Bishop Hill Public views of sceptics
Mar 7, 2014 Climate: Sceptics Greens Media Ed Hawkins tweets that most of the public don't see sceptics as lukewarmers. He's right of course. Nigel Lawson, for example, is regularly condemned as a "denier" by the chattering classes. Take these examples:
Robin McKie, the Guardian's science editor (in a letter to Owen Paterson): you arrive at your new post with the strong endorsement of Britain's chief climate change denier, Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor...
David Conn of the Guardian: Nigel Lawson, a very much ex-politician, now a well known climate change denier, getting a platform on the BBC: why?
Magnus Linklater: Nigel Lawson, climate change denier, says we should quit Europe: a very good reason for staying in.
Jonathan Porritt: Nigel Lawson (former Chancellor of the Exchequer, political street-fighter and spinner, and notorious climate denier...
Yet here are Nigel Lawson's stated views on the subject from 2010:
While CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas, increasing concentrations of which may be expected to have (other things being equal) a warming effect, scientists disagree about how large that effect may be.
Similarly from 2011:
I don’t deny for a moment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are so many other factors that affect climate.
Owen Paterson is another who seems quite clear on the subject:
There is almost certainly bound to be some influence by man-made activity but we have just got to be rational and make sure the measures we take to counter it do not actually cause more damage.
The reaction by our green friends and their acolytes in the media has been as follows:
Mehdi Hasan (writing in the Huffington Post, days after Paterson had been admitted to hospital): It wouldn't be so bad if Paterson's denialism was expressed only in the form of rhetorical gaffes.
Natalie Bennet of the Green Party (while Paterson was still convalescing): It's an insult to flood victims that we have an Environment Secretary (Owen Paterson) who is a denier of the reality of climate change and we also can't have anyone in the cabinet who is denying the realities that we're facing with climate change."
Joss Garman of Greenpeace: “David Cameron went from promising the “greenest government ever” to appointing a climate change denier, Owen Paterson, as environment secretary.”
Seumas Milne in the Guardian: paradoxically, Paterson is in fact a climate change denier in what was supposed to be "the greenest government ever"
Or what about that other environmentalist bogey man, Matt Ridley:
Here are his views from 2011:
I fully accept that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the climate has been warming and that man is very likely to be at least partly responsible.
Or from 2013:
Every time I argue for a lukewarm “third way” — that climate change is real but slow, partly man-made but also susceptible to natural factors, and might be dangerous but more likely will not be — I am attacked from both sides.
So if the public think that prominent sceptics are deniers rather than lukewarmers, we know who is responsible.
Bishop Hill
I've been sent this quote of Owen Paterson on the news last night:
Q: Have you changed your views on climate change?
A: Of course the climate is changing. There is a human element. What’s important for me and for Defra is to adapt and to make sure that we do have good coastal defences. And I’m very proud that although it was terrible for those who were flooded, families, lives and businesses, don’t forget that 1.4m properties were protected.
Reader Comments (74)
I don't think you fully understand what a denier is.
It is anybody who disagrees with The Mann™
Ask the Anti-Defamation League for help. They are rather sensitive.
Liers is what they are. Stalinist liers. I certainly will not be polite when the Green Party comes knocking at my door, I will treat them with same disdain and hostility I treated the local BNP candidate.
The best that one can say for many fervent Alarmists who present such caricatures to the public is that they are completely ignorant.
The next class is that of people who like to present "Straw Man" assertions (can't even say 'arguments') so as to make their opponents seem irrational.
Of course, many such benighted Alarmists are merely dishonest and don't wish to present the facts when this would distract from The Mission.
They don't care about science. Their definition of "the reality of climate change" is "we need to dismantle the capitalist system" and anyone not in complete agreement with this is a "denier".
In their world you do not make nuanced decisions about anything based on facts, you choose whatever advances the cause.
As we saw with the flare firing anti fracking protestors, if the truth is unfavourable they lie without compunction.
I don't think "most of the public" are really deeply concerned about climate change anyway so I don't think they hold strong opinions or have deep knowledge of sceptics.
I mean - I think we can all think of how easy it is to pick a fringe group and show it as clearly having something going wrong with its stance? Think of the weirdest conspiracy theorising for example?
Show how mad they are and the public will laugh along and ridicule them with you.
So the climate social scientists are rummaging through all the archetypes of pathological thinking, trying them out to persuade the otherwise unconcerned person that they are synonymous with climate scepticism.
But the trouble is, that once you start along that path, the climate social scientists have to start talking about the underlying 'facts' that are supposed to be *normal* and accepted - the climate social scientist has to tell the public that at least three things are normal accepted thinking:
- Don't you know that we are all going to hell in a hand-basket?
- Don't you know humanity is stretched to a point unlike never before in its history and possibly wont survive or adapt without our advice?
- Don't you know there are these strange people called "sceptics" who seem to think otherwise?
Good luck with that ;)
This is the tragedy for the the climate social scientists industry. They *have* to redefine *normal* scepticism as a pathological state.
Sceptics have been fairly clear what they believe and what they want to see. Unfortunately they’re asking for good documentation, data transparency, clear procedures, removal of bad elements (theories and people) and a debate. It’s far easier to create a denier straw man who believes that ‘hide the decline’ means falling temperatures and that CO2 theory is all rubbish. I can understand people like Romm and the Guardian journalists making these claims, they’re purely political beasts but there are those who regularly visit this site who DO know better and say nothing. What does that say about their general honesty?
Here is another "climate denier" Paul Homewood who does not believe that The MET Office's declaration that 2013/14 winter was the wettest on record. He has dared to look at The MET Office's own statistics (and confirmed his earlier preliminary findings).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/07/in-the-uk-it-was-much-wetter-in-1929/
We need Betts to pitch up to explain that 1928/29 does not count as it was November to January and, therfore, not winter, so we can forget about that and return to Sligo's eminent pronounciations that there is a link to "Climate Change" as the weather is now unprecendented. To the credit of The MET Office they have not altered or eliminated their old records.
One must believe climate change dogma without reservation or be cast out from polite society. So it is written so it shall be done.
Lazy journalism, easier and more dramatic to "brand" than to do the work needed to comprehend. Cut, re-arrange and paste the NGO/IPCC/MO press release add name calling to ensure being cc'd on the next release.
The 4th Estate disappearing with its ethics.
It is annoying, when neither Lawson, Ridley, nor anyone here denies that the climate changes.
4 years ago Anthony Watts took the Guardian to trask for use of the denier word
Sea change in climate journalism: The Guardian and the D-word
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/02/sea-change-in-climate-journalism-the-guardian-and-the-d-word/
and he clearly stated his views then:
"My position has been that there is no debate that the earth has warmed over the past 100+ years, but that the magnitude of the measured warming and the cause(s) remain in debate. The question of whether such warming is beneficial or detrimental depends on who you ask. I’ll also point out that it took our modern society about 150 years of science and technology advances to get where we are now. Doing it cleaner and better won’t be an overnight solution either."
Lindzen of course has styled himself as a climate denier "as far as such a thing is possible". Very funny. The misdirection is deliberate and operates at various levels, all of them deplorable. More thoughts on this some time this weekend.
"Most of the public" don't read the Guardian.
I am not convinced that "lukewarmer" is or has ever been an appropiate moniker. It too is ill-defined. It comes in a number of different shades and colours that do not fit comfortably under one umbrella.
In using it we support those who would dichotomise the debate. Stephen J Gould has a very perceptive essay on the subject of dichotomy. He demonstrates how it was used successfully to obfuscate discussion in another major scientific controversy. Some very fine scientists had their reputations smeared for all time.
Ill-chosen labels feed the propagandistas in the MSM. See them for what they are and consciously try to starve them.
"it-was-much-wetter-in-1929"
Thank you Paul Homewood.
I was shouting at the TV again last night, when C4 screened their gloom-fest about the floods and extreme weather (and inevitable linkage to AGW). There was some spectacular photography, especially of a mad Brazilian who liked windsurfing in a force 12, but I got a bit annoyed at the seamless transition of 'wettest winter since 1766' to 'wettest winter EVAH!', which was then repeated at every opportunity. They also wheeled someone on to rubbish the dredging, although of course there was no mention of why it had been stopped...
Labour MP Margaret Curran was on the Daily Politics on 26 Feb. When asked by Andrew Neil whether someone was a denier if he or she accepted CO2 was a greenhouse gas, but wasn't sure how much effect man had, she quickly replied 'Yes'.
When asked if someone who accepted humans were causing some warming, but was not sure how much, was a denier, she again instantly replied 'Yes'. She then went on to emphasise, very excitedly, that anyone who said that governments didn't need to intervene was also a denier.
She didn't stop to reflect on the question, consider her answer or flesh out the subject - it was just bang, bang, bang, 'Denier, denier, denier'.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26355593
Margaret Curran was a community worker and then a lecturer in community education before she went into Parliament. Educationally, she has no background whatsoever in this subject, but clearly feels 100% sure she is qualified to call people who have spent a lot more time studying it than she has derogatory names.
Dr Rodgers
"Some very fine scientists had their reputations smeared for all time."
I wouldn't mind too much if the reputations of the dodgier ones received the same treatment!
Meanwhile, Tesco rebrands halogen lightbulbs as "denier" bulbs.
Really.
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=280132922
This AGW, is an unproven scientific theory that will ruin Western industrial power is losing traction within scientific communities. Communication is required to propagate this tainted theory to the political classes as they have less scientific talent and thus cannot see the fraud. Hense the vulgar shouts of 'denier'.
To keep the whole scam rolling then more political pressure must be deployed to attempt to convince ordinary voting people and the politician that they empower.
Science be damned, they are going for the low hanging fruit of politics with the fraud.
Well that makes Richard Betts a denier as he purports to be questioning how much warming will be caused by 'human influence' and what we should do about it
I've heard from sources that Ed Hawkins' deleting comments on his blog. Hmmm...not so trustworthy.
Further to my comment in 'unthreaded' about my MP's (Con) response to my letter to him about CC, I have today written back to him about the use of the 'denier' label by Ed Miliband at PMQs. My MP's take on this was that it was not David Cameron who used the phrase - the implication being that that's OK then.
I wrote that being called a 'CC Denier' is akin to hate speech and that I would expect him and our PM to stand up for people suffering such an attack. I reminded him that hate speech was now against the law and I invited him to tell me what he might do about that.
I also told him that as boundary changes at the next election would align me with a different MP I was sad not to be able to look forward to the pleasure of NOT voting for him at the next election.
After reading my way through that lot of hate speak, I'm coming around to Roy Spencer's viewpoint.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/do-we-call-them-nazis-or-not/
Pointman
I am appalled that so many leading politicians, journalists, academics, professional societies and climate scientists insist on reducing the climate change debate to an exercise in schoolyard name-calling. If they have the facts, they should argue the facts. Instead, they pound the table. How very sad.
Pointman: quite so. The cute thing about it is that it's deniable hate speech. But Nazis always were cowards.
I hate the denier term but focusing on language is not a good argument in all of this. The average working person is laying out substantially more money for gas and electricity as a result of the greening of the grid. It's an economic issue. Focus on green policy impacts on peoples pocketbooks and watch a rebellion start. As many pollsters have noted, climate change is an extraordinary low priority in most people's minds. Their utility bills however loom ever larger and the vast majority of people are much interested in the rise in costs. Connect green groups will a higher bills and put them on the defensive, denying that they are responsible.
Sean: I agree about what the average working person is concerned about and that we should always be mindful of this. But I also think it's time to hit the denier word for six, that it is finally acknowledged as hate speech and that it ends.
I'm with Sean - I don't think language is a good battleground.
I'm happier lampooning greenies as sanctimonious effete gaurdianistas like that wimp that got stuck in the antarctic ice and cried about his milk shakes.
People who have never worried about the price of groceries but are obsessed instead with their own pretentious self-image: "look at me - I care about the weather in Bangladesh at the end of the century and you don't".
I complained to the BBC when their "Life Scientific" programme was about an awful woman who deliberately kept using the denier insult, as did her host, Jim Al-Khalili. The reply did not make any sense and bore no relation to my complaint.
I am intrigued by the nastiness of some of these people. Scientific disagreement was never like this. It verges on mental illness or religious fervour. It seems to be some sort of mass delusion that renders the victim incapable of logical thought and which brings out venomous hatred instead. It is very sad and worrying.
I would like to see some of these people charged with stirring up hatred. The Guardian comments pages supply endless examples.
Re: Richard Drake
> that it is finally acknowledged as hate speech and that it ends.
The only way to get it recognised as hate speech is to kick up a fuss every time it is used.
If someone at the BBC uses it or doesn't prevent an interviewee from using it then make a formal complaint.
If somebody calls you a denier via something like social media then make a police complaint and tell the police that it is hate speech and using it amounts to harassment.
I've raised complaints with the BBC over its use before and probably will do so again.
TerryS: It's time to complain a lot more about it, at every level. For example, some BH people may have missed this from Simon Hopkinson last week:
Result. It's time to say No.
I suspect that the hatred directed at sceptics will continue to get worse since the lack of any warming for over 17 years must be devastating for those who would prefer to see relentless catastrophic warming.
This is an excellent time for climate scientists to try to understand the natural drivers of our climate. It is disappointing to see all their efforts directed at finding excuses to explain why their flawed models are 100% correct after all.
Barbara,
I saw the same Daily Politics show with Margaret Curran labelling everything that moved as a denier.
This same person on her website:
“Holocaust Memorial Day is an important opportunity to remember the victims of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides. I encourage all constituents to mark the day and to join members of community in the fight against prejudice and intolerance.”
Yeah, right.
Stevo - 'against prejudice and intolerance', eh?!
My irony-meter just exploded ...
Since when have members of the Green Taliban represented the public? They belong to a tiny but vocal minority of zealots. I doubt the public are even aware of them.
Remember that the Guardian is a comic whose low circulation is only read by liberal middle class people who are guilty of their affluence.
I get the impression that people who use terms like 'denier' are capable of doing a lot worse given half the chance.
Such people have a lot to answer for.
Indeed, Bishop, so why the hysteria over wishing to ban the so called 'deniers'. The media is completely dominated by the 'good news'? It might be interesting to compare this with those other 'hysterias' and 'moral panics' about peoples health or, alternatively, crimes etc - it makes me think that these bureaucrats have very little to do, are 'under-employed', to use a euphemism (sh*tes would be better!), sit on their collective, fat arses amusing themselves over what worse damage they can do. Or, more terribly speaking, they despair, a la Ben Pile, of their meaning, ie they have no meaning, therefore, they must co-opt 'meaning' from anywhere they can. Whatever, time wasters whose 'wasting' wastes us, our Country and the world, in general. Isn't this what Nietzsche predicted as 'European Nihilism'?
My vote goes to Sean's suggestion at 5:30. Establish a firm connection in the public mind between rocketing energy prices and eco-nuttery - and never miss an opportunity to fill in the BBC's many gaps by (e.g.) casually mentioning how much wetter it was in 1929/30,
The appropriate tone of voice is sympathetic - "poor dears, I don't think they even realise what rubbish they're talking". We, after all, are the quietly reasonable ones here, and the more frenetic and unreasonable we can paint the Emperor's New Climate crowd (not difficult, given their frequent embarrassing outbursts!) the better.
By taking it as a personal insult, I think that skeptics are missing the true purpose of the use of the "denier" term. It is not to insult skeptics - that's just a "nice" bonus - but is actually to create the impression that the alarmist version of the science is every bit as certain as the existence of the Holocaust.
That, of course, is total BS, but as long as skeptics are failing to address that particular aspect, then the false impression is going to linger.
Everytime I see or hear some climate extremist call a skeptic "Denier", I know that they are channeling the old racist bigots and wish they could still get away with calling those they hate "ni**er".
I recently read an interesting article on manufactured opinion (in this case gay marriage):
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/manufacturing_consent_on_same_sex_marriage.html
It refers to a concept called "availability cascade" (from Wiki):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_cascade
Propaganda in other words. Constantly repeated in the background of public discourse, it seeps into the subconscious and becomes accepted fact without any conscious processing.
The BBC are masters at this.
Why are these fanatical warmists such mean and vile characters? The views held by Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson, coincide with the views of most sceptics, including scientists. Yet the fanatical warmists continue using ad hom attacks, and refuse to accept any scientific conclusions, that question the non rigorous, sometimes slapdash IPCC science for politicians.
PROJECTION is the answer to why warmist activists think skeptic are disgusting, deceptive and manipulative evil bastards.
-
.. why an earth you guys pay any attention to the Guardian climate scare pornographers is behond me (but then I guess I am the idiot who expects reasonableness from the BBC more fool me. i actually complainrd to Feedback again that everyday the BBC coverage is an insult to science.. Of course my message just got filed straight in the bin as they apparently only ever get complaints from greens)
Anything is possible [good name!]:
Very good points - but I don't think we have been missing them. As I wrote three days ago:
It's not just the certainty but the horror and the insult. It 'works' at every level and it is total illegitimate. It's time to show we've had enough, not just for ourselves, not even primarily for ourselves, but for the victims of disastrous 'climate mitigation' that isn't (and crony capitalism that is).
Tom Scharf provides the best summation of the denier epithet dynamic I've seen yet in a comment to Keith Kloor's recent post,
"Learning to Live with Denialism" (https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2014/02/25/learning-live-denialists/)
From Tom's comment:
"Here’s how this argument tends to play out:
The temps have been rising. OK.
Man has been emitting lots of CO2. OK.
Some of this temp rise is due to CO2. OK.
Clean energy R & D is a good idea. OK.
Here’s where the wheels fall off:
The climate sensitivity is not well defined. DENIER!
Extreme events haven’t actually gotten worse yet. DENIER!
Your suggested policy will only lower future global temperature increases by a fraction. DENIER!
China, India, and the developing world is key to keeping a lid on future emissions. DENIER!
Economics should be a high priority when designing a solution. DENIER!
Fracking is a good thing, better than coal by half. DENIER!
We should wait until the science is better defined and outcomes are more certain. DENIER!
It might be wiser/cheaper to adapt instead of attempt to mitigate which looks hopeless on a global scale. DENIER!
UN Global Climate Treaty looks unworkable. DENIER!
If the US acts alone, it won’t be effective. DENIER!
Nuclear power is the best solution we have now. DENIER!
Putting expensive intermittent subsidized power into production is a bad idea. DENIER!
The world simply isn’t going to give up cheap energy based on the uncertainty of outcomes in climate science. DENIER!
The science actually says catastrophic outcomes are low probability. DENIER!
I think estimates on large extinction rates are overstated. DENIER!
We can’t get work done if we all drive a Prius. DENIER!
Polar bears are…DENIER! DENIER! DENIER!
Climategate…Aaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!"
The good news is that The Guardian is going broke. The BBC should be deprived of its license fee and sent out to earn its living like everyone else.
I went to hear Ian Plimer talk in London about the climate and he started his brilliant lecture with 'The climate is always changing' and put up a graph of wiggly lines going back hundreds of thousands of years. The climate is always changing - who denies that? The inconvenient truth is that during the entire Holocene Interglacial warmer has always been better. It is the cold that kills, destroys civilizations, causes famine, plague, social unrest and disaster. How can there be SO MANY fools around?
the red ticks have the jobs the indefinite entitlements already. Now they want the rest to shut up or they call them names.
we should just pay the taxes for their easy lives.
The amount of time you all spend me-tooing about your distaste for being called deniers makes me think it really hits a nerve. I don't for a minute believe this has anything to do with any perceived association with Holocaust denial, but rather is that you recognise that it is a powerful label that the public recognises. As such it must be attacked and de-legitimized.
If you really don't want to be called deniers, stop denying things. And that means more than just not denying the greenhouse effect, as has been discussed here plenty before.
If the Bishop wants to avoid being called a denier, perhaps he should stop knee jerk rejection of climate science research and stop his rabble rousing reliance on the support of people who are clearly not "skeptical" as he would define it or who are borderline unhinged, exhibit 1:
------------------------------
TinyCO2 said
> ...but there are those who regularly visit this site who
DO know better and say nothing.
See exhibit 1 above to for a clue to the impression those you think "know better" actually get of this site. You could find plenty more of this sort of bile here if you looked.