Tuesday
Mar022010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Rude bloggers
Mar 2, 2010 Blogs Climate: Sceptics There's a fascinating analysis of the effect of rude blogging on climate science at the Times. In related news the Guardian decides it's no longer going to call us "deniers". At least not in news stories.
(H/T Anthony Watts)
Reader Comments (21)
Being a sceptic and being a scientist are both by-products of having an enquiring mind.
Someone with an enquiring mind notices something new to him and tries to understand it. He sees that all the sheep in a field are facing the same way and wonders why. He looks in other fields and looks at cows as well to see if there is a pattern.
If someone says "it's because of Invisible Force X" then he questions this idea and maybe checks for himself when the "expert" is gone. This is the sceptical bit.
Without an enquiring mind you will never become a great scientist - at best a cargo-cult scientist wearing a white coat and doing empty experiments in a barren laboratory.
And with an enquiring mind it's hard to just sit on your hands and bite your tongue while the emperor walks by naked.
Refutenik, me.
That's nice of them, did they talk to Al Gore.
[Snip - too angry]
March 3, 2010 | Micky D
Frankly, I'm kind of Micky D's perspective. Anthony's post certainly makes it clear that those people at the .... (sorry, got a problem with the spelling of Guardian...) have not changed their perspective.... "...the underlying science is sound..." Just which science is that? Arhenius? Sorry, it stops right there. Forcings and feedbacks? We Dunno. Unprecedented temperatures? Tell the Greenland Vikings. Shrinking Glaciers? Gee, why have we found farms and towns where the glaciers have receded? It was never about science and don't expect me to be polite, civil... or even civilized toward these people.
I'm a teacher and I see our young people being turned into serfs, a new, technologically proficient proletariat that will not question the judgements of their betters. Hello. When my students have found out how badly they've been betrayed....
Denier? Well I have plugging on about this with the Guardian quite a while now, and Leo Hickman did engage this blog over the issue. I am not going to be too congratulatory, because in reality a "quality paper" (an old UK term for the group of Broadhseets) should not resort to the methods of the Mail and Express (tabloids.) The differentiation was that you bought a broadsheet to get away from tabloid jingoism, but the Guardian just became a Climate Jingoist.
Another member of the team has written: "I use the term deniers not because I am seeking to make a link with the Holocaust, but because I can't think what else to call them.
This statement from them though is just denial. They used the denier term to play to the aggressive AGW proponents on their comments site. They used that term as pejorative between themselves. They used that term because it suited their mind set. Everyone knows exactly what is means. We are not that stupid.
So it will be interesting to see how it plays out with their active commenters and more ignorant, less mature, environmental journalists on their staff. Because the Guardian has positioned itself as journal of choice for those who use the "denier" term, journalists as well.
I welcome their decision, and I think Bishop Hill had some effect there, because the comments are easier to read for the journalists, to a high standard and keep off the right-wing politics of WUWT.
Just do not expect me to say thanks.
We should really all do George Monbiot a favour and "cut out and keep" his "climate denier cards" which are still available here -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers-monbiot-cards
I suspect Moonbat might wish to forget this episode in his journalistic career some time soon.
Yes, the problem is, the expression is used to imply that critical scrutiny of the premises of the argument or the evidence is illegitimate. Which is entirely understandable given the results of such scrutiny has usually been to discredit the alleged evidence.
But you can see from the last paragraphs, and the assertion that people who doubt that the earth is warming (since when?) are 'in denial', that the Guardian editorially still thinks that any critical examination of any of the evidence for the whole AGW thesis is not a legitimate activity.
This is what is so corrosive and destructive for the environmental movement about its current fixation on AGW. Its destroyed its rationality. You see it finally in the bit about the butterfly. Lets see, because a journalist asserts on evidence he does not produce that there is unprecedented behaviour of a butterfly in Scotland, we are supposed to accept that 'the planet is warming'.
And by extension, we are then supposed to invest trillions in large scale projects to remodel the planetary climate. Without doing due diligence or proper impact assessment?
Did the author, one wonders, have similar objections to having audited financial statements from the miraculous Enron? Did he refer to those sceptical about its business model as 'denialists'?
The use of the expression betrays a desire of the writer to end critical scrutiny of something. The effort is to short circuit consideration of evidence by substituting for it discussion of motivation for a view, rather than questions about the view itself.
I recently worte to Ed Miliband on the same topic. To be absolutely honest I did so because I was more than a little angry at being called a "denier" by an obvious idiot who'd never had a real job in his life, but nonetheless it is offensive just the same.Here's the note, no doubt he'd like to have me arrested and my assets confiscated but they haven't got a law for that just now:
"Dear Rt Hon Edward Miliband,
I am one of the multitude of scientifically trained (engineer) sceptics who have doubts about the science and the scientists involved in the catastrophic global warming debate. You refer to me as a "flat-earther" or a "denier".
The use of the word "denier" to describe anyone holding an opinion with which you disagree, is gratuitously offensive, is meant to be so, and is an attempt to associate the people so called with holocaust deniers. It is unworthy of any politician to indulge in such such language.
I'm not part of a well-organised, well-funded denial machine, and nor, to my knowledge is anyone else. We are indulging our democratic right to challenge anything we so wish to challenge, and indulge in free speech.
Finally, as a term of abuse the words "flat earthers" are probably not the best, given that the original flat earthers were the ones who believed the scientific consensus of the day."
@Andy
Yes I well remember that one...
This is one of my favourites from their US Environment Correspondent the fragrant Ms. Goldenberg. Almost exactly one year ago (12/03/2009)...
Suzanne Goldenberg meets the climate change sceptics
(do not be fooled by the use of sceptic here)
Some nice choice quotes just for old times sake...
Unlike Obama, who owed his victory to millions of supporters and donors, the climate change deniers operate within narrow bands of support: the conservative wing of the Republican party and the extreme end of the Christian Right.
...
Not that the mingling process is without awkwardness. Among climate change deniers there is little agreement on who they are fighting, and why, beyond the most basic.
...
A year is a very long time in Politics :) Buy that leaker a beer...
In that Rude Bloggers piece she writes:
inevitably it is climate change that has provoked the most abuse, especially from climate change deniers or “sceptics”. The 'deniers' is unquoted and the 'sceptics' is quoted. it is little things like that colour the whole piece.
Scientists entered the world of policy and politics. Basically 'keep out' or deal with it. You are not going to change or control the blogosphere. It is a market with infinite variations of content that can change overnight. Fifty years old there were maybe 10 newspapers with a letter to the Editor.
The MSM do not like blogs but when they they just stop processing press releases/soft pieces from friendly scientists, and start adding value then they might have some success.
Blogs are about adding value, in whatever form. Compete or die.
I have not thought about the term denier much, but if it seems to be a problem why not always reply with the term warmmonger when replying to climate alarmists that use the term denier. This has undertones that they might find distasteful.
The term “climate change denier” is objectionable not only because of the deliberate connection with holocaust denial, but because it sets up a straw man as opponent.
Few of those labelled as climate change “deniers” actually deny that there is such a thing as climate change, or that it is has been happening recently. Many concede that there may have been a human element in recent warming. Some may even believe that efforts should be made to mitigate the effects of this warming, though here we are moving from a question of science to one of policy.
If I am to be called a “denier” I should like to know what it is I’m supposed to be denying. For my part, were it not for the resonance with holocaust denial, I would be happy to be called a “denier” at least in this sense: I deny that global warming is likely to be as pronounced in size or anything like as catastrophic in its effects as currently held by the scientific consensus. Is this mere stubbornness to face up to the facts? Am I, as the use of the term “denier” implies, sticking to a view of the world which I find comfortable in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence? I don’t think so, but at least when the question is framed like this it may be possible to have a sensible debate.
Part of the problem is the laziness of the media when it comes to what is actually comprehensively agreed, (i.e that there has been roughly a degree of warming over the last century) and what is debateable (more or less everything else!). It seems that after Glacier- Patchy- Amazon- and the various other gates that the media are starting to acknowledge that the more outlandish claims of calamity are just that, but still haven't cottoned on to the fact that the models are showing very raggedy edges, and that the 'unprecedented' claim has very little holding it together. The science most definitely needs to be better defined, and this was touched on in the select committee hearing, where it was more or less said that temperature rise is a given, everything else is 'uncertain'. Where the press needs to dig in is in the policy that follows, for example the huge waste of resouces involved in the new renewable sell back rates that dear Mr Monbiot was going on about (£8.6bn being spent for a return of £500m). How much cheaper is it to strengthen sea defences for an expected 10cm rise over 50 years, than to shackle industry with huge costs, and drive the working people into penury with taxes that end up in the pockets of bankers and traders. That is what the Guardian, Times, and BBC should be debating, and pressing the politicians on.
I was impressed with the select committee; sure there were issues they hadn't fully grasped, but they clearly wanted to understand, and there was little grandstanding. Just shows how effective low key but persistent and polite questioning can be.
Given these people want to take away my money and my liberty, I don't see why I shouldn't be exceedingly annoyed and liable to foam at the mouth every now and then. In the old days, we wouldn't have called them bad names - we would have covered them in tar and feathers and run them out of town.
The Guardian newspaper piece is interesting and certainly represents a more reasonable stance than its past use of the term "denier". However the tone of the article and use of the terms "denier" or "skeptic" by people who agree with the AGW theory has become pejorative. Towards the end the Guardian article rather cleverly skews what it is saying. It asks what we should call someone who denies the climate is getting warmer, as opposed to a skeptic who disagrees with some of the scienctific points, or considers the uncertainty is much larger than claimed. This is a conflation. The climate can be warming through natural causes. The occurence of warming does not lead ergo to proof of the theory of AGW. There is also reason to be skeptical about the magnitude of current warming - a number of issues have been raised concerning the magnitude and type of corrections applied to surface temperature data and this concern is why ClimateGate and the transparency of methods and data is so important and has been pursued so tenaciously for so long.
I am not skeptical in any way about climate change. The climate has been changing, sometimes slowly, sometimes quite fast, over all periods of Earth history. The question is whether recent changes (warming?) are not solely natural but have been forced by human activities. To answer this question is very difficult and my own analysis so far suggests that if there is an AGW signiature it must be small because many other factors seem to be present in simply preapring the data. For example, I have done my own independent analysis (which replicates RomanM's work online here: http://statpad.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/ghcn-and-adjustment-trends/) on the differences between raw and adjusted GHCN data. From this we can see that the "adjusted" GHCN data includes a systematic correction which is around 50% of the total warming for the 20th Century. This is a surprising result and requires explanation. Without explanation I remain skeptical that the magnitude of warming over the 20th century is as high as claimed and that the magnitude is not without the possible range of natural effects. This makes me skeptical of the theory of AGW, but not skeptical about climate change. It is the mechanism of climate change about which I am skeptical. I call that science.
I don't know about everyone else, but I have not seen anything from climate skeptics "deniers" that comes even close to some of the obnoxious crap being spewed by the naive-minded new atheist camp. They win the award.
So bad that even Richard Dawkins has issues with it.
To complete the loop...it is interesting that Point of Inquiry (the podcast for Center for Inquiry) is skeptical of Climate skeptics ala the Mann interview with Chris Mooney. So much for free thinking.
The thing about those who use the word denier as an insult is that I think that they will come to deeply regret it. The reason being that if the so called deniers prove to be right and the climate change holocaust continues not to happen, the rationalisations of the faithful will start to become increasingly desperate. The sceptics won't even have to use the word denier because the denial will be there for everyone to see.
The reason for the abuse is to reduce the debate to an emotional level. We have to believe that Obama, Blair, Mandelsson and Brown are on our side against big oil. On the Guardian, the vast majority of intelligfent responses were sceptical, so they brought in George 'tabloid' Monbiot and his denier nonsense.
The venom coming from the blog world has really ramped up in recent months. Fred Pearce has even become a target. Once upon I time I called Fred Pearce an "alarmist" for many of his articles. But now he has written articles that don't portray climategate in a Positive light (he didn't spin it enough) and the war is on! Leake has endured the same on other blogs for his articles. Andy Revkin, once their guy at the Times has been crucified on several blogs for airing issues many don't want seen.
Perhaps this is why the MSM has been hesitant to post news that doesn't support AGW? The attacks and smears of the AGW blogs can be severe. I also have to believe that this behavior is putting them out of favor with the media (and anyone else not already a true believer). It will be interesting to see what the future holds.
"Part of the problem is the laziness of the media"
The media is anything but lazy. To the contrary it assiduously primes the pump 24/7 on behalf of an array of ideologically sanctioned "issues" and does so tendentiously, mendaciously and crapulously.
It also viciously targets any soul brave or naive enough to espouse a contrary viewpoint. Media persons work as lock-step enforcers of the prevailing sensibility as ordained by the Great and the Good with a diligence and zeal which would have earned any journalist at the Volkischer Beobachter an Iron Cross First Class from the Fuhrer himself.