Above, reposting Dr. Stanton Glanz comparing the anti-science movement of the lead industry, the tobacco industry, and the fossil fuel industry – the time-tested fundamental practice of the ‘..what about this, what about that?” whack-a-mole gish gallop.
Tamino analyzes further below.
Anthony Watts has a post which mocks scientists who are trying to explain “the pause.” It oozes ridicule because so many possible explanations have been explored, which he dismisses as “hand-waving.”
His list is reasonably long:
Too much aerosols from volcanoes, ENSO patterns, missing heat that went to the deep ocean, ocean cooling, low solar activity, inappropriately dealt with weather stations in the Arctic, and stadium waves, to name a few. So much for consensus.
Setting aside whether the list is even right — what Willard Tony doesn’t realize is that he has put the spotlight on the real difference between skeptics and deniers:
When scientists who are genuinely skeptical see something they don’t understand, they try to understand it. When deniers see something scientists don’t understand, they use it as an excuse to claim that “natural variation has been in control, not CO2.”
As most of you are probably already aware, I’m not convinced there even is a “pause” (read this, and this, and this, and this, and this). You might say I’m genuinely skeptical. Of course it’s possible — but I’m quite confident that there is not sufficient evidence to establish its existence.
Yet in spite of the fact that the so-called “pause” fails statistical significance, that it is easily explicable as already-known natural variation in addition to (but notinstead of) global warming, scientists are so curious about what’s happening to climate, so determined to get at the truth, and so damn skeptical, that they have explored many potential causes of the short-term fluctuations in recent temperature. Not everybody agrees with me that the “pause” isn’t real, not everybody accepts that it’s just already-well-known natural variation on top of the global warming trend, so the scientific community is exploring a wide range of explanations for something that we don’t agree on and a lot of people are genuinely skeptical about.
That’s what scientists do. When we don’t agree on what’s happening, we try to understand it. If a lot of different possibilities are investigated, well that’s the way it always happens. Eventually, we’ll sort through which arguments are most persuasive and reach at least some measure of agreement. That’s how science works. And it works, bitches.
But not Anthony Watts! He already made up his mind that CO2 is unimportant or irrelevant, so if he finds anything on which the scientific community can’t reach agreement, anything we’re still exploring and don’t yet fully understand, he can recite only one conclusion: that CO2 is unimportant or irrelevant. Do note that he doesn’t reach that conclusion — he already concluded it beforehand. His total skepticism about that is less than zero.
And that, dear readers, is the real difference between skeptics and deniers.
Tamino said it well—-I like him more and more with every word he speaks. Glanz says it well too—you should repost this clip of him regularly.
One “controversy” that should have been added to this was that of evolution and creationism. Quibbling was the key argument from Darwin’s time as if flaws in one theory “proved” the other. As the arguments fell away, another quibble would be added.
The fact that this nonsense is still being debated in the public arena says a lot about those making the arguments. I’d say it’s time to go on the attack.
The argument style can be similar, but Stan is talking about the anti0-science attacks driven primarily by financial interests, relatively minimal effect on evolution.
Anyone unfamiliar with NCSE should take a look. They have long fought for science versus creationism, but in last few years have fought for climate science and added several staff for that. They have the best channel to science teachers of America, who knew to call for help, and when similar attacks on climate science appeared, they started calling NCSE for help on that, too.
I don’t care what the post happened to be about, I jumped to read it just for the title. I’m old enough, and a sci-fi fan, to remember that Star Trek episode. Here’s a good excerpt – on the perils of overpopulation of the environment.
http://youtu.be/Bprgl_4z6gY
Great play on words, Peter!
everyone’s favorite episode, no?
A grab bag of tangential points if you’ll forgive me.
1) Oddly, we have a posting from the author of the tribbles episode up today on Planet3.0 .
2) That aside, I think Glanz’s comment is right on the money. I hadn’t seen it before and I appreciate you reposting it.
3) I also think Tamino’s recent posting is an important one, demonstrating the fundamental unseriousness of Watts & co. But it’s not so much a matter of whack-a-mole. What it reveals is not the (very great) extent to which they are political or conniving generators of red herrings per Glanz’s comment. What it rather reveals is their stark incomprehension that there is any other way to be. The way they think of it, it is not a good way to influence the public to be stealing their memes!
4) Finally, this indifference to the real facts of the matter isn’t just relegated to the fringe. Consider this quote from a prominent political journalist:
“My job is to assess not the rightness of each argument but to deal in the real world of campaign politics in which perception often (if not always) trumps reality. I deal in the world as voters believe it is, not as I (or anyone else) thinks it should be. And, I’m far from the only one.”
As Coby Beck points out, what the world actually is, does not even make the list of possibilities.
See http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2014/02/one-of-the-biggest-problems-for-humanity/ for context.
“I deal in the world as voters believe it is, not as I (or anyone else) thinks it should be. And, I’m far from the only one.”’
the epic failure of contemporary journalism in one sentence.
Even search engines don’t give you hits that gives you information anymore. They give you what you want to hear and what others like to hear. So people generally get their misconceptions confirmed as “why would that be on the top of the search results when I look for climate change?”.
“if [Anthony Watts]… finds anything on which the scientific community can’t reach agreement…” It should be pointed out that this is an example of ‘the best defense is a strong offense’. Watts is taking a normal characteristic of Science (that it is never settled), and using it to create doubt. As Dr Glanz relates, its proper for real scientists to attempt to explain these discrepancies, even if it plays into the Denier’s playbook: that’s just what scientists are supposed to do. But the rest of us don’t have to play defense all the time, in fact, we shouldn’t. There are two ways to play offense with deniers:
1. Expose their real motivations. Their fossil funding and/or their Rightwing ‘free market’ ideology. Every time I am pointed to something written by Dr Roy Spencer, for example, I point out that he’s the author of “Fundanomics: the free market simplified”. You have to wonder about the motivations of a climatologist whose attachment to free market ideology is so strong he’s written his own book on the subject. Spencer may have some complicated reason why he thinks the climate models are wrong, but I’m not going to play Defense, I’m going to play Offense, and point to his motivations.
2. Expose their Science – notably the lack of any. When a denier says ‘the models are wrong’, I ask him for his models. How does a fossils industry that makes a trillion dollars in profit annually, that models everything from oil refineries to tankers to futures, and that faces an existential threat to their profitability if global warming is true not have any competing climate models? Where are Anthony Watts climate models? Where are Roy Spencers? Keep in mind that the last time Deniers did any Science, the Koch Brothers paid for the BEST temperature survey and it promptly came down on the side of Science and against the Koch Brothers!
To play offense against deniers, its important to point out the many ways they resemble graffiti taggers. Someone else builds a bridge to greater understanding, and they paint it the color of Mud and bid everyone to agree that “that’s an ugly bridge”. Point to the guy with the Spray Can.
You are absolutely right. It’s better to go after the deniers by exposing their anti science motivations than to try explaining why the latest denialist meme is incorrect to a largely scientifically illiterate audience.
Trying to correct all the disinformation means constantly playing catch up with the facts. The deniers are always able to be on the front foot!
And ofc the problem is that the denier always asks for “proof” – prove this – prove that – but are generally unable to come up with any competing hypothesis. In my eyes its a classic behavior of a child who is unable to take responsibility and comes up with all kinds of excuses.
I’ll continue to say it – climate denial is not so much about science as it is about poor toilet training.
I think rather, it’s about poor attachment, one of the most fundamental and profound aspects or tasks people face in life. It’s about poor attachment resulting in the inability to feel and thus believe in connection–to other beings, between facts and meaning, between elements in an ecosystem… The feeling of being unable to attach, or of being rejected or abandoned or any of the other varieties of poor attachment, is the basis of conservatism, anti-science and especially anti-ecological beliefs. The shadow side of it, in the face of clear connections that can be felt, seen and understood (more or less) by most others but only vaguely by conservatives, is a shadowy belief in shadow connections, aka conspiracy theories.
Some fairly solid “telepsychiatry” there, but I still don’t feel any sympathy for Dave Burton. He is a danger to OUR mental health, and that is my concern.
UCSF is one of the US’s top medical institutions, and Stan is not just a random professor, but runs the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, home of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
Material from CTCRE and LTDL can very useful, because tobacco and climate anti-science groups are well-entangled as Stan says. See Familiar Think Tanks Fight For E-cigarettes or TEA Party: Tobacco Everywhere Always, the latter about paper where Stan’s post-docs found the deep connection of Big Tobacco with Kochs in fostering the Tea Party.
For one more, see Cigarette Butt Pollution Project. Tobacco filters have long been proven to have zero real health benefit, are just marketing gimmicks that impose cleanup costs on others. People can still get the same nicotine if they want, but without the environmental damage and cleanup costs.
“… as an excuse …” – often, however, not an excuse, but: proof.
Such a mine “wordplay”.
I’m not delighted of many posts WUWT, but it’s the only (really) so totally (like me) a skeptical blog.
And here is remind me of these statements rather supporters global warming theory:
H. von Storch (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html):
“Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people.”
“Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth.”
Atte Korhola , the Professor of Environmental Change (http://www.helsinki.fi/news/archive/2-2010/15-16-18-33):
“The mistakes demonstrate that IPCC has taken on too much when trying to cram the entirety of diverse climate research in one book and force it into consensus.”
“However, science develops all the time and reduction of scientific ambiguity is not realistic.”
DNFTT!