate war must be won for lasting victory. They only need to understand enough science to know how it was corrupted, but they must know the motive. Until that happens, all the AGW proponents need to say is that Trump is acting to line the pockets of his billionaire friends. Mann demonstrated the technique in his congressional presentation.
Dear Tim
I personally find the whole affair becomes much more comprehensible if one adopts a point of view about global warming, which is that it is not , and never was, anything to do with science.
I believe it was created by a powerful political and commercial cartel, for the purposes of power control and profit: Its goal was to use the Green movement to demonize and shut down primarily the coal industry.
That was the commercial motive.
The political motives were I believe somewhat more complex. The 20th century was the age of oil. Who owned it and controlled it owned and controlled the world. I believe it is no coincidence that Wahhabism, the ideology behind modern Jihad and Islamic extremism, is a product of Saudi Arabia, the richest oil state in the world. Rising oil prices and a world scarcity of oil feeds directly into the power and the pockets of those who own and control the resources. Taxing fossil fuels does not matter of all markets can be persuaded to tax them equally. Huge rises in government revenues result, and the price of oil can be leveraged upwards without being noticed amongst the tax hikes. High oil prices leverage existing assets of oil and gas reserves.
What all this amounts to in socio-economic and political terms is a squeeze on the net disposable incomes of – mainly – the middle classes and a direct transfer of their wealth into corporate and government pockets. The rich get richer, ‘Liberal’ governments get more powerful, and the people pay.
Some commenters have decried the association of this sort of political and corporate cartel with socialism: I think this is quite wrong. Green and Left (Liberal to the US reader) politics are both prime tools in the hands of this particular elite, and they have long ago bought both movements and turned them into nothing more nor less than marketing tools to sell their own style of power grab to the ignorant (but well educated) masses. In a similar vein Wahhabism is being sold to the less well educated, but just as ignorant, masses of a more Islamic persuasion.
What drives this elite is profit and control of populations. The ideal state from their perspective is a world of willing slaves, controlled not by shackles, but by belief. They have realised that for the purpose of political and social control, at least, what matters is not the facts, but what people believe. And the group most easy to manipulate is in fact the educated middle class, who think they can think, and think they are intelligent. Because they can be ‘baffled with bullshit’ . They respect and applaud those who they believe to be secretly cleverer than they are, and they are blindsided by moral arguments: Having a high opinion of themselves, they must need to play whatever games appear to give them, moral and intellectual status.
All this has been knows since the ‘полезные дураки’ — the ‘useful idiots’ of the intelligentsia were recognised by the Soviet state as the key to controilling huge sectors of the population. And the hounding of dissidents out of the public eye and into the gulags the key to maintaining control.
In a democracy, you control not by force, but by the power of your narrative. Even in a totalitarian police state this is a more efficient way, too. And this I believe is the key to both understanding and to countering the particular subsection of the post truth socalisist narrative which we understand as ‘climate change’.
Climate change, the narrative, has succeeded because quite simply huge amounts of money have been poured into the key parts of the narrative generation and dissemination process to ensure it did. As I stated from the outset, nothing to do with science at all. Science is only there to provide a veneer of intellectual respaectability. 300 years ago it would have been religion, with witchcraft on trial. Today it is science, and carbon dioxide.
The campaign has made use of the Big Lie extensively and also projection. In fact big corporate interest sand indeed big oil and gas are behind this. The big lie is to run a campaign ostensibly against their interests, to disguise this. As is becoming completely apparent, replacement of fossil fuels by any other technology than nuclear is simply not going to happen. For all the noise made about renewables, their impact on the carbon fuel market is negligible, and they provide a handy source of government guaranteed income to power generating corporates. What is not to like? Climate change can be used to replace coal with gas, the green movement can be mobilised against nuclear and new gas (fracking), governments have a ready excuse to implement de facto, if not de jure, state control of energy, and profits can be guaranteed by legislation and cartel price fixing.
And if the sheeple object, just cut off their supplies via the new green eco friendly ‘smart meters’!
The oil and gas industry is the biggest global market in any commodity. Exxon’s revenue is around £250bn annually. (https://www.statista.com/topics/1783/global-oil-industry-and-market/) . Do you really think that if Exxon wanted to stop AGW it doesn’t have the resources to not only stop it, but also to stop it without its presence even being noticed? Of course Exxon knew, knew years ago, that renewable energy was a crock of manure that would never work, that anthropogenic climate change was probably not real, and that whilst it hadn’t started AGW, there was nothing to be gained by opposing it, and everything to be gained by going along with it. Yea even unto starting a fake campaign to expose itself, only to have that campaign collapse in the light of evidence. The Big Lie, that Big Oil was the enemy, not one of the perpetrators, of AGW was safe…
AGW delivers all the chattering class intellectual moral poseurs to the ballot box with their voting cards already filled in. It justifies a communist style state takeover of the biggest market in real goods in the world, and state control of what is the lifeblood of any post industrial modern Western nation. That is the Devil’s bargain. Big Oil gets its profits, and Big State gets its political control and the ability to exercise a stranglehold on the population if and indeed when the looming economic and demographic crises finally hit. Remember those in power believe, rightly or wrongly, in Malthus. When growth slows and stops and goes into reverse, they want to be the ones in control who don’t die in the general holocaust of a global economy that has run out of the fuel to make it run, just as the population peaks. To do that, they need to be (in the limit) a communist style non democratic police state, and that is of course what they have tried to build. With a considerable degree of success.
You may think I am paranoid, but that isn’t the quality in play here, what is in play is total lack of idealism and a world weary cynicism learnt around tables with companies like (the late) Arthur Andersen. These boys employ some of the best brains in the world, they have massive resources at their disposal, they are no way stupid, and they are cynical to a level that is simply beyond the belief of the average normal pleasant human being. And that is how they do it. No one in their wildest dreams believes the depths to which a collection of humans on multi million dollar salaries will sink to preserve them.
In short we should, I believe, understand AGW as nothing more than a convenient lie invented by a particular elite group to further their social political and economic ambitions. Similar lies – Nazism, Communism, Wahhabism, are also in play or have been used by the same class of people, and in fact it’s the way the world has always worked. The peasants are too powerless to resist, although they don’t believe in any of it. The intellectual middle classes are susceptible to well crafted intellectual nonsense and guilt at being slightly better off than the peasants, whilst the elites sit and plan the next campaign in total contempt of everyone else…
…Until the Internet.
Without the Internet none of us – myself certainly – would have been aware of the monstrous deception played upon us. For a brief moment communication not controlled by the elites has taken place – its being attended to now though, and net censorship is big on everyone’s agenda, under the guise of protecting poor innocent naïve Netizens from nasty violent abusive Trolls… But the Internet coincided with this particular piece of well crafted BS, and here we are drinking in Anthony’s Internet bar, and discussing the travesty of science that exists, not because it is in fact perverted science, but because it is simply political marketing wearing a white lab coat to give it a spurious veneer of authenticity.
How can we oppose it? Well the best thing has already happened. The voters chose Trump. There is a chance that he won’t go along with the RINO and Liberal narratives. He is a maverick. He is already rich enough to carry a high price on his soul. You might buy it for a billion, but a million? No chance.
If large sections of the Green blob are deprived of the oxygen of dollars, then they will be unable to fund the publicity, and without the constant drip feed of steady liquid manure into the tender ears of those who consider themselves to be more intelligent than they really are, the interest will wane. It is after all, with the champagne socialists, more a matter of fashion, than anything else. Radical chic in fact is what drives that game. Big oil is neutral. Coal is pretty much dead in Europe, the Chinese never listened anyway, nor the Indians, and in any case its not such a great play in the US either. So Big Oil wont interfere with the demise of AGW in all likelihood. What is left is government, and a lesser interest in renewable energy.
And Trump has already shown that by and large disowning ‘climate change’ is not a vote loser at least. In Europe the fashion is now the EU and political structures in general, and people are bored with climate change. And so are the ruling elites. The principle of state control of energy is now almost achieved, and the greater threat right now is that the state that imposed those controls is in danger of collapsing under its own inability to satisfy its citizens,. I don’t say electorates, because not one commissioner of the European Union has ever been elected by popular votes. Far too risky. The muppet show of elected MEPs is no more than a revising chamber – all the policy initiatives come from unelected career bureaucrats.
So the other great Western political power centre is imploding on account of its own incompetence. And it is possible to discern in the way the two more right wing parties in the UK, as well as similar forces across Europe, are being manipulated by insiders to ensure the ‘right’ leaders are selected to carry out the wishes of….well whoever it is that has the cash and the clout to buy them, naturally.
I am a child of the sixties. I watched a spontaneous grass roots movement in lifestyle, popular culture and music explode into something that was in very short order bought up, and resold back to the young people by cynical marketeers in the cultural and political arenas. Long haired musicians playing their hearts out in blues clubs, became multi million dollar campaigns run by tin pan alley. Expressions of rebellion and a desire for change became channelled into carefully orchestrated Marxist inspired student politics. And their adherents were sent into government and the media to spread their world-view to the nations of the West.
In short our spontaneity and natural feelings became fodder for a generation of marketeers and political activists to feed off. I became disillusioned with that culture at just about the same time the CND who I had always despised, were morphing into the Green movement. And virtue signalling (as I now understand it) replaced LSD as the chief pastime of the new wave of ‘fashionable’ hippies of the Liberal upper middle class of urban American society.
The greens were doomed before they even got going. Such a potent and useful fashion as virtue signalling about the environment was a low hanging fruit the marketeers picked early. Combined with the new self absorption of the idle modestly rich, enormous quantities of ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ products could be sold to an innately narcissistic nouveau riche unsure of their newly acquired affluence and with all the discrimination of a dairymaid in a West end jewellers…
..and into this cultural milieu, was dropped Al Gore’s genius, the convenient lie, that carbon dioxide was a pollutant, and this could be brought under EPA rulings, taxed, banned, and generally controlled and used to make money out of and to justify political interference in energy markets.
What am I saying? AGW is a passing fad. As transient as any other fashion. It will pass, not because we won, not because we got the science right, or they got it wrong, although that will play a part. It will pass because people are getting and will get quite simply bored with it. And once it loses traction as an tool to affect hearts and minds, it no longer has any political or commercial purpose.
That is the real reason why we are seeing an upsurge in activity right now. Because Trump won. Because Britain voted Brexit. Because Marine Le Pen is riding high in France. Because Poland and Hungary reject the EU’s impositions. Because the people didn’t buy the faux message of Liberal politics.
Because the old lies are no longer working, there is desperation amongst the old liars. Their careers, their lives are built around a tissue of lies, and if those lies lose traction then it’s game over.
Without Climate change, where will Michael Mann go? What will he do? He is finished scientifically, politically, and in every way. He will be destroyed. What about all the green journalists and activists? If the drum they have been beating for the last 20 years turns out to be hollow, how much else that the environmentalists have espoused is likewise a crock of organic manure? Careers built on green politics will collapse.
The darkest hours is just before the dawn. The ‘greens’ are up for one final counter attack. But in ordinary houses and homes across the Western world people are waking up, and not thinking about climate change at all. They are more bothered about their bank balances and people with long beards blowing themselves up in their capital cities. And the size of their electricity bills.
My point is, in the end very simple. Stop looking at AGW in terms of science if you want to stop it. It was never conceived as science and has never been about science. That was always simply a way of selling it, that’s all. Ultimately in a democracy so called, all you have is one vote. America placed it for Donald Trump., the UK placed it to leave the EU. Those two simple actions by huge numbers of people made all the difference in the world.
Climate change will fade from simple boredom. Lies are only sustainable if they serve a purpose and can attract funding. No one is funding last years fashions. Not only climate change, but in all probability green politics is probably dead too.
We will never eliminate those who manipulate us, not whilst there is one born every minute, but sometimes we can remind them of the limits to the power of their lies. Even if its just by yawning and not buying the product.
Plebeian lives matter, too.
http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/Clitorall_hinny.jpeg
I vote Leo Smith for the Best! Post! EVAH! on WUWT. You simply said it ALL! Kudos!
I liked Leo’s essay also. But I don’t share his youthful optimism about the ultimate fate of the AGW fraud. As our recent president demonstrated, nothing is of so much value to the right kind of politician as a crisis. The natural processes of the earth will continue to provide fodder for the engines of demagoguery, even if our leaders don’t engage in manufacturing opportunities out of emotionally charged videos showing policemen arresting violent criminals from identifiable favored minorities. I think it will take a counterforce to stop this movement, just as it took a Churchill to stop Hitler, but I hope I’m wrong. Perhaps boredom arising out of an over done familiarity will do the trick.
Leo Smith has some interesting points. Following up on that is a 2016 book called “The Devil’s Chessboard,” and a You-tube video called “A Rich Man’s Trick.” We’re losing the war because we don’t know the battlefield. I disagree with green-slamming; the problem is much bigger than that.
You’ve just simply got to understand, this is a KEY World government agenda, they will NEVER, EVER, EVER back down from this, no matter what the evidence is because it’s too important as a welath transfer tool and a proto-infrastructure for world political and economic governance.
Perhaps if the vast majority knew it was a scam it would force them to back down, but there are too many braindead libtard useful idiots brainwashed by leftism and too many intelligent liberals who are scared to hurt their careers and are desperate to fit in with the crowd as their religion is statism and collectivism.
I’m sorry but though we have to continue fighting and trying to educate, there are simply too many stupid and gutless people.
Which is why Faye is correct. Cut off the UN money, not just in this area, but in most others. Only by starving the monster can it be killed.
You nailed it in as few words possible.
Governments do like AGW because it increases their power and control. External threats gives control over the masses. Free people are much harder to manage.
Have we watched the same hearing? I thought Mann was terrible and clearly dishonest and the other three very convincing and genuine.
In any asymmetric conflict, you’re going to have one organized group with lots of resources fighting a resistance with fewer means for the hearts and minds of the rest of a populace that is largely agnostic but often sympathetic to one side. In these types of conflicts, the rebels have historically been able to win over their slower moving bureaucratic foes by:
(1) Hit-and-run fighting, rapidly changing tactics before the larger force can come up with countermeasures. This is often accomplished by blending in with the general populace.
(2) Waiting out the enemy, bleeding them of motivation, resources, and popular support. It’s classical insurgent type fighting.
Skeptics have done an pretty good job with method two, but by and large have failed at method one, choosing instead to fight a head on battle. This is almost always a losing proposition. Think about Vietnam or the difference between the first and second Iraq wars. In Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, any time US forces encountered large organized groups of the enemy, it was always a resounding tactical victory for American forces.
For skeptics to be successful, we will have to infiltrate the AGW bureaucracy and fight from the inside. In addition, we have to win over much of the agnostics to our side. In successful insurgencies, the general populace fall in line with the insurgents by one or a combination of the following methods:
(1) By threat. The populace fears what the insurgents may do them more than they do the government.
(2) By reward. The insurgency gives the populace something of value (money, food, education, etc.).
(3) Prevention. The resistance is able to demonstrate and prevent unpopular government action or at least offer to repeal said action if given power.
Successful counterinsurgencies generally offer the converse and are almost always political in nature. Government threats are usually counterproductive, but rewards and law and order can often help win in the court of public opinion.
I believe the way for skeptics to be successful is to target Millennials and Gen Z. I’m a 45 year old man, so there is no way for me to hold sway over these types, but if you pay close attention you’ll see that the new counterculture is the anti-establishment in these two groups. Unlike previous generations, modern youth have fallen in line with the establishment. They trust government and institutions. Their thinking is governed by political correctness. However, there is a small, vocal, and growing group youth that reject PC and push back against it and the establishment views. They fight strange battles involving video games, cartoon characters, and celebrities. There is no better example than the amazing battles between actor Shia Labeouf and 4Chan users over a “He Will Never Divide Us” flag. Each victory for the counterculture creates new skeptics multiply virally over the Internet.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/03/4chan-users-capture-shia-labeoufs-flag-liverpool-england/
These types of people must be encouraged to enter into our bureaucracy and institutions in much the same way as todays establishment was a product of institutional infiltration of the 60s counterculture. Skeptics must help plant the seeds in the youth. Influencers in among this group are YouTube celebrities and what might be called trolls on Instagram, Snapchat, and online forums. Encouraging AGW skepticism in these influencers will go a long way, especially if we can continue to hold the line against government action allowing for the failure of climate predictions to give them ample ammo to use in their fight.
I think arguing the science will not win the day. That’s been done for 30 years and it just doesn’t gain traction. I’ve seen some genuine debates and the CAGW crowd has lost every one. But that only opens the minds of the people at the debate. To win over the vast majority of people who don’t really care about the issue, you have to uncover scandal and hypocrisy. Climategate really did have an impact, but it was short lived. Someone needs to uncover more stories of alarmists profiting from the scare. The stories are out there. Someone just has to make an effort to find them. If Michael Mann is as unscrupulous as we all believe, you can be damn sure he’s profiting in some way. Find that and discredit him. That’s the only way I see things changing. Of course, we can wait another 30 years and the marginal increases in global temps will slowly take the steam out of the issue and ultimately end the insanity. This will be a long slow death though.
The stories are there. But just look at the Susan Rice story, it was sat on at bloomberg and nyt . The MSM will not break the meme, Planebrad has it right.
[countering the AGW meme for a few decades, but to little avail.]
Because CAGW is a (state) religion. Region answers questions about the “unknown” to ease people and take away their existential fears (which result from our conscienousness) The climate is unknown just as the future is. Religion need no proof (cannot proof it’s theses otherwise it’s science).
So what can “sceptics” do? Their scientific approach cannot provide predictions about the unknown climate. They cannot eliminate the fears of the believers. We have to admit that humans are basically religious. Consensus and authority really is what makes things “true” . Science was a deviation. Romanticism took over from the enlightenment long ago.
Unfortunately ,(mainly) white, (mainly) males born and educated in the 20 years or so after WW2 in northern europe and english speaking countries, have had a unique experience in human history. They experienced ‘enlightened’ logical training of the mind that encouraged critical, scientific thinking.
It was very quickly realised that giving this to the masses was a mistake. Back to ‘romanticism’ and feudalism.
First world countries spend billions on this issue and have created a massive trough of vested interests that perpetuate the ugly mess. However, this is such an insignificant percentage of their budgets they don’t really care. And many actually believe it. World leaders who don’t believe the science still throw money at it. Trump will too. You can bank on it. Nothing changes until it becomes easier to say know. Science has nothing to do with it.
There are some practical reasons why the sceptical side is losing the debate and making little inroad on public perception – except for being labelled by their opponents as cranks and anti-science. Tim Ball is right to point out the failure to match the success of the green lobby.
One major reason is that the green lobby is much better placed and organised. Organisations like Greenpeace operate from what are corporate headquarters, well funded, with dedicated people working in shared offices and an international call list of activists and spokesmen/women at hand.
They dominate the MSM debate because they have slick, highly professional, press offices ready with responses to any media opportunity or media questions. Anyone who doesn’t understand what a tremendous advantage this places the green lobby at. And please don’t whine about the MSM, reporters are always under pressure to deliver stories and will naturally be predisposed to go to people who can give them a good line, information and will accept a prepared graph, package, picture or quote if it helps meet their deadline.
What does the skeptic side have by comparison-mostly individual academics, working in scattered locations, often under attack or pressure of their mainstream work. The skeptic side does not have an organisation to compete with this, it does not have many (any) media trained spokesmen or the ability to respond immediately to media demands. A media information centre is the bare minimum requirement in N.America or Europe (with language speakers) to even begin to compete. But the greens smear the skeptics with “dirty fossil fuel money” whic strangely doesn’t seem to actually exist.
We lack some major political spokesmen – in Europe anyway – available to go on to broadcast media at short notice who are debate skilled. We don’t media train our people – and it shows!
We need an organised media organisation to ask direct simple questions in the public arena – “do you know how much you are paying to subsidise useless green windmill Said?” , “Climate change is natural – get over it!” ,etc,etc. Start attacking the validity, veracity, integrity and costs of the other side.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a great admirer of WUWT and other skeptic websites, but this debate will not be won by talking to ourselves. We need to carry the fight to a the general public. Information packs to schools “Climate Change is natural”, qualified speakers available to debate (and not just academics) , a real organised and funded centre to co-ordinate campaigns would begin to redress the balance.
What I fear is that after President Trump it will be back to business as usual for the greens.
Don’t let’s kid ourselves, the opponents are much more formidable and better prepared and effective than we are. And they are still controlling the terms of the debate.
Right ! This has nothing to do with truth and everything with authority , consensus, endless repition and threats.
Moderately Cross of East Anglia @1:37 am
…this debate will not be won by talking to ourselves.
BINGO
Heartland? GWPF? what that think tank Ebell worked for?
If you form an organization, you build a target for the other side to aim at. That group becomes the “enemy” and all in it are condemned. It may be easier to remain more scattered and less of a target. Some people in the opposition to wind considered forming a large group and this is exactly what happened. If you want the MSM to discover you, meet in a large group. You’ll make front page, though it won’t be a flattering article. Just something to consider.
Exactly! It’s about the Public Relations. We come to battle with the switchblades of science and they come with the bombers of professional PR organizations and with money to buy as much as they want. No match.
Believers have a huge advantage over realists or “sceptics”. Religious statements cannot be proofed (otherwise it would be science) But if the sceptic expresses his doubts, the believer simply answers: “just proof that it is not true” .
Some gremlins got in there, sorry but you get the sense.
The way to wind – is either to wait for the public and academia to get bored with a subject where nothing is happening. Or to create an alternative narrative.
And no doubt when people were obsessed with global cooling – creating the CO2 warming as “alternative facts” looked a way to get the public and academia off the trajectory of obsessing about a coming ice-age …
I am not a skeptic (you guessed?) though I make sure to read up on the skeptic side of the argument (e.g. here).
Why am I not convinced by the skeptic argument?
I am not of the left, brainwashed, paid, in some green group. Just a middle aged scientifically literate Englishman.
top reasons are:
Politics, not science: I don’t think climate science has anything to do with the left
Persistent cherry picking of evidence
Ignoring contrary evidence
Repeating the same old stuff without checking what you posted in 2006 is still true
Paid for scientists (Soon et al)
Money from fossil fuel lobbies
Supporting every theory, even when they are contradictory (can’t be both warming but no harm coming of it and an approaching ice age)
and the strength of the observational evidence (not models)
Is it true that Fossil Fuel corps lobby against Climate Change rules ?
Oil corps love stuff that puts the price up.
So please email or tweet me EVIDENCE that skeptic funding approaches anything like the magnitudes that of the Multinational Eco-Charities.
Absolutely it is true that fossil fuel firms fund the opposition to climate change (many think tanks, lobbyists)
But the amount involved is about 1/8th of what greenie organizations claim. Their typical, misleading way of phrasing it is something like this: “”Big Oil donated $xx,xxx,xxx to anti-climate think tanks,” implying that the entire amount donated went toward climate-skeptical spending.
But climate change-related activity is only about 10% of the spending of organizations like Cato, AEI,George Marshall, etc. The highest-percentage spender is Heartland, at 20%. The greenie organizations like Greenpeace who make these claims know they rather duping their readers, if only by the artful way in which they phrase their accusation..
I’d so love to debate you on your points.
Not willing? No surprise there.
Griff doesn’t debate points. Ever. He either doesn’t know what the word means, or he knows he can’t win an actual debate.
Your delusion is truly astounding Griffie. You have the usual Warmist talking points, none of which are based on reality. And yes, you are brainwashed.
Griff, Middle-aged but have read the New Scientist for 50 years?
Which coal mines did you grow up near?
Is your ‘identity’ suffering from all these comments?
I am an English physicist and your comments are never ‘scientific literate’.
Griff is actually being helpful; there are lessons to be learned here. Why does he persist in these opinions despite all the time he apparently spends here?
Griff:
We are still waiting for you to post ONE study which MEASURES the amount of warming caused bu CO2.
Being middle aged you have had plenty of time. We are waiting………..
Griff:
You claim to be:
“Just a middle aged scientifically literate Englishman”
My response:
You may be middle aged.
You may be English.
But “Scientifically literate” … you are not.
Wild guess computer game predictions of the future climate are not science.
That statement is true even without 30 years of wrong computer game climate predictions to support it.
Not to mention the extremely wrong global cooling predictions in the mid-1970s.
There is no evidence to cherry pick if one wants to be skeptical — that’s one reason we are skeptical, not to mention being skeptical is the primary attribute of a good scientist:
(1) Where is any evidence that CO2 has ever been a “climate controller” in the past 4.5 billion years?
(2) Where is any evidence that CO2 was the “climate controller” since the era of man made CO2 started in 1940?
— 1940 to 2016 was a period that included a negative correlation (1940 to 1975), positive correlation (1975 to 1998) and no correlation (1998 to 2015), of average temperature and CO2 levels?
The “observational evidence” is that the climate in 2017 is wonderful and has barely changed in the past 15 years.
The primary “skeptic” argument is that humans have no ability to predict the future climate.
If you disagree with that skeptical argument 100%, you are as dumb as a rock.
Absolutely nailed it Griff.
You can add a complete lack of scientific training from the Denier community to your points.
Most over 50, male, dubious social skills, extreme libertarian/conservative ideology, single/divorced/mail order wives.
There is perhaps another way to frame this. Dr Ball is correct in terms of how well the many-layered conflicts within climate science are being broadcast to, and absorbed within, the body public. I drew similar conclusions from the congressional hearing; Mann is nothing if not cunning, and knows that he needs only to win the soundbite-debate in the public square, not the science behind the narrative. Well, rather, that is the only strategy that will win him ground in the medium term. Where I disagree with Dr Ball is that he is perhaps too close to the center of this issue, perhaps even too weary from his efforts to bring scientific balance, to see the greater game unfolding. My own conclusion is that the long-term objectives behind the data and the funding for CAGW, the hoped-for mega-trend towards de facto Global government, unitary currency issuance and taxing power, is suffering an unexpected ‘Black Swan’ attack from the now-global and accelerating rise of (nationalistic) patriotism. That politics and the assertion of geo-strategic interests would carry the ‘Climate Day’ was as unexpected as it is unstoppable. It is also not a net good, but let’s put that aside for the moment. In time – and perhaps in shorter time than many imagine – the funding mechanisms of, and appetite for, the CAGW meme will crumble and fade as the world deals with more immediately pressing issues; it gets a little hard to play a game of backgammon when you’re hanging off a cliff by your fingertips. I predict that majority public and media opinion will slowly, and perhaps even quietly, meet up with the more cogent and verifiable science somewhere out there in the dark (and in due course). I also predict that at that point the CAGW warriors will simply shuffle offstage ‘peer-reviewed’-papers-tucked-under-armpits, and delete the upcoming climate summits from their Outlook diaries. Hang in there, Dr Ball.
Very well said. 🙂
We were marched right up to the edge and then some, we just need to make sure we don’t fall, as we climb back off the edge.
..it’s tribal, not logical
1957 “Don’t talk to the gays”
2017 “Don’t talk to the NEW gays (ie anyone they can label as rightwing, racist, denier” etc.)
We – are truth seekers, and not a cult
They – are often lead by PR experts … unscrupulous experts
…. then the ones that follow act as if in a religion or cult
As I said yesterday :
inside the BBC many do really think THEIR Social Justice Missionary work comes ABOVE the impartiality rules.
(They’re saving the planet don’tcha know)
Their wok is full of dirty PR tircks* our’s isn’t
(Balls essay is an example ..it’s you actually have to read it to understand his points
It’s not professional PR
Whereas the PR people would produce something that feeds you quick memes, usually tribal
The Daily Mail bullet points that they put at the top of their articles after having written it ..are effective..I wish people would copy that style.)
* Tricks include major entryism hijacking moneyed influential orgs from the inside : NGOs, news networks, non-profits ..I’ve just sen it done with a formerly neutral FB goup… LibMob moved in ..intimimidated people..now they’ve take moderator rights and started to delete comments, lock threads and ban some Non-LibMob commenters
… yet LibMobbers typing hate-not-hope is allowed and encouraged
* Also includes : Bullying by taking offence .. “ah you made 200 points, but point 63 was a little bit sexist, or a link to Breitbart, therefore we can dismiss you and your 200 points”
* – Misrepresentation is another one so it doesn’t matter if you didn’t say anything sexist , they’ll just say you did
That’s the “He kicked a little puppy” trick
stewgreen @2:34 am
They – are often lead by PR experts … unscrupulous experts
Methane is misrepresented by the meme that, “Pound for pound, methane as a greenhouse gas is 86 times more potent than CO2 over a time period blah blah blah” And no one on the skeptical side of this issue calls B.S. on this crap.
Some PR genius came up with the 86 times meme because it’s rather difficult to unravel in just a few words.
Before the defendant enters before the attorney he is briefed by his lawyer and staff.
And if someone wants to compete against people like M.Mann, he must get hard briefed by his staff.
Just can’t imagine why that simple truths still have to be outspoken.
Progressives have controlled the education system during the last decades where they could brainwash the young generations with this lie.
So most people younger than 40 think that humanity is bad for the environment and that we are too many.
It was the Hitlerjugend that fought until the end. That is what they were told to do since the age of 4. So they didn’t know better.
One good thing that came out from the UK’s MetOffice is definition of what should be meant by the term ‘climate change’.
“Climate change is a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns or average temperatures.”
Approximately 0.17% change in the global temperature over period of the last 30 years does not qualify as ”a large-scale, long-term shift”.
The last ‘climate change’ occurred possibly at the time of Younger Dryas and at the temporary transition from the Ice Age to the present interglacial.
I have lived in the UK for a number of decades, where the weather is discussed daily (as a Mediterranean I found this in the early days as the local’s rather odd ritual, but eventually I got used to it, and now I’m also an experienced the ritual’s practitioner) and for all this decades I have not experienced any change in climate either for the better or worse.
And I don’t understand why anyone should comment Trump should do / should just say this or that.
What can you do to help your country.
I am sorry to say that “As long as we use climate change as de-facto global warming”, there is no difference between warmists and skeptics.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Very good point simply stated — the leftist’s carefully chosen propaganda words must be resisted, and countered with our own propaganda words (or at least more accurate words):
Here are Saul Alinsky-influenced words and phrases that I use
at my Global Warming Scam blog for non-scientists:
Warmunists
Global Warming Cult
Global Warming Nuts
Climate Computer Games
Wild Guess Climate Predictions
40 Years of Wrong Climate Predictions
Global Warming is 99% Politics and 1% Science
The CAGW belief was never based on data and logic,
so can never be refuted with data and logic …
especially when the coming catastrophe is ALWAYS in the future !
You are correct — leftists carefully pick their propaganda words
and then bully others to use the same words.
I’m a libertarian — I don’t give a damn about what leftists or conservatives want.
I prefer simple words that convey what I want to say.
So, in my Global Warming Scam climate blog for non-scientists,
I often use the following words and phrases:
Global Warming
Global Warming Cult
Warmunists
Climate Computer Games
Wild Guess Climate Predictions
CAGW is 99% politics and 1% science
IPCC’s 95% number was pulled out of their a__
My climate blog for non-scientists:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Experts:
A Greek mathematician told the story about
https://www.google.at/search?q=achilles+and+the+tortoise&oq=Achilles+andthe&aqs=chrome.
Experts love never ending enigmatic stories.
So thei’re needed never ending.
This is an important post. I disagree with some who say that polls show Americans aren’t that concerned with climate change. I have many friends and relatives who aren’t actively “concerned” about climate change because in the big picture, it’s up to governments to act, but if you talk to them, catastrophic global warming is a certainty.
I think we underestimate how much organized, professional PR is behind public perception. This PR can easily counter whatever Trump says or does. Undoubtedly any number of groups would be willing and able to pay good money to ensure that deniers are neutralized and the planet is “saved,” although to what purpose is up for debate.
Do you suppose that Mann was coached by a PR firm in preparation for the hearing? Look at how he hit on the key “anti-science” message. Look at how he painted himself as the mythical truth-loving scientist, in contrast to those false agents. I think we would be naive to assume that he was not coached, and that he did not understand the message he was trying to get out for the cameras. The skeptics, by contrast, were merely talking science.
In my opinion, if the focus were to shift toward countering PR rather than arguing science, the real problem could be seen more clearly.
Mann has spent a lot of time practicing the CAGW bull-shirt.
He does that for a living.
He is in his position because he is good at the CAGW bull-shirt.
Roger Revelle invented the CAGW con — Al Bore and Mann are just good students of the original con man.
Those that oppose Mann and the Blob need to move to effective PR and sloganizing. Call them out, for example, of the Rape of the Pocketbook. Lining the pockets of their crones. Higher fuel costs that rape the poor, the working class along with billions/trillions of wasted on shovelling money to others in their elite club.
As for Mann, make him pay! Demand to see his tax returns, his net worth, his investments and his links to Big Climate Rapists. After all, it’s a war, not a gentlepersons boxing match.
EPA’s Scott Pruitt may be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Delingpole:
“I just watched Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, get eaten alive by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace.
Not only was it an ugly and painful sight but it was also a very dispiriting one.
Here is the guy who was carefully selected to be in the vanguard of President Trump’s war on the Green Blob which, for decades, has been doing untold damage to liberty, the scientific method, and the economy.
And he can’t even answer a few basic and obvious questions about why the job he is doing is necessary, important, and right.
Wallace asked him about the UN’s view that it was 95 percent likely that more than half the temperature increase since the mid-20th century is due to human activity.
Pruitt sweated, stuttered, and floundered.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/02/delingpole-epas-scott-pruitt-gets-eaten-alive-by-fox/
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/27/delingpole-scott-pruitt-is-failing-to-drain-the-swamp-at-the-epa/
Ask a few pertinant questions, shine a bit of light and what you see is a posse of nincompoops.
Just hope they don’t wreck things too much before they are thrown out.
Whenever we do the same with you, Ol’Tony, you skedaddle like a roach. We haven’t thrown you out yet, though. You’re too entertaining.
Don B.:
If Pruitt is a friend of deniers, I’d hate to have enemies.
Chris Wallace is the most persistent questioner on Fox.
Most Democrats know how to talk, talk, talk and not answer Wallace’s questions without looking too bad.
He’ll only ask the same question two or three times, and then gives up if there’s no real answer.
The 95% number is pulled out of a hat (or from lower on the body), and has no scientific meaning — Pruitt did not know that, or was too nervous to say it — either way, he did not sound very bright.
I was half asleep during that interview, yet answered the questions (for the wife) faster and better than Pruitt. I’m no genius — I only claim common sense when saying no one knows what the future climate will be — no one is 95% sure — no one is 85% sure — or even 5% sure.
Of course I know — The future average temperature will be warmer, unless it is colder!
Pruit may have been told by Trump not to contradict anything asserted in the Social Cost of Carbon document, because Trump doesn’t want to catch flack at this moment for opening that can of worms.
The reason the juggernaut of CAGW (or whatever its current label) rumbles on is straightforward:
(1) Vested interest (eg “alternative energy”, along with all the subsidies it attracts from taxpayers) and (2) Government (all the tax it imposes, “carbon tax”, emission taxes et etc) under the guise of “the fight against Global Warming”.
The former will continue to scream, chicken little style, in order to ensure their suckling at the taxpayer teat remains secure; the latter will support (overtly or otherwise) the notion of CAGW (or whatever its current label) because it is a guaranteed excuse to raid taxpayers pockets.
History proves it is very difficult to force a government to give up a tax once it has formulated and imposed it for whatever reason. The justification for the tax just morphs.
The only thing that stops this nonsense is the climate itself. When (not if) the climate cools again, perfectly naturally, perfectly cyclically, then and only then will the charlatans and thieves be rumbled. I sincerely hope at that point there is a “Nuremberg Trial” for the purveyors of what is undoubtedly the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the West – with Nuremberg consequences in the perfect world.
The “war” will not be won or lost in the courtroom of public opinion. the AGW meme is not about science or facts. it is a vehicle of the left to gain total control over the lives of individuals. Rahm Emmanuel said “never let a good crises go to waste”, but in order to scare the free people of the planet into giving up total control of their freedom, you have to have a really big crises! So they created Algore and the hokey stick.
On one side, you have the totalitarians, and their willing toadies – the press. On the other side, you have – apathy! Who will win is a question that will only be answered with time, as it is not a conventional war, but a war of attrition. Can the totalitarians scare us before the next glacial age comes. The winner will not be decided by science as it is not science. It is politics.
On the one hand you have science and the other US Republican politics.
Climate change is not something resulting from the UN/left conspiring.
The real left doesn’t care about climate change…
Griff, we are waiting for your post of a study which measures temperature change caused by CO2.
Waiting…………
Griff, you are so dim that I wonder if it is worth my time to respond to your nonsense:
Making wrong long-term predictions about the future average temperature for the past 40 years is not science.
Science tells us the climate varies, and can’t be predicted because we don’t understand climate change well enough to predict anything.
Science tells us we currently have near the lowest levels of CO2 in the past 4.5 billion years, and more CO2 added to the air since 1940 is greening our planet..
Science tells us CO2 has never been the “climate controller” in the past 4.5 billion years.
In the past 4.5 billion years of continuous climate change, we have a mere ten year period, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s, when manmade CO2 and the average temperature both rose rapidly at the same time.
One decade of “evidence” is not proof of anything.
I live in Michigan USA.
My property was under ice 20,000 years ago.
I suppose you think the global warming that started more than 10,000 years ago was caused by coal burning power plants and gasoline burning SUVs?
On second thought, you probably do believe that.
If you want to dedicate your time to debating the pollution caused by burning fossil fuels, that would be something worth debating …
… but CO2 is not pollution, and more CO2 in the air — double or triple the current level — would significantly benefit green plants, and the humans and animals who eat them.
CO2 is our friend.
Griff, please continue posting your nonsense here — please don’t stop — this website needs its own Bozo the Climate Clown (that would be you) to make silly comments to stir up, and entertain, the “deniers”.
“The real left doesn’t care about climate change…”
The real left cares about gaining power, influence, and money, and climate change is one of their vehicles for getting these things.
You cannot get your shoe size correct can you Griff? I will help you:
A shame you do not know science. or you would see that. But then that is your religion.
Kill their blood supply, abolish the ‘(not)FEDERAL RESERVE’. Progressivism can’t survive without funding.
Gerald any number of professional scientists have published compelling proof of how human CO2 drives climate change and conveniently put it on the internet.
I don’t have to spell it out for you.
I would encourage you to look at ‘Berkeley Earth Results’ for a skeptic funded proof that it is warming and that surface temp measurements are reliable.
I suspect you won’t look.
Griff thinks published papers= “compelling proof”! He thinks that “compelling arguments” or “compelling conclusions” equal empirical EVIDENCE! He literally believes that peer review= proven fact!! ” If it passes peer review, then even morons know it’s true”. Wow.
In this one post, Griff demonstrates that even at the most basic level, he doesn’t understand what science is, how it works, how it progresses, or what it’s limits are.
Help!!! I’ve been banned on Facebook for being “abusive.” Here is my recent article. Anyone that reads my posts knows that they have been directed at exposing the climate bullies.
The Benefits of Higher CO2 Levels; Fewer Hurricanes, Greater Prosperity, Longer Life
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/the-benefits-of-higher-co2-levels-fewer-hurricanes-greater-prosperity-longer-life/
Don’t use facelift. It is one of the digital spy machines neocons use against the people. A smart meter is another digital spy machine forced upon us.
co2islife, it doesn’t matter, that sort of stuff can’t be printed in certain venues. I’ve been kicked off websites, I can’t even get a relatively tame commentary on the recent Hearing published in our local on-line news– but, I can respond to the commentaries of others, and with some force. If you move off of WUWT and similar sites, you’ll have to find ways to be more subtle. Blatant and out-front truth telling will get you banned. But moving off of sites like WUWT and confronting a wider audience is exactly what must happen.
Yep, I’ve learned that. Pretty shocking.
Their site, their rules. You mistake was in thinking they were fair and unbiased.
WOPR – The only winning strategy is to not play the game.