Tuesday
Mar232010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill PR tactics
Mar 23, 2010 Climate: CRU Media Keith Kloor's article at Nature Climate Feedback looks at the PR tactics that the warmist side of the debate might adopt. Should it be an offensive against the sceptics or something else.
I can't help but think that this is missing the point rather.
Reader Comments (14)
I have just finished reading The Hockey Stick Illusion. A brilliantly written book Andrew.
My mood is disbelieving mixed with anger.
Missing the point? If we were talking about the normal world, I would agree.
But in the parallel world of the Emperor's New Clothes, perhaps it's actually the entire point.
The article assumes that warmists are correct but that their PR has been poor. Which is exactly what every politician always says - it's exactly what Obama says when asked why his policies face opposition and criticism.
Keith Kloor's article, like so many of the hasty attempts to whitewash over the cracks that are coming out at present, are suggestive of a group of Goliaths getting their heads together to try to stop that pesky David from threatening them with his slingshot.
They perhaps have a dreadful vision in mind of a premature end to their nice comfortable existance producing the odd shroudwaving paper, getting their chums to 'peer review' it, briefing the adoring and breathless boys and girls from the Grauniad and the Beeb, jetting off to another Conference in Tahiti to discuss the evils of letting the plebs go on holiday.......
Phew! it must be tough. Only the odd Nobel Prize and a good index linked pension to look forward to.
Hmm, Peter B.
I take your point but I'm not sure the execrable Bob Ward (PR man for the Lord Stern's Grantham Research Institute - well known for his involvement in trying to discredit "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and Ian Plimer's "Heaven & Earth") would be happy about knocking PR.
Oh shucks! Forgot! He likes to pretend HE's a Climate Scientist!
It seems to me that these people readily agree that they have FAILED to communicate their message and refuse to accept that their Failed science is the problem. I see far more science on the skeptic side, and that is what i find persuasive.
None of the writings of the so called warmists suggest that they are open minded.(Just the reverse) Its still an open and shut case as far as they are concerned. All i want to see is an open debate on the science. I am ready to be persuaded so come and get me.
To get the measure of who is doing what to whom in this "debate" compare realclimate's blog, the censorship and abuse, then go and look at WUWT, BH, CA and the other sceptical blogs, where there is a real effort to keep people on topic and polite to each other. This would be no big deal if realclimate was the home of CAGW activists and nutters, but it isn't, it is the blog of the climate science community. Clearly there can be no dialogue if the scientists won't confront their critics with real science and choose to use "big oil shills", to deal with even the most reasoned opposition.
Martin Brumby, I watched Bob Ward in person at the Royal Institution on the occasion of the "disasters" debate with Pielke Jr. He came across as a PR man quick to go for the "think of the children" line of argumentation. I don't think anyone could mistake him for a scientist (wait - I forgot - we're talking of "climate scientists" here).
There is not a single science that has not been radically revised or extensively added to within living memory; and every well-known philosophy has familiar shortcomings. If we really do absorb into our thinking the fact that only fragmentary knowledge and partial understanding are available to us we shall stop making the mistake of supposing that everything can be explained in terms of categories of understanding that happen currently to be available to us—and therefore that anything not thus explicable is in some sense supernatural. The idea that we have now come into possession of all the explanatory means required to make sense of everything is, on serious examination, so silly that I am at a loss to know how anyone can believe it, yet it is a widely held assumption, and held most confidently of all by people like philosophers and scientists.
Bryan Magee (from Confessions of a Philosopher, 1997)
Perhaps this phenomenon so aptly put by Magee goes some way to explaining the die-hard adamancy of the so-called climater scientists?
Brilliant, climate scientists have introduced class warfare into the debate!
What would you rather be a middle-class educated fool or a working class nutter?
All this shows is that science has become elitist, bigoted and ignorant, and that scientists are not truth-seekers but are only interested in politicising science in order to get their own way.
I think you need to highlight your role in the networks of skeptics as here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/22/the-well-funded-well-organized-global-skeptic-network-laid-bare-sarc/
I am pissed of that I'm not on the chart (as a reader of your blog) but not as pissed off as Johan Hari and the Independent who are missed completely. Also nice to see the warmists acknowledge that the BBC, Nature and New Scientist are not neutral!
If you want to comment your frustrations.
Comment where people that do not know what is going on can read them.
Ie like the bbc.
Richard Black's Earthwatch is a good place, very well read. as are Paul hudson, and some very sceptical Andrew Neil Blogs (see his tv interview of green party leader, straight talk, climategate 10 mins in - should still be on iplayer)
Sceptics read sceptics blogs, advocates read real climate..
''Normal' people read the bbc...
If the bbc continues to recieve educated criticism of its stance, and the science.. then the tanker, may start to slow and turn...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/03/climate_ads_far_from_divine.html#comments
Mac
I must respectfully take issue with you for your last statement above, although I understand the sentiment behind it. I think it applies more accurately to politicians and "political scientists" than scientists as a whole.
I think we must all be careful not to fall into the trap laid for us by the climatologists and their assorted apologists in claiming the good name of science for themselves.
Climate science does not equal all science, and its practitioners are not all scientists. Indeed many of them appear to have very poor hard science backgrounds and many others simply turn out to be economists on closer inspection.
Let us put climatology in its place as, at least for the present time, one of the soft and dismal sciences.
Let us reclaim hard science to its rightful place, as practised by very many talented and honest scientists in hundreds of fields of enquiry, many of which attract a fraction of 1% of the funding available to find evidence to support the AGW hypothesis.
It needs to be stated that moralistic (cuddly and eco-friendly) intent usually leads to moral (benefit for humans, animals and the planet) disasters.
Witness the drive to reduce fossil fuel use by encouraging palm oil plantations.
Now even Greenpeace has resorted to begging companies to eschew the use of palm oil as they have suddenly realised that financially-savvy businessmen will simply chop down rainforest to make money.
> I am writing to express my deep concern at the role Nestle is playing in the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests, and the impact this is having on people, wildlife and the climate.
> The palm oil you buy to make Kit Kats is often the result of forest and peatland destruction, which is speeding up climate change and destroying the home of the endangered orang-utan.
> By buying palm oil from the notorious forest destroyer Sinar Mas, you and the palm oil traders you buy from are involved in the destruction of Indonesia's precious rainforests.
> Sinar Mas continues to destroy rainforests to grow plantations, despite the negative impact on the people and wildlife that depend on it for their survival, and despite the fact that it is also accelerating climate change.
> As the world's largest food and drink company, Nestl? could be using its influence to insist on positive changes in the palm oil industry that would have a real benefit for the rainforests of Indonesia. Your company uses over 320,000 tonnes of palm oil every year, which goes into a range of well-known products including Kit Kat. In the last three years, your use of palm oil has almost doubled according to your own figures.
> Unilever and Kraft have already cancelled its contract with Sinar Mas due to its bad practices, whilst Nestl? has failed to take the same action. Please stop turning a blind eye and instead immediately:
> - Stop trading with companies within the Sinar Mas group
> - Stop buying Sinar Mas palm oil and pulp products from third-party suppliers.
> - Engage with the Indonesian government and industry to deliver a moratorium on forest clearance and peatland protection
> In short, please give the rainforests and the orang-utans a break. I look forward to receiving your response in due course.
Hmm, use these words in a well-known saying: chickens, roost, come home.